The Model and the Mannequins

Abbey Clancy and friends in the new ad  for Veet and Scholl

(Virgo Health/PA, 2014)

Just when I thought I'd finished with the question of female objectification, model and Strictly Come Dancing winner Abbey Clancy appears semi-nude in the company of five mannequins as part of a new promotional campaign for hair-removal specialists Veet and leading foot-care brand Scholl.

Ms Clancy is literally prepared to play the dummy in order to encourage other women to have the confidence to expose their legs and feet with pride. She informs us with all the spontaneity and warmth of a corporate sex doll reading a press release written by condescending and misogynistic morons:

"With such a busy lifestyle and a little girl to run around after I barely have time to visit a salon for beauty treatments, so easy-to-use products such as Scholl Velvet Smooth Express Pedi and Veet EasyWax help me get long-lasting professional results from home. It's not just about how great your feet and legs look, but how you feel when they are prepped and ready to bare as soon as the sun comes out!"

 
Rather coyly, and unlike her plastic associates, Ms Clancy keeps her knickers on. Presumably this is to help us spot which one she is. It is also intended to eroticize the image. But, dear Abbey, don't you know that whether she is in or out of her underwear makes very little difference to the desirability of modern woman having lost her nakedness long ago?

No matter how prepped your legs and feet might be and no matter how much you may flaunt your body, you do so in what Lawrence describes as a non-physical, merely optical aspect and your nudity is about as interesting as a dolls, cut off from any mystery or charm.

In fact, it's even less interesting and little wonder that many men will look at this picture and quickly decide in favour of the mannequins: for why desire an object still tainted with traces of subjectivity when one can love an object free from all residual humanity?

Love, Hate and Intercourse

Intercourse: The Life and Work of Andrea Dworkin, 
dir. Pratibha Parmar.
Presently being filmed in San Francisco and 
scheduled for release in January 2015

According to Rawdon Lilly, the Lawrentian persona in Aaron's Rod (1922), hate is a form of love on the recoil which invariably results in destructive violence, be it on a personal-individual or an impersonal-collective level: It flies back, the love-urge, and becomes a horror.

I've long accepted the logic of this and still think it's a crucial insight. But might we not turn it around and suggest that rather than hate being an extreme reversal of love, love is actually a sublimated and disguised form of hate? That, essentially, even the highest and most celebrated expressions of love are coercive forms of spiritual and/or sexual abuse based upon the threat of violence.

This rather more disconcerting and pessimistic view is perhaps where Andrea Dworkin was coming from in her radical feminist study Intercourse (1987).

Although Dworkin doesn't actually write that all heterosexual intercourse is rape (this oft-quoted line was invented by her critics in an attempt to disparage her sophisticated argument by reducing it to a crass slogan), she does suggest that the male lover is more often than not in a position of power over the female object of his desire and that penetrative sex therefore invariably involves some degree of violation and all the flowers or boxes of chocolates in the world don't alter this fact, even if they serve to mask it and somewhat sweeten the deal.

Extending her own analysis developed in earlier works, Dworkin argues in Intercourse that the eroticized subordination, exploitation, and abuse of women within a phallocratic society is central and determines the behaviour and beliefs of both sexes.

This is increasingly apparent within a pornified culture, although the hatred, contempt and revulsion for women is reinforced by and throughout the arts, media, law, politics, science and religion (i.e. all of those discursive practices which between them produce the truth of our engendered human condition). You can read many classic works of literature or watch almost all films to see this; pornography is by no means exclusively to blame and is ultimately just another symptom of a far more serious disease: misogyny.     

And this is why what we need is not more censorship or attempts to outlaw extreme pornography, but what Nietzsche terms a revaluation of all values.


Note: this post is dedicated to KM and all those like her sensitive to the issue of invasive male penetration and the internal occupation of their bodies; those women who, like Dworkin, realise that the question of intercourse is fundamental to feminism and women's freedom. 

In the House of the Sleeping Beauties

 Emily Browning in Sleeping Beauty (2011) dir. Julia Leigh

House of the Sleeping Beauties (1961) is a short, surreal novel written by the brilliant Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. 

It tells the story of a lonely old man, Eguchi, who frequents the above establishment in order to enjoy the exquisitely poignant pleasure of touching young flesh and sleeping besides a naked girl, sharing her drug-induced dreams and reflecting upon his own memories and mortality.

Whilst he, like other elderly clients, is free to enjoy the body of the sleeping beauty as he will, there is a house rule which dictates no penetration. Thus violent fantasies of rape and necrophilia must give way to an almost chaste ideal of female worship; religious veneration of purity is the name of the game rather than sexual violation and the vagina is posited as a temple off-limits even to worshipers. Of course, we know that the fetishization of virginity is itself a fatal form of perversion and abuse.

