Philosophy on the Catwalk: In Praise of an Exterminating Angel Dressed in Lambskin

Model wearing an Emilio Parka and Ezio Trousers by Loro Piana

loropiana.com [1]

 

It takes a lot of courage to sail gaily, in super-soft shearling, 

right in the teeth of dreary convention. [2]

 

 

Nobody denies that we wear clothes for three very obvious reasons: firstly, to cover up our nakedness; secondly, to protect us from the elements and, thirdly, for purposes of ornamentation. 

 

But these aren't the only reasons and only those with very practical minds who always wear sensible shoes and keep their spending in line with their income, would fail to appreciate that dressing up is "an act of meaning beyond modesty, ornamentation, and protection" [3]. 

 

In other words, wearing clothes is a signifying activity and that's where its importance and real interest lies - particularly when the clothes in question are haute couture, rather than merely mass produced and ready-to-wear [4].

 

For within the world of high-end fashion, the frenzied play of signifiers is taken to the extreme; i.e., to the point of enchantment at which systems of reference begin to break down. In this manner, writes Baudrillard, the very logic of the commodity is abolished and there is "no longer any determinacy internal to the signs of fashion, hence they become free to commute and permutate without limit" [5]. 

 

This rupture of referential reason goes beyond the collapse of all values into the market and the sphere of commodities. When fashion becomes an art, then it transports us into another world entirely; one in which nihilism is consummated and we become (as Nietzsche would say) like the ancient Greeks; i.e., superficial out of profundity and full of the courage to remain at the surface, the fold, the skin; to adore appearance and believe in forms [6].    

 

Those who fail to appreciate this - who don't enjoy the absurdity of fashion; the frivolity and immorality "which at times gives fashion its subversive force (in totalitarian, puritan or archaic contexts)" [7] - will never understand why a young flâneur strolling through Soho in an outrageously expensive outfit made of shearling possesses the beauty an exterminating angel ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Loro Piana is an Italian luxury fashion brand, founded in 1924 by Pietro Loro Piana, and based in Milan. Initially known for its cashmere, vicuña, linen, and merino fabrics, the company has expanded to design knitwear, leather goods, footwear, fragrance and related accessories. Since 2013, the company has been majority-owned by Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the French multinational fashion conglomerate.

      If any wealthy readers fancy sending me the money, I will happily make the outfit pictured here my winter look for 2024/25. The hay-coloured Emilio Parka, crafted from shearling, costs £10,755; whilst the matching Ezio Trousers, in a creamy cashmere colour but also made from finest lambskin, are priced just over £7,000.        

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing a line by D. H. Lawrence, in 'Red Trousers' (1928). See his Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 138.

 

[3] Roland Barthes, 'Fashion and the Social Sciences', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, (Berg, 2006), p. 97.

 

[4] I'm using the term haute couture in a broader contemporary sense, rather than with its strict 19th-century French definition; i.e., to refer to exclusive creations by the world's leading designers, made with high-quality, rare fabrics and crafted with meticulous attention to detail by skilled artisans, but not necessarily made to order by private clients or stamped with the official seal of the Paris Chamber of Commerce.

 

[5] Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, by Iain Hamilton Grant, (SAGE Publications, 2007), p. 87. 

 

[6] Nietzsche, Preface (4) The Gay Science (1887).  

      We might note that Baudrillard is sceptical about this. For whilst he speaks of the charm and fascination of fashion and welcomes the resurrection of forms, he dismisses fashion's revolution as innocuous and rejects the idea that it recovers the superficiality that Nietzsche discovered in the ancient Greeks: "Fashion is only a simulation of the innocence of becoming, the cycle of appearances is just its recycling." Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 89.

      In other words, fashion's passion for artifice and for empty signs and cycles - for making the insignificant signify - may be genuine, but it lacks symbolic radicality and only announces the myth of change. 

 

[7] Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 94. 

Jean Baudrillard: the Marmite Philosopher

Love Him or Loathe Him ... Here's Jean Baudrillard - 

the Marmite Philosopher 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

In response to my Boxing Day post - click here - an anonymous correspondent writes:

 

Even a plate of cold turkey leftovers is more digestible than the turgid (if for a time fashionable) nonsense that Baudrillard passed off as philosophy and which only pretentious idiots - such as yourself - continue to take seriously. 

      Sokal and Bricmont were spot-on to describe Baudrillard and those figures often associated with him - I won't designate them as thinkers - as intellectual imposters whose confusions, fantasies, and postmodern jargon for a time brought philosophy into disrepute and damaged the minds of generations of students. 

