Plastic Ants (There Might Come a Day When They're Treading On You)

Lasius plasticus

 

I. 

 

The world isn't actually going to turn Day-Glo as Poly Styrene predicted [1], but it - and the life that it supports - is going to become progressively plastic at every level, including the molecular, as chemical additives known as phthalates - used to increase the flexibility, transparency, and durability of plastic - are released into the environment at ever greater levels.  

It's not just ourselves we are transforming with these things, even insects, for example are undergoing an artificial metamorphosis, as a study of ants by Alain Lenoir from a few years ago made clear ...

 

II. 

 

Investigating the biochemical process by which the common black ant can differentiate between friends and foes, Dr. Lenoir discovered to his suprise the presence of phthalates alongside hydrocarbons in the creature's protective cuticle. And this was true not just in a few specimens, but all of them.     

 

Other researchers had previously reported such findings, but Lenoir had been sceptical and suspected that the presence of phthalates was due to contamination within the lab. However, he could now see for himself the startling fact that all of the ants that he and his team studied were contaminated with phthalates, no matter where they originated [2]. 

 

Now, whilst there are serious concerns related to the presence of phthalates within living organisms - including us - it's probably too late to worry too much now and, who knows, maybe they'll have some positive evolutionary effect in the long term ... 

 

Maybe, for example, the ants will become a cyborg species with an artificially enhanced exoskeleton - super-ants, if you will, who might end up one day treading on us just as Adam forewarned ... [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the classic punk single by X-Ray Spex, 'The Day the World Turned Day-Glo', from the album Germ Free Adolescents (EMI, 1978). Click here to watch the band - fronted by Poly Styrene who wrote the track - perform it on Top of the Pops.

 

[2] To see how widespread the problem of phthalates in ants was, Lenoir and his team tested six-legged subjects from several countries around the world, including Spain, Greece, Morocco, and Egypt. In every case, the ants - which were not believed to have had any direct contact with plastic - tested positive (although in some cases only trace amounts were found). They also tested crickets and bees, just for comparison, and the result was the same.   

 

[3] I'm referring here to the single 'Ant Music', by Adam and the Ants, released from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS, 1980), which contains the wonderful verse: 'Don't tread on an ant, he's done nothing to you / There might come a day when he's treading on you / Don't tread on an ant, you'll end up black and blue / You cut off his head, legs come looking for you'. Click here to watch the official video on YouTube. 

 

For a follow up post to this one - on the prospect of a posthuman world dominated by ants - click here.  

Existence is Elusive 2: Further Reflections on The Artificial Silk Girl

Penguin Books (2019)

When I put on my make-up, the pretty little mask's not me

'Cause that's the way a girl should be in a consumer society.

I. Artificial Silk

Artificial silk - which is really just a nice-sounding name for rayon (or viscose, as it is more commonly known in Europe) - was first developed from cellulose fibre at the end of the 19th century.

When, in the '30s, America gave the world nylon, soon even real silk stockings were outmoded and heavy cotton or woollen dresses replaced by garments made of more affordable and easier to clean synthetic materials. These mass produced clothes, sold in the new department stores that sprang up in big cities around the world, including Berlin, enabled even working-class girls like Doris, the protagonist and narrator of Das Kunstseidene Mädchen, to look good and follow fashion.  

In other words, artificial silk was a wonder product that furthered female emancipation and the creation of a consumer society.*

II. The Artificial Silk Girl

(i) A Girl Called Doris ...

I like Irmgard Keun's second novel - a follow up to Gilgi (1931) - for many reasons, not least of all because it contains elements central to my own concerns as a writer; such as fashion and sexual politics. But I'm also very fond of its 18-year-old narrator, Doris, with her rosy complexion, permed hair, love of tinned sardines, and seven rusty safety pins attached to her underwear providing a form of punk chastity.

Doris is a promiscuous tragi-comic heroine in the same mould as Lorelei, the young flapper who narrates Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and the divinely decadent figure of Fräulein Sally Bowles, who first appeared in a short novel by Christopher Isherwood in 1937.

