Stupeur et tremblements

Cover of the Faber and Faber English 

paperback edition (2004)

In some ways, Amélie Nothomb's Stupeur et tremblements (1999), can be regarded as a fictional supplement to Roland Barthes's L'Empire des Signs (published thirty years earlier) and ought not to be thought of simply as an autobiographical novel.

For like the latter, Nothomb's book is an attempt to isolate a certain number of features and from out of these delineate with great delicacy and ingenuity a system called 'Japan'. It succeeds because she wisely avoids any banal sociological analysis of Japanese corporate life, just as - despite autobiographical elements - she avoids offering a simple recreation of her own past. 

Central to her little comedy of manners is the question of etiquette. Amélie-san longs not so much for intimacy with Fubuki, but informality. For informal relations are so much more desirable to a modern, occidental sensibility than the strictly coded ones that exist within the Japanese work place. 

For to be informal, even at the risk of seeming impolite, is to be true according to the logic of Western morality which rests upon what Barthes terms a mythology of the person; we believe ourselves and others to be composed of a false, public exterior and of a personal, authentic interior which it is our duty to know.

And so it is that, after a certain period of time, we naturally assume we have the right to be ourselves in the company of others; further, we also think we have the right to know them as they really are, stripped of any social status or superficial difference on which they might pride themselves. For is it not taught that all souls are equal in the sight of God.

That we could believe other and behave differently is something that Amélie-san has to learn. But whether she does learn this is debatable, for her attachment to a democracy of souls seems extremely strong. Thus, at the end of her time working for the Yukimoto Corporation, she bids farewell and shakes the hands only of those colleagues who have acknowledged what she regards as her essential humanity.

For this reason, one can't help but wonder about the nature of the great happiness that Fubuki's letter brings at the end of the novel; does Amélie-san feel that it signals some kind of final victory and vindication?

I would like to think not, but there is something profoundly disturbing and even ugly about the character of Amélie-san: like a soul-devouring monster, she's obsessed with discovering the truth of poor Miss Mori and, via what Barthes calls the willed simplicity of Western manners, she seems determined to declare her affability, her honesty, and her authenticity whatever the consequences for herself and those around her.

Ultimately, and ironically, she's the bully in the office place! For her friendship is something that cannot be refused and her pity is a type of poison. 

On Convalescence

Oy, I don't feel so good! Coughing, aching, lemsipping, etc. Still, whilst I might not have Zarathustra's animals to look after me, I do have the pigeons on the balcony for company and the Little Greek to make some chicken soup. So I can't complain. 

Also, I have a period of convalescence to look forward to during which colours, sounds, etc. all seem to become clearer and more vibrant and one feels momentarily perkier than usual. Doubtless this is simply a physiological effect of returning strength, but Heidegger prefers to see it in slightly different terms, relating it as he does to questions of nostalgia and being:

"The convalescent is the man who collects himself to return home - that is, to turn inwards, into his own destiny. The convalescent is on the road to himself, so that he can say of himself who he is."

Obviously, this is anathema to me; a rootless cosmopolitan who knows no home, scorns notions of interiority and prefers anonymity and masquerade to self-confession and the revelation of true identity. In fact, I'd rather stay sick and self-alienated than convalesce in a Heideggerian manner. 

The Gulf War Is Still Not Happening

And still - rather amazingly to my mind - there are well-read and intelligent individuals who just cannot or will not allow themselves to see what Baudrillard is arguing in his series of short reflections from 1991 on the Gulf War. Individuals such as the libertarian blogger and photographer Brian Mickelthwait, for example, to whom these comments are addressed. 

Contrary to the title of the third of his three articles originally published in Libération and which also became the title of a later book - The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1995) - Baudrillard is not suggesting that the events in Kuwait and Iraq didn't happen; the violence was in fact all-too-actual. But it was also, for us in the West at least, spectacular and virtual, rather than real, constituting a form of simulated warfare. 