The novel was adapted for the cinema by German filmmakers in 2008. Unfortunately, Das Haus der Schlafenden Schönen, dir. Vadim Glowna, was not entirely successful; it certainly wasn't well received by the critics who dismissed it as pretentious art-house pornography that dramatized impotent male self-pity and decrepit perviness in a sordid, soporific manner that threatened to send even the audience to sleep.   

A far superior cinematic adaptation was made in 2011 by the Australian novelist, director and screenwriter Julia Leigh and starring Emily Browning, who gives a near-perfect performance in the role of Lucy. 

Whilst Sleeping Beauty retains the central premise of Kawabata's novel, Leigh crucially reverses the viewpoint thus creating an intelligent and disturbing feminist film, rather than merely another exploitative and misogynistic movie designed to titillate.

Leigh knows that at the heart of every fairy story, every religious myth, and every sleazy male fantasy about women (on whichever side of the virgin/whore dichotomy they're placed), is a kernel of the real: i.e., real bodies, suffering real abuse, experiencing real pain at the hands of those who wield real power.         

Bodies Mystical and Medical

I'm still musing at the moment on chakras and all-things-tantra as found in the writings of those whose understanding of the body is informed by readings of "sacred" Hindu texts; an understanding which is ultimately not only lacking in scientific legitimacy but comes close to being nonsense at times (and dangerous nonsense at that). 

It's a view of the body I'm vaguely familiar with thanks to my knowledge of D. H. Lawrence and his interpretation of the Irish theosophist James Pryse, author of Apocalypse Unsealed (1910), a work that significantly influenced Lawrence's thinking on physiology and the material unconscious which, he argues, is rooted primarily not in the brain, but in the solar plexus:

"This is the great centre, where, in the womb, your life first sparkled in individuality. This is the centre that drew the gestating maternal bloodstream upon you ... for your increase. This is the centre whence the navel-string broke, but where the invisible string of dynamic consciousness, like a dark electric current connecting you with the rest of life, will never break until you die and depart from corporate individuality."

- D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (CUP, 2004), p. 75.  

Thanks to Pryse and others, Lawrence is led to the conclusion that esoteric doctrine is fundamentally a mapping of the body; not in terms of organs and anatomical function, but in terms of hidden centres of power and spiritual potential. And so, whilst Lawrence is prepared to admit that our medical-scientific understanding of the body is fine as far as it goes, he also insists that it by no means explains everything and invariably presupposes a corpse; i.e. it fails to consider life in terms of vital experience.

And so, contra objective science concerned with observable phenomena, Lawrence posits his own subjective science which proceeds in terms of intuition and the re-imagining of an ancient body of knowledge which has, he says, been repressed for thousands of years. Via the awakening of the seven principal nerve centres and the snake-like force of kundalini latent within the lower body, Lawrence believed mankind could restore the balance between the spiritual and sensual planes of being and thereby discover what Zarathustra referred to as the greater health.

Now, time was when I would have been enthusiastically supportive of all this. Indeed, I still think that the best way to counter idealism is to relentlessly emphasise the corpo/real; I still share Nietzsche's suspicion that all philosophy to date has been a misunderstanding of the body and that nihilism is first and foremost a pathological condition; and I still believe that the schizoanalytic project of building a body without organs is of import.

However, I now have zero-tolerance for New Age therapies, alternative medicines, or any anti-scientific quackery that purports to cure all via faith healing or other magical means. In as much as Lawrence's pollyanalytics and prejudices lend support to these things then shame upon them, and him, and his readers who let his opinions pass unchallenged without comment. 

For advances in medical science have produced genuine miracles; from the eradication of smallpox to cochlear implants inside the ears of tiny infants so that they might hear their mother's voice and smile. I wonder if those shamans and gurus who subscribe to what is a mystical notion of the body (more often than not based upon ignorance and religious superstition) have ever made people healthier, or a single child happier ...?   

         

Towards a Democracy of Touch

The very lovely Bethany Leach: a young advocate of the 

democracy of touch; see her blog 

 democracyoftouch.tumblr.com

Amused by Tim Pendry's recent posts on the notion of touch in relation to tantric practices and teachings on his Position Reserved blog, I thought it might be a good time to remind ourselves once more of Lawrence's thoughts on this subject.

According to Lawrence, when our industrial-scientific civilization falls - as fall it must - the only bridge into the future will be the phallus. The phallus will lead us towards a new type of humanity and a new form of society based upon the mystery and inspiration of touch. He calls this the democracy of touch. 

