What Was I Thinking? (13 December)

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

13 December (2014-2023)

 

 

Apart from 2012, 2013, 2019, 2020, and 2022, I have published a post on this date on Torpedo the Ark in every year since its inception. And sometimes, it can be instructive to look back and see what one was thinking and how things may have changed since ...

 

 

Carry On Facesitting (13 Dec 2014) 

This perfectly innocent post is, I discover, another now placed behind a sensitive content warning by the censor-morons who police things for Blogger (which has been owned and hosted by Google since 2003): is it something I said in the text, is it the accompanying image, or is it both? 

 

I don't know. And Google will not say: they simply refer you to their community guidelines and then invite you to identify your own wrongdoing, rectify the situation, and then republish the post in the hope that, after an official review, you'll be allowed to keep it up and that it will be freely accessible to readers. 

For the record: the post is fine as is and I do not intend to make any changes to it. It does not advocate facesitting, although, even if it did, this is not a criminal activity and harms no one.

 

Rather, the post simply reported on a good-natured and somewhat comical protest outside Parliament by sex workers, freedom-loving perverts, and various interested and/or sympathetic parties against new legislation that prohibits the depiction of certain kinky (but nonetheless perfectly legal) acts between consenting adults.

 

It amazed me then and amazes me now, that the UK government might spend its time opposing activities such as facesitting - or regulating the size of dildos - on the (spurious) grounds of health and safety. As one of the organisers of the protest pointed out, the new laws are not only anti-queer, but also inherently sexist, as many of the activities discriminated against are ones that afford specifically female pleasure and empowerment. 

 

 

On the Truth of Things (13 Dec 2015) 

 

Whilst conceding that questions concerning politics and psychagogy are philosophically interesting and that one must invariably return to them at some point, for me, back in 2015 - in my object-oriented days - I was more enthralled by those entities that make up an inhuman and non-human universe and encourage the posing of questions that do not always posit Man as the central subject or final solution.

 

In other words - and I still think this now - the beauty and the truth of things is precisely that they exist mind independently and it's a real joy to occasionally write about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens (not to mention bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens), rather than just human ideas and human relations.

 

 

Reflections from a Sickbed (13 Dec 2016) 

 

It strikes me that the depressing thing about a long-term health condition, is that it lowers your expectations of what constitutes a good life; one is suddenly pleased merely to experience a pain-free day.  

On the other hand, convalescence is a vital phenomenon and so sometimes one welcomes being sick, so that one can, as Heidegger would say, return home to oneself and one's destiny - which of course is death (as all being is a being-towards death). 

 

That being the case, it's not surprising that when ill in bed back on December 13th, 2016 my thoughts should turn to the question of how best to dispose of that most accursed of all objects, one's own corpse. After considering several of the main methods, including cremation, inhumation, and immurement, I decided that a Tibetan sky burial - in which one is literally fed to the vultures - was the most attractive option.  

 

 

Kissing Hitler 1: Some Like It Hot / Kissing Hitler 2: Notes on the Führer's Love Life (13 Dec 2017) 

 

Not one, but two posts on the theme of kissing Hitler published on the same day back in 2017 - what was I thinking, indeed! Perhaps there's some truth in Godwin's law after all ...

Although, as a matter of fact, the first post - 'Some Like It Hot' - was more about Tony Curtis (and what it was like to share an on-screen smooch with Marilyn Monroe), than about Hitler as a recipient of amorous affection. 

 

The second post, however, did look somewhat deeper into Hitler's love life - something that has long been subject to critical and clinical analysis, as well as sensational speculation and obscene rumour. I arrived at the conclusion that, ultimately, it was a pity that Hitler wasn't more of a libertine and less of a Nazi; it's always better to make love rather than war, no matter how perversely one may choose to do so.      

 

On Poetry and Plagiarism (With Reference to the Case of Ailey O'Toole) (13 Dec 2018) 

 

The case of the young American poet Ailey O'Toole - which caused a bit of fuss in certain literary circles - still interests me and I still feel that Ms. O'Toole has nothing to apologise for or feel ashamed about and that she was treated poorly by moralists defending bourgeois (and untenable) notions of intellectual property.

