Showing posts with label oscar wilde. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oscar wilde. Show all posts

5 Oct 2024

In Memory of Leonard Rossiter (1926-1984)

 Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby in Rising Damp (1974-78)
and as Inspector Truscott in Loot (1984)

 
I. 
 
As a Rising Damp aficianado, I was pleased to find family, friends, and fellow actors - including Don Warrington and Gabrielle Rose - sharing memories of Leonard Rossiter in today's Guardian.
 
As Catherine Shoard writes: 
 
"Four decades after Rossiter's death, his singular style - manic energy, machine-gun delivery, splenetic intelligence - continues to carry remarkable currency." [1]
 
And continues to make laugh. 


II. 
  
Rossiter died from a heart condition (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), aged 57, whilst waiting to go onstage at the Lyric Theatre, London, where he was playing Inspector Truscott in a production of Joe Orton's dark farce Loot (1965), directed by Jonathan Lynne.
 
As Orton was a scandalous playwright much admired by Malcolm - and I was a fan of Rossiter's - I naturally felt obliged to attend a performance of Loot - which I did on Tuesday 2 October, 1984, just three days before Rossiter's death. 
 
I recorded in my diary at the time: 
 
LOOT: very good; very funny; very well-acted. Leonard Rossiter's performance was particularly enjoyable. I can see why Malcolm loves Orton: virulently anti-authority and all forms of moral hypocrisy; like an angrier (more contemporary) version of Oscar Wilde.
 
And on Monday 8 October I noted (somewhat prosaically, I have to admit): 
 
Distressing news: Leonard Rossiter died backstage a few days ago. A hugely talented comic actor, he'll be much missed.     

Thanks to TV and YouTube, however, we can still enjoy his work - although I smiled to see that Rossiter - who could be a deadly serious and impatient individual, who hated wasting time - had once described the former as merely: 'An advanced technical method of stopping people from making their own entertainment.'
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Catherine Shoard, '"It was hard not to stare at him all the time": inside the remarkable rise and shocking loss of Leonard Rossiter', The Guardian (5 October 2024): click here
 
 
Readers who enjoyed this post might like to see an earlier post (dated 15 October 2022) discussing the character of Rupert Rigsby, as played by Leonard Rossiter: click here


22 Sept 2024

Bring Me the Head of Oscar Wilde

Visualisation of how Eduardo Paolozzi's Oscar Wilde 
sculpture will look when installed in Chelsea
 
 
A new sculpture of Oscar Wilde - or, more precisely, of the Irish playwright's head cast in black bronze, lying on its side and sliced into segments - has been condemned by his grandson, Merlin Holland, on the grounds that it fails to adequately convey Wilde's genius and is, from a purely aesthetic perspective, absolutely hideous (his words, not mine) [1].      
 
I have to say, Holland's criticism of the work, which is based on a maquette by the late Eduardo Paolozzi [2] - one of the most seminal British artists of the post-war era and a pioneer of Pop Art - seems rather ridiculous. And the fact that he should describe the work as unacceptable is troubling.
 
Holland may know more about his grandfather, whose life he has researched and written about extensively, than anybody else, but he has failed to appreciate that Paolozzi's cubo-surrealist sculpture is not meant to be a lifelike representation, nor is it attempting to capture Wilde's joie de vivre
 
Actually, the piece is very much in line with other sculptural works by Paolozzi; see for example his piece entitled The Head of Invention (1989), located at the entrance of the Design Museum in Kensington - click here - and if one were to criticise the Wilde sculpture it would be on the grounds that one has seen this kind of thing before.         
 
In sum: it lacks uniqueness, but it's not gloomy or hideous and it's certainly better than the hilariously bad memorial statue of Wilde by Danny Osborne located in Dubin's Merrion Square - click here - though not as challenging as Maggi Hambling's A Conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998), which can be found off the Strand in London, in which the playwright rises from the dead, cigarette in hand: click here.    

If Paolozzi's work tells us more about him than it does Wilde - and I admit it probably does - I can see this might be an issue for some, including Wilde's grandson. But that doesn't trouble me as an admirer of both men and, besides, our task ultimately is to learn to appreciate the piece as an object in its own right and not as something tied to a human subject.     

 
Notes
 
[1] I'm quoting from the article by Dalya Alberge entitled '"Absolutely hideous": new London sculpture of Oscar Wilde condemned by his grandson', in The Guardian (21 September 2024): click here
 
[2] In 1995, Paolozzi along with eleven other invited artists submitted a design for a statue of Oscar Wilde to a committee chaired by Sir Jeremy Isaacs. The committee, of which Merlin Holland was a member, eventually shortlisted six candidates, including Paolozzi, and requested they create maquettes (i.e., scale models). Ultimately, Paolozzi's design was rejected as too brutalist and the committee chose Maggi Hambling's more playful (if somewhat macabre) sculpture. 
 

17 Jul 2024

Memories of Summer '84: Charisma

Just another day in the press office at Charisma Records 
for Jazz and Lee Ellen (1984)
 
 
Entry from The Von Hell Diaries Tuesday 7 August 1984

By the time I got into Charisma this morning, Lee Ellen was already freaking out because Malcolm had cancelled three cover-interviews [1]. As she tried to re-arrange things, I was sent over to McLaren's office on Denmark Street with two cheques: the first for £5000 (a video fee) and the second for £20,000 (advance against the next album). 
 
