Send in the Clowns

I.

In an early school report, one of my teachers noted: "Stephen's work suffers due to his insistence on playing the clown. He has to understand that he is in school to learn and not merely to amuse his classmates."

Despite this po-faced attempt to nip my talent for comedy in the bud, this insistence on playing the clown - influenced in part by Cesar Romero's performance as the Joker in Batman - continued all the way into adolescence, when that fabulous grotesque, Johnny Rotten, the clown prince of punk, became a great inspiration.     

II.

As a matter of fact, I never regarded myself as a clown: certainly not the type who relied on slapstick or other forms of physical comedy; and certainly not the type who was solely interested in entertaining others.

Even at six-years-old, I was more interested in challenging authority and provoking laughter through the use of language - including the language of fashion - than by throwing buckets of water (not that there's anything wrong with throwing buckets of water, as Tiswas demonstrated).

Admiring as I did fun lovin' criminals like the Joker and, later, anarchic pranksters like the Sex Pistols, meant there was always a bit more of a subversive edge to my fooling around, refusal to care, and mockery (of self and others). I may have worn Grimaldi's whiteface makeup, but that's just about where any point of comparison ends.    

III.

If not a clown, then what was I really? Some might say a fool and I've nothing against those who rush in where angels fear to tread.

But I'd probably be happier with the term trickster, as there's something more ambiguous about such a shape-shifting figure and the manner in which they often push things beyond a joke; are they being mischievous, malicious, or both? Either way, they seem to act with the full intelligence of evil.

Primarily, tricksters violate principles of social and natural order. That is to say, tricksters playfully deconstruct reality and dissolve binary distinctions. And that's why Jordan Peterson is absolutely right to describe Derrida as a philosophical trickster - though his ignorant dismissal of Derrida's work (without even attempting to engage with it) is as shameful as that of those four Cambridge dons who, in 1992, opposed the awarding of an honorary degree to M. Derrida on the grounds that his thinking failed to meet accepted standards of philosophical clarity and rigour.

Ironically, Peterson has himself just had an offer of a visiting fellowship rescinded by Cambridge University following a humourless and politically correct backlash from members of both faculty and the student body, who seem to regard him in much the same way he regards Derrida - that is to say, as a dangerous charlatan.

Ultimately, culture requires its clowns and tricksters - almost as comic saviours. Indeed, that's something I would have thought Peterson, as a great reader of Jung, would readily agree with. Thus his loathing of Derrida is, in some ways, surprising as well as disappointing.

Ooh La La La: Katherine Waugh's Fugitive Philosophy

Paul Klee: Angelus Novus (1920) 

I. Kate Loves Marlon

Katherine Waugh describes the impersonal form of writing that she loves best as fugitive in character and I don't have any problem with that, though how it differs from what Deleuze and Guattari term minor literature and/or nomadic philosophy is not quite clear; they too speak of outlaws and those who have the courage to flee.

Indeed, Waugh even privileges the same authors as Deleuze and Guattari - Nietzsche, Kafka, Artaud ... all the usual suspects. She may have been a subjectless teenage reader, but there's nothing unique about her taste in writers. Or movie stars ...

If saying you like Marlon Brando isn't exactly going out on a limb, describing Sidney Lumet's film Fugitive Kind (1960) as extraordinary - in a positive sense - is admittedly a bold move. Waugh is clearly smitten with the character played by Brando - Valentine Xavier - dressed in his snakeskin jacket. She speaks of his "singular beauty and sexual allure", before quickly adding that what really appeals is the fact that Valentine is "seeking to escape the oppressive subjectification he feels trapped within".

How do we know that this guitar-playing drifter is "seeking to escape the oppressive subjectification he feels trapped within"? Because he tells the older woman he's taken a shine to (played by Anna Magnani) the tragic tale of an apodal bluebird that is destined to forever stay on the wing. Should the poor creature ever attempt to land, it will immediately perish.

That's how Valentine wishes to be understood; as a man who doesn't belong anywhere and must always keep moving. And I guess that's how Waugh also wants to be understood; footloose and footless. Part bluebird - and part angel of history, as Waugh flits from Brando to Benjamin and the latter's obsessive love of a painting by Paul Klee ...     