 

For the fact remains, very few poets invent neologisms; and even fewer have original thoughts or feelings. They essentially rearrange the words of a shared language and play with the ideas and emotions of the culture to which they belong. It's an art - and it can produce amazing results - but poetry is never a personal or private matter, no matter how idiosyncratic one's writing style. 

 

As Roland Barthes would argue, the poem-as-text is neither representative of a non-linguistic reality, nor expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words that are also drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every poem is, in a sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred. 

 

Wherever she is today - and whatever she's doing - I send Ms. O'Toole kind regards and warm wishes.  

 

 

Notes on the Fetishist (And Other Stories) by Michel Tournier (13 Dec 2020)

 

Michel Tournier was the writer I loved reading most in the winter of 2020-21 and I wrote over twenty posts inspired by (or referencing) his work in this period. 

 

This includes the above post, in which I offered a series of notes on a collection of stories originally published in French under the title Le Coq de Bruyère (1978) and which offered a queer and often disconcerting dip into the world of the sordid supernatural (to borrow the author's own description).  

 

Those who enjoy philosophically-informed fiction that explores the porno-mythic imagination and accelerates what Jonathan Dollimore terms the perverse dynamic, will like this book - and like it a lot. Other readers, who don't enjoy such fiction, probably won't like it so much (but then, such people probably aren't spending time on this blog either). 

 

The Day of the Golden Jackal (13 Dec 2021)

 

I love felines: but I'm not so keen on canids. 

 

That said, I was happy to discover back in December 2021 that the number of golden jackals - small wolf-like animals, about three times the size of a red fox - have been rapidly expanding in number and increasing their range in recent decades. 

 

Apparently, you can now find jackals living, hunting, and howling in many parts of Central and Northeastern Europe and it has been estimated by the IUCN that whilst there may be fewer than 17,000 wolves left in Europe, there are around 117,000 jackals - and the more the merrier, I say, although, of course, all the usual suspects - such as farmers - raise their familiar objections. 

 

Sadly, therefore, these intelligent and sociable animals continue to be hunted in many countries; one can only invoke the great jackal-headed god Anubis to bite off the hands and tear out the throats of those who harm them (some think that capital punishment for deliberate cruelty to animals is a bit extreme, but I'm not one of them). 

 

 

On the Haunting Beauty of Sue Lloyd (13 Dec 2023)

 

Finally, on December 13th last year, I discussed how, as I get older, my desire is increasingly tied to nostalgia and has effectively become a type of spectrophilia; i.e., sexual attraction to ghosts, or, as in my case, the haunting images of dead actresses from the 1960s and '70s. 

 

This includes Sue Lloyd, who guest starred in many much loved English TV shows during this period, but is perhaps best remembered today for her long-running role as as Barbara Hunter (née Brady) in the British soap opera Crossroads.

 

A former dancer and model, Miss Lloyd also appeared in a number of films; performing alongside Michael Caine in The Ipcress File (1965) and Joan Collins in The Stud (1978), for example.  

 

But what I like most about Miss Lloyd is not her acting credentials, but the fact she exuded the kind of dazzling beauty and sexual sophistication of the older woman which excited me as an adolescent and continues to work its magic some 50 years later. 

 

 

On the Daughters of God

Portrait of Tammi of Nazareth

the onion.com

 

"And I sayeth unto thee: Look upon mine eyes, which rest within mine head; 

not upon mine bosom, wherein no wisdom dwells."

 

 

I. Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace

 

A friend of mine, who happens to be a specialist in medieval religious art and literature, recently gave birth to her third daughter and joked: 'I just need one more and God's people can be restored!' I sort of smiled at this, but, at the time, had no idea what on earth she meant by this.

 

However, after thinking about it - and doing a bit of biblical research - I realised that she was referring to Psalm 85 - and the so-called Four Daughters of God who loved nothing better than meeting up and exchanging kisses [1].

 

Of course, these four daughters were allegorical; they personified the virtues of Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace and their uniting in Love signified the triumph of God and the fact that mankind was forgiven its sins and redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ. 

 

Attempts to pornify the motif - which was extremely popular in medieval Europe - by imagining scenes of incestuous lesbianism, are uncalled for, as the kisses were given in innocence [2]. At any rate, most people had become thoroughly bored with the idea by the end of the 17th-century, though some, like William Blake, remained fascinated by the Four Daughters. 