I had also been given a letter, marked private and confidential, that I was instructed to hand personally to Malcolm. Unfortunately, there was no one in to receive either the letter or the cheques when I got to Moulin Rouge. However, on the way out I bumped into Malcolm and we both went up to his first floor office.
 
Clearly, the contents of the letter were not to his liking. And when Carrolle [2] arrived, he told her she couldn't have the half-day agreed, but would have to type up an immediate reply, which I was to then take back to Charisma. While they worked on the letter, I chatted with Andrea [3] who, by this time, had also arrived at the office. 
 
As well as the letter, Malcolm also gave me three tape cassettes and a small box containing 'valuable jewellery' that he wanted to have couriered to Nick Egan [4] in New York without the US customs knowing anything about it. I was told to wrap the things up carefully and if anyone asked at Charisma what the package contained I should tell them it was a rubber fish. 
 
For security, I was put in a cab by Carrolle - even though the walk from Denmark Street to Wardour Street is literally only a few minutes via Soho Square.              
 
Later, Lee Ellen called me and said I should meet her at 6 o'clock at the Soho Brasserie on Old Compton Street, where Malcolm was going to give an interview to someone from Time Out. Had a fun night chatting, eating sausages, and drinking Black Russians. The Melody Maker journalist Colin Irwin joined us - he's clearly in love with Lee Ellen, but then, to be fair, who isn't?
 
The terrible trio - Glen Colson, Jock Scott, and Keith Allen [5] - also briefly came over. Not sure I'm a fan of the latter; a bit too aggessive for my tastes, so glad when he and his pals headed off to the Wag Club. 
 
Found it ironic that, interview over, Talcy Macly of all people should tell me he's never seen anyone as pale as I am. He asked Lee Ellen what she'd being doing to me. 
 
He also advised that I needed to 'calm down' a little, saying that he'd never want to rob a bank with me as I made him a nervous wreck. 'Listen Jazz boy', he said, 'you've got to learn how to make people feel comfortable. Be a bit more cunning; don't show so much enthusiasm'. Having acted as my mentor-cum-career's advisor, he then launched into a long (but fascinating) monologue about Oscar Wilde. 
 
With regret, I left in time to catch the last tube back to Chiswick. Lee Ellen told me the next day that Malcolm kept her up until 2am with his stories and his complaints that pictures from a recent photo session had made him look like Michael Bentine. 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Lee Ellen Newman was the Press Officer at Charisma Records, a label founded in 1969 by Tony Stratton Smith and home to a few old hippies, such as Genesis, but also the label to which Malcolm McLaren was signed.

[2] Carrolle Payne was McLaren's Personal Assistant at Moulin Rouge (25, Denmark Steet). 
  
[3] Andrea Linz was a talented fashion student and McLaren's girlfriend and muse at the time. 
 
[4] Nick Egan is a visual artist and graphic designer who collaborated with Mclaren on many projects in the early and mid-1980s. 
 
[5] Glen Colson was a music publicist associated with Charisma Records; Jock Scott was a popular performance poet (about whom I published a post on 18 April 2016 in his memory - click here); Keith Allen was associated at this time with a group of British comic actors known as the Comic Strip. 
 
 
Musical bonus: Malcolm McLaren, 'Madam Butterfly (un bel di vedremo)', single released from the album Fans (Charisma Records, 1984) on 20 August 1984: click here. Video directed by Terence Donovan.
 
 
For further memories of the summer of 1984, click here and/or here.    
 

27 May 2024

Adoration of the Golden Calf

The Adoration of the Golden Calf – image from the 
Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg 
(12th century)
 
I.
 
According to the Book of Exodus [1], the golden calf was a cult idol made by the Israelites when Moses was for forty days and nights at Mount Sinai being entrusted with a ten point list of commandments inscribed by YHWH himself on two tablets of stone. 
 
To be fair, slipping back into bull worship is tempting at the best of times - even when, ironically, the very first two of the above commandments read: Thou shalt have no other gods before me and Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
 
Unfortunately, six weeks is a long time for a fanatically religious people to be left without an idol to worship and, fearing Moses might never return, they convinced his brother, Aaron, to make them such. And so Aaron constructed a golden calf and an altar to place before it, declaring: This is your god, O Israel!       
 
Before long, the people were making burnt offerings to their new deity and feasting and dancing in front of the lustrous bull. Happy days ...!   
 
Yahweh, of course, soon discovered what was going on and was not best pleased; he told Moses that he intended to destroy the Israelites. Fortunately, Moses was able to persuade God to be merciful. But when he returned from the mountain and saw the golden calf, Moses found himself in a rage and threw down the Tablets of Stone, breaking them on the ground. 
 
Further, he burnt the golden calf, ground it to powder, mixed this with water, and then forced the Israelites to drink up.   
 
 
II.
 
What has this biblical story got to do with us today? 
 
Quite a lot if, like Jordan Peterson, you passionately believe that such tales still have things of vital importance to teach us; warning, for example, as this tale does, about the dangers of false gods, materialism, and hedonistic self-gratification [2].   
 
