Sinister Writings 4: Purity is the Malign Inversion of Innocence

From the film poster for The Ogre, (1996) 

dir. Volker Schlöndorff and starring John Malkovich

 

 

Michel Tournier's enthralling novel The Erl-King (1970) contains many philosophically important ideas; none more so than the following apology for perversion, which is expressed so powerfully that it requires no commentary [1]:

 

"Purity is the malign inversion of innocence. Innocence is love of being, smiling acceptance of both celestial and earthly sustenance, ignorance of the infernal antithesis between purity and impurity. Satan has turned this spontaneous and as it were native saintliness into a caricature which resembles him and is the converse of its original. Purity is horror of life, hatred of man, morbid passion for the void. A chemically pure body has undergone barbaric treatment in order to arrive at that state, which is absolutey against nature. A man hag-ridden by the demon of purity sows ruin and death around him. Religious purification, political purges, preservation of racial purity - there are numerous variations on this atrocious theme, but all issue with monotonous regularity in countless crimes whose favourite instrument is fire, symbol of purity and symbol of hell." [2]    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Having said that, there will doubtless be those who would like a commentary on the above; such persons may care to read Ursula Fabijancic's, 'Purity/Innocence: A Defense of Perversion in Michel Tournier's Le Roi Des Aulnes', in Dalhousie French Studies, vol. 72, (2005), pp. 71-86. It can be accessed via JSTOR: click here.

 

As Fabijancic rightly notes, the key notions of purity and innocence should not be taken as binary opposites; their inherent instability (and reversability) precludes attaching absolute fixed moral values to them. Also, there exists an ambiguous zone in Tournier's fictional universe where all apparent opposites meet and converge with one another. Ultimately, as readers of the novel will know, Tournier uses the term innocence in a similar manner to Nietzsche and the book's ogre-like protagonist is innocent in a way that many non-Nietzscheans will find problematic; particularly given the nature of his perverse tendencies. For Abel Tiffauges, only true outsiders - social misfits, sexual deviants, immature philosophers et al - share that same quality of innocence and forgetfulness that we find in young children. Finally, we might note in closing that Fabijancic finds Tournier's inventive defence of perversion unpersuasive from an ethical standpoint; mainly because it rests upon a highly idiosyncratic definition of the term innocence and lacks intellectual rigour and consistency. These things don't overly bother me, however. 

 

[2] Michel Tournier, The Erl-King, trans. Barbara Bray, (Atlantic Books, 2014), p. 66.      

 

 

If You Only Palpitate to Murder / No One is Innocent

Jamie Reid: God Save Jack the Ripper (1979)

One of a series of posters designed by Reid for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)

For more information visit the Victoria and Albert Museum website: click here. 

Some interesting emails have arrived in my inbox concerning a recent post by Símón Solomon on Charles Manson: click here.

Several people professed no interest in the case; others voiced their concern that, in publishing the post, I am helping to further mythologise Manson and his Family when such vile individuals should be starved of the oxygen of publicity and allowed to fade from the collective memory as soon as possible.

However, whilst I agree with D. H. Lawrence that "if you only palpitate to murder" it quickly becomes boring and results, ultimately, in "atrophy of the feelings" (i.e., like the sexual excitement generated by pornography, the sensational thrill of violent crime is subject to a law of diminishing returns and one must therefore seek out an ever more lurid level of explicit detail), I don't think we can simply ignore negative limit-experiences.

Like it or not, figures like Charles Manson are indelibly part of the cultural imagination and undoubtedly have something important - if disturbing - to tell us about ourselves. As Símón rightly argues, it's virtually impossible to exaggerate (or expunge) Manson's enduring impact and whilst some might need to think him beyond the pale, he was "very much a product of American post-War popular culture and a toxic body politic".

Similarly, in the UK, figures ranging from Dick Turpin and Jack the Ripper to Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, are as British as fish 'n' chips and will continue to haunt our cultural imagination for as long as we continue to consume the latter (even though he's horrible and she ain't what you'd call a lady).