      As the above rightly conclude: 'When all is said and done, one wonders what would be left of Baudrillard's thought if the verbal veneer covering it were stripped away.' [1]  

 

If this email is anything to go by, it would seem that the Christmas spirit doesn't last long; one wonders what would remain of my correspondent's argument if the vitriolic veneer were stripped away. 

 

 

II.

 

Of course, the above - aligning himself with the unfunny double act of Sokal & Bricmont - is not the first and won't be the last person to be triggered by Baudrillard, who is, we might concede, something of a Marmite philosopher; i.e., a divisive and polarising figure and thus something of an acquired taste.

 

Indeed, even those thinkers who emerged out of the same philosophical background - and with whom he is often categorised - often found his vision of contemporary culture as cynical and overly pessimistic; i.e., one that offered no critical solutions and seemed to render direct (political) action impossible.

 

He was, they said, merely a bleak fatalist trapped inside his own ideas and, according to Sylvère Lotringer, during the mid-late 1970s Deleuze quietly let it be known around Paris that he considered Baudrillard to be the shame of French intellectual life [2].  

 

Despite this, here we are at the fag end of 2024 and I find that just as I prefer cool memories to cold turkey, so I'd sooner spend time reading Baudrillard than M. Deleuze; a philosopher whom everyone seems to love and have acquired a taste for these days (apart from my Sokal & Bricmont quoting correspondent of course).     

 

Notes

 

[1] My correspondent is referring to the book by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures (Profile Books, 1998). The line quoted is the closing sentence of the chapter specifically written on Baudrillard (chapter 8). The book was first published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles (Editions Odile Jacob, 1997). 

 

[2] See Sylvère Lotringer, 'On Jean Baudrillard', in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 6, Number 2 (July, 2009): click here. 

      Lotringer explains how the publication of Baudrillard's Forget Foucault (1977) not only anatgonised the subject of the essay, but Foucault's close friend Gilles Deleuze and that whilst the work made Baudrillard (in)famous on the one hand, it got him excommunicated from French intellectual circles on the other.

 

Boxing Day with Baudrillard

Cold Turkey with Jean Baudrillard 

(SA/2024)

 

 

Boxing Day or not, if given the choice between a plate of cold turkey and a book of cool memories, I think I prefer the latter. 

 

In other words, better fat-free Baudrillardian fragments and scattered thoughts, each existing perfectly in its own singular and symbolic space, than Christmas day leftovers. 

Note: Click here for a follow up post addressing a criticism of this one ...

Cheirophilia: the Hands of Rachel Ashley

Philip Ashley inspecting the delicate white hands 

of his cousin Rachel by candlelight [a] 

 

'There are some women [...] who through no fault of their own impel disaster. 

Whatever they touch, somehow turns to tragedy.' - Nick Kendall [b]

 

 

I. 

 

Jean Baudrillard insists that the slender and lively hands of women are of greater symbolic and seductive beauty than their eyes or hidden sexual organs, and I suspect that Philip Ashley - the naive and inexperienced (possibly unreliable) narrator of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) - may very well agree with this assertion. 

 

For he certainly seems to be partial, shall we say, to the delicate white hands of his older, twice-widowed, half-Italian, very alluring cousin Rachel ... 

 

 

II.

 

From the first time he meets her, with, at that time, hate in his heart for the woman he believes responsible for the death of his beloved guardian, Ambrose, Philip notices her hands clasped in her lap: 

 

"I had never seen hands so small before on an adult person. They were very slender, very narrow, like the hands of someone in a portrait painted by an old master and left unfinished." [80]

 

When Rachel finishes drinking her tea and places her cup and saucer back on the tray, he is once again "aware of her hands, narrow and small and very white" [85], noticing also that she has "two rings, fine stones both of them, on her fingers" [85].

 

So, whilst I'm not saying Philip is a cheirophile or hand fetishist, it's certainly true that when talking to Rachel he finds it hard to retain eye contact and that his gaze does not wander from her face towards her breasts or feet, for example, but almost exclusively to her hands: 

 

"I shifted my gaze from her eyes down to her hands. They were clasped in front of her, small and very still. It was easier to speak somehow if I did not look directly at her, but at her hands." [99]

 

It's true also that he is fascinated by the manner in which the fingers on her right hand would touch and play with the ring on her left hand: "I watched them tighten upon it" [99] and then gradually relax their hold. 

 

No doubt Philip is hoping that Rachel will one day hold something of his own in her hands - and I don't mean his heart. At one point, whilst watching her hands, he imagines himself sitting naked in his chair before her; exposed and all his fantasies revealed unto her. 

