Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero (2)

Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

Following publication of a recent post on Johnny Rotten as an abject antihero, a young woman writes from France to accuse me of body shaming the former Sex Pistol: 

 

'If he wasn't larger-bodied than you and many others in our fatphobic society find acceptable, then I very much doubt you'd feel at liberty to ridicule Lydon and subject him to such unfair criticism.' 

 

Whilst I'd accept there's an element of truth in this, I think it misses the point of the post, which - as the opening reference to Julia Kristeva indicates - was essentially concerned with the state of abjection and what an abject individual may have to teach us, rather than with Rotten's weight per se (although his obesity obviously plays a role here). 

 

Perhaps I might offer a few further remarks in an attempt to clarify ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In critical theory, to be an abject individual is to exist outside of social expectations and moral standards in a manner that doesn't only challenge but unsettles conventional notions of identity. One isn't so much inhuman, as abhuman (i.e., not-quite-human and seemingly caught up in the process of becoming-monstrous). 

 

For Julia Kristeva, this can easily induce horror, particularly when one is confronted by an intrusion of corporeal reality into the symbolic order [1] - such as seeing Rotten on stage now whilst remembering him on stage back in the day. 

 

Being forced to face the abject truth is an inherently traumatic experience; like being asked to look at the decomposing corpse of a loved one. It's deeply disturbing and I understand how it can manifest in the desire not merely to look away, but do away with the abject subject. 

 

Learning how to accept others in their otherness - particularly when that otherness strikes us as repulsive - is to adopt what Roland Barthes describes as a politics of pure liberalism: I am a liberal in order not to be a killer [2]. 

 

 

III. 

 

The irony is that whereas in his punk period Lydon was merely pretending to be Rotten and a social outsider, he has now become truly abject. 

 

And yet, as I suggested at the close of the post we're referring to here, perhaps we should be grateful to him for this; for mightn't it be the case that Rotten, in his very abjectness, draws us unto him and not only grants us a perversely-morbid pleasure of some kind, but exemplifies a Christ-like level of passion by which we might all learn something important ...? 

 

I think so. 

 

And thus, I wasn't so much subjecting Rotten to 'unfair criticism', as my correspondent suggests, rather I was trying to find a way to view him in a positive light; recalling, for example, Jean Genet's insistence that it is only via a becoming-abject that the individual can achieve an existentialist form of sainthood (something that might appeal to the son of Irish Catholics who self-righteously believes himself to be the voice of Truth). 

 

 

IV. 

 

Ultimately, why Rotten does what he does now in the manner he chooses, is, I suppose, only something he can explain. 

 

Perhaps his speaking tour is not simply a commercial venture, but a method of public mourning; i.e., a form of catharsis via which he can express all his anger, sorrow, regret, etc. 

 

And perhaps his karaoke rendition of 'Anarchy in the UK', in which he invites the audience to clap and sing along as if they were the elderly residents of a care home, can be seen as a piece of abject performance art in which old ideals (such as artistic integrity) are devalued once and for all.

 

Or perhaps he's just become what he is (and what he formerly despised) ... 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (Columbia University Press, 1982). 

 

[2] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Papermac, 1995), p. 117. My italics.

 

 

What Was I Thinking? (2 June)

Images used for posts published on this date 

in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2023

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I'm still busy working on an 8000-word essay, the structuring and now even the style and content of which is giving me a real headache, it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by, rather than produce all-new material.

 

And so, let's time travel and reminisce ...

 

 

The Museum of Failed Products 

 

I always thought this post published in 2014 concerning the fact that the vast majority of new consumer products - just like the vast majority of species - are destined to fail, was an amusing if somewhat poignant post, concluding as it does that just as the marketplace can do without yoghurt shampoo or breakfast cola, so too can the universe do without us. 

 

 

Breast Ironing 

 

In June 2015, I wrote about the attempt to suppress the growth of healthy breast tissue in pubescent girls by using hard and often heated objects to literally flatten any signs of such development. Usually, this moral shaping of the flesh is carried out in the name of Love; i.e., it's a bad act performed with good intentions - just like the equally disgusting practice of FGM. 

 

Unfortunately, thanks to mass immigration and multiculturalism we now have both these things in the UK.  

 

 

Cabaret: Divine Decadence and Fascinating Fascism

 

Skip a couple of years forward, to 2017, and I was back in Berlin of the 1920s and early '30s ...