If, however, like me, you're not quite so exercised about these things - viewing Abrahamic religions to be far more dangerous in their idealism, self-denial, and claims to absolute Truth than false gods, etc. - then probably not so much. 

I've never seen a golden calf - and certainly never worshipped one. And when I hear mention of the golden calf, I don't think of the ancient Jews messing around in Egypt. I think, rather, of the bohemian set who used to frequent the notorious London nightclub called The Cave of the Golden Calf ... 

Opened in the summer of 1912 by the Austrian writer Frida Strindberg - wife of the famous Swedish playwright - The Cave of the Golden Calf was the last gasp of late-19th century decadence, as epitomised by Oscar Wilde and his gang of aesthetes (i.e., young men who liked to wear nail varnish and drink iced champagne or sip absinthe in order to see the world as they wished to see it, for a short while at least). 
 
Located in the basement of 3-9 Heddon Street, in Mayfair, it was a favourite haunt of aristos, artists, and intellectuals trying to recreate a European caberet vibe. It was decorated by the painter Spencer Gore, with contributions by Jacob Epstein and Wyndham Lewis. Sculptor Eric Gill, meanwhile, designed the club's motif; a phallic Golden Calf - symbol of biblical dissipation and idolatry.
 
Regular guests of the establishment included many of the usual suspects; Ezra Pound, Katherine Mansfield, Ford Maddox Ford, Augustus John, et al. I can't imagine, however, that it would've been the kind of place that D. H. Lawrence would have been happy in, even if he was friendly with several of the above.  
 
The Cave of the Golden Calf - a place given up to gaiety - closed its doors shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914; not as a response to the seriousness of the times, but because it went bankrupt, Mme. Strindberg heading West to the States and leaving a trail of debts behind her. 
 
Today, members of the LGBT community claim The Cave of the Golden Calf as the prototype of London's gay bars and clubs and the site is home to one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants.      
 
 
Notes
 
[1] See Exodus 32: click here for the version found in the King James Bible. 
 
[2] Peterson - wearing his amazing(ly ugly) dreamcoat - insists that worshippers of the golden calf were "dancing around naked, drunk" and describes what went on as a "Pride parade" (i.e., the surrendering to immature instincts). Click here to watch a six minute video on YouTube in which Peterson shares his thoughts (with Russell Brand) on the story of the golden calf. 


13 May 2024

On the Rise of the Useful Idiot

 Adapted from the poster for I Am Greta
(a documentary film dir. Nathan Grossman, 2020)
 
I. 
 
Byung-Chul Han says that the idiot has all but vanished from our society. But Han is not using the term idiot in its familiar modern sense (i.e., to refer to a stupid person). 
 
Rather, he's returning to the ancient Greek term from which it derives - ἰδιώτης - which refers to a private individual who prefers to think their own thoughts rather than simply subscribe to common sense or conform to popular opinion (even at the risk of appearing ignorant or foolish). 
 
For Han, the idiot is thus a type of outsider or heretic; not so much uninformed as unaligned with any party or cause; someone who values freedom and opposes the violence of consensus [1]. The idiot, in brief, is the kind of person attracted to philosophy, a practice born - like psychology - of idleness and characterised - like art - by its uselessness [2].   
 
 
II.
 
Unfortunately, however, there's more than one type of idiot in this world.
 
And if the type of useless philosophical idiot privileged by Byung-Chul Han has all but vanished from contemporary society, the political idiot who prides themselves on their allegiance to a cause, party, or ideology and happily makes themselves useful to such is, it seems, proliferating in number ...
 
Some commentators may clutch their pearls - or even reach for the smelling salts - when they hear the term useful idiot [3], but it's a widely accepted term within political discourse [4] to refer to someone who believes they are fighting for a just cause and have history on their side, without fully appreciating the consequences of their actions or the extent to which they are being cynically manipulated by nefarious forces.  
 
Many supporters of Extinction Rebellion, or Black Lives Matter, or those we currently see larping for Palestine on streets and campuses across the Western world, are probably well-intentioned idealists; i.e., perfectly sincere in their views, but they are politically naive to the point that idiocy hardly even covers it; closing their eyes to reality and shutting their ears to reason, they unwittingly assist in the destruction of their own culture, history, and society.   
 

Notes
 
[1] See Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, trans. Erik Butler, (Verso, 2017). And see also the post 'On Heresy and Philosophical Idiotism' (20 Nov 2021): click here
 
[2] Nietzsche famously asserts in Twilight of the Idols (1889) that idleness is the beginning of psychology (and is therefore the result of vice). 
      Oscar Wilde, meanwhile, writing in a Preface to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) claimed: "All art is quite useless." He later explained in a letter what he meant by this: "Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way." Similarly, philosophy is simply intended to open up a space for thinking - nothing else. Wilde's letter can be read in full here
 
[3] For those gentle souls who prefer a slightly less harsh-sounding term, it might be noted that some commentators speak of useful innocents, whilst those within the intelligence community apparently refer to unwitting agents.
 
[4] Frequently used during the Cold War to describe those susceptible to communist propaganda and manipulation, the phrase useful idiot was (ironically but mistakenly) attributed to Lenin by the Russian human rights activist and Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. Lenin may have liked to use it, but he certainly didn't coin it, and nor is it found in any of his writings.
 
