Bad Boys (With Reference to the Cases of Johnny Strabler and George Costanza)

Two Bad Boys: Marlon Brando as Johnny Strabler 

and Jason Alexander as George Costanza

I.

Last night, on TV, they showed The Wild One (1953) - László Benedek's classic biker movie starring the impossibly beautiful Marlon Brando in an iconic role as Johnny Strabler, leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club.

When Johnny meets good-girl Kathie Bleeker (played by Mary Murphy) working at the local café-bar, he asks her out to a dance. Although she politely (somewhat coyly) turns him down, she's clearly intrigued (and excited) by Johnny's brooding personality.

In other words, Kathie digs the bad boy ...

II.

I don't know if we should classify the bad boy as a cultural archetype, stereotype or trope, but I do know that there's something in the idea that at least some women - who probably should know better - find the rebellious rogue male or romantic outlaw figure irresistibly attractive.

These women might claim to want caring, sharing boyfriends who are in touch with their feminine side and happy to help with the housework, but the evidence suggests otherwise; namely, that self-obsessed psychopaths with a cool persona and striking good looks always triumph over  the former when it comes to getting the girl.

There are many types of bad boy - including the punk, the pirate, the gangster, and the mad, bad and dangerous poet in all his Byronic splendour - but they all share a dark triad of personality traits: narcissism, thrill-seeking, and deceitfulness. I don't know if these traits have a genetic component - or if the women who find them attractive are genetically predisposed to do so - but it wouldn't suprise me if that were the case.

III.

The female susceptibility to bastards was very amusingly spoofed in a season eight episode of Seinfeld, when George suddenly finds himself playing the role of bad boy (which mostly consists of chewing gum). 

Elaine warns her colleague Anna (Rebecca McFarland) to keep her distance from her friend George, even though he seems harmless: "He's a bad seed. He's a horrible seed. He's one of the worst seeds I've ever seen." Of course, this immediately makes Anna interested in him.

Jerry, of course, is familiar with the syndrome and so when George expresses his surprise at being contacted out of the blue by Anna - after she has previously rebuffed his advances with extreme prejudice - he knows exactly what's going on: "Anna digs the bad boy" - much to George's bemusement ...

For George has never been the bad boy before. He likes the role, however, and intends to exploit his new (unfounded) reputation for badness, setting up a rendezvous with Anna in the park. Elaine's attempt to put an immediate stop to their relationship only makes Anna more attracted to George and soon she's wearing his Yankees jacket. 

Things only cool off when Elaine persuades Anna that, actually, George is a good and decent soul - a fine seed. Desperate to prove his bad boy credentials, George attempts to bootleg a movie. Of course, George being George, he bungles the operation and is arrested.

Worse, when the police officer shouts at him, George begins to cry and has to be comforted by Anna. Now, of course, it's really over; for girls hate cry babies as much as they love bad boys.

Watch: Seinfeld, 'The Little Kicks' (S8/E4), written by Spike Feresten, directed by Andy Ackerman (NBC, 10 October, 1996): the bad boy scenes between George and Anna can be viewed by clicking here. 

Philosophical Reflections on Self-Partnering

Emma Watson
Photo: Action Press / Rex / Shutterstock

As members of the Hollywood set are amongst the most self-absorbed, self-obsessed, and self-indulgent individuals in the world, it came as no surprise to hear Emma Watson speak in an interview with Vogue about self-partnering [click here to read online].

Of course, such a single-positive proposition is really nothing very new: we could trace out a long and fascinating history of self-partnering from Narcissus to Jerry Seinfeld; "Now I know what I've been looking for all these years - myself. I've been waiting for me to come along. And now I've swept myself off my feet!"*

And although some people seem to react with hostility to the idea, there's really nothing to get angry or judgemental about. In fact, I would encourage people to be happy for Ms Watson - particularly as she seems to be so content with the arrangement.

Ultimately, self-partnering is better than sitting around moping like Bridget Jones, or complaining about not having met your soulmate - that special someone who will complete you as a human being (as if Aristophanes's amorous fantasy was anything other than that).**

I also agree with Foucault that care for others shouldn't be put before the care of oneself; that the latter is ethically prior due to the fact that the relationship with oneself is ontologically prior. ***    

The only problem comes when you grow tired of the arrangement and seek a conscious uncoupling; i.e., a releasing of oneself from oneself  - 'cos breaking up is hard to do (comma, comma, down dooby doo down down).  