It is, I suppose, an intriguing idea which cries out to be developed and given flesh. As a form of libidinal materialism, it involves actual physical contact born of passion and not merely a new idealism. It also calls for the proliferation of touch not just between men and women, but people and animals, people and plants: 

"The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love."

This sounds to some ears suspiciously like mysticism, but in attempting to articulate and substantiate the mystery of touch Lawrence is actually trying to climb down Pisgah, not seek out spiritual or transcendent truths. The democracy of touch may be a form of fourth dimensional bliss, but it's very much a heaven on earth involving bodies and their pleasures. 

In other words, the democracy of touch, as Lawrence envisions it, is a kind of natural paradise; one where men and women learn to live like animals in accomplished innocence, walking naked and light upon the open road in a Whitmanesque manner: 

"Exposed to full contact. On two slow feet. In company with those that drift in the same measure along the same way. Towards no goal. Having no direction even. Only the soul remaining true to herself in her going."

All of which sounds very nice - even comforting (as meaningless things may do).

Note: See D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323 and Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (CUP, 2003),  p. 156.

  

H. P. Lovecraft and the Sordid Topic of Coin

Isabella Rossellini as Lisle von Rhoman in the 1992 dark 

comic fantasy Death Becomes Her, dir. Robert Zemeckis

Sometimes, as Michel Houellebecq points out, it is necessary to fail in life in order that one eventually succeed in one's work as an artist or philosopher. Although, even then, failure in a worldly sense (i.e. absence of any financial reward and complete lack of recognition) doesn't necessarily guarantee results.

For sometimes, opting to remain aloof and outside of the commercial realm - displaying no interest in the sordid topic of coin, no desire to make a name for oneself and practicing as it were a policy of complete non-engagement vis-a-vis mundane realities - carries with it the risk of falling into poverty, apathy, and suicidal despair.  

The writer H. P. Lovecraft provides a good example of someone who was prepared to risk these things and hold out against them. As Houellebecq tells us in his excellent study, Against the World, Against Life, Lovecraft never quite experienced utter destitution, but he was extremely constrained financially and had to always watch every penny. He also kept a small bottle of cyanide at hand - just in case. 

For Lovecraft, it was simply not dignified for a gentleman to worry about money matters "or to express too lively an anxiety where his own interests were concerned". In any case, his writings earned him very little - not that he considered literature a particularly noble pursuit and cared nothing for building a career or readership. He wrote "for the sake of his own pleasure and that of a few friends, without worrying about the public's taste, fashionable themes, of anything else of the kind". 

Obviously, such an individual is afforded no place within the modern world; Lovecraft knew this, but always refused to sell himself. Indeed, he refused even to type his texts and would send editors soiled and crumpled manuscripts; though one might wonder whether such an act doesn't betray at last self-contempt as much as defiant anti-commercialism.  

 

Nevertheless, Lovecraft provides a role model to all of us who hate to ask for payment and prefer simply to give ideas away in the same manner as the sun shines freely to no end and without thought of preserving energy, or securing the morrow. 

And this - along with his aggressive anti-theism and virulent anti-humanism - is another reason to love him.   

Note: lines quoted are from Michel Houellebecq, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, trans. Dorna Khazeni, (Gollancz / Orion Publishing Group, 2008), p. 92.       

Aurora Contra Airfix

As a child, I was never much interested in building complex models of planes and ships and certainly wouldn't describe myself as belonging to what Geoff Dyer has termed rather nicely the Airfix Generation.

I did, however, love assembling the luminescent body parts of the great movie monsters manufactured by the Aurora Plastics Corporation. 

Founded in New York in 1950 by engineer Joseph E. Giammarino and his business partner - the wonderfully-named Abe Shikes - the company became famous for these terrifying figure kits that delighted children who had a certain gothic disposition and a fascination for the morbid and macabre, rather than military history.

Of the dozen monsters that followed their 1961 Frankenstein kit, I remember having five: the Wolfman, Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and, my personal favourite, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

At night, I would lie in bed and shine a torch upon them to boost their glow-in-the-dark power when the lights went out, deliberately attempting to induce nightmares - although, in truth, they weren't particularly scary; perhaps not even as scary as those hairy gaping vaginas that featured in 70s porno mags conveniently stashed in the woods by persons (or perverts) unknown which also captured my youthful imagination and taste for the monstrous. 

Audrey's Ghost

Framestore Chauffeur ad for Galaxy/Dove (2013) 

dir. Daniel Kleinman 

I have to confess that upon first viewing the Galaxy TV ad which appears to star Audrey Hepburn alongside male model-of-the-moment Nick Hopper, I thought it was just a particularly lovely lookalike.

