Shit Bow: Larry David and Roland Barthes on the Art of Japanese Etiquette

Larry David and a Japanese restaurant manager discuss 

bow techniques in Curb Your Enthusiasm [S8/E7]

When is a bow not a bow? Or, more precisely, when is a bow a disguised insult, rather than a sincere form of apology? The answer, according to Curb Your Enthusiasm, is when it's a shit bow ...

Having had his takeaway order messed up by his favourite Japanese restaurant due to insecure packaging, Larry seeks an apology from the manager (brilliantly played by Andrew Pang) - something which he duly receives, along with an accompanying bow much to his great delight: "We could learn a lot of things from Japan."  

However, although initially excited by the bow and expressly stating that it was not something with which he could possibly quibble, he later starts to worry that it was perfunctory, rather than invested with genuine feeling. Seeking to confirm his suspicions, Larry accosts a group of Japanese tourists in the park and asks to be enlightened on the finer points of bowing.

He is told that a sincere apology requires a deep bow and that the bow he received - which was not much more than an exaggerated nod in his direction - not only fails to express sorrow or regret, but is insulting and dismissive. In fact, Larry is told he has been given a shit bow and that no bow would be better than that bow. 

Armed with this new information, Larry returns to the restaurant in order to confront the manager. The latter, however, is uninterested in either apologising further, or discussing Japanese etiquette. Hoping that he might be able to quickly resolve the issue and get on with his job, he repeatedly tells Larry that a bow is a bow.

Of course, Larry being Larry, he's not going to let it go: "Is it possible", he asks, "you don't know the bow rules?" This naturally irritates the manager, who insists that he understands the bow rules perfectly and has done so since a young age: "I was raised by bow rules.'"

He's understandably not too pleased either to hear his bow described as a shit bow. But, if only to get Mr David to go away, he finally gives him the deep bow that the latter felt entitled to. A satisfied Larry finally leaves, but not without declaring his intention to research the matter further online.

It's a great series of scenes and one can't help wondering what it is that Larry thinks we might learn from Japan - or, rather, what he calls Japan. For like Barthes's Japan in Empire of Signs, Larry's Japan is essentially an imaginative space; somewhere faraway providing a reserve of features whose manipulation and invented interplay affords amusement and allows for the fantasy of a symbolic system that is entirely alien to that found in the West.

Indeed, as with most other things, people and places, Larry is essentially indifferent to the real Japan, living, as he does, almost exclusively in a comedic world of his own invention. What excites him is not so much "another metaphysics, another wisdom (though the latter might appear thoroughly desirable); it is the possibility of a difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of symbolic systems".

In other words, Larry is excited by the possibility of previously unheard of rules and new forms of social minutiae. Unlike most Westerners, Larry doesn't regard formal displays of politeness, for example, as suspicious or as signs of hypocrisy. He genuinely loves the bow as he does all forms of coded behaviour - it's modern informality and inconsiderate behaviour (such as wearing shorts on an airplane, or pig-parking) that drive him nuts.

Larry doesn't buy into what Barthes terms the Occidental mythology of the person that allows for - and encourages - the free expression of one's natural feelings or authentic inner self. For this ultimately results in impolite and selfish behaviour. Larry wants society with all its complexity and artifice; for it's these things that provide him with his comic material. And, indeed, his ethics ...

See: 

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 8, Episode 7: 'The Bi-Sexual', dir. David Mandel, written by Larry David, Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer (2011). Click here to watch a clip on YouTube of the scene in the park; or here to watch the later scene in the restaurant.     

Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard, (Hill and Wang / Noonday Press, 1989), pp. 3-4. 

Phallic Pictures 2: L'Origine de la Guerre by Orlan

ORLAN: L'Origine de la Guerre (1989) 

Aluminium backed cibachrome 88 x 105 cm 
orlan.eu

For all his phallic bravado, I wonder what D. H. Lawrence would have made of Orlan's reimagining of Courbet's obscene masterpiece, The Origin of the World (1866), now retitled The Origin of War (1989) and featuring a close-up of the indecently exposed lower-body of a naked male - including an erect penis - rather than centring on the hairy, gaping cunt of a woman ...?

I suspect he wouldn't like it; that he would condemn it as a pornographic example of sex in the head, even though, arguably, it's a work that invites comparison with his own canvas, Boccaccio Story (1926), featuring the exhibitionist Masetto caught snoozing with his cock out before some passing nuns.

I suspect also he would be troubled by the fact that the work is by a woman and thus subjects the male body to an ambiguous female gaze that just might be derisive more than desirous; scornful, rather than reverential. For whilst Lawrence wants women to worship the male body in all its phallic beauty and potency (as Connie worships the body of her lover Mellors), he seems full of anxiety that they should find the male sex organ foolish and imperfect; a little disgusting in its unfinished clumsiness.

And then there's the title chosen by Orlan for her work; a title which implies the phallus is a symbol of violent masculinity and lies at the root of armed conflict. Lawrence would absolutely deny this. For him, whilst the penis as a physiological organ obviously belongs to an individual male agent, the phallus is something that rises into being between lovers, forming a bridge that brings people into touch and enables the post-coital bliss that he terms the peace that comes of fucking.