Notes

*Dialogue from Seinfeld, 'The Invitations', (S7/E22, 1999), written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, episode dir. Andy Ackerman. Click here to watch a clip on YouTube.

** Plato, The Symposium, ed. M. C. Howatson and Frisbee C. C. Sheffield, trans. M. C. Howatson, (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

*** Michel Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and Others, (The New Press, 1997).

Readers who enjoyed this post will probably find an earlier one on sologamy also of interest: click here.

Rocking the Lobster Look with Elsa Schiaparelli, Salvador Dalí and Cosmo Kramer

Lobster evening dress by Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Salvador Dalí

Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer in Seinfeld wearing his lobster shirt 

I.

The surreal genius of Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer in Seinfeld is not to everyone's taste. In fact, of the four central characters I find Kramer the least interesting and sympathetic. But I do like his comic hipster dress sense, including the short-sleeved white lobster shirt with red print.   

I don't know from where the character drew his sartorial inspiration, but it's nice to think that this particular item is an hommage to the work of the great Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, who had a penchant for marine crustaceans with their hard protective shells and soft insides, particularly lobsters, which appear in several of his iconic works, including a dress made in collaboration with the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli ...       

II.

If Coco Chanel ever had a serious rival, it was Elsa Schiaparelli - one of the most fabulous figures in fashion between the wars, whose designs displayed the influence of several prominent artists, including Dalí and Jean Cocteau, though it should be noted that her great inspiration and teacher was master couturier Paul Poiret.

Punk rockers may be amused to discover, for example, that it was Schiaparelli - and not McLaren and Westwood - who first made clothes with visible zips as a key element of the design. She also loved to experiment with synthetic materials, unusual buttons and outrageous decorative features. It was her designs produced in collaboration with Dalí, however, that remain amongst her best known, including the so-called Lobster Dress of 1937.*

As can be seen from the above photo, the dress was a relatively simple white silk evening dress with a crimson waistband and featuring a large lobster - painted by Dalí - on the skirt. Whilst not as amusing as his Lobster Telephone created the year before, the dress - famously worn by Wallis Simpson - is just as provocative I think, bringing surrealist elements of eroticism and cruelty into haute couture (for Dalí, lobsters invariably symbolised sex and suffering). ** 

Notes

* The three other works that came out of the Schiaparelli-Dalí collaboration are the Tears Dress (1938), a pale blue evening gown printed with rips and tears and worn with a long veil; the Skeleton Dress (1938), a black crêpe number which used trapunto quilting to create ribs, spine, and leg bones; and the Shoe Hat (1937-38), which, as one might guess, is a hat shaped like a high heeled shoe.

** Two years later, at the New York World's Fair (1939), Dalí unveiled a multi-media experience entitled Dream of Venus, which featured semi-naked female models dressed in outfits made of fresh seafood, including lobsters used to cover their genitalia. See the photo below taken by German-American fashion photographer Horst P. Horst.

Surprise musical bonus: click here.

Too Much Water-Jelly

Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard is best-known for a six-volume autobiographical novel given the Hitlerean title Min Kamp (2009-11): a series of books in which he exposes in intimate and intricate detail not only every aspect of his own life, but that of his friends and family too.

Several critics refer to him as a Scandinavian Proust. And so it's surely not coincidental that when asked for my opinion of Knausgaard's work, I immediately thought of Lawrence's criticism of the French writer, to whom he had a life-long aversion.     

For Lawrence, Proust was too much water-jelly. I don't quite know what that means, but I don't suppose it's a good thing. He was also guilty - like Knausgaard - of being "absorbedly, childishly interested in phenomenon" - not least of all in his own experience of such:

"'Did I feel a twinge in my little toe, or didn't I?' asks every character in [...] Monsieur Proust: 'Is the odour of my perspiration a blend of frankincense and orange pekoe and boot-blacking, or is it myrrh and bacon-fat and Shetland tweed?'"  

