Bad Penny

Penny Slinger: Exorcism: Inside Out

Richard Saltoun Gallery (London)

 

I. 

 

Sometimes, we need an artist to turn up like the proverbial bad penny in order to reintroduce a little magic, a little eroticism, and even a little horror into our otherwise safe, sexless, and disenchanted world. 

 

And so, step forward out of the shadows of the past Penny Slinger; a provocative London-born artist whose combination of surrealism and feminism into a queer gothic practice no longer shocks as it once did, but which nevertheless still excites, often amuses, and occasionally gives one the creeps. 

 

 

II. 

 

Her solo exhibition at the Richard Saltoun Gallery (London) - Exorcism: Inside Out - is composed of a number of photographic collages set against the backdrop of a spooky mansion house. The dark fairy tale elements remind one of Angela Carter, with a touch of Daphne du Maurier thrown in (all those birds and animal-headed people) [1]. 

 

We are informed that Slinger is attempting to integrate her own body into an archetypal landscape and  'engaging in a cultural exorcism that explores themes of fetishism and sexploitation from a feminist perspective'. 

 

And that's far enough, although, ideas of empowerment, self-actualisation, and sexual liberation now seem a little naive and old-fashioned and the art itself creaks with more clichés - or what her supporters would call timeless and universal symbols - than you can shake a broomstick at. 

 

Some might believe Slinger's images to be just as daring and challenging now as when they were first conceived, but, unfortunately, that's not the case. And, ultimately, what we are left with here are memories of exhilarating sixties radicalism inspired by Max Ernst; a sincere attempt to transform the outer world through inner dream and the politics of desire ... [2]

 

Notes

 

[1] The exhibition coincides with publication of Slinger's book An Exorcism: A Photo Romance (Fulgur Press, 2024); an extended version of her 1977 book An Exorcism, which has been withheld from UK publication for all these years after another work, Mountain Ecstasy (1978), was seized and destroyed by the British customs having been deemed to be pornographic.  

[2] For an alternative take on Slinger's exhibition, see Young Kim's review in A Rabbit's Foot (30 August 2024): click here.    

Notes on the Sexy, Secret, Stereotyped World of the Secretary

Select her carefully and she'll prove the loveliest 

and most valuable of all fringe benfits. - Helen Gurley Brown

I. 

As Derrida notes, the rise of the personal computer has made the figure of the secretary structurally redundant. Only those who wish to continue marking "the authority of their position" still insist on hiring a secretary, even when they could quite easily do the work themselves on their laptop. 

Why should that be? 

Well, partly, it's a sign of status to sit behind a machine-free desk and reconstitute the old-fashioned boss-secretary relationship, passing over hand-written notes to by typed, or dictating whilst some bright young thing practises her shorthand. As Derrida says, power in the workplace has to be mediated, if not delegated, in order to (be seen to) exist.

But, there's also something else going on; something to do with desire and the way in which it infiltrates and directly invests even the most formal and professional of workplaces as a kind of productive energy. 

The fact is, argue Deleuze and Guattari, sexuality is everywhere - not least in the offices and boardrooms of big business. It's in the way a bureaucrat fondles the files; an accountant analyses the financial data; and it's there in the relationship between a male boss and his female secretary ...          

Never shy of discussing sexual politics, D. H. Lawrence naturally had something to say about all this. In an article first published in the Sunday Dispatch in November 1928, Lawrence writes:    

"The business-man's pretty and devoted secretary is still chiefly valuable because of her sex appeal. Which does not imply 'immoral relations' in the slightest. Even today, a girl with a bit of generosity likes to feel she is helping a man, if the man will take her help. And this desire that he shall take her help is her sex appeal. It is the genuine fire, if of a very mediocre heat. Still, it serves to keep the world of 'business' alive. Probably, but for the introduction of the lady secretary into the business-man's office, the business-man would have collapsed entirely by now. She calls up the the sacred fire in her, and she communicates it to her boss. He feels an added flow of energy and optimism, and - business flourishes. That is perhaps the best result of sex appeal today - business flourishes."

I think that's a pretty astonishing passage for several reasons (not necessarily all the right reasons). For one thing, it anticipates Deleuze and Guattari's analysis in Anti-Oedipus - as it does Helen Gurley Brown's claim in Sex and the Single Girl that office romances have a positive effect on performance and productivity. For not only will a man up his game when trying to impress a woman, but a girl in love with her boss will exhaust herself 24/7 and still wish there was more she could do to help. 