 

His childhood friend Louise is not mistaken to say to him: "'How simple it must be for a woman of the world, like Mrs Ashley, to twist a young man like yourself around her finger'" [133].

 

III.

When not clasping her hands in front of her, or playing with her rings, or stroking the head of the dog, Rachel sometimes cups her chin in her hands or puts them to her face in a defensive gesture; at other times she gives Philip a hand to hold or kiss. And, like a true Italian, when she grows animated in conversation she gestures somewhat excessively with her hands.

 

It is sometime before Philip finally gets to hold her hands in his own, or to remove her gloves so as to passionately kiss her hands. But his joy in so doing doesn't last long. For after Rachel makes it perfectly clear that she has no intention of ever marrying him, Philip reflects how her hands lose their warmth and, when he does attempt to hold them, "the fingers struggled for release, and the rings scratched, cutting at my palm" [270].

 

During his prolonged period of illness, Philip is nursed by Rachel. But the feel of her hand upon his fevered brow and neck isn't soothing; it is, rather, hard and gripping like ice. When finally he begins to recover his senses and his strength, however, he is content to lie in bed holding her hand in silence:

 

"I ran my thumb along the pale blue veins that showed always on the back of hers, and turned the rings. I continued thus for quite a time, and did not talk." [289]

 

 

IV.

Finally, the questions that all readers must address arise: Are Rachel's the hands of a murderess? Does she stir ground laburnum seeds into his tisana? 

 

By the end of the book, Philip certainly has his suspicions and after noticing how Rachel stirs the tisana with a spoon in her left hand [c], he comes to the following fatal conclusion:

 

"I had held [her hand] many times, in love, before. Felt the small size of it, turned the rings upon the fingers, seen the blue veins upon the back, touched the small close-filed nails. Now, as it rested in my hand, I saw it, for the first time, put to another purpose. I saw it take the laburnum pods, in deft fashion, and empty out the seeds; then crush the seeds, and rub them in her palm. I remembered once I had told her that her hands were beautiful, and she had answered, with a laugh, that I was the first to tell her so." [321]

 

Finally, Rachel has the accident that kills her (one that Philip is complicit in, if not criminally responsible for). Climbing down to where she lay "amongst the timber and the stones" [335], he takes her hands in his for the last time and, despite being cold, he "went on holding her hands until she died" [335].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Screenshot from My Cousin Rachel (dir. Roger Michell, 2017), starring Rachel Weisz as Rachel Ashley and Sam Claflin as Philip Ashley. 

 

[b] This is the warning Philip's godfather, Nick Kendall, gives him on the eve of his 25th birthday, with reference to his beloved cousin Rachel. See Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 246. All future page references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] Whilst I'm sure most readers will accept that being left-handed is perfectly natural and not a sign of evil, the fact remains that left-handedness has long been associated with negative qualities and malevolent activity; the word sinister derives from the Latin word for left.

 

 

A Tale of Two Polar Bears: Dominic Harris Contra Heide Hatry

 

Dominic Harris: Polar Bear from the series Arctic Souls (2023)

Code, electronics, LCD screen, sensors, aluminium 

65 (W) x 106 (H) x 12 (D) cm  

Heide Hatry photographed by J. C. Rice on the Great Lawn in 

 Central Park (NYC) making Snow Bears in the winter of 2020-21

 

 

I. 

 

Take two polar bears created by two very different artists: the first constructed in code by the London based British artist Dominic Harris; and the second made with snow by the New York based German artist Heide Hatry ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In a tryptich entitled Arctic Souls (2023), Harris seeks to remind viewers of the beauty (and vulnerability) of three of the Arctic's most iconic inhabitants; the polar bear, the Arctic fox, and the Arctic hare. Whether the portraits also capture each creature's essence is debatable (I would obviously say not). 

 

As Harris reveals on his website, despite looking strangely real and lifelike thanks to the level of intricate detail - not to mention the fact the animals respond to the movements of an approaching viewer - they are in fact high-fidelity digital constructions presented on an interactive screen. 

 

In other words, his work is the manifestation of the purest techno-idealism and ultimately tells us more about him than it does about the fascinating animal species he has chosen to depict, including the iconic carnivore shown here.  

 

 

III. 

 

Harris is an artist who uses the very latest technology to share with us his vision of the natural world, transforming the latter (and the creatures that inhabit it) into an imagined reality that the viewer can not only observe, but interact with and immerse themselves within. 

 

The effect is magical. But as much as there is beauty and playfulness in the computer-generated, artificially intelligent world Harris creates, there is also something disturbing; something a bit uncanny valley-ish. 