Such writing, spun out for hundreds - if not thousands - of pages, displays an almost insane degree of self-consciousness: Mssrs. Proust and Knausgaard "tear themselves to pieces, strip their smallest emotions to the finest threads" and for Lawrence this is unacceptable:

"One has to be self-conscious at seventeen: still a little self-conscious at twenty-seven; but if we are going it strong at thirty-seven, then it's a sign of arrested development, nothing else. And if it is still continuing at forty-seven, it is obvious senile precocity."

The funny thing is, whilst I agree with Lawrence that infantile and narcissitic self-absorption doesn't necessarily make for great literature, it does give rise to TV comedy gold; for what is Seinfeld other than a brilliant exercise in supersmart postmodern irony and the microphysics of everyday experience?

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Future of the Novel', Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 151, 152. 

Note: Lawrence makes his water-jelly remark in a letter to Aldous Huxley written in July 1927. See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Maragaret Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), letter 4065.  

This post is for Simon Solomon.

That Chimp's Alright: In Memory of Koko

Koko (4 July 1971 - 19 Jun 2018)
Photo: The Gorilla Foundation / koko.org

I.

Although Puddy misidentified her species, he was absolutely right to declare that Koko the gorilla - who, sadly, died earlier this week - was alright. And the very fact that this one-time grease monkey could recall the name is evidence of just how far and wide her fame had spread. 

Indeed, by the time of her death, Koko was probably the best-known and most-loved ape on the planet; popular not only with the writers of Seinfeld, but good pals with many celebrities, including Robin Williams, who struck up a particularly close relationship with her.

II.

Koko was an unusually large female western lowland gorilla with a nipple fetish, a love of kittens, and an amazing ability to communicate with her carers using sign language. She also understood 2000 words of spoken English, in addition to more than 1000 signs. 

Born at the San Francisco Zoo, she spent most of her life at the Gorilla Foundation's preserve in Woodside, California, which is certainly not a bad place to live, whatever species one belongs to. Her interesting life has been fully documented by Francine Patterson and others in a number of books, articles and videos.

Some commentators have challenged the extent to which Koko truly understood what she was signing; she didn't use syntax or grammar and the suggestion has been made that her actions were largely the product of operant conditioning. However, she scored well in different IQ tests (between 70-95) and had passed the so-called mirror test, something that most of her kind fail to do. So Koko was clearly not just a typical dumb ape.   
 
Koko died during her sleep, unexpectedly, even though at 46 she had passed the average life expectancy of a gorilla and outlived her original male companion, Michael, by a good few years. The Gorilla Foundation released a statement saying "Her impact has been profound and what she has taught us about the emotional capacity of gorillas and their cognitive abilities will continue to shape the world."

This might be true. But, unfortunately, it doesn't alter the fact that both lowland and mountain gorillas - along with the other great apeas - are in imminent danger of extinction and the only sign they really need to learn is how to wave goodbye ...

See: Seinfeld, Season 9 Episode 11: 'The Dealership', (dir. Andy Ackerman, 1998).

Eric Gill: On Trousers and the Most Precious Ornament

D. H. Lawrence wasn't the only weirdy beardy Englishman writing in the interwar period to be concerned with the question of masculinity and men's fashion, with a particular interest in trousers and the male member.

The artist, typographer, and sexual deviant, Eric Gill, also wrote on the vital role played by clothing within society and that most precious ornament, the penis, and I would like to discuss his thinking on these things as set out in an essay from 1937 which exposes a phallocentric sexual politics that makes Lawrence's look relatively limp in comparison.

Like Lawrence, of whose work he was a passionate admirer, Gill hated commercial and industrial civilisation. For whilst it encouraged women to "flaunt their sexual attractiveness on all occasions" and display the shapeliness of their legs and breasts with pride, it forced men to dress in a manner that suppressed their maleness of body and obscured their animal nature.

The protuberance by which a man's sex might be identified, is, says Gill, carefully and shamefully tucked between his legs and modern men are taught to regard the penis as merely a ridiculous-looking organ of drainage; "no longer the virile member and man's most precious ornament, but the comic member, a thing for girls to giggle about ..."   

The mighty phallus has been deflated and dishonoured. And not just in the West, but wherever machine civilisation has triumphed, with disastrous consequences for both sexes. For in a world in which men lose physical exuberance and assurance, women quickly lose all natural modesty. They start to parade around like shameless prostitutes in a desperate attempt to arouse the half-impotent male.

