I Don't Know as I Get What D. H. Lawrence is Driving at When He Writes of Bursten Bowels ...

Picasso: Gored Horse (1917) 

Graphite pencil on canvas with ochre primer 

(80.2 x 103.3 cm)

Museu Picasso de Barcelona

 

 

I. 

 

As readers of D. H. Lawrence are very well aware, he loves to write about the mysterious nether region of the human body known as the loins - i.e., that zone of libidinal intensity that lies somewhere between the ribs and the pelvis (or above the legs, but below the waist).

 

In fact, the only thing that excites his imagination more are the bowels ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Unfortunately, a bit like Frank O'Hara, I'm not quite sure I always understand what Lawrence is getting at when he uses this term [1]. On the one hand, it seems to be more than simply an anatomical reference to the gastrointestinal tract; indeed, for Lawrence, the bowels seem to be the seat of human compassion from which the deepest desires also spring. 

 

But, on the other hand, Lawrence likes to base his philosophical understanding of the body in biology where possible. So when he talks about the bowels, he is also referring us to the digestive system and those sausage-like organs known as the intestines or entrails. 

 

And, rather like Kenneth Williams, who described his daily bowel movements obsessively in his diaries, Lawrence seems to be plagued by a fear of things not working properly in this region, as we can see in the novel Kangaroo (1923), for example, when the marsupial-like fascist Ben Cooley is shot several times in his "'bloomin' Kangaroo guts'" [2], as one of his followers says.

 

Richard Somers - the book's Lawrentian avatar - visits Cooley in the hospital and can barely disguise his horror and disgust at the thought of ruptured bowels:

 

"Somers found Kangaroo in bed, very yellow, and thin [...] with haunted, frightened eyes. The room had many flowers, and was perfumed with eau de cologne, but through the perfume came an unpleasant, discernible stench. [...]

      Somers could not detach his mind from the slight, yet pervading sickening smell.

      "'My sewers leak,' said Kangaroo bitterly, as if divining the other's thought." [3]

 

Bruce Steele's explanatory note on this is spot-on:

 

"Jack's angry reaction to his leader's having been shot in the stomach and not killed outright probably reflects the First World War soldier's fear of abdominal wounds. In a pre-biotic age, peritonitis was a common and deadly complication of such wounds. While a ruptured bowel could be stitched, contamination of the abdominal cavity was frequently fatal; it would account for  the 'unpleasant, discernible stench' and Kangaroo's diagnosis 'My sewers leak'. If the sniper had deliberately aimed at his stomach rather than his head - which would probably have killed him instantly - it would have been in the knowledge that the victim would almost certainly die a slow and painful death." [4]

 

Of course, whilst being shot in the stomach can lead to a slow and painful death for a man, being disemboweled by the horns of an angry bull can be an equally horrific (and, arguably, even more obscene) way for an elderly horse to die.

 

And so to Mexico City ...   

 

 

III.

 

There are several disturbing scenes in Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent (1926), including the opening one set at the plaza de toros [5] - and I'm not referring to the fact that someone in the crowd thought it funny to throw an orange at the bald spot on Owen's sunburnt head.

 

Rather, I'm referring to the following incident involving a blindfolded horse ...

 

"The picador pulled his feeble horse round slowly, to face the bull, and slowly he leaned forward and shoved his lance-point into the bull's shoulder. The bull, as if the horse were a great wasp that had stung him deep, suddenly lowered his head in a jerk of surprise and lifted his horns straight up into the horse's abdomen. And without more ado, over went horse and rider, like a tottering monument upset.

      The rider scrambled from under the horse and went running away with his lance. The old horse, in complete dazed amusement, struggled to rise, as if overcome with dumb incomprehension. And the bull, with a red place on his shoulder welling a trickle of dark blood, stood looking round in equally hopeless amazement.

      But the wound was hurting. He saw the queer sight of the horse half reared from the ground, trying to get to its feet. And he smelled blood and bowels.