    

II. Tammi of Nazareth

  

In September 2010, The Onion published a piece under the headline 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter' [3], according to which:

 

"In a discovery that biblical scholars say could alter our most fundamental understanding of Christianity, recently unearthed manuscripts suggest that in addition to His Son, Jesus Christ, God also had a daughter with absolutely humongous breasts." 

The article goes on:

"The documents, found in a cave near the Jordanian-Israeli border and estimated to have been composed circa A.D. 200, recount the life, teachings, and death of Jesus' well-endowed twin sister, Tammi of Nazareth."

And it continues in much the same comic-blasphemous (breast-obsessed) vein throughout. 

 

It's juvenile, certainly, but it is also amusing to read that whilst Tammi "promulgated similar ideas as her sibling, and appeared to possess the same miraculous powers", she found it difficult to preach the gospel as followers were only interested in gaining "a better vantage point from which to observe her 'heavenly radiance'" hidden beneath a thin linen vestment. 

 

 

III. Jane

 

Funny enough, Larry David anticipated this idea of a comely daughter born of God in a season 5 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, first broadcast in October 2005 ... [4]

 

In a now classic scene, Larry's Christian father-in-law (played by Paul Dooley) has purchased a nail used in the movie The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004) - not a film that Larry much cares for, wishes to watch, or discuss. And so he quickly changes the subject and takes the conversation in an irreverent (some might say sacrilegious) direction:

 

Larry David: 'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'

 

Cheryl's Father: 'Yeah. Well, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'

 

Larry David: 'Really? See, I could see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter ... Jane. I'll worship a Jane. But, you know, to worship a guy ... like a little kinda, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'

 

Although his wife, Cheryl, attempts to shut him up at this point, Larry is determined to expand upon the idea:

 

Larry David: 'I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane, I could have a relationship with a Jane.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Increasingly annoyed and irritated] 'He didn't have a daughter!'

 

Larry David: 'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Disgusted] 'Ugh!'

 

Larry David: 'Good looking woman ... Zaftig ... Good sense of humor ...'

 

Cheryl David: [Exasperated] 'Okay, that's fine.'

 

Larry David: 'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane. That's all I'm saying.'

It's an interesting point, as Jules would say. 

 

And I think Larry is on to something: we don't need a pale and sickly looking Jesus with his crown of thorns - or even a weeping Virgin - for our saviour; we need a voluptuous woman who knows how to laugh (and make laugh) - more Marilyn than Mary [5].          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Psalm 85:10 (KJV): "Mercy and Truth are met together; Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other." 

      This psalm is a community lament, probably written during the period of Israel's return from Babylonian exile. The people seek forgiveness from God for their unfaithfulness and restoration of their former status and power. The closing section expresses confidence that salvation will come.

 

[2] The Hebrew word for kiss in Psalm 85 doesn't refer to an erotic act per se, but, rather, to something exchanged by near relatives when greeting one another. In medieval Europe, where the visual motif of Justice and Peace kissing was first introduced, such an act was even more widespread than in the ancient Jewish world. However, because (male) artists have a penchant for nude (female) figures, renditions of Justice and Peace kissing were often (inappropriately) sexualised.

 

[3] 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter', The Onion, (23 September, 2010): click here to read online. 

 

[4] Curb Your Enthusiasm, S5/E3, 'The Christ Nail' (2005), dir. Robert B. Weide, written by Larry David. Click here to watch the scene on YouTube.

 

[5] Thanks to the season 5 finale of Curb, we know that not only does Larry look forward to meeting Monroe in heaven, but that the latter is also a big fan of Seinfeld. See 'The End', S5/E10, dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, (2005). Marilyn is played in the episode by Susan Griffiths. 

 

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).

Not All Sex Kittens are Catty ...

 

Cover of the French magazine  

Noir et Blanc (12 June 1959)

 

 

Despite the best efforts of the press in the 1950s to create a rivalry between the Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and her younger French counterpart Brigitte Bardot, the two - very different [1] - women never came to blows or traded insults.