 

Harris is undoubtedly aware of this and maybe he wishes to exploit our unease in order to challenge perceptions of what constitutes reality and make us question what we want our relationship with the world to be. To what extent, for example, do we wish our daily experience to be mediated via technology? Do we want to see butterflies in the back garden, or on a giant screen? 

 

Maybe the answer is we want both: but what if we can't have both? 

 

What if in so seamlessly encoding the natural world and transforming everything into digital information we exterminate reality? This is what Baudrillard refers to as the perfect crime; i.e., the unconditional realisation of the world via the actualisation of all data [1]. 

 

 

IV.

 

Consider in contrast the Snow Bears made by Heide Hatry ... [2]

 

Whilst Harris and his team are operating in the warmth of his Notting Hill studio - designing, engineering, coding, and fabricating his diabolicaly clever artworks and installations - Ms Hatry has been scrambling around on hands and knees and freezing her tits off for the last couple of winters in snowy Central Park, making snow sculptures of polar bears.

 

Despite both Harris and Hatry issuing a similar call to preserve the natural environment that polar bears live in, I find her work more poignant and many native New Yorkers were also touched and grateful for her heroic efforts.  

 

I remember once Malcolm McLaren telling me that a man on a mountain top tapping two sticks together makes a much bigger sound that all the electronic music in the world. Similarly, we might say that someone daubing paint by hand on a cave wall produces a much truer representation of the world than all the digital photographs shared on Instagram; or a woman making Schneebären that will quickly melt to nothing (just like the Arctic sea ice) moves us more than someone using code and colours to create a virtual reality.           

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (Verso Books, 1996).

      In brief, Baudrillard argues that reality has been made to disappear and singular being exterminated via technological and social processes bent on replacing real things and real lives with a series of images and empty signs. For Baudrillard, this consitutes the most important event of modern history; one carried out before our very eyes and in which we have all - including artists - have been complicit, although, ironically, it is artists who also leave clues or traces of criminal imperfection behind them.

 

[2] Some readers might recall that I have written previously about Heide Hatry and her snow bears; see the post dated 16 February, 2021: click here.

 

 

For more information on Dominic Harris and his work visit: dominicharris.com - or click here if you wish to go straight to the page on Arctic Souls (2023). Harris is represented by the Halcyon Gallery (London): click here. 

 

For more information on Heide Hatry and her work visit: heidehatry.com 

 

 

A Brief Astrophilosophical Reflection

Zodiac Man (Homo Signorum) [1]

 

 

I can't quite recall where, but I'm sure Baudrillard once mused on the idea of changing one's fate by the simple measure of adopting a new star sign. For if a man can identify as a woman (and vice versa), then surely someone unhappy with being tied down by an earth sign could, for example, identify as a free-floating air sign.

 

Having said that, I have no desire to transition from one sign to another. I'm perfectly content having been born on February 13th to be an Aquarian [2] and my sense of self closely and comfortably corresponds to the sign I was given at birth, which I suppose makes me ciszodiac.

 

I hope, however, that this doesn't make me dismissive of those queer individuals who, for example, no longer wish to identify exclusively with one star sign; or those who feel uncomfortable within the confines of the traditional zodiac divided into twelve houses across three modalities (cardinal, fixed, and mutable) [3].

 

For as Baudrillard also said (I think): We ought to be as cruelly indifferent to star signs as they are to us as individuals ... [4]

 

Notes

 

[1] Frequently encountered in astrological (and medical) works from classical, medieval, and early-modern times, the Man of Signs illustrates the (imagined) correlation between the cosmos and human physiology; as above, so below and all that (occult) jazz. 

 

[2] The philosopher Sam Harris argues that one of the things that might be said in favour of astrology is that it's profoundly egalitarian; that there are no inferior zodiac signs. However, I'm not sure that's quite true. For it does seem to me that Aquarius has a rather special status; not only is it the rarest of the twelve signs, but stands above all others due to the enigmatic and multifaceted nature of those who are governed by it (this might have something to do with the fact that Aquarius is a sign ruled by not one, but two celestial bodies: the revolutionary Uranus and the disciplined Saturn).

 

[3] The German philosopher Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, who specialises in thinking about aesthetics, politics, and culture in a playful, stylish, and slightly dreamy (neo-organic) manner, has written a short satirical skit developing this idea; see 'Genders and Zodiacs' on the Medium website (20 July 2023): click here.     

 

[4] Unfortunately, I don't have access to my books at the moment and it might be the case that I'm misremembering what Baudrillard wrote. However, I can say with confidence that he definitely suggested in one of the volumes of Cool Memories (1980-2004) that we should accord equal importance to the star sign we die under as to the one we are born under. 