      So, rather vaguely, as if not quite knowing what he ought to do, the bull once more lowered his head and pushed his sharp, florishing horns in the horse's belly, working them up and down inside there with a vague sort of satisfaction." [6] 

      

As the novel's protagonist Kate Leslie rightly recognises, this shocking spectacle reveals nothing so much as human cowardice and indecency. She turns her face away in disgust. And when she looks again, "it was to see the horse feebly and dazedly walking out of the ring, with a great ball of its own entrails hanging out of its abdomen and swinging reddish against its own legs as it automatically moved". [7] 

 

But the sordid show isn't over: another horse is brought into the bullring so that it may be publicly disemboweled for the amusement of the crowd:

 

"Kate knew what was coming. Before she could look away, the bull had charged on the limping horse from behind [...] the horse was up-ended absurdly, one of the bull's horns between his hind legs and deep in his inside. Down went the horse, collapsing in front, but his rear was still heaved up, with the bull's horn working vigorously up and down inside him, while he lay on his neck all twisted. And a huge heap of bowels coming out. And a nauseous stench." [8] 

 

 

IV. 

 

I've never been (and wouldn't go) to a bullfight, and so would find it difficult (and disturbing) to visually imagine this scene were it not for the fact that Picasso - a lifelong bullfighting enthusiast - produced the image at the top of this post, after attending a bullfight in Barcelona during his stay in the city in 1917.

 

As the anonymous author of a piece describing this work on the Picasso Museum's website rightly notes:    

 

"In contrast to what he had mostly done on previous occasions, here the artist leaves aside the colourful and festive representation of the spectacle of bullfighting to focus his attention [...] on the solitary agony of the disemboweled horse, which collapses until it falls on its knees in a fetal position or prayer posture that has been compared to that of a fossilised crustacean or bird. Picasso manages to transcribe the animal's stabbing pain by means of its outstretched neck and raised head, looking upwards with a fixed gaze, as if asking for mercy to put an end to its cruel agony, once and for all." [9]

 

The author concludes: 

 

"The drama and cruelty of the scene reaches its zenith with the horn that sprouts from the ground and stands threateningly, waiting for the horse to finish collapsing to then finish it off." [10] 

 

I suppose, to end on a slightly more positive note, it might be mentioned that bullfighting was banned in Catalonia several years ago and the the last bullfight in the region took place in September 2011. [11]

 

However, there are still eight countries in the world where this ancient festival of gore still takes place - Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador - and every year around 180,000 bulls (and 200 horses) are slaughtered in the ring.

 

 

V. 

 

In sum, I might not get what D. H. Lawrence is driving at when he writes of bursten bowels, but I do know: 

 

(i) I wouldn't want to be shot in the stomach ...

 

(ii) I don't like cruelty to animals ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Frank O'Hara, 'I don't know as I get what D. H. Lawrence is driving at', Selected Poems, ed. Mark Ford, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), p. 167. The poem can be read online at allpoetry.com: click here. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge Unversity Press, 1994), p. 317.

 

[3] Ibid., pp. 322-323.    

[4] Bruce Steele's explanatory note to 317:12 of D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo ... p. 406.

[5] In Lawrence's day, the main bullring in Mexico City was the Toreo de la Condesa. This ancient bullring was replaced in 1946 by the monumental Plaza de toros México, an arena that seats over 41,000 people.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clark, pp. 15-16.

[7] Ibid., p. 16. 

[8] Ibid. 

[9-10] See the text that accompanies Picasso's Gored Horse (1917) on the Museu Picasso de Barcelona website: click here. 

[11] The ban was officially annulled for being unconstitutional by Spain's highest court in October 2016. However, despite the overturning of the ban, no further bullfight has taken place in Catalonia. 

 

 

Rosebud

Illustration of the clitoris by Fiona Tung / The Varsity

thevarsity.ca

 

 

I. 

 

I've never actually watched Citizen Kane (1941) from start to finish; like W. H. Auden and Kenneth Williams, I'm not a fan of Welles's masterpiece [1]; nor, to be honest, do I particularly like his other work (apart from the TV ads for sherry and Sandeman's port).

 

However, I am aware that the key to understanding the psychology of its protagonist Charles Foster Kane - a fictional character inspired by real-life publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst - is the single word that he utters on his deathbed: Rosebud. 

 

Audiences eventually discover that this is simply the trade name of a sledge that Kane loved to play on as a boy. 

 

In other words, we are asked to accept that, in Kane's subconscious mind, Rosebud signified childhood happiness and reminded him of his mother's love, which, for a film that is supposed to be the greatest ever made, is almost laughably trite - as Welles himself acknowledged when interviewed in 1960:

 

"I'm ashamed of Rosebud. I think it’s a rather tawdry device. It’s the thing I like least in Kane. It’s kind of a dollar book Freudian gag. It doesn’t stand up very well. " [2]

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps looking to add a little more interest and intrigue to the origin of the term, Gore Vidal suggested in an essay published in 1989 that Rosebud was actually the pet name that Hearst gave to his mistress's clitoris [3]. 

