Notes on the Be Real Campaign

berealcampaign.co.uk

I.

The Be Real Campaign - which has developed out of a global marketing campaign by Unilever for a range of toiletries sold under the brand name Dove and in partnership with the YMCA - is determined to change attitudes to body image and help all of us put real health above appearance.

According to their website, low body confidence is something that affects everyone; impacting upon our physical and mental well-being and preventing us from achieving all of the wonderful things we would be capable of if only we were more body confident.

In order to bring about real change, the campaign calls upon businesses, advertisers, and the media to act responsibly and embrace real diversity, positively portraying different body shapes and sizes drawn from all ages, genders and ethnicities.

Individuals are also encouraged to take back control and sign a pledge in which they promise to help create a body confident nation by no longer editing their photos on social media. They also, of course, agree to submit their details to the Be Real Campaign.

II.

I suppose it'll be pretty obvious to most readers that I won't be signing this pledge. Indeed, I philosophically oppose the aims of this campaign and the language of politico-moral correctness and authenticity upon which it relies.

What is confidence, ultimately, but a mixture of faith and narcissism? And what's the point of being healthy if you look like shit? As for Dove's idea of the real, do they not know that - somewhat ironically - it's objectifying and betrays a death instinct?

Our individuality and our agency is a type of artifice; something styled within culture. To become-human is to challenge real being (understood in essentialist terms) and enhance our thingness; our uniqueness as a species rests on the fact that we are more than a mere piece of nature and that we have invented each gesture.

I may, as a Nietzschean, be interested in ways of overcoming our humanity as presently conceived, but I certainly don't want us to fall back into a pre-human condition lacking in style, complexity and virtuality - no matter how real it may be ...

The Object is Poetics

Jean Dubuffet, Personnage Hilare 

(Portrait de Francis Ponge), 1947

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 

In a text entitled The Object is Poetics, Francis Ponge correctly points out that the relationship between man and object is not at all limited to possession or use. Our soul is transitive, writes Ponge. By which he means it needs "an object that affects it". For man is a curious body "whose centre of gravity is not in itself". 

We have our being, in other words, in the infinite number of things outside ourselves. There are thus as many ways of being as there are objects and relationships. Arguably, the artist understands the multiple and decentred nature of man best of all; understands that the world is not only populated with other human beings, but with birds, beasts and flowers - and, indeed, with objects belonging to the inanimate world:       

"The world is peopled with objects. On its shores, we see their infinite crowd, their gathering, even though they are indistinct and vague. Nevertheless, that is enough to reassure us. Because we also feel that all of them, according to our fancy, one after the other, may become our point of docking, the bollard upon which we rest."

But, in order for this to be true, we must choose true objects, says Ponge. By which he means real objects that exist as such, with their own weight, mind independently. All too frequently we become enthralled by our own ideas: "Most often, man only grasps his emanations, his ghosts. Such are subjective objects". 

These pseudo-objects endlessly sing the same dreary song - the song of a triumphant humanity. True objects, however, exist outside of our own thoughts and desires and are not merely decorative or background features. They emit a black noise, inaudible and alien ... 

See: Francis Ponge, 'The Object is Poetics', in The Sun Placed in the Abyss, trans. Serge Gavronsky, (SUN Books, 1977). 

Note: this post forms part of a longer (as yet untitled) project on Ponge, poetry, and object-oriented philosophy being worked on in collaboration with Simon Solomon.  

   

The Case of Old Eguchi

Photo by Akif Hakan found on artclit.tumblr.com

Back - once more - in the House of the Sleeping Beauties and the case of old Eguchi ...

What is he hoping to find in bed with drugged and naked teenage girls and why do his fantasies invariably involve violence and a desire to physically abuse the young bodies that stimulate such sweet memories, rather than treat them with tenderness and affection?

Is it because male sexuality is inherently aggressive? Do all men dream of rape and incline towards tyranny as soon as they have a hard-on? I don't think so. Nor do I believe that Eguchi's anger towards the sleeping beauties is born of impotent frustration, or the ugly resentments of age (though he is acutely aware of his declining powers and his lust is doubtless driven to some degree by the approach of death).

Rather, I think we must look elsewhere for why it is Eguchi repeatedly thinks of strangling the girls, or placing his hand over their mouths and noses and so preventing them from breathing. He is aware that such acts constitute evil, but he can't help contemplating them; of sacrificing virgins, rather than merely deflowering them.

His thoughts, in other words, are atrocious rather than sensual; Eguchi wants to leave his mark on the girls and - above all - he wants to waken them and imagines that he might have a better chance of doing so were he to tear off a limb or stab with a knife, rather than place kisses on a breast or his flaccid penis between soft lips.  

Ultimately, it's not the astonishing beauty of the young women that drives Eguchi mad; it's their radical passivity. He cannot bear the fact that not only do the sleeping girls not speak, but they do not know his face or hear his voice either. In other words, the girls - who have volunteered to become perfect objects - negate his subjectivity so that not even the smallest part of his existence is acknowledged.   

It's the desire to still be recognised as a man and a living being in the eyes of the world that is uppermost in his heart - and this is precisely what is denied him. And so, even when sandwiched between the naked bodies of two women, Eguchi knows himself to be fatally isolate and alone - just like the rest of us at last.     



Note: 'House of the Sleeping Beauties', by Yasunari Kawabata, can be found in House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories, trans. Edward Seidensticker, with an introduction by Yukio Mishima, (Kodansha International, 1980).