However, I also think we can see something of Doris in the character of Macabéa, in Clarice Lispector's brilliant novel, A Hora de Estrela (1977), which, like The Artificial Silk Girl, is a tale of crushed innocence and anonymous misery (although, to be fair, it's also a far more philosophically-informed work).

(ii) Venus im Peltz ...

Whilst described as an artificial silk girl,** Doris is actually a young woman who values the authenticity of natural materials; ermine, for example, is a sacred word in her vocabulary - one that gives her goosebumps just to think of it. At some point she steals a fur coat and it becomes the great love of her life:

"Such sweet, soft fur. So fine and gray and shy, I felt like kissing it, that's how much I loved it. It spoke comfort to me, a guardian angel, protection from heaven. It was genuine squirrel." [40]

If, initially, she intended merely to borrow the coat (albeit without permission of the owner), she knew deep down that she'd never return it: "The fur coat was attached to my skin like a magnet and they loved each other, and you don't give up what you love, once you have it." [40-41] Later, wandering the streets at five in the morning, disappointed and disgusted by an old flame, Doris thinks to herself:

"I look so elegant in that fur. It's like an unusual man who makes me beautiful through his love for me. I'm sure it used to belong to a fat lady with a lot of money - unfairly. It smells from cheques and Deutsche bank. But my skin is stronger. It smells of me now [...] The coat wants me and I want it. We have each other." [42] 

This, one might suggest, goes beyond a fur fetish towards a genuine example of objectum sexuality. Amusingly, she even gives her beloved coat a Christmas present; "a waft of lavender perfume" [91], and, at the end of the book, when she is considering returning the coat to its rightful owner, she composes a letter in which she writes:

"'Dear Madam:

Once I stole your fur coat. Naturally, you will be mad at me. Did you love it a lot? I'll have you know, I love it a lot. There were times where it lifted me up and made me a high-society woman and [...] the beginning of a star. and then there were times when I loved it just because it's soft and feels like a human being all over my skin. And it's gentle and kind. [...] And I can tell you that a thousand fur coats could rain down on me [...] but I would never love another coat the same way I loved this one." [129]

 

Those familiar with the novel will recall that it was her initial concern that the police might be after her on account of the stolen coat that made Doris decide to flee her hometown and catch an overnight train to Berlin, determined to become a movie star:

"And then everything I do will be right - I'll never have to be careful about what I do or say [...] I can just be drunk - nothing can happen to me anymore, no loss, no disdain, because I'm a star." [30]

(iii) Du bist verrückt mein Kind, du musst nach Berlin

At first, Doris loves the excitement of the Big City; the people, the U-Bahn, the enormous neon signs, etc. Not that she's happy exactly - or wants to be happy. She wants, rather, to become rich and famous and happy people are content with what they have and who they are and don't care about these things. "Only if you're unhappy do you get ahead." [54]  

This pessimistic philosophy is perhaps best expressed in the following paragraph, which could easily have been lifted from An Illicit Lover's Discourse: 

"If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch." [56]

Sadly, things - as they have a habit of doing - take a turn for the worse. And soon Doris's misery is compounded by poverty and hunger and she is obliged to increasingly trade on her looks, shall we say, accepting the precarious patronage of sugar daddies. But still she retains her dreams of stardom and devotion to the city: "My life is Berlin and I'm Berlin." [60]

Her descriptions of the city to Herr Brenner - an old blind man who likes to hold her feet with reverence and stroke her silky legs and to whom she's extraordinarily kind - are really very beautiful and astonishingly observant. She wants him to experience and to love her Berlin as she knows and loves it.

He tells her: "'The city isn't good and the city isn't happy and the city is sick, but you are good'" [79] and I think that's probably true.

(iv)  Wir sind alle Prostituierte / Jeder hat seinen Preis

Actually, this remark made by Herr Brenner reminds me of a story that Norm MacDonald tells Jerry Seinfeld in an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, about the naivety of Det. Crocker in an early episode of Kojak (the CBS series from the 1970s starring Telly Savalas).   