I don't know if that's true - and I don't know if Vidal himself really believed it to be true. It seems doubtful; for one thing, how would Welles have had knowledge of this secret term used between lovers? It's difficult to imagine that either Hearst or Marion Davies would have shared such intimate information with him. 

 

In a letter to the New York Review discussing his claim [4], Vidal admits that, whilst he had met both parties, neither Hearst nor Davies ever volunteered this detail. However, he points out that the latter was an alcoholic who liked to surround herself with celebrity friends and fellow drinkers, sharing stories about their lives, and that one of these friends was Herman Mankiewicz; i.e., the man who co-wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane ...

 

Of course, that still doesn't prove that Rosebud was in fact Hearst's hypocorism for Davies's clitoris. But, as Vidal says, if it was that would certainly explain in part Hearst's furious response to the film - which he attempted to suppress - and his deep hatred of Welles.

 

Ironically, of course, it could be that Welles himself had no idea of any of this. He always gave Mankiewicz full credit for coming up with the idea of Rosebud and it's possible the latter didn't tell Welles the real significance of the term (that he was essentially playing a joke not on Hearst, but on Welles).

 

I suppose we'll probably never know for sure the full meaning of Rosebud - if it is, in fact, anything other than the trade name of a sledge [5]. And in that sense the joke's on all of us who waste time thinking about it ...

  

 

Notes

 

[1] After watching the film on 29 Jan 1942, a 15-year old Kenneth Williams described Citizen Kane in his diary as "boshey rot". See The Kenneth Williams Diaries, ed. Russell Davies, (Harper Collins, 1993), p. 2.

 

[2] Click here for the section from the interview with Welles on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in which he explains his dislike of the Rosebud device used in Citizen Kane. 

 

[3] Gore Vidal, 'Remembering Orson Welles', The New York Review (1 June 1989): click here. 

 

[4] Gore Vidal's letter on what might be termed the Rosebud controversy, was written in reply to a letter sent to the Editors of The New York Review by Jay Topkis (17 Aug 1989): click here. 

[5] A gay friend tells me that Rosebud actually indicates that Kane had a liking for sodomy and that Welles was a closeted homosexual; for it seems that the term refers not only to the clitoris, but to the anus (and/or the pinkish-red rectal tissue protruding from the anus following a prolapse due to frequent penetration of the latter).

 

 

To watch the official 1941 trailer for Citizen Kane, written and directed by Orson Welles, click here. Unlike other trailers, it doesn't feature any footage from the actual movie, but offers itself as a short spoof documentary on the film's production.   

 

 

Carry on Cross Dressing

 

Top: Tony Curtis as Josephine and Jack Lemmon as Daphne in Some Like It Hot (1959)

Bottom: Kenneth Williams as Ethel and Charles Hawtrey as Agatha in Carry on Constable (1960)

 

 

I. 

 

For lovers of film and for lovers of drag, Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, is perhaps as good as it gets.

 

And indeed, there's certainly a lot to admire about it, including the performances of Curtis and Lemmon as the two jazz musicians, Joe and Jerry, who go on the run - disguised as women - after witnessing a gangland murder. They could have played the roles of Josephine and Daphne simply for laughs, but instead they invest their acting talent in creating an illusion of womanhood that is convincing as well as comic [1]. 

 

Perhaps that's why although the Curtis and Lemmon characters of Joe and Jerry are portrayed as red-blooded (heterosexual) males, whose decision to wear female clothing is a sign of their desperation rather than perversity, Some Like It Hot was produced without approval from the censor-morons who enforced the Hays Code and feared the slightest hint of queerness. 

 

Or perhaps they just found Marilyn Monroe's character of Sugar Kane too hot to handle ... [2]

 

 

II.

As good as Curtis and Lemmon are in Some Like It Hot - and as loveable as we may find Josephine and Daphne - they are not, in my view, as good (or as loveable) as Ethel and Agatha, as played by Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey in Carry On Constable (1960) ...