This was certainly the case for those sat in the comfort and security of their own homes who experienced the war in the form of televised imagery and stylized media presentation. But even the US armed forces for the most part did not directly engage in combat with their opponents and suffered few casualties. They too largely conducted the coordinated and choreographed slaughter of Iraqi troops from behind the safety of screens. 

Thus to call the events in the Gulf a war, Baudrillard suggests, is a misnomer; for it was both rehearsed and enacted as a videogame in which the actual violence and atrocity was overwritten by electronic narrative (complete with a missile eye-view of events). There is thus a fatal interdependence established between truth and fantasy; in fact, nothing separates them any longer in the hyperreal orgy of simulation.          

This might have been a controversial view at the time, but it seems today incontrovertible and really rather modest. As for the charge - often made against Baudrillard - that he displays at best casual indifference to human suffering and at worst political and moral nihilism, this is simply ignorant and malicious and, ironically, risks falling into the kind of banality and fraudulence which his critics accuse him of.

Sun-Fucked (Extract)

Image by Zena McKeown (2012)

Strangely it always becomes necessary to speak about the phallus when thinking about the sun: for what is a hard-on other than the body of man declaring: I am the Sun. As Bataille writes, the verb to be and the integral erection tied to it is ultimately nothing other than an articulation of amorous solar frenzy.

For an erection, like the sun, is something that rises and falls and scandalizes, being equally obscene, equally demanding; a quasi-miraculous phenomenon resulting from a complex interaction of factors, often triggered by some form of sexual stimulation, though this need not always be the case.

Indeed, often the happiest of erections are ones that arise spontaneously and in all innocence and, interestingly, Lawrence explicitly reverses the idea that love calls potency into being. On the contrary, he suggests, it is power that gives rise to love; power that comes to us from outside and enters us from behind and below, where we are sightless and do not understand. And so, to be sun-fucked is, also, to be sodomised and some of us might once more think of Bataille and his notion of the solar anus.

Of course, however we get it, most of us want life and the feeling of power; although, ironically, the latter comes via the expenditure and exercise of power and not from its possession. When one is powerful, like the sun, one gives oneself away and life only comes to us when we dare to live and squander resources. For life does not mean length of days: "Poor old Queen Victoria had length of days. But Emily Brontë had life. She died of it."

That's a fantastic thought, isn’t it? Life kills! And energy eventually escapes its entrapment within form and is liberated back into the solar flux. For that’s all life is; a temporary arrest of sunlight. And death? Death is nothing but a release of power and what Nietzsche describes as a festive return to the actual.

Those who live with the greatest intensity and imitate the sun often die young, burning out like tiny stars. Those who go on and on into old age either lack vitality, or they are monsters of stamina - like Picasso. As a rule, it is better to live fast and die young than live like one who has never known the power of the sun; nor the love of another in whom the sun can be glimpsed.


Note: Line quoted is from D. H. Lawrence, 'Blessed are the Powerful', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (CUP, 1988), p. 322.

The Three Ducks (Donald, Daffy & Howard)

Donald Duck © The Walt Disney Company / Howard the Duck © Marvel Worldwide, Inc.

Daffy Duck © Warner Bros. Inc.

I have never been a great fan of Disney's Donald Duck. Partly, this is due to his choice of outfit consisting of blue sailor shirt, cap and red bow tie; not a look I much care for.

That said, he's clearly more interesting and more edgy than his friend and rival Mickey Mouse. For whereas the latter is simply irritating, the former is amusingly irritable and often seems at odds with those around him and in general conflict with life - a bit like a feathered George Costanza. Indeed, someone should write a comparative analysis of these two characters as they seem to share a wide range of personality traits.