 

For many people, Cabaret (1972) - dir. Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli and Sally Bowles - is a near-perfect film musical; one that appears to starkly contrast the divine decadence of Berlin during the Weimar Republic with the fascinating fascism of Hitler's Third Reich, but which actually demonstrates how the two share the same cultural foundations and possess similar aesthetico-sexual concerns to do with questions of gender, style and performativity. 

 

For ultimately, if life is a cabaret old chum, then politics is just another form of show business and - as Jean Genet once wrote - even fascism can be considered theatre. 

 

Or, as Susan Sontag writes in her famous 1975 essay, there's a disturbing (almost symbiotic) relationship between the world of the cabaret and that of the concentration camp; the seduction is beauty ... the aim is ecstasy ... the fantasy is death.  

In Praise of Denial

 

Skip forward another 24 months to 2019, and I discussed my favourite line from Shakespeare - I know thee not, old man ... (Henry IV Part 2, Act 5 scene 5) - arguing that the need to deny our elders, our loved ones, our teachers, our leaders, and, ultimately, ourselves, is an absolutely crucial requirement in the process of becoming what one is.

 

Why? Because too much love and loyalty to another, or to the past, can be deadly and anyone who wishes to live and fulfil their own destiny has to offer a seemingly cruel denial of someone or something at sometime or other, regardless of the consequences or the pain caused. 

 

We deny and must deny, says Nietzsche, because something in us wants to live and affirm itself.

 

 

Schopenhauer and the Sea Turtles

 

 

2 June 2020: what was I thinking? 

 

Apparently, about German philosophers and marine reptiles ...

 

For Schopenhauer, life is a manifestation of a hungry will; concerned only with its own continuation. Thus, we witness innumerable species - including sea turtles, wild dogs, and tigers - caught up in an endless feeding frenzy in order to survive and reproduce others of their kind. 

 

Life is thus not only absurd, it is often atrociously cruel and grotesquely violent. And those who imagine that the earth would be some kind of peaceful paradise if only mankind were to stop interfering or vanish altogether, are very much mistaken. 

Sometimes, Better a Dead Mountain Lion Than a Live Dog 

Finally, last year, a post about German born, New York based artist and Wunderfrau Heide Hatry and her latest muse and family member; a stuffed puma called Luna - proving that the author of Ecclesiastes who insisted better a living dog than a dead lion was not always right. 

 

For sometimes, as Ms. Hatry knows, it is the deceased who have something vital to teach us. Which is why her long fascination with corpses has often resulted in work of great insight and macabre beauty. 

 

 

French Maid

F. H. Clough: The French Maid (1950s)

Grammatically speaking, I'm not sure if the word French, as used within English, is a modifier, qualifier, or both. Either way, it often also serves as an erotic intensifier, as illustrated by the term French maid, for example ...

I.

Maids - including comely barmaids - have a long-established position within the pornographic imagination for complex reasons involving power and pleasure on the one hand, fantasy and fetish on the other. Indeed, I've written on the psychosexual aspects of this topic in an earlier post and readers who are interested can click here.

In this post, however, I'm specifically interested in the figure of the French maid as trope, stereotype, and soubrette; i.e., as an attractive young woman wearing a skimpy stylised outfit based on the typical uniforms worn in 19th century France. 

This costume - which is instantly recognisable - usually consists of a black dress with white trim and a full skirt cut well above the knee; a frilly white half-apron; a white lace headpiece; sheer black or fishnet stockings (preferably seamed); and high-heeled shoes. Optional accessories include a garter, a choker necklace, and a feather duster.   

Of course, maids - even in France - have never attempted to keep house dressed like this, but that's so beside the point that anyone who stops to raise this as an issue is an idiot. The pornographic imagination is not overly concerned with historical accuracy and the coquettish French maid ooh-la-la-ing her way through life belongs more to the world of burlesque and Benny Hill than domestic service. 

II.

Having said that, the French maid is not simply found in comedy and can sometimes move from sauciness to sadomasochism - as in Jean Genet's play Les Bonnes (1947), loosely based on the shocking story of sisters Christine and Léa Papin, who brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, in 1933.*

In the play, the two French maids - Solange et Claire - construct elaborate sadomasochistic rituals when their mistress (Madame) is away. Their dark role-playing games always involve the murder of the latter. However, their concern with process rather than goal, means they always fail to ceremoniously kill Madame, thereby forever postponing the climax of their fantasy and delaying their own ultimate pleasure. 