 

11 May 2024

Reflections on 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman



I. 
 
The American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) is perhaps best remembered today for a (semi-autobiographical) short story written after she suffered a severe bout of postpartum psychosis and first published in 1892: The Yellow Wallpaper ... [1]
 
 
 
II. 
 
The (possibly unhinged and certainly unreliable) narrator is a married woman who keeps a journal. Her husband, John, is a doctor and "practical in the extreme". 
 
By this she means: 
 
"He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures."
 
Rightly or wrongly, she resents the fact that he will not believe she's physically unwell and blames him for thereby retarding her recovery. And, to be fair, I can see how this might be troubling. 
 
For it's bad enough when one's useless GP insists there's really nothing wrong. But when one's own spouse - who just happens to also be a physician of high standing - "assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression", that must be really maddening. 
 
And when one's own brother - also a highly respected doctor - concurs that one is simply exhibiting signs of a slight hysterical tendency ... Well, it would be enough to make anyone want to scream and tear at the wallpaper (whatever the colour or pattern). 
 
It's an unfortunate fact that doctors and others working in the healthcare professions, are often not what one might expect or hope for. And experience over recent years has taught me to be wary of accepting their diagnoses and prescribed treatments. 
 
And so I'm sympathetic to the narrator of Gilman's story; even if, as I say, she may be unreliable on occasion and a little too romantic and overly sensitive to queer vibrations for my tastes (sometimes, a draught is just a draught and you really do just need to close the window).  
 
And I do see that John is a patronising and paternalistic prick; I wouldn't want to be married to him, that's for sure.     
 
As for the wallpaper:
 
"I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. [...] The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others."
 
I know a lot of people dislike wallpaper: and I know a lot of people hate the colour yellow - although I'm not among their number and have, in fact, just painted my kitchen in a lemon zesty colour full of enough sunshine to make Van Gogh proud [2].  
 
Still, she has a point: one should be happy - or, at the very least, not unhappy - in one's domestic surroundings. 
 
And it's wrong of her husband to laugh at her about the wallpaper. Just as it's wrong not to appreciate that Wilde was perfectly serious when, lying in his wretchedly furnished Paris hotel room, he declared that he and his wallpaper were fighting a duel to the death: One or the other of us has to go.
 
The fact that Wilde died shortly afterwards proves that home furnishings can have a malevolent - even fatal - influence on our lives and that aesthetics deserves to be taken very seriously as a branch of philosophy. 


III.
 
Like the narrator, I also used to lie awake as a child and extract a mixture of terror and entertainment out of the objects of my little bedroom. She remembers how kindly the knobs of a big old bureau were, whilst I remember the scary faces and figures made of leaves that appeared in the curtains - and that returns us to the yellow wallpaper:  

"This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design." 
 
Despite this, the woman grows very fond of her room; in spite of the wallpaper, or perhaps - somewhat perversely - because of the wallpaper: "It dwells in my mind so!" She spends many hours trying to follow the pointless pattern:
 
"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit." 
 
She particularly dislikes it at night, when the moonlight shines on the undulating wallpaper and gives her the creeps: 
 
"The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move [...]" 
 
Her husband tells her to go back to sleep and not be silly. But she doesn't. Instead, she lies there in the darkness "trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately". 
 
If the colour of the paper is bad enough, it's the pattern - with its purely random design that seems to change depending on the light and time of day - that really tortures her mind:
 
"You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you." 
 
In the end, she decides the female figure she sees behind the pattern is a prisoner; trapped and desperate to escape. And she determines to learn her secret, even if she still can't stomach the yellowness of the wallpaper which makes her think "of all the yellow things I ever saw; not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things". 
 
Oh, and did I mention the paper's unique smell: 
 
"I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair." 
 
"Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad - at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house - to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell." 
 
 
IV.
 
And so, we approach the end of Gilman's remarkable tale ... and the narrator's further descent into madness. 
 
She decides, for example, that the pattern of the wallpaper really is moving; that the trapped woman is making it move as she crawls around and shakes the bars of her prison, desperate to break out. Unfortunately, "nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so".   
 
But, having said that: 
 
"I think that woman gets out in the daytime! [...] I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. [...] I see her [...] creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!" 
 
Finally, there's only one thing for it - she has to strip the paper off the walls: 
 
"As soon as it was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper." 
 
The next day, when alone in the house, she attempts to finish the job, keeping a rope close by just in case the woman gets out and requires restraining. But peeling off the paper isn't easy and she grows increasingly angry and frustrated. She also now totally identifies with the woman and believes that she too has emerged out of the wallpaper:   
 
"I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I don’t want to go outside. [...] For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."
 
At this point, her husband John comes home and discovers her creeping around the room:
 
"'What is the matter?' he cried. 'For God's sake, what are you doing!' I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. 'I’ve got out at last,' said I [...] And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!'" 
 
In horror and despair, her husband collapses: 
 
"Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!" 
 
Is that final line a triumphant assertion of female agency and independence - or the confession of a lunatic? 
 
Maybe both: I don't know. 
 