Despite this retrospective Seinfeld connection, as a child I had much more time for Donald's Warner Bros. counterpart, Daffy Duck. Probably this has something to do with being part of a TV generation growing up on Looney Tunes, rather than being a regular movie-goer. Also, Daffy, created by Tex Avery, was, to me at least, simply funnier as well as a more contemporary-seeming, more savvy figure than Donald. Mel Blanc's brilliant vocal characterization doubtless played a large part in this. And, crucially, Daffy spurned the sailor suit and dared to go naked.

  

The third fictional bird to have played an active role in my imagination, is Howard the Duck, created by writer Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik for Marvel Comics in 1973. Like Donald and Daffy, Howard is often ill-tempered and foul-mouthed (no pun intended). But unlike them, his character lends itself more to nihilism and existential angst, rather than screwball comedy. 

For Howard reveals that life is joke. But it's an absurd and often cruel joke lacking in point or punchline. As Gerber once explained, via Howard he sought to demonstrate how the things, people, and events we value and take seriously are distinguishable from those things, people, and events we despise or think ludicrous only thanks to interpretation and perspectivism (i.e. personal prejudice and the contingency of viewpoint).

Unfortunately, Gerber and his publishers soon clashed over issues of 'creative control' and the writer was removed from his own series in 1978. The comic in its original format quickly folded. Around this time, Disney was also threatening to sue Marvel for copyright infringement, claiming that Howard looked too similar to Donald and insisting that the former put some pants on!

Today, now that Disney own Marvel, one can't help fearing that with or without trousers, Howard's days are sadly numbered.

On Van Gogh's Ear and the Dangers of Sungazing

Picture by Phischer: Van Gogh's Ear (2007)

www.worth1000.com

Although the facts of the case were disputed in 2009 by two revisionist art historians looking to pin the blame on Gauguin, we all know the story of Van Gogh's mutilated ear and how he carefully wrapped the piece of severed lobe in newspaper before presenting it to his favourite prostitute, Rachel, at a nearby brothel, with instructions to carefully look after it.  

Very few of us, however, have bothered to place this story in a wider context of meaning; and no one has managed to do a better job of this than Georges Bataille in his 1930 essay on acts of sacrificial atrocity and solar-induced madness.

Bataille persuasively argues that Van Gogh's violent act of self-disfigurement was the result not of a tiff with Gauguin, but due to an inhuman and ultimately overwhelming relationship maintained with the sun; a fatal form of worship that is only fully revealed in the painter's canvases produced during his stay at the mental hospital in Saint-Rémy in 1889 (i.e. following the Christmas Eve ear incident).

Vincent's letters to his brother Theo written during this period, also indicate how his solar obsession had reached its peak; he felt that he and the sun - at which he stared for dangerously long-periods at a time as if he himself were a sunflower drawing nourishment directly from the latter - were burning with the same vital intensity and magnificence.

After his departure from Saint-Rémy in January 1890, the sun doesn't simply fade or set within his artwork, but, crucially, almost entirely disappears. Six-months later, Van Gogh takes his own life, aged 37.

The point is this: it is impossible to maintain a personal or safe relationship with the sun; the attempt to do so might promise enlightenment and a healthy tan, but it ends with death and dismemberment. For just as sun-gazers risk solar retinopathy, sun-lovers risk being proved fatally mistaken in their anthropomorphic conceit if they believe that the sun loves them in return.


Note: See Georges Bataille, 'Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh', in Visions of Excess, ed. Allan Stoekl, (University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

The Case of Joyce McKinney

One of the figures who captivated my adolescent imagination and who has subsequently continued to shape my adult understanding of sexuality, was twenty-seven year old American beauty queen Joyce McKinney; a woman who achieved tabloid notoriety in the UK due to her unusual relationship with a young Mormon missionary, Kirk Anderson, in the summer of '77.  

Abducted with an imitation revolver from the steps of a Mormon meetinghouse in Surrey, Mr. Anderson reported to the police several days later subsequent to his escape, that he had been chloroformed and driven to a cottage in Devon, where he was fastened to a bed with a ten-foot chain and mink-lined handcuffs by Miss McKinney - with whom he had previously had a brief romantic relationship - and forced to be her sex slave (something he claimed to find extremely upsetting).    