II. Kate Loves Walter

German philosopher and cultural critic, Walter Benjamin, was, as Waugh reminds us, literally a fugitive. Or, perhaps more accurately speaking, as a Jew in German-occupied Europe, Benjamin was a political refugee. Either way, he died on the run from the Nazis.

Waugh wonders what Benjamin might think of contemporary culture, were he to view it through the eyes of his Angel. Would what he saw make him panic, or fall into picnoleptic hysteria? I don't know. And, to be honest, I had to google the last term too.

Waugh writes of  eyes that cannot see the past, but remain "hypnotized and bedazzled by the virtual luminosities of a history-less present, and possibly, in such a state, not seeing the present (however one defines it) either". And it's a nice idea, nicely expressed, even though it's not her idea; it belongs rather to that philosopher of speed, Paul Virilio.

Not that this really matters ... It's only that later in the essay, Waugh expresses such a love of original writing that ... But I digress (as Waugh herself digresses, though she terms it a divagation). Let's get back to Benjamin ...

What is it that Waugh loves about him? Did he too wear a snakeskin jacket and possess the singular beauty and sexual allure of Marlon Brando as Valentine Xavier? I think it would be pushing it a bit to describe him in such terms. However, he did seek to escape the oppressive subjectification he felt trapped within. Waugh tells us that Benjamin was (amongst other things):

Self-effacing ☑
A lover of pseudonyms ☑

Able to stage his own disappearance in the text ☑
Buried in an anonymous grave ☑

In other words, he ticks all the right boxes for Waugh, who loves a writer who gives nothing away about himself and is able to become-imperceptible, which is the ultimate goal of all becomings. And o' how she longs for such writers to come from out of the future as it were, now that Kafka, Joyce, and all the B-boys, are long dead and buried beneath the weight of (non-fugitive) scholarship and critique.

III. Closing Remarks

Essentially, what Waugh is calling for is a new theoretically-informed criticism which is extreme, absurd, bewildering and, above all, thrilling. She approvingly quotes the music critic Simon Reynolds: "Far from being born of a cold-blooded drive to dissect and demystify, the attraction of critical theory (especially the French kind) was that it set your brain on fire."

I don't agree with that. Au contraire, I think that French critical theory builds upon the Nietzschean teaching that only those who know how to put ideas on ice have earned the right to enter into the heat of debate. Thus, I don't think Waugh would much care for the posts here on Torpedo the Ark where enthusiasm (and what she terms passion) is very much curbed.

Indeed, I suspect she'd think me a narcissistic stylist who trades in bland inanities dressed up as "profundities in 'clever' sentences". And she is quick to remind her readers - with all the snobbery of those who (often secretly) defend genre distinctions and high culture - of Sylvère Lotringer's remark: theory is not synonymous with blogging.

That might be true, but blogging is not synonymous with "the horrors of much online, spontaneous, 'opinionizing' and 'self-expression'" either. Indeed, I would suggest that one can (sometimes) find conceptual intelligence in all kinds of writing, including blogging - and she can put that in her snow globe and shake it!   

See: Katherine Waugh, 'The Fugitive Kind', essay in Fugitive Papers, Issue 2, (Summer 2012), pp. 12-15. 

Note: Katherine Waugh is a curator, writer, and filmmaker based in Ireland.  

Greta Thunberg: Child Saviour or Witch?

We cannot help regarding the phenomenon of Greta with wonder, fear, 
amazement, and respect. For in her the spirit of modern childhood 
is profoundly, almost magically revealed.  

Following a recent post, someone who identifies as a practicing Christian and environmental activist writes quoting scripture in support of Greta Thunberg: And a little child shall lead them [Isaiah 11:6].    

I have to say, I'm always a little troubled by this idea of an infant saviour - even when it turns up in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. And with reference to the case of Miss Thunberg, it's a startling model of redemption she offers; one that denies people hope, deliberately spreads panic, and desires that the entire world suffers, as she herself has suffered, on a daily basis.

Addressing a UN climate conference last year, she virtually placed a curse on all their houses, as if she were less salvator mundi and more some kind of witch. Indeed, seeing how she's enchanted an entire generation and left so many world leaders - including the Pope - spellbound, describing Greta Thunberg as a witch seems entirely justified: she's like a Swedish Joan of Arc.
   