But I do know Gilman's work fully deserves the multiple readings from many different perspectives that it has had over the last 130 years. H. P. Lovecraft was not wrong to recognise it as a classic tale which powerfully (and cleverly) delineates the madness which can overtake any one of us (whatever the colour of our wallpaper) [3].
 
 
Notes
 
[1] I am reading (and quoting) from Gilman's tale as published in eBook form by Project Gutenberg in 1999. Click here to read free online.  
 
[2] See the post 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here
 
[3] See H. P. Lovecraft, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', a 28,000 word essay published in The Recluse (1927): click here to read on the H. P. Lovecraft Archive. 

 
Thanks to Síomón Solomon for suggesting this post.
 

6 May 2024

Hail, Emperor Grayling

Philosopher A. C. Grayling - 
give this man a toga and a crown 
(Photo: Simone Padovani)
 
 
I don't much like long-haired British philosopher A. C. Grayling, but a recent remark concerning the interesting etymology of his given name, Anthony - spelled with an H, but pronounced 'Antony' - caught my attention:
 
"The name comes from Antonines in Rome - one of the most famous was Marcus Aurelius. Some idiot in the Renaissance thought that maybe the name Antony comes from 'anthos' in Greek, which means flower. So if you are an Anthony with an H, you're a flower, rather than a Roman emperor. I'd much rather be a Roman emperor." [1]
 
Firstly, of course, this struck me as a very un-Wildean thing to say, the Irish poet and dramatist famously declaring that in the next life he would like to be a flower; beautiful, but with no soul
 
Secondly, however, it reveals that Grayling subscribes to a rather common male fantasy; i.e., one of holding supreme power - particularly if one gets to dress up in a toga and wear a laurel leaf crown. 

Indeed, so widespread is this nostalgia for ancient imperialism amongst men that there was even a viral trend on TikTok last year, with women asking the men in their lives how often they think (and dream) about the Roman Empire. The answer, it seems, is very often - with some men confessing they do so multiple times per week (or even per day) [2].
 
This includes very rich and powerful men, such as Mark Zuckerberg, who has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Augustus - and, so it appears, philosophers such as Grayling. 
 
Perhaps this helps to explain the latter's zealous committment to the European Union, founded in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome, which he describes as "the greatest project for peace and cooperation, progress and security, high common values and standards" [3]
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Asked ten random questions by Sian Cain, including one about how he likes to be addressed, this was his answer. The full piece, in The Guardian (5 Oct 2024), can be accessed by clicking here.   

[2] The trend is so popular that the hashtag #RomanEmpire on TikTok has surpassed 1.2 billion views. Asked about this, the historian Mary Beard commented: "In some ways, ancient Rome is a kind of safe place for macho fantasies. It's where men can pretend to be macho men." 
      See Olivia B. Waxman, 'The Most Famous Historian of Rome on Why Men Are Obsessed', Time (26 Sept 2023): click here.  
 
[3] I'm quoting from Grayling's website: click here.  
      Obviously, the implication is that the pax Europaea is comparable to the pax Romana, a 200 year period of Roman history seen as a golden age of peace, prosperity, regional expansion and increased power. It is usually dated as commencing with the accession of Augustus, in 27 BC, and concluding in AD 180 with the death of Marcus Aurelius. 
      I'm aware, however, that to view the EU as an attempt to recreate the Roman Empire is somewhat absurd, although not entirely fanciful, as both institutions engender the emergence of a market economy characterised by free movement of goods and people, a single currency, universal laws, etc.    


19 Jan 2024

Here We Are Nowhere (Bienvenue à l'Hôtel Non-Lieu)

The Overlook Hotel (The Shining, 1980) 
 
 
For a long time, I have dreamed of one day living in a hotel. Not staying for a short break or even a prolonged period, but living there full-time (and, indeed, dying beyond my means in a hotel just like Oscar Wilde) [1].
 
It isn't the amenities or services that attract per se, so much as the notion of anonymity and the fact that it provides an escape from domesticity and all the horrors of home, sweet home. The idea of not actually owning property also appeals. 
 
Since this is essentially a fantasy, concerns about the cost or feasibility - I know that many hotels have rules governing maximum duration of stay - haven't really entered my thinking. 
 
Nor have I worried about the fact that hotels can provide only a transient and somewhat artificial sense of community. In fact, that's part of the attraction; not belonging anywhere or having to establish long-lasting relationships with neighbours seems a plus to me and I imagine it would be far more fun interacting with a rotating cast of staff members, ghosts, and fellow guests. 
 
However, recently, I've begun to have my doubts and I'm not so sure that life in what the French anthropologist Marc Augé termed a non-place [2] is really such a great idea ... 
 
It's not that I fear being unable to sustain my identity, or that I might feel alienated and alone. Rather, my concern is that, ultimately, living in a hotel - no matter how fabulous - might begin to feel as if one were in limbo, neither here nor there, and once you tire of nowhere there is, of course, nowhere left to go [3] ... 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Oscar Wilde died on 30 November 1900 at L'Hôtel, 13 Rue des Beaux Arts, 75006 Paris, France, where, famously, he disliked the wallpaper. Readers interested in staying in what is now termed the Oscar Wilde Suite will find all they need to know by clicking here.    
 
