In a Time Never-Never (Notes on McLaren & Westwood's Worlds End)

Worlds End: the fifth and final incarnation of McLaren and Westwood's 

store at 430 King's Road, Chelsea.

 

'It was a bright cold day in 1980, and the clocks were striking thirteen ...'

 

 

Whilst David Connor proudly promotes his role in the transformation of Seditionaries into Worlds End in late 1980 - describing the total refurbishment of 430 King's Road as a "collaboration with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren" [1] - I think those of us who care about this matter are aware that it was the latter who essentially should be credited with the work.

 

I'm not suggesting McLaren didn't have help [2]: but the creative vision was his and the key ideas - such as the steeply sloping shop floor and the giant 13-hour clock with hands that rotate anti-clockwise at high speed promising to magically transport those who stepped inside not merely to the past, but to a time never-never or an immanent utopia [3] - were his. 

 

As was the name of the shop: and the Worlds End logo, adapted from the flag design by the eighteenth-century pirate Robert Tew, featuring a muscular arm holding a Saracen sword on a black background (McLaren having decided that the skull and crossbones was simply too clichéd) [4].

 

The interior and exterior designs McLaren came up with for the store were intended to suggest a mixture of The Old Curiosity Shop located in London's Holborn area - and made famous by Dickens in his 1841 novel of that title - and an eighteenth-century galleon.

 

Ultimately, McLaren's idea was to sail away from everything; from punk, from England, from the twentieth-century. And for McLaren, Peter Pan style pirates and Red Indian braves [5] were now sexier, more stylish, and more subversive of the cultural mainstream than rockers in their black leather jackets and ripped jeans.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See David Connor's website page dedicated to Worlds End: click here. 

      Whilst Connor produced a number of drawings for the project that developed what Paul Gorman describes as the "twisted fairy-tale elements of McLaren's concepts" - three of which are included on the page linked to - Malcolm desired a much stronger-looking facade for his store; one that was rooted in history as well fantasy. See Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 457.

 

[2] Gorman informs us that whilst McLaren "oversaw the overhaul", it was carried out by Roger Burton and the electrician Andy Newman. But the latter were simply following instructions and the concept being realised was McLaren's own. See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 457.

 

[3] This phrase, which I associate with Deleuze and Guattari, refers to a place and time that exists very much now/here rather than nowhere. I discuss the idea in relation to the land of Cockaigne and the Big Rock Candy Mountain in a post of 10 August 2018: click here. 

      As for the idea of a clock that might strike for a 13th time, this is one that resonates within English literature. The line at the top of this post, for example, is a paraphrase of the very famous opening line of George Orwell's novel 1984. Essentially, it's an idea that casts doubt on reality.

 

[4] See Paul Gorman's post of 28 August 2014 published on his (always amazingly well-researched) website paulgormanis.com - click here. 

      Readers might also be interested in Ben Westwood's post of 11 August 2017 on the Worlds End blog published on viviennewestwood.com: click here. 

 

[5] Interestingly, McLaren's relation to the Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie - creator of Peter Pan - is little dicussed, even though he was clearly much influenced by the latter's adventures in Neverland as leader of the Lost Boys; adventures which involved dealing with pirates and redskins, as well as fairies and mermaids. 

      In a list for The Guardian of his top 10 books, compiled in February 2000, McLaren places Peter Pan at number one, describing it as the "best sex story" he has ever read: click here. As a possible explanation of what he meant by this, see Philip Hensher's article in The Spectator entitled 'The creepiness of Peter Pan' (11 June 2005): click here.

      

 

For a recent post related to this one entitled 'Out of the Punk Ruins and Into the Age of Piracy' (26 May 2024), please click here. 

It Was on the Good Ship Venus ...

Sex Pistols: Friggin' in the Riggin' 

(Virgin Records, 1979) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

As many readers will recall, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) ends aboard the good ship Venus with the Sex Pistols reduced from flesh and blood punk rockers, who once called for anarchy in the UK, to cartoon pirates singing a bawdy 19th-century drinking song and heading for disaster on the rocks. 

 

Still, whilst the song itself may have a strictly limited appeal, the animated sequence contains many delicious moments, two of which I'd like to comment on here ...

 

 

II.

 

Firstly, there's the scene in which Rotten is made to walk the plank and is pushed into the sea at sword point by Captain McLaren, where he is quickly gobbled up by a hungry shark branded with the Virgin logo. It's très drôle.  