I'm not saying this to denigrate her, or dismiss her message. But I do think we need to exercise caution when dealing with charismatic individuals who claim to possess (or be possessed by) special gifts and who speak with absolute conviction, seeing the world as they do in stark black and white terms.

When Greta presents her arguments within the bounds of science, I don't have a problem. But when she offers us an interpretation of the facts that veers towards apocalyptic vision, then I have my concerns - for her and for all those who share her vision. Their love - for the planet, for humanity - becomes questionable and subtly diabolic, to borrow a phrase from Lawrence, exerting as it does a destructive force. 

Women like Greta - and her mother - who campaign to save the world and save the future, may have kind hearts and the very best of intentions. But, underneath, there's something malevolent; an unconscious desire for revenge on those they blame for the crisis that afflicts them at a personal level. You can almost see it in their eyes. Still, this malevolence is just as necessary as superficial goodness - maybe more so, especially when it comes to exposing the world's own corruption and stupidity. 
  

Like that other witch-child, of whom Hawthorne writes, Greta is a being 'whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves'. We say she's neurologically diverse, or has Asperger's, a condition that manifests itself in all kinds of ways; depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, selective mutism, etc.

And again, it gives Greta a peculiar look in her eyes that is also Pearl-like: 'a look so intelligent, yet so inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious' that one almost questions whether she's a human child. Who knows what this brave but tormented sixteen-year-old will be like as a fully grown woman. I wish her well and hope she discovers a little peace and happiness; hope, above all, that she doesn't martyr herself to her own cause.      

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter' (Final Version, 1923), Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Quotes taken from Hawthorne's 1850 novel can be found on pp. 93-94.  

Note: The lines underneath the image of Greta Thunberg are paraphrased from Lawrence (writing of Pearl) in the First Version (1918-19) of the above essay, SCAL, p. 252. 

For a sister post to this one on Greta as Pippi Greenstocking, click here. 

Pippi Greenstocking: Notes on the Case of Greta Thunberg

Illustration: @artbyneva on Instagram

I.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl from Sweden called Greta. Greta had pigtails and was an unconventional child with special gifts who cared so much about climate change that she stopped going to school. Often, she would attempt to shame adults into listening to her, especially if they were more concerned with putting profit before the planet.

Many found Greta inspirational; others mockingly called her Pippi Greenstocking. And a few expressed their concern that her neurodiversity made her vulnerable and prone to fanaticism and fantasy ...

II.

Paulina Neuding, for example, is interested in the role Greta's parents have played in her meteoric rise to international fame. Her father, Svante Thunberg, is an actor and her mother, Malena Ernman, a successful opera singer, so both dream of transforming the world into a stage and seek the limelight.

A book, published last year and entitled Scener från Hjärtat, tells the story of Greta and her family - including her younger sister, Beata - in sometimes harrowing detail. Narrated by Malena, the work was written, apparently, with the collaboration of her husband and daughters.

As Neuding notes, this story is framed in terms of a family and a planet in crisis - and, rather oddly, these crises are inextricably linked. The personal is political, as they used to say in the sixties.

Thus it is, for example, that Scenes from the Heart claims that the "oppression of women, minorities, and people with disabilities stem from the same overarching root problem as climate change: an unsustainable way of life. The family's private crisis and the global climate crisis [...] are simply symptoms of the same systemic disorder."

Little wonder, therefore, that Greta seems to take everything so personally; insisting people wake up to the coming eco-apocalypse and feel the fear, pain and panic that she experiences daily. Greta Thunberg protests not merely because she believes the planet is dying, but because she feels as if she were dying inside too.

Her mother's hope seems to be that once the planet has been saved and there is environmental justice for all, then Greta and Beata can also be happy and healthy, overcoming their depression, anxiety, eating and obsessive-compulsive disorders, selective mutism, etc.

Without wishing to say anything negative about Greta, question her phenomenal impact, or deny the existential threat posed by climate change, Neuding wonders whether it's advisable to groom an anguished sixteen-year-old into a global icon ...?