The play was performed in London at the Greenwich Theatre in 1973, with Vivien Merchant as Madame, Glenda Jackson as Solange and Susannah York as Claire. This production was filmed in 1974, directed by Christopher Miles, who implemented many of Genet's theatrical devices for the movie.**

Promo photo of Susannah York and 

Glenda Jackson in The Maids (1975)

Notes

* This murder exerted a strange fascination over French intellectuals - including Genet, Sartre and Lacan - many of whom sought to analyse it as a symbolic form of class struggle. The case has since inspired many artworks and further critical studies. 

** The film, made for the American Film Theatre, was released in the US in April 1975, and shown at Cannes the following month (although not entered in the main competition). To watch the trailer, click here.

For a sister post to this one on French kissing, click here. 

For a sister post on French knickers, click here. 

Cabaret: Divine Decadence and Fascinating Fascism

Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles 

Cabaret (1972) 

For many people Cabaret (1972) is a near-perfect film musical: one that appears to starkly contrast the divine decadence of Berlin during the Weimar Republic with the fascinating fascism of Hitler's Third Reich, but which actually demonstrates how the two share the same cultural foundations and possess similar aesthetico-sexual concerns to do with questions of gender, style and performativity. For ultimately, if life is a cabaret old chum, then politics is just another form of show business and - as Jean Genet once wrote - even fascism can be considered theatre ...      

Brilliantly directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, Cabaret stars the magnificent Liza Minnelli as international singing sensation Fraulein Sally Bowles and Michael York as Englishman abroad, Brian Roberts, a somewhat reserved bisexual academic and writer. It opened to rave reviews, was an immediate box office smash and won eight Academy Awards. And yet, without doubt, it's the darkest and queerest of musicals - one that even Nazis can enjoy. Indeed, it provides an anthem that is today sung without any trace of irony by neo-Nazi groups.

Written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' is certainly a catchy number. And when sung by a good-looking Hitler Youth in a bright, sunlit Biergarten (cf. the dark and seedy Kit Kat Klub), it's not surprising as, one by one, nearly all those watching add their voices and raise their arms in salute. But it's not just that the tune happens to be diabolically rousing; more important, as Susan Sontag points out, is the seductive idealism of the Nazi aesthetic itself:

"It is generally thought that National Socialism stands only for brutishness and terror. But this is not true. National Socialism ... also stands for an ideal, and one that is also persistent today, under other banners: the ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community ..."

In other words, it's insufficient and a little dishonest to pretend audiences are powerfully moved by 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' simply because of the songwriting genius of Kander and Ebb. The song is so compelling because, among other things, the Nazi fantasy of a future utopia is one which many people continue to share.    

Some individuals - les fleurs du mal - cynically reject the comfortable trappings of bourgeois life and like to indulge their taste for illicit pleasures and nihilism; they choose to be Jewish and queer rather than Aryan and straight as a die. Like Sally Bowles, they abort the chance of a stable family life, preferring a headless, homeless and childfree lifestyle. But most people do not; most prefer Kinder, Küche, Kirche and like to see men in black uniforms patrolling the streets rather than girls with emerald green nail varnish and black stockings. 

But this is not to say that the masses lack a libidinal economy; Sontag is right to remind us that National Socialism doesn't only offer an aesthetic, it also places sex under the sign of a swastika too. And Cabaret crucially hints at how a sexually repressive and puritanical regime on the one hand is profoundly kinky and perverse on the other; the leather boots and gloves providing us with a clue as to the likely predilections of SS officers who continue to figure prominently within the pornographic imagination.

And so, if at one level the film can be read simply as the tale of a failed love affair between Sally and Brian, the violent rise to power of the Nazis and how this influences every aspect of life for all characters - be they German, Jewish, or foreign nationals who just happen to be in Berlin at the time - is the real story. Cabaret demonstrates that fascism compels us to speech and obliges us all to take sides; of how totalitarianism leaves no space for neutrality or political indifference. 

Thus it is that, by the end of the movie, even the Kit Kat Klub is putting on anti-Semitic skits for an audience dominated by uniformed Nazis and their supporters and we are obliged to admit that there's a disturbing (almost symbiotic) relationship between the world of the cabaret and that of the concentration camp; the seduction is beauty ... the aim is ecstasy ... the fantasy is death.


See: Susan Sontag, 'Fascinating Fascism', The New York Review of Books, (Feb 6, 1975): click here to read online. 

To watch Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles singing 'Life is a Cabaret', click here.