But then, watching it for a second and third time, the realisation dawned that there was more going on here than initially met the eye; that it was in fact a commercial reliant upon the very latest in visual effects and, although filmed on the Amalfi coast, it was ultimately an Uncanny Valley production.

And, sure enough, upon investigation, it turns out that the ad does use CGI in order to create what is not only a chocolate lover's fantasy, but a spectrophile's wet dream.

The only concern, perhaps, is what it tells us about our digital culture; is there not something cadaverous beneath the technological wizardry?  

Why have cotton when you can have silk?

Why have live actors when you can have dead icons?

 

On Not Taking Any Shit From Magicians

The fact that there is a dark and primitive religious subtext to National Socialism is surely indisputable. Many top-ranking Nazis clearly had esoteric obsessions and controversy only arises when we try to assess the influence of these obsessions upon their political thinking.  

Hitler's position in relation to this question remains somewhat ambiguous however - despite the huge amount of serious research and often crackpot speculation in this area. On the one hand, he did have some knowledge of Ariosophical ideas and did seem, in part, to endorse views first advocated by racial mystics such as Guido von List.    

On the other hand, however, Larry David is right to say that one of Hitler's more admirable traits is that he didn't take any shit from magicians, occultists, or the preposterous and posing völkisch crowd with their neo-pagan pretensions. This is clear from the following passage in Mein Kampf:

"The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old German heroism, about dim prehistory ... but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined ... they make a ridiculous impression on the broad masses ... For all this, these people are boundlessly conceited; despite all proofs of their complete incompetence ... Especially with the so-called religious reformers on an old Germanic basis, I always have the feeling that they are sent by those powers which do not want the resurrection of our people." 

 
  - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Hutchinson, 1989), pp. 327-28. 

Whilst Hitler may share in the reactionary politics, revolutionary dreams and Wagnerian fantasies of the above, he ultimately wants nothing to do with them. Lanz von Liebenfels may have regarded Hitler as one of his pupils, but the latter did not acknowledge him as one of his masters; in fact, he never even mentioned his name in any recorded speech, conversation, or written document. I think this is evidence of more than mere ingratitude. Hitler may have read Ostara whilst a young man in Vienna and it may have helped shape his Manichean and apocalyptic worldview, but ... well, I refer you again to the Larry David line above.  

We must conclude that Hitler was always more concerned with Realpolitik and exercising industrial and military muscle, than with mystical fantasy and the impotent posturing of magicians. The NSDAP under his leadership and control became a powerful war machine radically different in character to any of the secret societies or occult orders that are sometimes said to have paved the way for it.  

Note: This post is based on a revised and edited section of a paper presented at Treadwell's Books on March 18th, 2008 and which can be found in Volume IV of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). The original artwork for the paper appears above.

On The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Its Critics

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly by Billy Perkins

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles respectively is, according to Quentin Tarantino, the greatest film ever made.

He's not alone in this assessment; many people love it and name it as the purest example of cinematic art brought to a moment of absolute perfection thanks not only to the performances of the three stars and the directorial skills of Leone, but also the magnificent photography by Tonino Delli Colli and the famous score composed by Ennio Morricone.

It's surprising, therefore, to discover that upon its release it was met not with universal acclaim, but, on the contrary, fairly widespread hostility and critical disdain. Not only was the violence found objectionable, but the length of the film led some to label it dull and interminable. Meanwhile, the fact that it was an Italian re-imagining of a classically American art form - a so-called spaghetti western - led even Roger Ebert in his original review to deduct a star purely on the grounds that, as such, it could not be art.  

It was Italian-born Renata Adler, however, who really took against the movie in her New York Times review from 1968, dismissing it as "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre". This is particularly disappointing coming as it does from the pen of a woman with a background in philosophy and comparative literature.

Disappointing too is the review of Pauline Kael in The New Yorker, published two months after that by Adler. Kael - described by some as the most influential film critic of her generation - called the film, garish, gruesome and stupid. She particularly objected to what she perceived as the mindless sadism and fascistic nihilism of the film in which all noble and heroic elements of the traditional (American) western have either been omitted or spat upon. 

What this demonstrates, I suppose, is that even very smart, very well-educated critics can sometimes get things very wrong; particularly when confronted with the genuinely New (i.e. that which comes to us from the future and shatters the past). 

One recalls in closing Woody Allen's remark about Kael to the effect that she has everything a film critic needs except judgement: 'She has great passion, terrific wit, wonderful writing style, huge knowledge of film history, but too often what she chooses to extol or fails to see is very surprising.'