 

In fact, following their only meeting - in the ladies’ dressing room of the Odeon Leicester Square, for a royal film premier on 29 October, 1956, at which both Bardot and Monroe were formally introduced to the Queen [2] - the former, still only 22, was clearly a little star-struck by the latter, then in her prime. 

 

Many years later, writing in her 1996 autobiography, Bardot confessed that she simply stared at Marilyn, too nervous to speak, other than to shyly say hello: "I found her sublime. She was always for me what every woman, not only me, must dream to be. She was gorgeous, charming, fragile."     

 

She goes on to add: 

 

"I have a lot of things in common with Marilyn and she is very dear to my heart. Both of us had childish souls despite our starlet bodies, an intense sensitivity that can't be hidden, a great need to be protected, a naïveté!" [3]

 

Which really just goes to show that not all sex kittens are catty ...

 

Interestingly, however, a third screen goddess was also present at the royal film performance in 1956; namely, the Swedish actress Anita Ekberg. 

 

As with Bardot, this was the only time that Ekberg's path crossed with that of Marilyn, about whom she once commented in a 1999 Arena documentary on the BBC: "I think she's a good actress: you can't play stupid unless you're very intelligent", which I suppose is a compliment. 

 

But in the same televised interview, Ekberg denies that Bardot was beautiful, insisting she was simply "very pretty [...] like a Barbie doll." [4] 

 

Which shows that some sex kittens are catty after all ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Monroe, born in LA in 1926, spent much of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages, before becoming a factory worker; Bardot, on the other hand, was from a solidly middle class Parisian background and trained to become a ballerina. At fifteen, Bardot was invited to pose for the cover of Elle, whilst Marilyn was appearing as a nude pin-up model in rather less respectable magazines. 

      However, both women went on to achieve global fame as movie stars and both, interestingly enough, caught the attention of intellectuals; Monroe married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 and Bardot was described by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1959 essay The Lolita Syndrome as the most liberated woman in post-War France.  

 

[2] The film being premiered was The Battle of the River Plate (1956), a British war film by the writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, and Peter Finch.     

 

[3] Brigitte Bardot, Initiales B. B.: mémoires, (Grasset, 1996). 

      Note that I'm relying on an anonymous English translation of these lines, so can't vouch for its accuracy. However, I have no reason to doubt such and Bardot makes clear her admiration and affection for Marilyn in an interview posted on YouTube: click here. 

 

[4] To watch the clip from this Arena documentary, directed by Nicola Roberts, in which Ekberg comments on Marilyn Monroe, click here. To watch the clip in which she comments on Brigitte Bardot, click here. 

  

When Marlene Dietrich Met Marilyn Monroe

Blue Angel meets Blonde Bombshell

 

 

I.

 

In a fascinating series of photos taken at a New York party in 1955 [1] - four of which are reproduced above - there are no obvious signs of animosity between der blaue Engel Marlene Dietrich and American blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. 

 

However, if I may use a rather old-fashioned - some would say sexist - term to describe what amongst men might be regarded as healthy competitiveness, Dietrich had, prior to this meeting, been somewhat catty about Monroe, displaying the jealousy of an older woman who knows she is no longer queen of the silver screen [2].

 

As revealed in a snippet of gossip in the June '73 issue of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, Dietrich had attended a screening of one of Monroe's earlier films and rudely talked throughout her scenes, at one point sneering in her distinctive German accent: 'So this is what they want now; this is what they call sexy!' [3]    

 

One rather wishes that someone had had the courage to turn and shush Dietrich, or to tell her: 

 

'Yes, this is what we want now and this is what we call sexy: a woman who is proud of her curves and femininity and has no interest in appearing androgynous; a woman who looks like she has stepped out of the pages of Playboy, rather than off stage from the Berlin cabaret in the 1920s.'

 

 

II. 

 

Funny enough, a couple of years after the photos taken in New York, Monroe was offered the lead in a proposed remake of The Blue Angel - i.e., the film which had made Dietrich an international star almost thirty years earlier [4]. 

 

Sadly, the project was abandoned. However, in 1958 Monroe would recreate the character of naughty Lola, striking her classic pose reclining on a barrel with her one leg elevated, in an astonishing photo by Richard Avedon [5].