The only hope, says Gill, lies with those men who still retain something of the Old Adam about them; men who, like Oliver Mellors, despise commerce and industrialism; men who care about more about making love and waging war, than making money; men who refuse to commute to the office on the Tube each day in clothes that restrict their maleness and crush their balls.

For Gill, if modern man is to be emancipated and remasculated, then he must throw off his trousers and refuse to wear "cheap ready-made coats and collars and ties". Instead, he should don a dignified long robe, like an Arab; or a kilt, like a proud Scotsman, sans pants, allowing his penis its natural freedom of movement and chirpiness: I'm out there Jerry and I'm loving every minute of it!

Not - we should note in closing - that Gill wants men to make a spectacle of themselves and expose their nakedness; indeed, the last thing he wants is for men to become sexual exhibitionists flaunting their masculinity like modern women flaunt their femininity by wearing short skirts and make-up. He just wants us all to admit that the question of clothing - like that of the human soul - is of great importance and deserves the most serious consideration ...

Notes 

Those interested in reading Gill's 1937 essay can do so by clicking here. 

The Seinfeld episode in which Kramer discovers the joys of going commando is Season 6 / Episode 4: 'The Chinese Woman'. 

On Black Mould and the Tragic Case of Dana Anhalt

Photos: Caters News

Mould is a fungus that grows in the form of multicellular filaments called hyphae. There are thousands of diverse species, but they all require moisture for growth and they all derive their energy heterotrophically from the organic matter on which they live. Typically, mould secretes enzymes that transform complex biopolymers such as starch, cellulose and lignin into simpler substances which can be absorbed by the hyphae. Mould thus has a significant role in decomposition, enabling nutrients to be recycled throughout ecosystems - which is a good thing.

Mould also plays an important part in the production of various foods, antibiotics and other medicinal drugs - and again, this is a good thing. Indeed, one might view mould positively from the perspective of Ben Woodward's slime dynamics and understand it to be a darkly vital substance. Unfortunately, however, mould is also a major source of food waste and of illness and many strategies for food preservation - such as salting, pickling, and freeze-drying - are essentially attempts to prevent or retard mould growth.

Although moulds grow all around us and their spores are a common component of dust, their presence is visible to the naked eye only when they form large colonies consisting of an interconnected network of hyphae called a mycelium. In artificial environments, such as homes and offices, humidity and temperature are often stable enough to foster the rapid and extensive growth of mould colonies and this can lead to a variety of health issues, including allergic reactions and respiratory problems.

Indeed, some moulds, including the notorious black mould or Stachybotrys chartarum, produce mycotoxins, prolonged exposure to which can have extremely serious - potentially fatal - consequences. As a general rule, you really don't want to ingest or inhale toxic compounds produced by black mould, or facilitate the growth of pathogenic moulds within the body.   

Which brings us to the terrible and tragic case of Dana Anhalt which has recently received extensive media attention; a 37-year old writer and psychology student from New York, Ms Anhalt has been bedridden for years suffering from multiple health problems, due (it was eventually discovered) to the presence of toxic black mould in her household (and not, as was once believed, chronic Lyme disease).

Having spent most of her life being slowly poisoned and crippled with excruciating pain, Dana has now been instructed by doctors to immediately abandon her home and all of her possessions and move into a new, sterile environment - a bit like the Bubble Boy, Donald Sanger (Seinfeld 4-07).

But this, of course, requires money ... And so I invite readers of this blog interested in knowing more about Dana's case and possibly donating to her family's attempt to raise funds in order to help pay for her new life and the expensive medical care still required, to click here. Alternatively, one can go to Dana's own fundraising project: Art is Life.   

Hopefully, this courageous woman will one day discover the greater health which Zarathustra speaks of and enjoy the intoxication of convalesence. In the meantime, she might care to remember that it is only intense pain and sickness, unfolding within us over an extended period, that serves as the ultimate emancipator of the spirit and compels us to descend into our depths; not necessarily improving us as human beings, but making us more profound as thinkers.  

Downblouse and Upskirt (Get a Good Look Costanza?)

 Seinfeld S4/17: The Shoes. Click here to view scene.