 

But before we discuss why the lead singer was cruelly dispatched in this manner, we might stop and ask if pirates ever really used walking the plank as a method of execution ... Apparently, the answer to this is yes, but only on rare occasions and it was practised mostly for the amusement of the crew. Nevertheless, it has become a popular pirate motif within popular culture.

 

In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1884), for example, there are several mentions of walking the plank, including the opening scene in which Billy Bones tells blood-curdling stories of the practice to Jim Hawkins. And Captain Hook and his men also had a penchant for making prisoners walk the plank in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904).

 

But, returning to the case of Johnny Rotten in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle ... His symbolic execution illustrates the fact that shortly after the Winterland show in San Francisco on 18 January 1978, it was decided by Malcolm and other members of the group that he simply had to go. 

 

Not only was everybody bored with being part of a successful rock 'n' roll band, but, according to McLaren, Rotten was starting to develop certain starry pretensions and thinking about how he might develop a long-term (possibly solo) career in the music industry. In this, he had the backing of record company executives, who saw him as a valuable asset and someone whom - unlike McLaren - they could work with.

 

Further, McLaren was of the view that in order to gain everything it was necessary to sacrifice something, or someone, and Rotten - whom he now characterised as a collaborator - was the perfect candidate.     

 

And so, whilst throwing him overboard was an unexpected move, some might say it was also a bold stroke of genius; as was sending Cook and Jones to Brazil and recruiting the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs as the Sex Pistols' new lead vocalist, but that's another story ...  

 

 

III.

If walking the plank is a legendary pirate practice, then the idea that a sea captain must always go down with his ship is arguably a more noble maritime tradition; one that assigns to the latter ultimate responsibility for both his vessel and all who sail aboard her (crew and passengers alike). 

 

I'm not sure McLaren in his role as captain of the good ship Venus cared in the slightest about saving the lives (or musical careers) of his punk crew - in fact, having thrown Rotten to the sharks and determined to effectively skuttle the ship, Malcolm didn't give a fuck who would sink or swim and went beneath the waves standing to attention, but with a mischievous grin on his face. 

 

Nineteenth-century ideals of virtue and doing the right thing - of always following protocol and respecting tradition - were exactly what the Sex Pistols wished to destroy and McLaren prided himself on the fact that he was irresponsible and didn't manage so much as wilfully mismanage the group.  

 

 

Screen shots from  

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] "Friggin' in the Riggin'" - along with Sid's version of the Eddie Cochran song "Something Else" - was released as a double A-side single on 23 February 1979 (both taken from the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle soundtrack also released in Feb '79 on Virgin Records). It got to number three on the UK charts and sold 382,000 copies, making it the Sex Pistols' biggest selling single. To play and watch on YouTube: click here.   

[2] Animation for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was by Bill Mather, Andy Walker, Gil Potter, Derek W. Hayes, and Phil Austin (Supervised by Animation City). 

 

 

Good Things Come in Small Packages: Notes on Microphilia with Reference to the Case of Tinker Bell

Very Sexy Tinkerbell by CreepingNinjas  

deviantart.com

"It was a girl called Tinker Bell, exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, 

cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. 

She was slightly inclined to embonpoint." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

An anonymous correspondent emails: 

 

As a member of the SW community, I was intrigued to see you close a recent post featuring the Mothra twins by making reference to your own microphilia. I do hope that, as indicated, you intend to say more on this often overlooked form of love. [2]

 

So, not wanting to disappoint a reader (since I have so few), here's a post for him [3] and all other members of the shrinking women community ... [4]   

 

 

II.

Somewhat ironically, it seems that the number of individuals erotically fixated with tiny women and who derive sexual pleasure from fantasies involving such fairy-like figures is increasing in size, just as the number of self-identifying macrophiles begins to shrink. [5]

 

But then, when one starts to investigate the subject, it soon becomes apparent that microphilia has always been present within mainstream art, literature and film - and that it is not something only found at the kinky margins of society. 

 

In order to demonstrate this, I thought it might be fun to examine the case of Tinker Bell ...

 

 

III.

 

As most readers will know, Tinker Bell is a fictional character from J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan (1904) and its later novelisation as Peter and Wendy (1911). She has since established herself as an iconic figure within the Disney universe - where she is often misclassified as a pixie - wearing a bright green strapless mini dress in order to best display her hourglass figure and lovely long limbs.