Adults - including politicians and journalists such as herself - have a responsibility to not be carried away by messianic hysteria: "It is time we stopped to ask if we are using her, failing her, and even sacrificing her, for what we perceive to be a greater good." 

See: Paulina Neuding, 'Self-Harm Versus the Greater Good: Greta Thunberg and Child Activism', Quillete (23 April 2019): click here. 

For a sister post to this one on Greta as child saviour or witch, click here. 

On Holism and Anti-Holism

Holism / studiocarreras.com

Despite what some commentators suggest, I wouldn't describe myself as a reductionist.

But, as might be imagined, my love of cracks, gaps, fragments, ruins, ruptures, breakdowns, and all those things that belong to what might be termed a gargoyle aesthetic, means that I have little time for those monomaniacs who subscribe to holistic thinking and insist on a smutty state of Oneness in which all parts are reconciled and find their completion. 

Thus, it's mistaken to read the multiplicity of posts on this blog and then attempt to understand them as a Whole: the will to a system, says Nietzsche, betrays a lack of integrity.

Ultimately, I'm sympathetic to Blanchot's suggestion that we learn to think about the relationship between literary fragments in terms of sheer difference; as things that are related to one another only in that each of them is unique and without, as Deleuze and Guattari note, "having recourse either to any sort of original totality (not even one that has been lost), or to a subsequent totality that may not yet have come about".

In a passage that captures perfectly the anti-holistic spirit of Torpedo the Ark as desiring-machine, the latter write:   

"We live today in the age of partial objects, bricks that have been shattered to bits, and leftovers. We no longer believe in the myth of the existence of fragments that, like pieces of an antique statue, are merely waiting for the last one to be turned up, so that they may all be glued back together to create a unity that is precisely the same as the original unity. We no longer believe in a primordial totality that once existed, or in a final totality that awaits us at some future date. We no longer believe in the dull grey outlines of a dreary, colourless dialectic of evolution, aimed at forming a harmonious whole out of heterogeneous bits by rounding off their rough edges. We believe only in totalities that are peripheral. And if we discover such a totality alongside various separate parts, it is a whole of these particular parts but does not totalize them; it is a unity of all of these particular parts but does not unify them; rather, it is added to them as a new part fabricated separately."

In addition to the artistic implications of this, a number of logical, ethical, and political consequences also follow; ones that, to me at least, appear far more attractive (and more radical) than those that follow on from holism which, unfortunately, is a concept invoked here, there, and everywhere within contemporary culture - even by people who should know better (i.e., people with the ability to be critically self-reflective).

We hear about holistic models of everything; healthcare, education, science, spirituality, etc. Even politicians talk about the need for joined up government. Again, to quote Nietzsche: I mistrust all systematisers - but today it's become impossible to ignore them.

These advocates of holistic thinking speak in fuzzy terms about inclusion, integration, and harmony. But such idealism builds churches and concentration camps; it erases real difference, fears otherness, and ultimately wants to subordinate the individual to a superior Whole (the Party, the State, Humanity). 

I find the thought of One Love, One World, One People, nauseating. If this makes me a reductionist, or a nihilist, then so be it ...

See: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 42. 

Evolution Needs Death More Than It Loves Life: Reflections on Extinction Rebellion

Poster by Extinction Rebellion Art Group

rebellion.earth/act-now/resources/art-group/

What does it mean to rebel against extinction?

Ironically, it means one is opposed to the driving force of evolution; which is to say, one is anti-life understood in the immoral terms of difference and becoming.

For whether we like it or not, mass extinctions periodically destroy up to 95% of life forms in giant orgies of death and scientists think that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived have now - like the Monty Python parrot - passed on, ceased to be, joined the choir invisible. It's simply pointless protesting the fact that evolution needs death more than it loves life.          

We used to think the sun revolved around the earth. Then we discovered it wasn't so. Now there are young people who sincerely believe the earth revolves around them. The overly-privileged and self-righteous children of generation snowflake who talk about saving the planet are, ultimately, only concerned about protecting their own future.

But alas, everything isn't all about them - anymore than it's all about the polar bears or coral reef - and their will to conserve and self-preserve has become a form of mania expressed as moral and political alarmism.