 

 

 

I don't know what Dietrich made of this photo - or indeed if she ever saw it (Monroe asked Avedon not to use the image and it remained unpublished for many years after her death in 1962). 

 

It's worth noting in closing, however, that Dietrich did acknowledge in her autobiography that Monroe was an authentic sex symbol, not only by nature, but by inclination; i.e., she liked being an object of desire and it showed in everything she did [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The party followed a press conference called by Marilyn's business partner, the photographer Milton Greene, to announce the formation of their new company Marilyn Monroe Productions. It was Greene, who had worked with Dietrich in the past, who invited the latter to attend and to meet Monroe. 

 

[2] Of course, Monroe was no angel and could also be catty when she wanted. Thus it was that the photographer Eve Arnold remembered Marilyn once telling her how much she loved some pictures taken of Dietrich for Esquire magazine in 1952, before then adding: 'If you could do that well with Marlene, just imagine what you could do with me.'   

      Arnold would in fact photograph Monroe on several occasions and produce thousands of images. The best of these can be found in her book, Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987). 

 

[3] See Evalena Labayen, 'That Time Marlene Dietrich Threw Shade at Marilyn Monroe', Interview (8 October, 2019): click here.

 

[4] The Blue Angel - or, in German, Der blaue Engel - is a 1930 musical comedy-drama, dir. Josef von Sternberg, and starring Marlene Dietrich as Lola. As well as bringing her global fame, it also gave Dietrich what would become her signature song; Friedrich Hollaender's 'Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt' - or, as it is known in English, 'Falling in Love Again' - click here.      

 

[5] As one commentator also reminds us:  

      "Marilyn would take a leaf out of Marlene's playbook again in 1962, asking costumer Jean Louis to recreate the beaded 'nude' dress he had made for Dietrich to wear during nightclub performances. Monroe's version became immortalised that May, when she sang 'Happy Birthday Mr President' to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden." 

      See Marina72, 'When Marilyn Met Marlene', on the Everlasting Star blog (11 Oct 2019): click here.

 

[6] See Marlene Dietrich, Marlene, (Grove Press, 1987). Note that a more recent edition was published in 2018. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one - Marlene meets ... Edith Piaf - click here.

 

 

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 Don't Like Fishnet Stockings (Or The Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Let's do the time warp again 

[No thanks]

Black fishnet stockings and tights, with their open, diamond-shaped knit, continue to be very popular with all types of women - not just goths and showgirls. They are one of those things that never quite go in or out of fashion. We might, therefore, describe them as a perennial favourite within the world of hoisery.  

Personally, however, I'm not a fan.

And that's because fishnets always remind me of Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania: nice face, shame about the legs (too chunky for my tastes). 

I've tried to break this visual association - to picture instead Marilyn Monroe wearing her fishnets in the famous 1956 photo by Milton H. Greene - but, alas, whenever I see anyone wearing them, I invariably think back to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - a charmless vision of camp outrageousness and gothic queerness that succeeds only in making one nostalgic for the world of fixed gender roles and heteronormativity that Brad and Janet belong to.

As someone once said, Rocky is ultimately an excuse for straight people to cross dress and pretend to be a little bit queer for the night: they don't want to be it, just dream it ...

Play: 'Sweet Transvestite' from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, (dir. Jim Sharman, 1975), performed by Tim Curry: click here.

Kissing Hitler 1: Some Like It Hot

Boop-boop-a-doo!

Whilst working on the Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot in the summer of 1958, Tony Curtis was asked what it was like to share an on-screen smooch with his (often difficult) co-star Marilyn Monroe; a question to which he famously replied that it was like kissing Hitler.

Curtis later explained that this was meant as a humorous rather than a malicious remark. One that whilst seemingly made at Monroe's expense, was also intended to poke fun at the absurdity of the question - for how could pressing your lips against Marilyn's be anything other than pleasurable? 

What really interests me, however, is the further underlying assumption that Hitler would have made an unattractive recipient of one's affection and was probably not only a monstrous human being, but also a terrible lover. This may, in fact, have been the case, although there's little real evidence to support such a belief and there's no way that Curtis would have been able to know this for sure.    