Directed by Gerald Thomas, Carry On Constable is the fourth in the series of Carry On films and contains many of my favourite actors, scenes, and lines of dialogue - including the scene in which Charles Hawtrey as Special Constable Timothy Gorse and Kenneth Williams as PC Stanley Benson, decide to go undercover - dressed as women - in order to catch a gang of shoplifters.

The Carry On films would, over a 20-year, 30-film span, often include scenes of drag; one thinks of Peter Butterworth, for example, as DC Slobotham disguised as female bait in Carry On Screaming (1966), or Kenneth Cope, as Cyril, pretending to be a student nurse in Carry On Matron (1972). 

But whilst heterosexual actors playing straight characters dressed as women may be mildly amusing, it lacks the camp frisson and sheer joyfulness of two homosexual actors openly playing queer characters dressed as women. And thus nothing tops the scene with Hawtrey and Williams dragged up in Carry On Constable, which readers can enjoy by clicking here.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Curtis and Lemon were helped to play Josephine and Daphne by the legendary female impersonator (and trapeze artist) Barbette, who was hired by the studio to coach them in the art of drag. 

      Much admired by Jean Cocteau, Barbette was described by the French poet and playwright as a combination of angel, flower and bird who transforms effortlessly back and forth between man and woman, revealing the performative aspect of gender. In a seminal 1926 essay, Cocteau instructed his fellow artists to learn from Barbette if they wished to understand the nature of artifice. Cocteau also commissioned a series of photographs by Man Ray of Barbette and cast her in his experimental first film Le Sang d'un Poete (1930).

 

[2] Peter Majda makes the important point that it's not just Curtis and Lemmon who are performing exaggerated forms of femininity in Some Like It Hot - that their co-star Marilyn Monroe is also "essaying another aspect of her comedic persona, which is a cis female-form of drag"; one that is, in fact, "more complicated and layered because she's a woman, playing on the expectations of femininity".

      For Monroe's hyper-feminine (and almost cartoonish) character of Sugar Kane is also carefully constructed with clothes and cosmetics and also relies upon a certain ways of walking and talking, etc. As Judith Butler once said: We are all transvestites.

      See Peter Majda's post entitled 'Performative Femininity and the Absurd: Drag and Comedy in "Some Like It Hot"' (17 April 2019), on his excellent blog A Seat in the Aisle: click here. 

 

 

Why I Love Carry On Cruising

Kenneth Williams as First Officer Marjoribanks

There are many reasons to love Carry On Cruising (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1962), the sixth film in the series and first to be filmed in colour.

Firstly, it retains all the innocence and queer charm of the earlier black and white films and is essentially a finely balanced romantic comedy without too much sentiment or too much vulgarity; it's tender without being soft-centred, saucy without being smutty.   

Secondly, regular cast members - Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor - all deliver excellent (nicely restrained) performances; and, just as crucially, stand-in cast members Lance Percival and the lovely Dilys Laye also do fine jobs. The former, playing the ship's cook, occupies the part originally meant for Charles Hawtrey, dropped from the cast for demanding he be given top billing and a gold star on his dressing room door. The latter, playing a young woman looking for love whilst cruising the Mediterranean, replaced Joan Sims at short notice after she was unexpectedly taken ill just days before the commencement of filming.

Cruising also co-stars the magnificent Liz Fraser and - as I think we can all agree - any film or TV show with Liz Fraser is instantly improved, even if, sadly, not always worth watching. When she departs the series after Carry On Cabbie (1963), it's a real loss. Seeing her in her black underwear always makes happy (and nostalgic); she has the erotic charisma that Barbara Windsor in the later movies, for all her infectious giggling, completely lacks.                    

Someone else who always makes happy (though for very different reasons) is the diminutive, Australian-born character actress and funny-woman, Esma Cannon, here making her third of four appearances in the Carry On series. British cinema would not be British cinema without her and Miss Madderley is a very welcome passenger on board the Happy Wanderer. Her table tennis scene with Kenneth Williams is particularly pleasing.   

Finally, Cruising also contains a somewhat curious scene in which James and Williams discuss different schools of psychoanalysis. James, as Captain Crowther, declares himself to have always been a Freudian and too old to change; Williams, as First Officer Marjoribanks, quips in response that that's nothing to worry about or apologise for - just so long as one remains Jung at heart. 

It's not the greatest joke ever written. But it's inclusion in a film of this nature is surprising and a welcome relief from the more predictable double entendres, sight gags, and elements of slapstick.