Whisper it quietly, but every species is ultimately endangered and will one day topple into the abyss of non-existence. And if, as certainly seems to be the case, humanity is giving profligate Nature a helping hand by rapidly speeding up the extinction rate and destroying the environment, it might be remembered that we too are part of the biosphere and our actions just as natural as those of any other species.

In other words, there's no need to feel guilty or sinful; the so-called sixth extinction event lacks moral significance, even if we're the causal agents. Besides, as biologist R. Alexander Pyron has pointed out:

"Unless we somehow destroy every living cell on Earth, the sixth extinction will be followed by a recovery, and later a seventh extinction, and so on. [...] Within a few million years of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, the post-apocalyptic void had been filled by an explosion of diversity - modern mammals, birds and amphibians of all shapes and sizes. This is how evolution proceeds: through extinction."

Professor Pyron also reminds us that whatever effort we make to stabilise and maintain present conditions, sea-levels and temperatures will continue to rise and fall and the climate as we know it today will eventually be "overrun by the inexorable forces of space and geology".

Finally, it should be noted that even the most rebellious of extinction rebels doesn't object to the planned eradication of deadly diseases such as HIV, Ebola, and malaria, even though these are "key components of microbial biodiversity, as unique as pandas, elephants and orangutans". As indicated earlier, the campaign to save the Earth is really a campaign to save the Earth for us: Extinction Rebellion is just another exercise in anthropocentric conceit and hypocrisy.   

Thus, whilst it's true that climate change may have certain dramatic effects - such as coastal flooding and widespread famines - and whilst it makes sense to take action to mitigate these things, I refuse to be lectured by adolescent eco-warriors, bandwagon jumping celebrities, or grey-bearded old hippies with an apocalyptic worldview.

In fact, push comes to shove, I remain more sympathetic to the arguments put forward by members of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, founded by Les U. Knight in 1991. For like Rupert Birkin, I regard people as an obstruction and a hindrance to the future unfolding of evolution and believe that only our self-extinction will allow life to continue perfect and marvellous in all its inhuman splendour.


See: R. Alexander Pyron, 'We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.' The Washington Post (22 Nov 2017): click here.

And click here for my post on Voluntary Human Extinction (published 12 October 2013). 

Three Cases of Brain Theft

I. The Case of Mr. Spock

As fans of Star Trek will know, 'Spock's Brain' was the opening episode of the third and final season of the original TV series.

Written by Gene L. Coon and directed by Marc Daniels, the episode was first broadcast on 20 September, 1968, and tells the amusing story of how an alien beauty beams aboard the Enterprise in order to surgically remove and steal Spock's brain. Capt. Kirk and his crew have just 24 hours to locate said organ and pop it back into Spock's empty skull before his brainless body dies.

Personally, I quite like the episode for its B-movie charm, although it's widely regarded as the worst of the entire series; even Leonard Nimoy admitted to feeling embarrassed during the shooting of the episode. Claims, however, that it strains credibility seem ridiculous to me. For even at its most plausible, Star Trek is hardly gritty social realism and I'm pretty sure that the Enterprise doesn't even have a kitchen sink.

Long story short, Dr. McCoy - with the assistance of Spock himself - successfully returns the brain to its rightful location and all's well that ends well. 

II. The Case of Adolf Hitler

Unlike Mr. Spock, Adolf Hitler is not a fictional character. However, it's important to stress that the 1968 film They Saved Hitler's Brain, directed by David Bradley, is not a documentary detailing real events.*

Adapted (and extended) for TV from a 1963 feature film entitled Madmen of Mandoras, it tells the tale of how Nazi officials removed Hitler's still-living head at the end of the Second World War and transported it to a (fictional) South American hideaway, in the hope that they might one day be able to bring the Führer back to full consciousness and thence resurrect the Third Reich.      

From 1945, the movie leaps forward into the 1960s and the surviving Nazis, having decided the time is right, kidnap a leading scientist in the field of neurosurgery in order to help fulfil their evil scheme. Unfortunately, however, Western intelligence agencies are aware of what's going on and determined to foil the plan. I'll not reveal the ending, just in case any readers are interested in watching the film for themselves: click here. 

Amusingly, They Saved Hitler's Brain is referenced in several episodes of The Simpsons (and at least one episode of Futurama), suggesting Matt Groening either has something of a fan's penchant for the film, or an obsession with Hitler's brain.