What it tells us is that for a Jewish-American heterosexual male of Curtis's generation (he served with the US Navy during the Second World War), Hitler was just about the very last person one might imagine kissing ...

Note: those interested in knowing more about the Führer's love life should go to part two of this post: click here.

Pop Art from North Africa (with Images of Marilyn Veiled and Unveiled)

Libyan Marilyn 

Alla Abudabbus

This just in from dear friend and fellow blogger, Nahla Al-Ageli, over at Nahla Ink (a site that chronicles the adventures of an independent Arab woman and freelance journalist living in London, with particular reference to events happening within the world of Arab art and culture) ...

September 21st sees the launch of the Pop Art from North Africa exhibition at the P21 Gallery (London), featuring work by fifteen artists from the region, who have all been inspired by a movement that first emerged in Britain and the United States in the mid-late 1950s, but which has since expanded into a global phenomenon, challenging the art traditions of numerous countries with imagery drawn from the worlds of mass media, commerce, and popular culture.

The exhibition, curated by Najlaa El-Ageli and Toufik Doubi, will examine how Pop Art's postmodern irony plays out within the social, political and cultural environments unique to North Africa. For more details, please go to the P21 Gallery website by clicking here, or visit nahlaink.com

Personally, I would think this exhibition worth attending if only to see the beautiful image by Alla Abudabbus shown above.

Of course, it's not the first time that Marilyn has been depicted pop art style in a veil; the Iranian artist, Afshan Ketabchi, produced her work Marilyn Monroe Undercover in 2008, for example.

But I think it's my favourite such picture, reminding me as it does of Douglas Kirkland's famous series of photographs of Marilyn from 1961, in which she poses naked in a white sheet and shows that - veiled or unveiled - she was one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century ...

Jump! On Defying the Spirit of Gravity (With Reference to the Work of Philippe Halsman)

If there's one thing to which Zarathustra makes himself supremely hostile above all other things, it's der Geist der Schwere - what in English is termed the Spirit of Gravity. 

He prides himself on all that is light-footed and light-hearted in his nature and says that the revaluation of all values begins only when man learns how to love himself and how to fly like a bird, rather than living like a beast of burden weighed down with morality and bad conscience.        

In order to fly, however, man must first learn how to stand upright on his own two feet; and then how to walk, naked and light, before running, dancing, skipping and jumping for joy - no longer taking life seriously and refusing to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

We find some of this Nietzschean defiance of the Spirit of Gravity in the marvellous series of 178 pictures taken by American portrait photographer Philippe Halsman and published collectively in his Jump Book (1959), along with his humorous essay on the aesthetics of jumpology.

Starting in the early 1950s, Halsman asked every celebrity or VIP that he photographed to jump in the air for him. His hope was that he might momentarily glimpse and capture on film the spontaneous and carefree individual beneath the formal, self-conscious public persona.

Amazingly, Halsman not only convinced many of the great comics and movie stars of the period to jump for him, he also persuaded many well-known politicians, scientists, artists and members of the House of Windsor to briefly forget themselves and dare to defy gravity.

Arguably, these are amongst his more arresting images. But, for Zarathustra, there's nothing lovelier than nimble young women with fine ankles. And so, above are Halsman's joyous photos of B.B., Marilyn and Audrey leaping barefoot into the future and the Dionysian imagination ... 

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969).

Philippe Halsman's Jump Book, (Damiani, 2015).

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My Three Favourite Witches 2: Gillian (Kim Novak)

Kim Novak as Gillian Holroyd 

(with Pyewacket the Cat)

My three favourite witches are not the Wayward Sisters found in Shakespeare's Macbeth, dressed in filthy robes, performing weird rituals in the fog, prophesying doom, etc. Nor are they the cock-starved, devil-invoking trio of Alex, Jane and Sukie given us by John Updike in his 1984 novel, The Witches of Eastwick.

Rather, the three broomstick-riding women I find most spellbinding are Jennifer, Gillian and Samantha ...

The second of these, Gillian Holroyd, the free-spirited, Greenwich Village witch with a penchant for going barefoot, was played by Kim Novak in the 1958 romantic comedy Bell, Book and Candle (dir. Richard Quine). The male lead in the film was taken by James Stewart, playing Shep Henderson, the handsome (but much older) next door neighbour upon whom Gillian casts a love spell. 