 

Although some people like to believe that the original animated version of Tinker Bell was modelled after blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe, the primary point of reference was actually the dancer and actress Margaret Kerry who, in 1949, was said by Hollywood insiders to have the World's Most Beautiful Legs. 

 

The key point is that, from the first, Tinker Bell was imagined as a sexually alluring woman in miniature; not a pre-pubescent girl. Thus, there's nothing innocent about foul-mouthed, orgy-loving Tinker Bell [6] and nothing criminally deviant about finding her sexy; microphilia is not a form of paedophilia [7]. 

 

This perhaps explains her broad and continuing appeal. Not only, for example, does she have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but in 2009 she became the smallest waxwork ever to be made by Madame Tussauds, measuring just five-and-a-half inches in height. 

 

Arguably, as I said earlier, this illustrates that whilst microphilia is rooted within the pornographic imagination, it also has a central position within mainstream popular culture and so isn't really a hidden or secret fantasy as some claim; young or old, male or female, queer, kinky or straight, we all love women in miniature (particularly those who, when spanked, sprinkle fairy dust upon our otherwise drab lives).     

 

 

 

Notes

[1] J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, (Hodder & Stoughton, 1911), Ch. III, p. 35. This work can be read free online thanks to Project Gutenberg: click here.

 

[2] The post that my correspondent refers to was published as 'Ravishing a Universe for Love: In Praise of Mothra and the Shobijin' (25 Sept 2022): click here.

 

[3] Although I'm assuming my kinky correspondent is male, it's important to note that there are female microphiles who might, for example, desire to be miniaturised and then sexually pleasured by a normal-sized partner (which might, I suppose, be just as legitimately discussed in terms of macrophilia). 

 

[4] I'd like to make clear at the outset, however, that I'm not an expert in this area and do not wish to be seen as a spokesperson for those with a fetishistic penchant for women of a radically reduced stature whom one might literally hold in the palm of one's hand. The views expressed here are my own and I'm sure some microphiles will object to my focusing on Tinker Bell - a fairy - rather than a real human female in shrunken form - such as Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966); or is Cora Peterson so tiny that even the most devoted or hardcore of microphiles draws the line?   

 

[5] According to Dr Mark Griffith, the go-to academic for information on a wide range of paraphilias, the reason microphilia appears to have increased in popularity over recent years is because of the rise of the internet and social media: 

      "Because the paraphilia is almost totally fantasy-based, much of the material from which microphiles gain their sexual gratification is placed and distributed online. There is a wide range of microphile artwork, photographs, and video on the internet. Applications such as Photoshop are widely used to create collages of fake miniaturized people." 

      See the post published on his website entitled 'Shrink rap: A beginner's guide to microphilia' (9 Nov 2012): click here. 

 

[6] Re Tinker Bell's tendency to sprinkle her speech with expletives, see Peter and Wendy, Ch. III, p. 48 in the edition previously cited, where Barrie writes: "Tink was darting about again, using offensive language". And for the reference to fairy orgies, see Ch. VI, p. 109.         

      I am grateful to Hannah Lucy, writing on her blog - Hannah Lucy's Literary Adventures - for reminding me of these lines. See the post 'Tinker Bell's Disturbing Sexuality' (19 November 2017): click here. As much as I enjoyed this post, however, I couldn't help thinking that Lucy's conclusion - that Tinker Bell is "essentially a lascivious tart" - is a bit harsh. 

 

[7] It is always questionable when one paraphilia is reduced to another, or different forms of kink are confused and conflated. 

      Having said that, Mark Griffith insists that when it comes to microphilia "there are crossovers with other sexually paraphilic behaviours such as sadism and masochism [...] For instance, some male microphilic fantasies involve sexual violence against shrunken women who they hold as a captive and/or prisoner. Here, the microphiles may also be sexually aroused by the fact that the shrunken women may be in a distressed psychological state [...] as a result of being miniaturized". See 'Shrink rap: A beginner's guide to microphilia' (the link to which has previously been given).  

 

Readers might be interested in some of the posts published on Torpedo the Ark discussing macrophilia, i.e., the opposite of microphilia in which the amorous subject derives sexual pleasure from human giants. These posts include: 'In Defence of Giant Lovers' (15 June 2015); 'Bigging Up the Gibson Girl' (23 July 2019); and 'Into the Valley of the Giants' (3 April 2022).