This was perfectly understood by Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid, the latter of whom designed the provocative series of God Save ... posters that the former pasted up in Highgate Cemetery in the famous 'You Needs Hands' scene of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) - a scene which I have discussed elsewhere on this blog: click here.      

Reid's artwork - much like the Sex Pistols' 1979 single featuring Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs on vocals - advances the challenging theological idea that, thanks to original sin, no one is innocent - i.e. we are each of us, as fallen beings, corrupt at some level and capable of committing acts of atrocity. Similarly, we are all of us - no matter how evil and depraved - capable of redemption; for we are all God's children (not just those who attend church and say their prayers).

Was punk rock, then, simply a disguised form of moral humanism founded, like Christianity, on a notion of forgiveness ...? Was its nihilism merely a pose?     

See: D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI: March 1927-November 1928, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 600.

Play: Sex Pistols, No One Is Innocent (Virgin Records, 1978): click here.

Simone de Beauvoir: Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome (Pt. 1)

I. Initials BB

In 1959, Brigitte Bardot - the world's most outrageously sensual film star - was the subject of a 64-page study (with many half-tone illustrations) written by Simone de Beauvoir - France's leading female intellect.

De Beauvoir is intrigued by the sneering hostility that many of her compatriots feel for BB. Not a week goes by, she notes, without articles published in the press discussing her love life and analysing her personality; "but all of these articles [...] seethe with spite".

Many parents, priests and politicians seem to object to Bardot's very existence. At the very least, they call for her films to be banned in order to prevent her corrupting influence on society, particularly amongst the young. Of course, as de Beauvoir writes, it's nothing new for self-righteous moralists "to identify the flesh with sin and to dream of making a bonfire of works of art" that depict it in pornographic detail.

However, such puritanism still doesn't quite explain the French public's very peculiar hostility towards Bardot. After all, many other actresses have taken their clothes off on screen and traded on their physical charms without provoking such anger and dislike. So the question remains: why does BB arouse such animosity?


II. The Lolita Syndrome

If we want to understand why Bardot was regarded as a monument of immorality, it's irrelevant to consider what she was like in real life. The important thing, rather, is to place her within a modern mytho-erotic context and examine what de Beauvoir terms the Lolita syndrome; i.e., what is for some the shocking and deplorable truth that older men are often sexually attracted to much younger girls.   

Idealists want their arts and entertainments to have an element of romance. But they also expect things to remain wholesome and familiar. The male lead in a movie, for example, should be clean-cut and the object of his affection a woman who doesn't deviate too far from the girl-next-door. And at the end of the film there should be the sound of wedding bells. 

Post-1945, however, serious film-makers were heading in a rather different direction. Their model of eroticism was obsessive and destructive: amour fou. And they were interested in creating a new Eve who was part hoyden, part femme fatale and whose youth opened up that pathos of distance that seems so necessary to (middle-aged male) desire:

"Brigitte Bardot is the most perfect specimen of these ambiguous nymphs. Seen from behind, her slender, muscular, dancer's body is almost androgynous. Femininity triumphs in her delightful bosom. The long voluptuous tresses of Melisande flow down to her shoulders, but her hair-do is that of a negligent waif. The line of her lips forms a childish pout, and at the same time those lips are very kissable. She goes about barefooted, she turns her nose up at elegant clothes, jewels, girdles, perfumes, make-up, at all artifice. Yet her walk is lascivious and a saint would sell his soul to the devil merely to watch her dance."


III. BBeyond Good and Evil
      

But BB is not just sexy in a conventional sense. Nor even is this "strange little creature" fully human:

"It has often been said that her face has only one expression. It is true that the outer world is hardly reflected in it at all and that it does not reveal great inner disturbance. But that air of indifference becomes her. BB has not been marked by experience [...] the lessons of life are too confused for her to have learned anything from them. She is without memory, without a past, and, thanks to this ignorance, she retains the perfect innocence that is attributed to a mythical childhood."