Unfortunately, things backfire and she eventually falls in love with Shep; problematic for a witch as this (apparently) means the loss of her magical powers. However, rather like Jennifer in I Married a Witch (1942), played by Veronica Lake, Gillian decides this is a price worth paying; that love is stronger than witchcraft - or, at any rate, more valuable, more vital. She chooses fulfilment as a married woman, over the lonely and frustrated life of a spinster-witch.        

Interestingly however, her feline familiar, Pyewacket, is unimpressed with this caving in and conforming to a conventional mix of romantic idealism and sexism; when Gillian opts for love, he puts his nose in the air, turns tail, and leaves her to her new, all-too-human life.

Novak is an interesting woman: of Czech descent, she began as a model before establishing a career as an actress. Studio bosses initially hoped that she would be a new Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe, but Novak had no interest in being typecast. Indeed, despite her success, by the mid-1960s she was fed-up with the Hollywood lifestyle. Rarely acting after 1966 (and preferring TV projects to cinematic ones), Novak chose to concentrate on her first love, the visual arts, often writing poetry to accompany her pictures.

Now in her eighties, she continues to create work as a photographer, poet and painter. But it's as a seductive (slightly scary) on-screen witch, humming that infernal tune and stroking her pussy, that I, like many wiccaphiles, most fondly think of her. 


To read part 1 of this post on Jennifer (Vernonica Lake), click here.
To read part 3 of this post on Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery), click here.

The Case of Evelyn McHale (The Most Beautiful Suicide in the World)

Photo of Evelyn McHale, by Robert C. Wiles. 

For poets, there is nothing more romantic than the suicide of someone young; particularly if they take their lives with an element of style and manage to leave behind them a good-looking corpse. And no one has managed to achieve this feat with more success than an attractive, twenty-three year old bookkeeper, called Evelyn McHale, in 1947.

Hers is often described as the most beautiful suicide in the world and I’m happy to share this view. What makes her case so magnificent and not merely tragic (or mundane), are the following six points:

1. She chose a magical date, May 1st, an ancient spring festival, on which to make her self-sacrifice, thereby lending her death a certain mythical aspect or celebratory pagan splendour.

2. She chose the right method for her location. When in Berlin, for example, one should swallow poison or use a gun; in London, it’s appropriate to throw oneself from a bridge into the Thames, or onto the tracks of the Underground before an approaching train. But, as Serge Gainsbourg observed, New York is all about the astonishing height of its buildings. And so, when in NYC, one simply has to jump.

3. Having chosen, rightly, to jump, Evelyn then selected one of the two truly great and truly iconic modern structures from which to leap: the Empire State Building. This 102-story skyscraper, located in Midtown Manhattan, is, with its beautiful art deco design, the perfect place from which to fall to one’s death and since its opening in 1931 only a select number of lucky souls have had the privilege (and fatal pleasure) of plunging from this iconic site.

4. She was impeccably dressed for the occasion, with gloves and a simple, but elegant, pearl necklace. Before jumping she calmly removed her coat and neatly folded it over the wall of the 86th floor observation deck. She also left behind her a make-up kit, some family snaps, and a suicide note written in a black pocketbook, in which she asked to be cremated without any kind of fuss or service of remembrance. In other words, even in death, Evelyn kept her composure - which brings us to our fifth point:

5. She didn’t land with an undignified splat on the pavement of 34th Street; but, rather, with a crash onto the roof of a waiting car. And it wasn't just any old car - it was a UN Assembly limousine, as if she wanted to make an impression on the entire world. And impression, as we see from the photo above, is the key word here. For Evelyn literally impressed herself into the roof of the Cadillac, so that it seemed to fold round her, with metallic tenderness. There is almost nothing to suggest the terrible violence of the scene - apart from the ripped stockings and the absence of shoes.

6. She conspired with fate to ensure there was a photographer nearby to instantly capture the event of her death on film; thereby ensuring her place within the cultural imagination. Indeed, fifteen years later, Andy Warhol would incorporate her image into his work, just as he did images of other beautiful women, including Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

As for the student photographer, Robert C. Wiles, he also struck it lucky that day; his astonishing photo of Evelyn was published in Life Magazine as a full-page 'Picture of the Week' in the May 12 issue. It was his first - and last - photo ever to be published and one likes to imagine he hung his camera up after taking this perfect shot, but I don't know if this is true or not.