 

  

If You Want Angels to Visit Your Home ...

Stephen Alexander (à la Jamie Reid): 

Taliban: Aniconism in the IEA (2024)

 

 

I. 

 

I can't say I'm a fan of the Taliban, but you have to admire their determination to actually practice what they preach and govern Afghanistan in accordance with Islamic law, which, as they rightly argue, is often unambiguous and needs only to be implemented and enforced rather than interpreted.

 

Take, for example, the teaching that prohibits the production and circulation of images not just of the prophet Muhammad, but of all living things. Some may pretend that this teaching is complex and point out that it allows exceptions. Others, for whom iconography is not such a major moral concern, will draw attention to the fact the Quran doesn't explicitly prohibit the visual representation of living beings (although it certainly condemns idolatry).

 

However, the hadith - a major source of guidance for Muslims, elaborating on the principles set out in the Quran - is perfectly clear: making images of living things is haram (i.e., strictly forbidden as a sinful action) and image makers are threatened with serious punishment on Judgement Day, no matter how pious they may have been in other regards; until, that is, they are able to invest their image with life (which, of course, they'll never be able to do, for Allah is the sole creator of life).   

 

So, whilst it may appear crazy or extreme to many Westerners - and, indeed, to many Afghans (particularly those working within the media) - the Taliban are behaving with impeccable moral logic; images of living things are contrary to sharia and angels will not enter a house with pictures on the wall.

 

 

II. 

 

Obviously, aniconism is not going to be an easy policy to sell (or enforce) in a world awash with images. Thus, the new ban announced on any images of living things will be introduced gradually over time. 

 

And, apparently, even the Taliban seem to approve of photo ID cards, which, I have to admit, I find somewhat disappointing; as is the fact that members of the mujahideen have posed for portraits and Taliban officials have posted selfies and other snap shots on social media before now.

 

Well, I say disappointing but perhaps that's not the right word to use as it maybe suggests I'm sympathetic to what's going on in Afghanistan: just to be clear, I'm not. Having said that, I remain of the view that iconography is certainly not an innocent activity (albeit one which, in a digital age, is perhaps our most fundamental activity). 

 

Like Baudrillard, I think image-making plays a complicit role in what he terms the perfect crime [1] and by which he refers to the extermination of singular being via technological and social processes bent on replacing real things and real people with a series of images and empty signs. 

 

When this happens, we move beyond a game of mere representation towards a world of obscenity; i.e., a state wherein all living things are made "uselessly, needlessly visible, without desire and without effect" [2]. 

 

And that, philosophically, is a legitimate concern it seems to me ... [3]              

 

Notes 

 

[1] See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (Verso, 1996). 

 

[2] Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact, trans. Chris Turner, (Berg, 2005), p. 94.

 

[3] One that I have discussed at length in a two-part post entitled Film Kills (13-14 June 2013): click here for part one ('At the Pictures with D. H. Lawrence') and/or here for part two (On Images, Objects and Speculative Realism'). 

 

 

Notes on SIG News Issue 3: From Bomber Jackets to the Joy of Punxploitation

It's all working well for him and it's all going smoothly for McQueen

 

NB: this post is a continuation from part one: click here. 

 

 

V. 

The MA-1 - or bomber jacket, as it is better known - was a popular fashion staple in the 1980s; particularly with skinheads, who loved both its utility and hypermasculinity (as did certain gay clones). 

 

However, as Ian Trowell reminds us, what imbued this garment with such great "subcultural crossover potential" [1] was the fact it evaded fixed meaning. This also helps explain its strange longevity.

 

That and the fact that what's good enough for Steve McQueen, is, as a rule, good enough for anyone (although, for the record, I never owned a bomber jacket and wouldn't have dreamed of wearing such). 

 

 

VI.

 

Mike Wyeld and Antony Price are both concerned with subcultural politics. 

 

The former asks whether punk or acid house, for example, has resulted in any long lasting political change. I think we all know the answer to this, even Wyeld, although he wants to keep the dream alive so can't quite bring himself to openly admit it hasn't.

 

Price, on the other hand, is adamant that rave continues to offer a form of "collective resistance to the oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism" [2]. 