In a sense, Bardiot is inhuman - or superhuman - or both; a force of nature who doesn't act before the camera but just is. Nevertheless, she does seem to reinforce traditional ideas of femininity; temperamental, unpredictable, wild, impulsive ... a feral child in need of taming and the guidance of an experienced male. 

However, this sexual stereotype and sexist cliché - which so flatters masculine vanity - is no longer tenable; cinema goers in the post-War period were no longer prepared to believe in this phallocratic fantasy in which the old order was restored and everyone lived happily ever after.

And this is why Roger Vadim's 1956 film starring Bardot - Et Dieu… créa la femme - is a great work; one that doesn't fall into triviality and falsity, but remains honest to the spirit of the times by presenting us with a character, Juliette, who will never be subordinated, or settle down and become a model wife and mother.

De Beauvoir writes:

"Ignorance and inexperience can be remedied, but BB is not only unsophisticated but dangerously sincere. The perversity of a 'Baby Doll' can be handled by a psychiatrist; there are ways and means of calming the resentments of a rebellious girl and winning her over to virtue. [... But] BB is neither perverse nor rebellious nor immoral, and that is why morality does not have a chance with her. Good and evil are part of conventions to which she would not even think of bowing."

She continues:

"BB does not try to scandalize. She has no demands to make; she is no more conscious of her rights than she is of her duties. She follows her inclinations. She eats when she is hungry and makes love with the same unceremonious simplicity. Desire and pleasure seem to her more convincing than precepts and conventions. She does not criticize others. She does as she pleases, and that is what is disturbing. [...] Moral lapses can be corrected, but how could BB be cured of that dazzling virtue - genuineness? It is her very substance. Neither blows nor fine arguments nor love can take it from her. She rejects not only hypocrisy and reprimands, but also prudence and calculation and premiditation of any kind."

Bardot is a woman who lives only in the present - now/here - and for whom the future is one of those "adult conventions in which she has no confidence". And this is why so many people fear and hate her. If she were a conventionally bad girl figure - coquettish and calculating - there'd be no real problem. But when evil "takes on the colours of innocence", then good people everywhere are radically disconcerted. 

In sum: BB is "neither depraved nor venal". She might lift up her skirt and flash her knickers, but there is a kind of disarming candour, playfulness, and healthy sensuality in her gestures: "It is impossible to see in her the touch of Satan, and for that reason she seems all the more diabolical to women who feel humiliated and threatened by her beauty."


See: Simone de Beauvoir, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome, (Four Square Books / The New English Library, 1962).

Note: this post continues in part two: click here.

Fascism May Be Fascinating, But Do Not Become Enamoured of Power

Designed by Hugo Boss, who was an active party member and not simply a collaborator with the Nazi regime, the SS uniform was, as Susan Sontag writes, "stylish, well-cut, with a touch (but not too much) of eccentricity". 

Close-fitting and all black in colour, the uniform suggested not only malevolent authority and the legitimate exercise of violence, but also the aestheticization and eroticization of power. It was an outfit designed to make its wearer not only feel superior, but look supremely beautiful. 

Little wonder then that this menacing but seductive uniform - complete with various items of regalia, cap, gloves, and boots - has continued to have a place within both popular culture and the pornographic imagination; filmmakers, fetishists, and fashionistas, for example, are united in their fascination for this ultimate fascist ensemble.       

But of course, as Sontag also points out, most people who fantasise sexually about being dressed to kill and go a little weak at the knees when they see an SS uniform are not signifying their approval of what the Nazis did ("if indeed they have more than the sketchiest idea of what that might be"). They are simply interested in the staging of their own desire and the acting out of their own fears and obsessions.

And perhaps this is a good thing. For perhaps, as Foucault said, in order to rid our hearts and dreams of fascism it is necessary to say and do shameful, ugly things not because we believe in their truth, but so that we won't have to believe in their truth any longer. Perhaps the aim is not ecstasy, but innocence; the fantasy is not death, but freedom (from that which causes us to love power and revere authority in the first place).

Note: Susan Sontag's essay, 'Fascinating Fascism', from which I quote in the above post, can be found online at: www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1975/feb/06/fascinating-fascism/