And note also - according to the Dead Kennedys - if you want to make a Tricky Dickie Screwdriver, you'll need to mix "one part Jack Daniels, two parts purple Kool-Aid, and a jigger of formaldehyde from the jar with Hitler's brain in it".** 

III. The Case of Albert Einstein

Finally, we come to the case of Albert Einstein; a case involving a real man, a real brain, and a real theft committed just hours after his death in April 1955.

Even whilst he was still alive, people were fascinated with Einstein's brain. Such an organ, belonging to one of the greatest of all scientific geniuses, just had to have special properties, or be significantly larger in size than the standard model. No surprise, therefore, that before his body had even chance to cool, his cranium was being removed and brain dissected - though what is surprising is that this was done without his prior consent or the permission of his family.***

Einstein's autopsy was conducted by the pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey. Having removed and weighed the brain, Harvey then popped it in a jar of formalin and smuggled it to a lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where he photographed it from numerous angles, before then cutting it into around 240 slices, encasing these segments in a plastic-like material called collodion.

Harvey kept some of these for himself; others, he distributed amongst fellow pathologists, all of whom were eager to have a piece of Einstein's brain. One lucky fellow, Einstein's ophthalmologist, received the great man's eyes that Harvey had also taken time to remove and carefully preserve.   

In 1978, what remained of Einstein's brain in Harvey's possession was rediscovered by a journalist interested in the story (preserved in alcohol in two large jars and hidden in a box). Eventually, in 2010, Harvey's heirs transferred all of his holdings - including the remains of Einstein's brain and fourteen never-seen-before photographs of the organ prior to dissection - to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, in Silver Spring, Maryland.    

Notes

* Hitler committed suicide along with his wife, Eva, on April 30, 1945, and their bodies were burned according to his instructions. The Red Army, who captured Berlin just a few days later, discovered the charred remains and shipped them back to Russia, where a piece of jaw bone and a fragment of skull were secretly kept in the Soviet State Archives.

** I'm referring to (and quoting from) the Dead Kennedys track 'We've Got a Bigger Problem Now', from the EP In God We Trust, Inc. (Alternative Tentacles, 1981): click here to play. 

*** Einstein's eldest son endorsed the removal of his father's brain, but only after the event and only on the condition that it should be used for serious research to be published in respected scientific journals.


For a related post to this one on brains in jars, click here.

Reflections on Brains in Jars

Dr. Hfuhruhurr meets Miss Uumellmahaye in

The Man with Two Brains (dir. Carl Reiner, 1983)

I.

Readers with knowledge of analytic philosophy will know of the brain in a vat idea that is deployed as an updated version of Descartes's concept of the evil demon in thought experiments concerning mind and meaning, or the relationship between consciousness and reality.

Typically, a brain in a vat scenario is used to support an argument for philosophical skepticism and solipsism. In brief, this argument goes as follows: since a brain in a vat transmits and receives exactly the same impulses as a brain in a skull - and since these impulses are its only way of interacting with the world - it's impossible for that brain ever to know for sure its own location and this has serious implications for the truth or falsity of a subject's beliefs.

In other words, because it's impossible to completely rule out that one is not simply a disembodied brain in a vat, there cannot be firm grounds for believing the things that one believes to be true (or real) with any certainty. As might be imagined, there are objections raised from within philosophy and biology that suggest this thought experiment is fundamentally absurd, but, unfortunately, I don't have time to go into these here.


II.

Readers without knowledge of analytic philosophy - but who know their sci-fi literature and films - will be more familiar with a scenario in which a mad scientist or advanced alien being removes a person's brain and suspends it in a jar containing some kind of life-sustaining fluid that is connected up with electrodes to a machine that simulates reality for the disembodied brain, thus allowing it to continue to have thoughts and feelings without these being related to objects or events in the actual world.

Think, for example, of Anne Uumellmahaye in The Man with Two Brains (1983), starring Steve Martin as pioneering neurosurgeon Dr. Hfuhruhurr, famous for his method of cranial screw-top surgery. Whilst at a conference in Vienna, Hfuhruhurr encounters Dr. Necessiter (played by David Warner), who has invented a radical new technique enabling him to (briefly) preserve living brains in jars (the plan being to eventually transplant them into new bodies, beginning with that of a gorilla). 