 

Unfortunately, Jean Baudrillard has indicated how and why the very idea of resistance in a transpolitical era characterised by the techno-social immersion of the individual rather than their alienation, has become problematic and even a little passé. Speaking in an interview with François L'Yvonnet, Baudrillard says: 

 

"I'm a bit resistant to the idea of resistance, since it belongs to the world of critical, rebellious, subversive thought, and that is all rather outdated. If you have a conception of integral reality, of a reality that's absorbed all negativity, the idea of resisting it, of disputing its validity, of setting one value against another and countering one system with another, seems pious and illusory." [3]

 

Of course, that isn't to say that there cannot exist singular spaces which, at a particular moment, constitute themselves as alternative worlds with their own set of rules. And that's pretty much how Price describes nightclubs:

 

"At their best, nightclubs are places for experimentation, for inclusiveness and exclusiveness, a place to try out different personas, to challenge sexual identity and orientation through both individual and collective freedoms, a space to move outside of the confines of society." [4] 

The problem is, anyone who has actually been to a nightclub recognises that this is mostly bullshit. And even if nightclubs were (at their best) heterotopic wonderlands of transgression and otherness, they still wouldn't offer the kind of head-on socio-political resistance that Price imagines and advocates. 

 

 

VII.

According to Madeline Lucarelli, the practice of witchcraft has been transformed via the establishment of online communities. No longer concerned with the casting of spells and the harnessing of supernatural forces, witchcraft is now all about personal growth and spiritual freedom [5].  

 

Alas, if Lucarelli is to be believed, witchcraft has therefore become a depressingly tame affair; no sex, no scourging, no satanic ritual ... The Dionysian frenzy of the orgy and the blasphemous humour of the black mass appears to have given way to a New Age theology that upholds many of the same woke values that any good liberal might recognise. 

 

Wicca, I'm sorry to say, is now a humanism. And the witch, far from being a figure who inspires terror or offers resistance to hegemonic society, is now merely a Twilight-reading Barbie Goth hardly deserving of the name.

 

 

VIII.

 

Finally [6], we come to Russ Bestley's article on the joy of punxploitation and his deep fascination with Plastic Bertrand's international hit single 'Ça plane pour moi' (1977).

 

Whilst Bestley struggles to say what, exactly, first attracted him to this song, I think I understand (and to an extent share) his love of those songs which have all the energy of punk but which are not weighed down by the spirit of gravity; songs which privilege the joy and laughter of pop over the austere monarchy of rock [7].

Bestley recognises that fun is a vital element of popular culture, even if it is often valued negatively by those commentators whose language succumbs all too easily to moralising imperatives; i.e., the kind of people who are embarrassed by the crude and shallow entertainments enjoyed by the working-class and who will never accept the fact that 'Friggin' in the Riggin'' was a bigger selling-single than 'Holidays in the Sun'.

 

I agree with Bestley that 'Ça plane pour moi' amusingly manages to "embody so much of what 'punk' set out to achieve" [8]. So click the link above, roll around with your cat on the bed, and enjoy!

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Ian Trowell, 'Bomber Crew: Storying the Eighties Through the MA-1', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 12.  

[2] Antony Price, 'Rave On', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 30.

 

[3] Jean Baudrillard, Fragments, trans. Chris Turner (Routledge, 2004), p. 71.

 

[4] Antony Price, 'Rave On', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 30.

 

[5] See Madeline Lucarelli, 'The Body, Broom and Sins of the Witch', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 22.

 

[6] It should be noted that there are numerous other articles in SIG News 3 that I have not discussed. These include Rachel Brett's piece on fashion's relationship with the colour black (a dark history I have myself written on here); Isabella Chiara Vicco's piece on Jerry Rubin and his metamorphosis from yippie to yuppie; and Shijiao Kou's musicological analysis of 'Hong Kong Garden' (the debut single by Siouxsie and the Banshees). Oh, and there's also my piece on the revolt into red-trousered style.   

[7] The phrase 'spirit of gravity' is borrowed from Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and the phrase 'austere monarchy' is borrowed from Foucault (The History of Sexuality 1). I have written on rockism contra poptimism and in defence of fun elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here and here.

[8] Russ Bestley, 'Ça Plane Pour Moi': The Joy of Punxploitation', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 27.  

 

 

Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Welcome to the Desert of the Real  

(SA 2024)

 

 

This photo, taken yesterday whilst approaching Liverpool Street Station by train, is an interesting study of old and new London; one in which, as the Irish poet and playwright Síomón Solomon pointed out, the recently erected skyscrapers look like a mirage [1], or as if superimposed upon the reality of an older landscape. 

 

I suppose we might refer to this as capitalist unrealism; or perhaps say after Morpheus: Welcome to the desert of the real ... [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A mirage is a naturally-occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of actual objects. Unlike a hallucination - and conveniently for the purposes of this post - a mirage can thus be captured on camera.