Without wishing to make light of kidnap, false imprisonment, and indecent assault - or even to cast doubt on the veracity of Kirk Anderson's story - there were not many teenage boys in Britain at the time who didn't envy him and wish that they too could be subject to a crime of passion and perversity at the hands of a former Miss Wyoming.

Arrested on 19 September, McKinney denied all police charges, claiming her former lover had, in fact, fully consented to his part in this kinky escapade. Released on bail for health reasons, she fled the country with an illicitly obtained passport, disguised in a wig and glasses whilst pretending to be a deaf-mute. Two years later she was picked up by the FBI, having returned to the United States. Although not extradited, the McKinney case was eventually heard in a UK court and, having been found guilty of assault under the Sexual Offences Act of 1956, she was sentenced in absentia to a year in jail.

Coverage of events in the British press was extensive and highly sensational. The Daily Mirror famously published the above photo of McKinney, taken during her nude modelling days, on the front of one of their editions, causing a Church of Scotland working party on obscenity to object that this was the sort of image that would have only been sold to adults under plain sealed cover ten years earlier.

Such has been the continued fascination with this tale, that Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris recently directed a documentary about it - and the media circus surrounding it - entitled Tabloid (2010). Although made with McKinney's co-operation, she subsequently filed a lawsuit against Morris and his producer, Mark Lipson, on the grounds of defamation; claiming that the film portrayed her as a kinky prostitute and an insane sex offender. 

Whether the film does or does not do this and whether such a characterization does or does not constitute defamation of character, for me, Joyce McKinney - now living in Palm Springs with her cloned dogs - will always be an object of great affection. As I think J. G. Ballard once wrote, those events and those people which impress themselves upon the imagination of a boy in his fourteenth summer will stay with him for life.

On the Queer Love Affair at the Heart of Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl was Lawrence's first version of the novel that would be published after extensive rewriting as The Plumed Serpent three years later in 1926. Both works examine political, religious and racial issues and both feature an Anglo-Irish heroine called Kate whose ambivalence about the sort of life she is offered in Mexico reflects Lawrence's violent attraction-repulsion to a culture so profoundly alien to his own.

Whilst this is not the place to offer a full and serious reading of the text, there is nevertheless one aspect of the novel that I would like to comment on here; namely, the queer relationship between Ramón and Cipriano. 

Although described by Kate's cousin Owen as "a David and Jonathan couple without any love" [38], there is nevertheless a kind of perverse dynamic at play; Cipriano is clearly enthralled by Ramón and ultimately their hearts beat in unison. Lawrence writes: 

"The two had known each other for some years. ... But they had never been really intimate. They had kept aloof ... although all the time they knew there was some secret bond between them. A bond which must one day assert itself." [114]

And so it is that when not endlessly staring into one another's eyes and discussing the nature of their manhood, Ramón and Cipriano like to engage in homoerotic games of domination and submission. Thus the interesting scene in Chapter VII when Ramón presses his hands over Cipriano's eyes and the latter promises to obey him, having felt a dark fountain of life rise up within him. He then drops to his knees and kisses the bare feet of the other man - an act that causes Ramón's heart to stand still.   

Later, in Chapter XV, there is a far more explicit scene between the two. Ramón approaches Cipriano from behind and again places his hands over the younger man's eyes, pressing them shut. "Cipriano, startled, braced himself to resist", before relaxing beneath the "soft, firm pressure of the hands that darkened him". As Cipriano drifts into a state of blissful semi-consciousness, he allows Ramón to penetrate him in his depths. Keeping one hand held tightly over Cipriano's eyes, Ramón "pressed the middle finger of the other hand over a certain awake place at the base of Cipriano's spine", making his soul tremble, until, finally, Cipriano dissolves into the joy of complete surrender and felt himself passing into a kind of death that was "infinitely satisfying" [241].

