Margaret Nolan: Artist, Actress, Object

Margaret Nolan (IMDB)
Photo © 2011 Silver Screen Collection 
Courtesy of gettyimages.com 

The case of Margaret Nolan, the London-born glamour model turned actress become artist, interests for a number of reasons, not least of all because she is a woman who has struggled to take control of her own image and personally confront the issue of sexual objectification.

Miss Nolan started her career - as many aspiring young actresses do - by stripping for the camera and she soon became a popular pin-up within the amorous imagination of the early 1960s, often featuring in magazines under the name of Vicky Kennedy (her pseudonym serving to disguise her identity, preserve her modesty, and distance her from the industry in which she worked; she wasn't a nude model per se, but merely playing the part of such).

Gradually, her more legitimate acting roles increased in number and importance and she appeared in many theatre productions, films, and television shows, under her real name. This famously included playing a masseuse called Dink in the James Bond movie Goldfinger (1964).*

For some of us, however, Miss Nolan is most fondly remembered for her roles in several of the Carry On films, including Carry on Girls (1973), in which she (predictably) plays the buxom beauty Dawn Brakes and is involved in a rather convincing - and at the time controversial - catfight with the Barbara Windsor character, Hope Springs.

But of course, such scenes are now long behind her. Today, Miss Nolan works as a visual artist, producing interesting (sometimes vaguely disturbing) images assembled from cut-up publicity pictures; a somewhat naive attempt to deconstruct the socio-sexual stereotype she embodied and challenge the male gaze to which she was made subject throughout her modelling and acting career. Naive, but something for which she should nevertheless be applauded.

Margaret Nolan: My Divided Self 

This and other works can be found on her official site: 

margaretnolan.co.uk 

* It might also be noted that it was Miss Nolan - and not Shirley Eaton - who appeared in the film's title-sequence by Robert Brownjohn, wearing a bikini and painted gold. This image immediately became iconic within popular culture, but, unlike some (mostly male) art critics and film theorists, Miss Nolan denies there was - or is - anything liberated or liberating about it. The fact that it served simply to secure her a shoot for Playboy would seem to confirm her view.

The Case of Old Eguchi

Photo by Akif Hakan found on artclit.tumblr.com

Back - once more - in the House of the Sleeping Beauties and the case of old Eguchi ...

What is he hoping to find in bed with drugged and naked teenage girls and why do his fantasies invariably involve violence and a desire to physically abuse the young bodies that stimulate such sweet memories, rather than treat them with tenderness and affection?

Is it because male sexuality is inherently aggressive? Do all men dream of rape and incline towards tyranny as soon as they have a hard-on? I don't think so. Nor do I believe that Eguchi's anger towards the sleeping beauties is born of impotent frustration, or the ugly resentments of age (though he is acutely aware of his declining powers and his lust is doubtless driven to some degree by the approach of death).

Rather, I think we must look elsewhere for why it is Eguchi repeatedly thinks of strangling the girls, or placing his hand over their mouths and noses and so preventing them from breathing. He is aware that such acts constitute evil, but he can't help contemplating them; of sacrificing virgins, rather than merely deflowering them.

His thoughts, in other words, are atrocious rather than sensual; Eguchi wants to leave his mark on the girls and - above all - he wants to waken them and imagines that he might have a better chance of doing so were he to tear off a limb or stab with a knife, rather than place kisses on a breast or his flaccid penis between soft lips.  

Ultimately, it's not the astonishing beauty of the young women that drives Eguchi mad; it's their radical passivity. He cannot bear the fact that not only do the sleeping girls not speak, but they do not know his face or hear his voice either. In other words, the girls - who have volunteered to become perfect objects - negate his subjectivity so that not even the smallest part of his existence is acknowledged.   

It's the desire to still be recognised as a man and a living being in the eyes of the world that is uppermost in his heart - and this is precisely what is denied him. And so, even when sandwiched between the naked bodies of two women, Eguchi knows himself to be fatally isolate and alone - just like the rest of us at last.     



Note: 'House of the Sleeping Beauties', by Yasunari Kawabata, can be found in House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories, trans. Edward Seidensticker, with an introduction by Yukio Mishima, (Kodansha International, 1980).     

Venus in Furs

Are you visiting Woman? Don't forget your whip! 

The masochistic lover  will often fall on his knees and passionately kiss the feet of the woman he adores as his mistress: she whose eyes sparkle with cruelty and who by virtue of her greater power is able to place a spiked heel nonchalantly on the neck of all mankind.

Whatever the truth of her actual status is irrelevant: fur transforms any woman wearing it into a superior creature; be she rich and wrapped in mink, or a simple peasant girl in clothes trimmed with rabbit skin (something that is forgotten in this graceless and charmless age of rubber and plastic).

The figure of the dominatrix obsesses, seduces, and captivates the masochist because she corresponds to his own refined tendencies and mirrors his particular nature; in discovering her, he learns how to paradoxically find and abandon himself.

If, initially, many women are reluctant to accept the adoration of a slave - finding the thought of their lover's submission as well as their own placement on a pedestal like a marble statue distasteful and degrading - nevertheless they know in their hearts that there is no equality or justice in the false virtue of love. 

And, having picked up the whip and experienced the grandeur of their own pale power sweeping over them, they are often more than happy to demonstrate precisely what it means to be at the mercy of a young and frivolous woman ...