 

[2] This line, delivered by the character Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) in the 1999 film The Matrix (dir. the Wachowskis), is a paraphrase of Jean Baudrillard writing in Simulacra and Simulation (1983). It is also the title of a book by Slavoj Žižek (2002).

 

 

Disney Über Alles

The Happiest Place on Earth [1]

"Children, I wanna warn ya / 'Cos I've been to California

Where Mickey Mouse is such a demon / Where Mickey Mouse is as big as a house!" [2]

 

 

I.

 

Cotino is the first Storyliving community being developed by Disney in Rancho Mirage, California. Work started on the 618-acre site - which will feature residential housing, hotels, resort facilities, and a retail centre, all surrounding a 24-acre grand oasis and an artificially blue lagoon - in April 2022. 

 

Disney are so confident that it will be a successful venture, that, in December 2023, they announced plans for a second such community, Asteria, in Pittsboro, North Carolina, which will include 4,000 homes (the same month that the first houses in Cotino went on sale, although the community will not be opened until 2025).    

 

 

II. 

 

In an article published in The Guardian [3], Oliver Wainwright discusses Disney's plan for curated living, i.e., a life which unfolds in a perfectly stylised and completely controlled environment so as to ensure that residents and guests experience the magical joy that the company has been peddling for a hundred years.    

 

Wainright calls it a fantasy world, but it's really much more (and more sinister) than that; this is a model of zen fascism overseen by Mickey Mouse and other Disney cast members where neighbours will be able to "bond over Disney-themed art lessons, enjoy dinners inspired by Disney stories and join family days with Disney-related activities". 

 

Wainright also informs us that the themed homes curated by Disney imagineers will be priced in excess of $1m, whilst the forthcoming town centre will feature "a street market where local artists will sell Disney-themed arts and crafts" and there will be "'abundant opportunities for laughter'". 

 

Oh, and if you're wondering how to keep a large lake sparkling blue all year round in an area that suffers from extreme drought, well, that's thanks to patented Crystal Lagoons technology.   

 

This expansion by the world's largest mass media and entertainment conglomerate into the real world is surely something that Uncle Walt would have approved of and might have amused Jean Baudrillard were he still alive to witness it ...

 

 

III.

 

Baudrillard wrote an important piece on Disneyland more than forty years ago in his seminal text  Simulacres et Simulation (1981), describing it as "a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulacra" and a "frozen, childlike world [...] conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized" [4] and awaiting resurrection.  

 

Obviously Disneyland exalts American values in miniature and cartoon form. But it does more than this: its real purpose is to conceal the fact that it is the real America, just as prisons are built in order to disguise the fact that society is itself carceral. 

 

Baudrillard writes: 

 

"Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle."

 

He continues: 

 

"The imaginary of Disneyland is neither true nor false, it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate the fiction of the real in the opposite camp. Whence the debility of this imaginary, its infantile degeneration. This world wants to be childish in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the 'real' world, and to conceal the fact that true childishness is everywhere - that it is that of the adults themselves who come here to act the child in order to foster illusions as to their real childishness." 

 

With the opening of Cotino next year, I'm not sure whether the Disney executives so skilled in playing this game of concealment have finally triumphed and the Happiest Place on Earth will soon expand across the globe, or if, perhaps, they have made a fatal miscalculation and all but the most fanatic of Disney adults will decide they've had enough of staged reality and curated living.    

 

 

Notes 

[1] This was the original slogan for Disneyland, Est. 1955. 

 

[2] Lyrics from 'Do You Wanna Hold Me?' by Bow Wow Wow, from the album When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going (RCA Records, 1983): click here.

 

[3] Oliver Wainwright, 'Let's move to Disney Town! Will life in its 2,000 themed homes be a dream or a nightmare?' The Guardian (08 April 2024): click here.

[4] This text by Baudrillard was translated into English as Simulacra and Simulation by Sheila Faria Glaser (University of Michigan Press, 1994). Material quoted here and following is from a section entitled 'The Hyperreal and the Imaginary' in the first chapter, 'The Precession of Simulacra'. See pp. 12-14. 

 

Three More Cool Cats: CC, Room 8, and Henri, le Chat Noir

Three Cool Cats: CC, Room 8, and Henri, le Chat Noir

 

 

Opening Remarks 

 

Some cats have so captured human affection that they've secured a place in the cultural imagination and achieved a degree of fame bordering on celebrity. To illustrate this, I recently discussed the cases of Félicette the Space Cat, Casper the Commuting Cat, and Oscar the Therapy Cat: click here.

 

Here, at the request of several cat-loving readers, are three further examples drawn from the modern period that particularly interest or amuse ...