Of course, this is just a movie. But, apparently, it is medically possible to keep an isolated brain alive in vitro before one places it into a new body, or, as in the case of Mr. Spock, returns it to its rightful owner. This requires a method of perfusion, or the use of an oxygenated solution of various salts (i.e. a blood substitute).

Any reader thinking of playing Dr. Necessiter, however, should note that they would probably have greater success attaching a whole head to the body of another organism, rather than simply attempting to pop a brain into an empty skull. It might also be noted that so far most of the experimental research in this field has been carried out using guinea pigs and not human test subjects; certainly no such procedures using people have been reported in a peer reviewed scientific journal that I'm aware of.

Click here to watch the scene in The Man with Two Brains in which Steve Martin as Dr. Hfuhruhurr meets Anne Uumellmahaye (voiced by Sissy Spacek, although she was uncredited in the movie). 

For a follow up post to this one on the theft of famous brains, click here.  

Easter with the Anti-Christ: (2019 Version)

Eric Idle and Graham Chapman in The Life of Brian (1979)

I.

Although Voltaire advised that we crush the Church and its vile superstitions - and whilst Nietzsche became increasingly hostile towards der Gekreuzigte, pitching his own Dionysian philosophy in direct opposition to Christianity conceived as "the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity [...] the one immortal blemish of mankind" - I'm increasingly coming round to the view that the best thing to do is simply laugh at Jesus hanging on his Cross, just as the Monty Python cast laughed in The Life of Brian and as Larry David often laughs in Curb Your Enthusiasm ...

II. 

One of the most controversial scenes in The Life of Brian (1979) is the ending in which Brian Cohen - who has been mistaken for the Messiah throughout his life - is crucified. Christian critics and protesters said it was mocking the Passion of Christ, which, of course, it is, no matter what the makers or defenders of the film may like to pretend.

But then that's precisely why it's so amusing and subversive of all the unnecessary suffering and pain that Christianity fetishises and foists upon us. I agree with director Terry Jones, when he argues that any creed that transforms a form of torture and execution into an iconic symbol before which to kneel, is a perversely corrupt form of religion.   

In just eight words, the Pythons perform a magnificent revaluation: Always look on the bright side of life. Such stoicism and, more importantly, gay insouciance, is profoundly anti-Christian and lyricist Eric Idle is to be congratulated. If only Jesus had of cared less about sin and dared to give his followers a grin ...


III.

In a season five episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry's father-in-law has purchased a nail on the internet and is wearing it proudly around his neck. The nail, he says, was used in The Passion of the Christ (2004) - Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic piece of Christian torture porn.

Clearly, not the kind of film likely to appeal to Larry (or any sane individual), he can't resist trying to provoke Cheryl's idiot father:

"'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'
'Yeah, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'
'Really?'
'Yeah.'

'I can see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter. Jane. I'll worship a Jane.' 

'No.'
'But, you know, to worship a guy, it's like a little, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'
'It's the Son of God! What's the matter with you?'
'I'm just saying. A girl ... I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane. I could have a relationship with a Jane.'
'He didn't have a daughter!'
'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say. Good-looking woman, zatfig, you know? Good sense of humour.'   

'No! No! No!'

'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane.'"

This scene isn't perhaps as outrageous or as provocative as the Python scene, but it's beautifully blasphemous in its own way. It's worth noting also that, later in the episode, Larry takes the nail and uses it to hang a mezuzah to the door before his own father's arrival.

And on that note ... Happy Easter to all torpedophiles. 

Notes

In a letter to the mathematician and philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762), Voltaire famously wrote: Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime. Those interested in Voltaire's correspondence can visit Oxford University's Voltaire Foundation: click here.   

Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), section 62.

Click here for the end scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979). The song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life', can be found on the film soundtrack album released by Warner Bros. Records (1979).  

Click here for the scene transcribed above from 'The Christ Nail' (S5/E3), Curb Your Enthusiasm, written by Larry David,  dir. by Robert B. Weide, (2005). 

Finally, for the 2013 version of Easter with the Anti-Christ, click here. 

Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargoyle on the Great Fire of Notre-Dame de Paris

croire aux ruines ...

I.

It's a shame that the fire at Notre-Dame only destroyed the roof and spire, leaving the towers and most of the building still standing. It would have been better for the people of France - better for all of us - if the whole thing had been razed to the ground.

I say this not as some kind of cultural barbarian or iconoclast, nor simply to be provocative; but, rather, as someone in agreement with D. H. Lawrence, who writes in one of his Etruscan sketches:

"We have reached the stage where we are weary of huge stone erections, and we begin to realise that it is  better to keep life fluid and changing, than try to hold it fast down in heavy monuments. Burdens on the face of the earth, are man's ponderous erections."

Like Lawrence, I love to see small wooden temples, that are unimposing and evanescent as flowers. Buildings - particularly religious buildings - should aim to be modest and charming rather than grand and impressive, preserving the natural humour of life: "And that is a task surely more worthy, and even much more difficult in the long run, than conquering the world or sacrificing the self or saving the immortal soul."   

Lawrence continues:

"Why has mankind such a craving to be imposed upon! Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness."

Even Notre-Dame, if we're honest, standing in Paris for centuries on end, had become a colossal dead weight - stuffed full of priceless treasures and cultural artefacts, but dead treasures and dead artefacts, belonging to another time, another people.

And one suspects that those who claim to revere the past and seek to preserve it - along with those billionaires and politicians who are now pledging obscene sums of cash to rebuild the cathedral (whilst continuing to ignore the deprivation in many parts of the city and its suburbs) - do so simply because they are unable ultimately to face up to the challenge of modernity to make it new.   

II.

Lawrence, of course, was ambiguous (at best) on the question of cathedrals - from Lincoln to Milan - long before his trip to see the Etruscan tombs in 1927.

In The Rainbow, for example, his novel of 1915, Lawrence stages an amusing conflict between Anna Brangwen and her husband Will, in which she destroys his passion for Lincoln Cathedral with her own gargoyle philosophy ...

Will is physically excited by the cathedral and willingly allows himself to be transported by it to another world. But to Anna, it's merely a thing of the past and she rather resented his ecstasy, wishing he might curb his enthusiasm.

Lawrence writes:

"The cathedral roused her too. But she would never consent to the knitting of all the leaping stone in a great roof that closed her in [...] it was the ultimate confine [...] She claimed the right to freedom above her, higher than the roof. [...]
      So that she caught at little things, which saved her from being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite [...] the wicked, odd little faces carved in stone, and she stood before them arrested.
      These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the cathedral like something that knew better. They knew quite well, these little imps that retorted on man's own illusion, that the cathedral was not absolute. They winked and leered, giving suggestion of the many things that had been left out of the great concept of the church."

Understandably, Will is unimpressed with such thinking and has little or no time for the carved faces; his wife was "spoiling his passionate intercourse with the cathedral" and this made him bitterly angry:

"Strive as he would, he could not keep the cathedral wonderful to him. He was disillusioned. That which had been his absolute, containing all heaven and earth, was become to him as to her, a shapely heap of dead matter [...]
     His mouth was full of ash, his soul was furious. He hated her for having destroyed another of his vital illusions."

Anna's nihilism, however, inasmuch as it's a counter-idealism, is an active negation of the negative and of nothingness. Thus, despite Will's initial anger and despair, gradually he became more responsive to the call of the gargoyles than to the perfect surge of the cathedral itself, realising that outside the cathedral "were many flying spirits" that could never be contained within the holy gloom.

"He listened to the thrushes in the garden, and heard a note which the cathedrals did not include: something free and careless and joyous. He crossed a field that was all yellow with dandelions [...] and the bath of yellow glowing was something at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral.
      There was life outside the church. There was much that the church did not include. [...] He thought of the ruins of the Grecian worship, and it seemed, a temple was never perfectly a temple, till it was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the herbs."

And so, my advice to the good people of Paris is this: either finish the job and demolish the rest of Notre-Dame, or leave it as a lovely ruin, roofless, and at the mercy of the elements.

See:

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sketches of Etruscan Places', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32-33.

D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 188-89, 190, 191. 

Jamie Reid archive 

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