I'll stop here - but I could of course talk about (and darkly caress) this topic forever. For Camus was right: there is only one truly serious philosophical question - and that is the question of suicide.

Panchira

Panchira by dw817 on deviantart.com

Panchira is a Japanese term for what is doubtless a universal practice; looking up the skirts of young women in the hope of glimpsing what perverts always like to term panties.

Because panchira is a well-established convention within comics, cartoons, and other aspects of popular culture, generations of Japanese men are reared to regard the fetishistic obsession with female undergarments as perfectly natural; they are normalised, in other words, into a pornified worldview that encourages the belief that it is an acceptable and harmless pastime to sneak a peek or take a snapshot up the skirt of any woman in a public space, with or without her consent.

Ironically for a practice that is often regarded as a national sport, the phenomenon of panchira in contemporary Japanese society can probably be traced back to its Westernization following American occupation at the end of the Second World War. As elsewhere, during the fifties and sixties there was a relaxing of taboos as new ideas and fashions began to circulate.

One crucial catalyst to the emerging craze of panchira seems to have been the release of the Billy Wilder movie The Seven Year Itch (1955). The iconic scene in which Marilyn Monroe has trouble with her skirt as she stands on a subway grate, excited the pornographic imagination of the Japanese public even more than the rest of the world. The practice of scoring a glimpse up young women's skirts became extremely popular at this time and many magazines ran articles advising men of the best places where they might view panties.   

What, then, are we to think of this? Obviously, panchira can be analysed psychologically as a form of voyeurism and - from a feminist critical perspective - as an example of what is termed the imperial male gaze (an immobilizing glance by which a woman is both sexually objectified and fixed in place).

But could it not alternatively be argued that it is the male subject who is effectively seduced and made helpless (almost idiotic) before a panty-clad crotch: that panchira thus results in a revenge of the object ...?         

Give a Girl the Right Shoes ...

Photo by Mario Testino for Vogue

Mario Testino's stunning photograph of Suki Waterhouse, Cara Delevigne, and Georgia May Jagger in the new edition of Vogue (April 2015) obviously owes a great deal to Antonio Canova's sculpture The Three Graces, in which the beautiful young daughters of Zeus are shown huddled together in naked embrace.

What excites most about Testino's photograph, however, is not the obvious sexual allure of the models but the fabulous faux-fur heel sandals they're wearing, designed by Sophia Webster for Shrimps (SS15), the playful fashion label created by Hannah Weiland.

Miss Webster, a graduate of the London College of Fashion and the Royal College of Art, presented her first collection of footwear in SS13, after having worked as a design assistant to Nicholas Kirkwood. She has rightly been recognised within the British fashion industry as a genius and received several prestigious awards for developing a unique but nonetheless commercially viable aesthetic that, like Canova's sculpture or Testino's picture, combines beauty, charm, and joy in a modern, sophisticated, slightly subversive manner that one is almost tempted to term neon-classical.

As Marilyn Monroe famously said: Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.      
 

The Perfect Shoe

Following a recent post in which I mentioned the importance of  footwear, I have been asked to describe what might constitute - for me at least - the perfect men's shoe. 

Fortunately, thanks to the creative genius of the designers at Prada, this isn't difficult. For the perfect shoe already exists: the Levitate is an insanely beautiful mash-up between the old school formality of the brogue and the urban cool of the Nike Air sports shoe - topped off with a golf fringe as an almost ludicrous addition just for the hell of it.  

Malcolm would always speak of the three things that matter most in fashion: sex, style, and subversion. These shoes possess all these elements. Are they comfortable? Who cares. Are they practical? Again, who cares! Do you imagine Cinderella's sister's were thinking of comfort and practicality when they mutilated their feet in order to squeeze into her magical glass slippers?

By wearing these shoes, your life will be instantly transformed for the better; for they make heroic and they make fabulous. As Marilyn Monroe once said: 'Wear the right shoes and you can conquer the world'.