[2] See Marc Augé, Non-Lieux: Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (Éditions du Seuil, 1992); recently republished as Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, trans. John Howe, (Verso, 2023). 
      Augé coined the phrase non-place to refer to those spaces where traditional notions of history, identity, and human relations, are, if not erased exactly, then suspended. Examples of a non-place include a hotel room, an airport lounge, or a shopping mall. When you enter, you might immediately feel a sense of familiarity and yet they incite no sense of belonging. 
      Readers who would like to read the Introduction to the second edition of Non-Places can find it on the Verso blog page: click here.   

[3] I'm recalling here the line from the Stiff Little Fingers song 'Here We Are Nowhere', written by guitarist Henry Cluney, which can be found on their debut album Inflammable Material (Rough Trade, 1979) and listened to on YouTube by clicking here - 59 seconds of punk genius. 


28 Aug 2023

Black Sun Flower

Black Sun Flower (SA/2023)
 
 
Is it just me, or is there not a suggestion in the flower on the left of the sun-wheel symbol [1] that Nazi occultists had such a fondness for? 
 
I think there is: and it makes one wonder whether it serves to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art [2]; or, alternatively, proves that even a flower can be fascist?  
 
Either way, I think we can all agree that at the core of every flower burns something obscene and evil, like a tiny black sun, and that this is something that many poets, philosophers, and gardeners remain deeply uncomfortable with. 
 
In fact, Bataille is one of the few writers who dares to stare into the heart of vegetal darkness, affirming the inexpressible reality of the flower and rejecting the sexless and sunless descriptions traditionally offered [3].
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The schwarze Sonne symbol originated in Nazi Germany and is now employed by neo-Nazis and other far-right individuals and groups. 
      The symbol consists of twelve radial sig runes and was used as a design element in Heinrich Himmler's SS castle at Wewelsburg. It is uncertain whether it held any particular significance for Himmler, but the black sun later became linked with neo-Nazi occultism and used as a substitute for (or variant of) the classic swastika design. 
      For a Lawrentian take on this concept of the black sun, see the post entitled 'Excessive Brightness Drove the Poet into Darkness' (3 Oct 2021): click here
 
[2] See Wilde's essay 'The Decay of Lying', Intentions (1891). An earlier version of the essay was published in the literary magazine The Nineteenth Century, in January 1889.

[3] I'm paraphrasing here form an earlier post entitled 'Fleurs du Mal' (25 April 2015): click here
 
 
Readers might like to see a related post to this one on how Jamie Reid's Cambridge Rapist motif haunts the natural world: click here.


18 Jul 2023

Wilde About the Beautiful Game

Sporting outfitters of intellectaul distinction
 
 
Apparently, the FIFA Women's World Cup begins this week and we're all supposed to get excited by the opportunity to experience a tournament Beyond Greatness - whatever that means ...

Unfortunately, I don't share this excitement. 
 
In fact, when watching women running about kicking a football, all I can think of is an oft-quoted remark made by Oscar Wilde: that whilst it's all very well for rough girls, it's entirely unsuitable for delicate boys.
 
 

12 Jun 2023

Why Bambi is Forever Being Killed in My Imagination Thanks to the Sex Pistols

My photo of a local fawn and a poster for the Sex Pistols'
film soundtrack The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979)

 
Some readers may recall a post from last year in which I attempted to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art, with reference to a moth's wing which appeared to incorporate the Cambridge Rapist motif used by Jamie Reid in his work for the Sex Pistols [1]
 
But as someone pointed out at the time, seeing a human face - even, as in this instance, a masked human face - in an object of any variety (be it natural or artificial, animate or inanimate) is a common psychological phenomenon [2], which tells us something interesting about how the brain works, but doesn't really lend support to Wilde's theory. 
 
And that's fair enough, I suppose. 
 
Thus, maybe what the above post primarily indicates is that my personal obsession with the Sex Pistols is such that I often view the world through a punk prism. Take, for example, what happened the other day when walking past the deer herd who have colonised what was once a local playing field ...
 
Seeing the little deer pictured above, immediately triggered thoughts of the shocking image of a dead fawn used to promote the Sex Pistols' film (and film soundtrack) The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle [3]. This, in turn, made me start to sing the chorus from the curious track by Eddie Tenpole: 'Who Killed Bambi?' [4]
 
I can't remember who said it, but it seems to be true; the songs we loved at sixteen, we'll remember and continue to love for the rest of our lives (even those that have become almost unlistenable).
 
 
Notes
 
[1] See the post dated 13 July 2022 and entitled 'Punk Moth (Or How the Cambridge Rapist Motif Haunts the Natural World)': click here.
 
[2] Once considered a symptom of psychosis, pareidolia, as it's known, is now understood to be hardwired into every brain by evolution; we all attempt to impose a meaningful interpretation on the world and to recognise ourselves in things and patterns of light and shade. See the post dated 4 June 2015 and entitled 'Pareidolia and Prosopagnosia': click here.
 