 

II.

The term secretary is derived from the Latin secernere and has connotations of something private or confidential (the English word secret has the same etymological root). A secretarius was someone, therefore, who discreetly handled the personal (or business) affairs of a powerful individual. Over time, whilst the duties of the secretary have varied and expanded, essentially the role has remained the same.

In 1870, Sir Isaac Pitman founded his famous school for would-be secretaries. Originally, much like the profession itself, it only admitted male students. But with the invention of the typewriter more and more women began to train as secretaries and by 1919 the role was primarily associated with the fairer sex. 

The period between 1945 and 1980 can probably be regarded as the golden age of the secretary. After this date, new technology and new office politics increasingly saw the role decline or transform. Secretaries became office managers, or personal assistants, or, indeed, bosses themselves and the work place became a boring, sterile environment: no fags, no booze, no flirting, no fun. 

Obviously, no one wants to write in support of sexual discrimination or sexual harassment. But, I have to admit that I find the new puritanism and political correctness just as concerning. Over the last fifty years our attitude towards the erotics of the workplace has moved from bawdy delight and Benny Hill to stern disapproval and the Time's Up movement.

Glancing down blouses and upskirts, making risqué remarks and double entendres, is now strictly forbidden or even legislated against. Some companies, apparently, have even introduced solemn love contracts for employees to sign, outlining what is and is not appropriate behaviour and who they can and cannot date.

It's all a very long way from the world of Mad Men. And if, in many respects, that's a good thing, in some ways it's a bit of a pity, because, as indicated earlier, some men and women work better and with real joy when they feel themselves attractive and subject to the charged flow of desire. Lawrence writes:

"If only our civilisation had taught us how to let sex appeal flow properly and subtly, how to keep the fire of sex clear and alive, flickering or glowing or blazing in all its varying degrees of strength and communication, we migh all of us have lived [and worked] all our lives in love, which means kindled and full of zest, in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of things. Whereas what  a lot of dead ash there is to life now!"  

Notes 

Jacques Derrida, 'The Word Processor', Paper Machine,  trans. Rachel Bowlby, (Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 29-30. Click here to read online.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 293.

Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, (Bernard Geis Associates, 1962).

D. H. Lawrence, "Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 147-48.

See also: Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, (Yale University Press, 2012), which offers a more critical and in-depth analysis on this subject than I've been able to offer here. 

Click here to view George Costanza's (failed) attempt to do the right thing and stay out of trouble when hiring a secretary in the Season 6 episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Secretary', dir. David Owen Trainor, written by Carol Leifer and Marjorie Gross (original air date 8 Dec 1994). 

And click here to view the trailer for the 2002 film Secretary, dir. Steven Shainberg, starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson based on the short story (of the same title) by Mary Gaitskill.

A Brief Note on Love, Hate and Humanism

According to Lawrence, the mistake made by those who claim to love humanity lies in their moral insistence on the fact, rather than in their feeling of being at one with their fellow men and women. 

And although some may care a little too earnestly about the suffering of unseen strangers, Lawrence concedes that we are physically - if remotely - connected to all people everywhere and that mankind is thus ultimately one flesh:

"In some way or other, the cotton workers of Carolina, or the rice-growers of China are connected with me and, to a faint yet real degree, part of me. The vibration of life which they give off reaches me, touches me and affects me [...] For we are all more or less connected, all more or less in touch: all humanity." 

This libidinal humanism - if we may call it such - is central to Lawrence's politics of desire. And it is intended to be in stark contrast to the "nasty pronounced benevolence" which is only a disguised form of "self-assertion and bullying", that he often associates (fairly or otherwise) with Whitman.

Lord deliver us, says Lawrence, from this latter form of (ideal) humanism and from all falsification of feeling: "Insist on loving humanity, and sure as fate you'll come to hate everybody."    

I think there's something in this suggestion that every time you force your own feelings or attempt to force those of another, you are likely to produce the opposite effect to the one hoped for. And we would do well to consider this today of all days, as we remember again the time when, in the name of Love, Europe rushed into four years of mechanical slaughter and self-sacrifice. 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Nobody Loves Me', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 311-20. 

For a related post to this one on Lawrence's humanism, human exceptionalism, and belief in a common ancestor, click here.

Sandals

Young girls in strappy Greco-Roman style sandals: what excites the most; the bareness of the feet, or the tightness of the binding?

Or perhaps it's the fantasy of owning slaves. For desire can quickly negate liberalism and every erection makes despotic.