Investigating the murder of several prostitutes, Crocker interviews the mother of one of the dead girls and reports back to Kojak that, actually, she wasn't on the game - she was a good, good girl. Kojak, however, who's seen and heard it all, is cynically dismissive: "She was a good girl. Mama's apple pie. The Fourth of July - she was a hooker!" 

And, despite her protestations otherwise, that's really what Doris was - a good-time girl with a talent for storytelling and cooking her own goose. She remains defiantly proud of the fact that - despite everything - she's not a normal girl living a regular life: "Compared to that, a whore's life is more interesting." [120]

Ultimately, those men, including the ultra-annoying Ernst, who would oblige her to seek respectable paid employment and strip her of her beloved fur coat - which has such soft hair and been through so much with her - can go fuck themselves.

And if she turns into a whore like the girl Hulla, wearing "cheap, tight-fitting wool jumpers that emphasize her body shape in a vulgar way" [80], well, as the song says, we are all prostitutes ... And perhaps glamorous stardom - just like bourgeois decency - isn't all it's cracked up to be (or even all that different).

Notes

* Unfortunately, the history of artificial silk production is also a disturbing tale of toxic materials, environmental abuses, and economics trumping health and safety concerns; many workers involved in the industry suffered serious illness as a result of contact with this innovative and highly lucrative product. See: Paul David Blanc: Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon, (Yale University Press, 2016).

** As a matter of fact, Doris is not a fan of artificial silk and advises against wearing it on dates with men as it wrinkles too quickly: "'Only pure silk, I say ...'" [72]

Read: Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl, trans. Kathie von Ankum (Penguin Books, 2019). 

Play: X-Ray Spex, 'Art-I-Ficial', from the album Germfree Adolescents (EMI, 1978). The Pop Group, 'We Are All Prostitutes', (Rough Trade, 1979). 

Watch: Jerry Seinfeld and Norm Macdonald, 'A Rusty Car in the Rain', Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Season 9, Episode 2 (2017): click here for the Kojak scene. 

Readers interested in the first part of this post in which I discuss the life of Irmgard Keun, should click here.

Let Them Eat Plastic

People Can Look So Plastic These Days

eclectech.co.uk

Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es - Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1826)

Well, that's it then: the world has officially turned dayglo (you know, you know) and all that punk prophet Poly Styrene predicted has come to pass; microplastics have now been found in human faeces for the first time, suggesting that the tiny particles are widespread in the food chain.

Scientists examined shit samples from participants in Europe, Japan, and Russia and all contained various types of plastic, with polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate being the most commonly identified.

On average, 20 particles of microplastic were found in each 10g of excreta and based on the findings from what was admittedly a small-scale study, the researchers estimate that more than half of the world's population might have microplastics in their bodies.

The study confirms what many have long suspected and feared; that it's not just fish, birds, and flying insects that are ingesting plastic - we are too. But then it's hard not to when the stuff is in pretty much everything, including tap water and soft drinks.

Fuck knows what it means for human health or, in the longer term, human evolution, but it's interesting to note that the smallest particles are capable of entering the bloodstream and lymphatic system and may even reach the liver (i.e., they're not just in the gut where they may possibly affect the digestive system's immune response and aid the transmission of toxins and pathogens).   

The UK government, which recently launched a study looking into the matter, promises to take action. And earlier this year, the European parliament voted for a ban on microplastics in cosmetics. But plastic is so pervasive in modern life - a million plastic bottles are sold around the world every minute - that removing it from the food chain is virtually impossible.

We all know that banning plastic straws and cotton buds isn't going to be enough - but do we really care? I don't think so. I think if you wrench your nylon curtains back as far as they will go, you'll see people happily driving their polypropylene cars on wheels of sponge, before pulling into their local burger bar to have a rubber bun.

In other words, they like the world as it is and are willing to embrace their fate as homo plasticus ...


Notes

Philipp Schwabl et al, 'Assessment of microplastic concentrations in human stool' (preliminary results of a prospective study), presented at UEG 2018, Vienna, (24 October, 2018). 

X-Ray Spex, 'The Day the World Turned Dayglo', single from the album Germfree Adolescents, (EMI, 1978): click here.