 

 

CC (Copy Cat)

 

Just as many people know the name of Laika, the Soviet space dog, but are unfamiliar with the French cat Félicette, so it is that whilst most have heard of Dolly the Sheep, very few are acquainted with a shorthaired, brown and white tabby cat called CC - an initialism standing for either Copy Cat or Carbon Copy, depending on who you ask - even though she holds the distinction of being the world's first cloned pet, born in Texas, in 2001 [1]. 

Whilst figures ranging from Jean Baudrillard to Adam Gibson have expressed reservations about cloning as a technique - Doesn't anybody die anymore? - I'm pleased to say that CC appeared to be a happy, healthy cat who, in September 2001, gave birth to four genetically unique kittens (one of whom was, sadly, stillborn), fathered naturally by another lab cat, named Smokey, before dying peacefully, aged 18, in March 2020. 

 

 

Room 8 (The School Cat)

 

If asked to identify my favourite type of cat, then I would have to say one that comes from out of the blue; i.e., not a breed, but either a fateful event in and of themselves, or the herald of such - a kind of feline angel with whiskers rather than wings.

 

My little black cat is one such creature, who just turned up one day and decided to stay ... And so was an American pussy who came to be known as Room 8 ...

 

Room 8 wandered into a classroom at Elysian Heights Elementary School in Echo Park, California, in 1952 and decided he was henceforth going to live there during the school year; vacationing for the summer months, but always returning when classes resumed in the Fall. 

 

This happy (somewhat unusual) arrangement continued without interruption until the mid-1960s. 

 

Eventually, the news media discovered what was happening and they would send reporters and film crews to await the cat's return. This resulted in him receiving fan mail (up to a 100 letters a day) and becoming the subject of both a documentary film and a children's book. 

When age, sickness, and injury began to take a toll - he was hurt in a fight when older and suffered from feline pneumonia - Room 8 was taken in by a kind family living close to the school.

 

When he died, in August 1968, thought to be aged around 21, his obituary in the LA Times ran to three columns and was accompanied with a photograph. Past and present students at the school raised funds for his gravestone and CC was laid to rest at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, California. 

 

Finally, for those who find such details fascinating, Room 8's paw prints can be found immortalized in cement on the pavement outside Elysian Heights. 

 

 

Henry aka Henri, le Chat Noir 

 

Technically, Henri, le Chat Noir is a fictional cat created by the human William Braden, who wrote and directed a short series of films posted online that explored the existential musings of the former. 

 

But Henri was portrayed by a real (longhaired black and white) cat, Henry, belonging to Braden's mother, so I think it's legitimate to comment on his case here, particularly as videos featuring Henri have been viewed millions of times and received critical acclaim, making him one of the world's best-known and most celebrated cats.

 

Braden began his project whilst a student at the Seattle Film Institute. He was inspired by the American perception of French films as pretentious and self-absorbed. The first short, Henri (2007), was written, filmed and edited in eleven days. 

 

The second film, Henri 2: Paw de Deux didn't follow on YouTube until five years later in 2012, but it won the Golden Kitty Award for Best Cat Video On The Internet at the Walker Art Center's Internet Cat Video Festival. Critic Roger Ebert also declared Henri 2: Paw de Deux the 'best internet cat video ever made' [2].

 

Many sequels followed between 2012 and 2018 - seventeen short films in all. In the final film, Henri announced his retirement and thanked all his fans around the world for their support. 

 

During this period, two books were also published: Henri, le Chat Noir: The Existential Musings of an Angst-Filled Cat (2013) and Reflections on Human Folly (2016), both written (obviously) by Braden, but one likes to think with Henry's approval.  

 

I think my favourite description of Henri was provided by a journalist at The Huffington Post who wrote that he was 'like a feline Serge Gainsbourg, just without the singing, or the alcoholism, or the public scandal' [3].

 

It's actually a little disapointing to discover that in real life Henry was, according to Braden, a good natured and happy cat who never suffered a single moment of existential crisis and had nothing in common with the brooding character Henri he portrayed on film. 

 

In December 2020, Braden announced that Henry had been euthanized at the age of 17 because of a debilitating deterioration of his spine ... C'est la vie! as he fictional French self might shrug.      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] CC was genetically identical to Rainbow, the male cat who donated the genetic material. But the cats looked different because coat patterns and other features can be determined in the womb. Her surrogate mother was named Allie.  

 

[2] Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, (31 Aug 2012). 

 

[3] Written in a Huffington Post review (27 June 2012) of Henri 3: Le Vet (2012). 

Notes on Young Kim's 'A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell' (Part 1)

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