[3] Readers who share my obsession with the Sex Pistols will be aware that Who Killed Bambi? was originally the title of a film featuring the band, due to be released in 1978, directed by Russ Meyer from a script by Roger Ebert and Malcolm McLaren. After this project was abandoned, McLaren eventually made The Great Rock and Roll Swindle with director Julien Temple, the trailer for which included the title shot of a deer being killed, a scene that was not included in the finished film. A song, however, with the title 'Who Killed Bambi?' did feature in the movie, sung by Eddie Tenpole (see note 4 below). Additional footage from Who Killed Bambi? was also used in Temple's documentary on the Sex Pistols, The Filth and the Fury (2000). 

[4] Click here for the album version of the song and here to see Tenpole (or Tadpole, as Irene Handl amusingly calls him) performing the track in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle film. I have written about 'Who Killed Bambi?' previously on Torpedo the Ark: click here


26 Mar 2023

In Memory of Sarah Bernhardt (1844 - 1923)

Sarah Bernhardt (aged 21) 
Photo by Félix Nadar (1865)
 
"Mon vrai pays est le plein air et ma vocation est l'art sans contraintes."
 
 
I. 
 
It's strange, but there are some figures who, in theory, should hold a special interest to me, but about whom I know embarrassingly very little. And the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who died on this day 100 years ago, is one such figure ...

Famously described by Oscar Wilde as divine, a 63-year-old Bernhardt even managed to capture the heart of a young D. H. Lawrence in 1908, when appearing on the English stage as part of a twenty day, sixteen city tour of Great Britain and Ireland:
 
"Sarah Bernhardt was wonderful and terrible. [...] Oh, to see her, and to hear her, a wild creature, a gazelle with a beautiful panther's fascination and fury, laughing in musical French, screaming with true panther cry, sobbing and sighing like a deer sobs, wounded to death, and all the time with the sheen of silk, the glitter of diamonds, the moving of men's handsomely groomed figures about her! She is not pretty - her voice is not sweet - but there she is, the incarnation of wild emotion which we share with all live things, but which is gathered in us in all complexity and inscrutable fury. She represents the primeval passions of woman, and she is fascinating to an extraordinary degree. I could love such a woman myself, love her to madness; all for the pure, wild passion of it." [1]
 
 
II. 
 
Clearly, then, Bernhardt - the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish courtesan who had numerous lovers amongst the wealthy Parisian elite - was one of those wonder-women who seem to seduce, bewitch, or scandalise everyone they encounter. 
 
And, the more I read about her - or the more I look at beautiful old photos of Miss Bernhardt, particularly those taken when she was still very young and with a mass of curly black hair  - the more I start to understand and appreciate why that would be. 
 
I love the fact, for example, that as a child being educated at a convent, she outraged the nuns by performing a Christian burial, with full procession and ceremony, for her pet lizard. And I love the fact also that a century before the world had ever heard of Toyah Willcox, Miss Bernhardt chose to sometimes sleep in a satin-lined coffin.   
 
Arguably, Bernhardt even has something free spirited about her that Nietzsche (who was born in the same month and year) would admire, as this quotation demonstrates:
 
'I passionately love this life of adventures. I detest knowing in advance what they are going to serve at dinner, and I detest a hundred thousand times more knowing what will happen to me, for better or worse. I adore the unexpected.' [2]
 
That's pretty much the philosophy of amor fati and living dangerously in a nutshell, is it not? 
 
She also had that most Nietzschean of virtues: endurance ... For here was an actress who didn't just break a leg, she actually lost a leg due to gangrene in 1915 (when aged 70), but still returned to the stage at the first opportunity and performed for French soldiers fighting on the Western Front.
 
Right until the very end, she also continued to entertain guests at home, - including Colette, who described being served coffee by a living legend:
 
"'The delicate and withered hand offering the brimming cup, the flowery azure of the eyes, so young still in their network of fine lines, the questioning and mocking coquetry of the tilted head, and that indescribable desire to charm, to charm still, to charm right up to the gates of death itself.'" [3]
 
 
Notes
 
[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Blanche Jennings (25 June 1908), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 59. 
      It is interesting to note that Lawrence was forty-years younger than Sarah Bernhardt when he wrote this letter. Later, he issues a warning to his new friend Miss Jennings: 
      "Take care about going to see Bernhardt. Unless you are very sound, do not go. When I think of her now I can still feel the weight hanging in my chest as it hung there for days after I saw her. Her winsome, sweet, playful ways; her sad, plaintive little murmurs; her terrible panther cries; and then the awful, inarticulate sounds, the little sobs that fairly sear one, and the despair of death; it is too much in one evening." 
      It is also interesting to note that a 28-year-old Sigmund Freud was also smitten by Sarah. After seeing her perform the title role in Victorien Sardou's melodrama Théodora (1884), he sent his long-suffering fiancée, Martha Bernays, a scene-by-scene account of Bernhardt's performance, concluding that she was a remarkable creature: "Her caressing and pleading, the postures she assumes, the way she wraps herself around a man, the way she acts with every limb, every joint - it's incredible!" 
      See the Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, ed. Ernst L. Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern, (Hogarth Press, 1961), pp. 178-82.  
      But of course, Bernhardt also had her critics, including Shaw, Turgenev, and Chekov - but I'm writing here to praise Sarah, not to bury her. 

[2] Quoted in Hélène Tierchant, Sarah Bernhardt: Madame 'quand même', (Éditions Télémaque, 2009), pp. 210-211. Unknown translator.
 