Watching the World Turn Day-Glo: Notes on Plastic Eating Bacteria

Image: Shutterstock / Wikicommons / Big Think

In the above picture we can observe Ideonella sakainesis happily feasting on a plastic bottle;

 breaking down polyethylene terephthalate into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol - 

two delicious and yet environmentally benign substances.

Another good news story from the world of science and serendipity ...

After the discovery in 2016 of a bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic at a Japanese waste dump, researchers have now (accidentally) created a mutant enzyme that accelerates the break down of polymeric materials by around 20%.  

The international team were initially attempting to determine the exact structure of the enzyme produced by the bug, which, like all enzymes, is basically a large protein molecule composed of a long chain of amino acids. For this they used an intense beam of X-rays that is 10 billion times brighter than the sun and capable of illuminating individual atoms that might otherwise withdraw into darkness.

It looked as if the structure of the enzyme was very similar to one evolved by many bacteria to digest cutin - a waxy, water-repellent substance used by plants for protection. By slightly tweaking it, however, they discovered that they had inadvertently made the enzyme even more efficient at breaking down PET (the plastic most commonly used to make soft drink bottles). 

The new and improved enzyme takes only a few days to start the process of disintegrating the plastic; if left to degrade in the oceans, in comparison, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years. What's more, researchers are hopeful that this process might be significantly speeded up still further and thus play an important part in tackling the problem of what to do with the one million plastic bottles that are sold each minute around the globe.

One way they might possibly optimise the performance of the mutant enzyme is to transplant it into extremophile bacteria that enjoy living at temperatures over 70c. At such heat, PET changes from a hard to a viscous state, making it liable to degrade between 10 and 100 times faster.

It has to be said, this new research into enzyme technology is, to me at least, incredibly exciting and must hold out promise for the future. For not only are enzymes non-toxic and biodegradable, but they can be produced in large quantities by micro-organisms.

Having said that, it still remains crucial to reduce the amount of shit we produce and throw away in the first place. But this is surely a positive development - though not as astonishing as the fact that plastic-eating bugs evolved in the first place ... 

Note: those interested in reading the published research for themselves should see Harry P. Austin et al, 'Characterization and engineering of a plastic-degrading aromatic polyesterase', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018): click here.  

Musical bonus: to listen to the X-Ray Spex track from 1978 that inspired the title to this post (and to see the band fronted by the inimitable Poly Styrene performing on Top of the Pops), click here.

The Case of Thomas Townsend (Germ Free Adolescent)

Your deodorant smells nice ...

An inquest into the recent death of 16-year-old Thomas Townsend found that he died from the effects of butane inhalation, following excessive use of spray-on deodorant.

The Kent teenager, concerned about body odour but unwilling to shower, used multiple cans of deodorant in order to stay fresh smelling, if not actually clean. Investigators at the scene of his death found over forty aerosols in his room, many of them empty.

The inquest heard that Thomas, a resident of a children’s care-home in Kent, was troubled and had a history of self-harm, but had expressed no desire to take his own life. Nor had he shown any interest in substance abuse (pathologists found no drink or drugs in his system). He simply didn’t want to stink as nature intended, nor be reliant upon such a primitive and bothersome solution as soap and water. And so he turned to science to counteract the bacterial breakdown of perspiration.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, the coroner declared that Thomas had simply succumbed to the effects of the gas. But surely we might say a bit more than this. For, if nothing else, his case illustrates perfectly the modern obsession with hygiene as a form of commercial and cosmetic artifice which, when taken to an extreme, becomes fatal; something which punk rocker Poly Styrene was singing about almost forty years ago and which Jean Baudrillard also often commented on with characteristic brilliance.

In the words of the X-Ray Spex front woman, Thomas aspired to be a germ free adolescent - one who, sadly, allowed his teenage anxieties and antiseptic fantasies to get the better of him to the point that he literally sprayed himself out of existence, leaving behind nothing but a nice smelling corpse.


Note: Those readers who wish to hear Germ Free Adolescents, by X-Ray Spex, should click here, for a TOTP recording from 1978 conveniently uploaded to YouTube.