I would concede that there is a certain Lawrentian vagueness about this scene, meaning we can never be entirely sure what has happened. In the explanatory notes provided by the Cambridge editor we are led to believe it's an esoteric passage to do with chakras and the serpent-power of kundalini. However, it sounds to me very much as if Ramón has simply finger-fucked Cipriano and treated him to a prostate massage. 

Either way, Cipriano is a different man afterwards and he has to reconcile himself to this and learn how to treasure what has passed between him and Ramón as his "innermost secret" [243]. If he still wants a woman - still wants Kate as a wife - nevertheless it is to Ramón he returns whenever he wants to rediscover his most impersonal and demonic self. 

Note: page references refer to the Cambridge University Press edition of Quetzalcoatl, (2011), ed. N. H. Reeve.

On Mannequins With Merkins

American Apparel (2014)

As regular readers of torpedo the ark will have gathered, I have a perverse critical interest in pygmalionism and female genitalia and in particular the manner in which culture determines the appearance of muffs and mannequins. And so, naturally, I feel obliged to say something about the latest window display from try-hard-to-be controversial retailer American Apparel. 

Sadly restricted (so far) to their store on East Houston Street, New York, the window features extremely beautiful mannequins wearing geeky glasses and revealing dark nipples beneath see-through bras and an unnatural natural abundance of dark pubic hair beneath see-through knickers. Indeed, so lavish is the bush on one model that it juts defiantly from the sides of her high-cut underwear.   

Some passers-by smile. Some look away in disgust. And some, of course, take photos. But the window has certainly aroused media attention and fed into a conversation about the need or non-need for women to obsessively remove all traces of body hair. One might even be tempted to speak of a growing backlash against the pornified ideal of a completely denuded cunt - an ideal which the fashion and cosmetic industries have long shared and eagerly promoted, so it's a wee bit disingenuous to say the least when a spokesperson for American Apparel tells us that they are a company that has always celebrated natural beauty and believed in keeping things real.    

Still, having said that, it's a qualified two cheers for the window display and for the visual merchandizing team of Sawyer Ballance, Julio Delgado and Molly Hatch - whatever the thinking or commercial consideration behind it. The campaign obviously continues to exploit female bodies, but perhaps it also opens up another option for young women who belong to a generation that has been obliged to wax and shave and deodorize relentlessly and who now have the ugly word labiaplasty in their vocabulary.  

Non-Racist Photo Sparks Mistaken Outrage

Photo of Dasha Zhukova copyright Buro 24/7

The above picture of fashion designer and magazine editor Dasha Zhukova, in which she sits looking somewhat awkward on an amusingly kitsch piece of human furniture by British pop artist Allen Jones, has, apparently, sparked outrage. 

Rather surprisingly, it's not the fact that the chair objectifies women by assigning them a sexually-submissive whilst decoratively functional role that has caused this storm of angry protest across various social networks and media outlets: it's the fact that the mannequin-sculpture happens to resemble a woman of colour.  

According to some, this makes the work not only misogynistic but racist and the photo of a privileged and extremely wealthy white woman sitting on the chair merely serves to emphasise this. The fact that it was published on Martin Luther King Day ironically - if unintentionally - adding further insult to injury.   

   

Should I bother to comment on this? I'm tempted to do so, obviously. Indeed, when I first glanced at the photo and the headline on the Yahoo news page I felt like a fish being offered bait on a hook.

But, to be perfectly honest, I'm tired today and my heart's simply not in it. So let me just say, for the record if you will, that of course racism, sexism and class hatred are realities that infect every aspect of our culture, society and politics. And of course these things should be questioned and critically challenged. But knee-jerk liberalism rooted in naive moral sentiment and humourless political puritanism rarely helps matters.