[3] Quoted by Cornelia Otis Skinner in Madame Sarah, (Houghton, 1967), p. 330. 
 
 
Special (from beyond the grave) bonus - Sarah Bernhardt reciting a poem by Victor Hugo (Paris, 1903): click here
 
For a follow up post to this one on the art and necessity of coffin sleeping, click here.
 
Merci à Sophie pour la suggestion de cet article.


18 Oct 2022

Sing Hello


 
 
I.
 
I've mentioned before on this blog how the word hello has long held a privileged place in my personal vocabulary: click here.  
 
It's disappointing, therefore, that the majority of songs that have the word hello in their title or lyrics make one wish to stop up one's ears like Odysseus, so as to never hear them again. And this includes some really well-known songs by much loved artists. 
 
For example: 
 
'Hello, Dolly!', by Louis Armstrong (1964) ...
 
'Hello, Goodbye', by The Beatles (1967) ...

'Hello, I Love You', by The Doors (1968) ...
 
'Hello', by Lionel Richie (1984) ... 
 
'Hello', by Adele (2015) ... 
 
In fact, the more I come to think about it, there is really only one great song containing the word hello - and that is Gary Glitter's smash hit single 'Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again' [1]
 
 
II.
 
1973 was a golden year for British pop music - particularly for the genre known as glam rock - and whilst I loved Sweet, Slade, and Suzi Quatro, Gary Glitter was my beautiful obsession at this time [2]
 
'Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again' - written by Glitter and genius record producer Mike Leander - was much loved not only by teeny-boppers, but by football supporters up and down the country. O what fun we had singing along to this ridiculously catchy song!    
 
Of course, that was then and this is now ... And Glitter's songs are today no longer played on the radio or sung on the terraces and his performances on Top of the Pops no longer shown - we all know why ... [3]
 
Without getting into the whole can we separate art from the artist debate [4], I think that's a shame. And ultimately mistaken. I suppose, push comes to shove, I remain of the Wildean view that there is no such thing as a moral or immoral pop record.     
    
 
Notes
 
[1] Gary Glitter, 'Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again', single release from the album Touch Me (Bell Records, 1973): click here to play. 
      Having said that this is the only great song with hello in the title and/or lyrics, I must obviously also mention Soft Cell's 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye' (Some Bizzare, 1982): click here. And I have to give a nod to 'Public Image' (Virgin, 1978), the debut single by Public Image Ltd., which opens with Rotten repeating the word hello six times: click here.
 
[2] See the post 'Notes on a Glam-Punk Childhood' (24 July 2018): click here
 
[3] Glitter's career ended after he was imprisoned for downloading child pornography in 1999, and was subsequently convicted of child sexual abuse and attempted rape, in 2006 and 2015, respectively. The fact remains, however, that he is one of the UK's most successful performers, selling over 20 million records, including numerous hit singles (three of which reached number one in the charts). To deny him his place in the pantheon of pop is simply to whitewash our own cultural history. 
 
[4] It's not that this debate isn't philosophically interesting - involving as it does questions concerning ethics and aesthetics - it's just too big and wide-ranging to address here. What I would say is that whilst it's clear that bad people can make good art, it's less certain whether the morally virtuous can produce anything other than mediocre work (at best).      
 
  

13 Jul 2022

Punk Moth (Or How the Cambridge Rapist Motif Haunts the Natural World)

Fig. 1: Pretty little moth in my front garden / Fig. 2: A colour enhanced detail from the wing
Fig. 3: Jamie Reid God Save the Cambridge Rapist (poster design for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, 1980)


There are, apparently, around 2,500 species of moth in the UK and I'm no lepidopterist, so don't expect me to identify the very pretty little moth in the photo above which seems to like living in (or on) my front garden privet. 
 
Perhaps its most striking feature, to me at least, is the marking on the wing which reminds me of the Cambridge Rapist [1] mask that so fascinated Malcolm McLaren and which he and Vivienne Westwood incorporated as an image on shirt designs sold at 430 Kings Road [2]; an image which Jamie Reid later used in one of his God Save ... series of posters produced for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) [3]
 
Does this serve to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art? [4] Or does it prove that even an insect can be a sex pistol? 
 
 
Notes

[1] Peter Samuel Cook - known in the press as the Cambridge Rapist - attacked several women in their homes between October 1974 and April 1975. He quickly entered the public imagination due to the distinctive leather mask with the word rapist painted in white letters across the forehead that he liked to wear whilst carrying out his crimes. 
      The 46-year old delivery driver was arrested following one of Britain's largest police manhunts. He was convicted at his trial in 1976 of six counts of rape, as well as assault and gross indecency. Cook was given two life sentences with the recommendation made that he never be released. He died, in jail, in January 2004 (aed 75).   
 
[2] A long-sleeved muslin shirt by McLaren and Westwood with the Cambridge Rapist motif is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum: click here.  
 
[3] A version of this work (produced in 1978) by Jamie Reid can also be found at the V&A: click here.
 
[4] See Wilde's essay 'The Decay of Lying', Intentions (1891). Note that an earlier version of the essay was published in the literary magazine The Nineteenth Century, in January 1889. 
 
For a related post on cultural entomology entitled 'Insectopunk', click here.