 

Downblousing and upskirting are both examples of pornified voyeurism that illustrate perfectly the objectifying nature of the male gaze. Both have blossomed in an age of smart phones, the internet, and rape culture, yet they continue to rank very differently on a scale of perviness.  

For when a man looks down a young woman's blouse it is in the hope of glimpsing breasts; a healthy, heterosexual desire for female flesh. If not quite the done thing within polite society, downblousing is nevertheless regarded as natural and relatively harmless behaviour; something we might even characterize as a bit of good clean fun and place within a comic context.      

But when a man looks up a girl's skirt it's in the hope of seeing her underwear; what excites is not the flesh per se and it's for this reason that upskirting is regarded as truly deviant behaviour - fetishistic, unwholesome, indecent, etc.    

Thus it is that most viewers laugh when George Costanza stares down the blouse of a fifteen year-old in an episode of Seinfeld and don't see it as an assault by a middle-aged man upon the dignity of a minor, nor a sordid invasion of her privacy. 

Would they feel quite as amused, however, had George been caught staring at her crotch rather than her cleavage?      

Calimocho: On the Politics of Wine and Cola

 Andy Warhol: Coca-Cola (3), 1962

Probably the most powerful argument for choosing a cool can of Coke over a fine glass of wine remains that made by Andy Warhol and it's primarily a cultural-political argument tied to American consumerism, rather than one concerning taste (in either sense of the word) or sobriety:

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."   

- The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, (Harcourt, 1975)

This is undeniably true and one senses something of this same patriotism and ironic egalitarianism of the market place - one might almost call it Coca-Cola communism - born of a New World dislike for Old World snobbery, in George Costanza's equally robust defence of Pepsi.

Reminded by Elaine that it's customary for guests to bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party, George informs her that he doesn't even drink wine - he drinks Pepsi. When Elaine scornfully tells him that he can't bring Pepsi to a gathering of grown-ups, George snorts: "You telling me that wine is better than Pepsi? Huh, no way wine is better than Pepsi."

Even Jerry's attempt to intervene by telling his outraged friend that the fabric of society is very complex and that one has to conform to all manner of customs and conventions, fails to placate George on this point. Later, in the car driving to the party, George asks: "What are we Europeans with the Beaujolais and the Chardonnay ...?" 

Still, none of this serves to explain Jeremy's discomfort at ordering a bottle of Barolo when on a date in an episode of Peep Show. He's obviously put off by the price (£45), but does he really think that wine is less delicious than hot chocolate or Coke? If so, this simply makes him juvenile rather than American does it not?    

Notes:

See Seinfeld, 'The Dinner Party', episode 13, season 5 (1994) and Peep Show, 'Burgling', episode 1, series 5 (2008). 

On the Love of Maids

In a classic episode of Seinfeld, George is fired for engaging in sexual intercourse with a cleaning woman on the desk in his office (Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?). 

Six seasons later, Jerry hires an attractive young woman, Cindy, to tidy up around his apartment and he also ends up sleeping with her (or diddling the maid, as Elaine so memorably describes it).  

Freud would certainly sympathise with both men. For whilst they are in positions of power, they are themselves helplessly caught up in a common psycho-sexual fantasy long established within the pornographic imagination. 

Freud not only commented on this fascination amongst men for the peasant girl scrubbing floors on her hands and knees or doing the laundry, but he shared it himself - so much so that Deleuze amusingly suggests that those looking to develop an interesting research thesis shouldn't bother with complex considerations of psychoanalytic epistemology but simply start here.

Of course, Freud being Freud, he ultimately decides after a crucial moment of hesitation to resolve the question of maids and their erotic charm by considering it in relation to what was to become the central dogma of psychoanalysis: Oedipus. This is unfortunate and mistaken; for despite what his followers may insist, men who love maids do not secretly desire their own mothers. What excites, rather, is the opportunity to exercise social and sexual authority over a woman in a somewhat illicit manner and - as in George Costanza's case - in an inappropriate setting.

What disconcerts meanwhile is knowing that they are screwing around with a figure who is not only indispensable to their desire, but representative of a class which threatens to one day rise up and refuse their subordination; a class who will one day tell them to do their own cleaning.

       

Note: See Seinfeld season 3 episode 12 entitled 'The Red Dot' and season 9 episode 19 entitled 'The Maid'.