Thus hatred of the phallus - seen here rising darkish and hot-looking from the little cloud of vivid gold-red hair - is uncalled for and betrays perhaps the great modern horror of being in touch; what Lawrence insists is the root-fear of all mankind.

And so, without suggesting readers get on their knees before the phallus and subscribe to Lawrence's phallocentric mystery religion, I do think an attitude of queer wonder that mixes a little awe and excitement is preferable to any lazy attempt to denigrate, belittle and nullify the erect cock, or, indeed, the small soft penis, which is really just another little bud of life as Connie says, rather than a potential source of evil.

When, as it must, the phallus inexorably penetrates the body of another, it might indeed come with the thrust of a sword and bring suffering and death. But, more often than not, it comes with "a strange slow thrust of peace, the dark thrust of peace and a ponderous, primordial tenderness, such as made the world in the beginning" ...


Notes

Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte is a French artist, born in 1947. She adopted the name Orlan (which she always writes in capitals) in 1961, aged fifteen. She's primarily an artist who works with and on the flesh (usually her own); more of a carnal artist, as she says, than just an artist concerned with the body.

Her 1989 work, L'Origine de la Guerre, which uses a photograph of the actor Jean-Christophe Bouvet taken by Georges Merguerditchian, is surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly) little-known. For an interesting discussion of her work, see Cerise Joelle Myers; 'Between the Folly and the Impossibility of Seeing: Orlan, Reclaiming the Gaze' (2006) - click here.

The lines quoted from D. H. Lawrence (including those that I have recalled from memory and put in italics) are taken from chapters 12 and 14 of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).   

Those interested in reading a related post to this one on D. H. Lawrence's painting Boccaccio Story, should click here.

Phallic Pictures 1: Boccaccio Story by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Boccaccio Story (1926)

Oil on canvas (72 x 118.5 cm)

Boccaccio Story (1926) is one of Lawrence's most charming and amusing canvases. It depicts a scene from Boccaccio's tale of a horny Italian peasant named Masetto, who feigns mutism in order to obtain a gardener's job at a local convent so that he might be afforded the opportunity to fuck the young women therein.  

In the painting, Lawrence shows Masetto asleep - or possibly pretending to be asleep - under a large almond tree on a hot afternoon with his clothes in a state of dramatic disarray, exposing his lower body to the view of some passing nuns who, it might be noted, stare intently at his genitalia, rather than averting their eyes in embarrassment as one might have expected.

For Lawrence, it was great fun discovering that he could paint his ideas and feelings and not just articulate them in his poetry and prose. Keith Sagar insists that the picture is not designed to shock and that it's a perfectly wholesome portrayal of the sexual impulse. But this is rather disingenuous.

For Sagar knows perfectly well that Lawrence's paintings from this period are part and parcel of his provocative project of phallic tenderness, via which, like Nietzsche, he hoped to trigger a revaluation of all values, enabling man to storm the angel-guarded gates and return victorious to Eden.   

In a letter to his American friend Earl Brewster - which Sagar himself refers us to when discussing the late paintings - Lawrence confides:

"I put a phallus ... in each one of my pictures somewhere. And I paint no picture that won't shock people's castrated social spirituality. I do this out of positive belief that the phallus is a great sacred image: it represents a deep, deep life which has been denied in us, and is still denied."

So, Lawrence knew very well what he was about and it's puzzling that Sagar should wish to play down the scandalous aspect of Lawrence's paintings. Puzzling also that Lawrence should react with such (seemingly genuine) distress when Boccaccio Story, along with a dozen other works, was seized by the police after being exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London in the summer of 1929.     

Boccaccio Story may very well be a painting of real beauty and great vitality, as one critic (Gwen John) wrote at the time. But so too is it quite obviously obscene in its subject matter of sexual exhibitionism and the carnal desire of nuns; what would be the point of it - and of Boccaccio's tale - were it otherwise? 


See: 

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam, (Penguin Books, 2003). Note that the story of Masetto and the nuns is the first tale told on the third day. 

D. H. Lawrence, D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, with an Introduction by Keith Sagar, (Chaucer Press, 2003). The letter by Lawrence to Earl Brewster is quoted by Sagar on p. 43 of this work. It can be found in full in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), where it is numbered 3967.

Note that Boccaccio Story is part of the D. H. Lawrence Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Accession Number 65.242). 

Those interested in reading a related post on Orlan's The Origin of War, should click here.

Insecticide and the Eco-Apocalypse

Illustration by Luisa Rivera for Yale E360 (2016)

Do people not realise that in a world without insects buzzing, there'll be no birds singing and no flowers blooming? Or do they simply no longer care so long as their smartphones continue to receive a signal?

Research data gathered by scientists and dozens of amateur entomologists from nature reserves across Germany that indicates the number of flying insects has fallen by around 75% over the last 30 years is certainly shocking, but hardly surprising to anyone old enough to remember when there were not only plenty of bees, butterflies and beetles in the backgarden, but also other invertebrates such as worms, slugs, and snails (not to mention the larger creatures that prey on these things).      

The cause of this huge - and potentially catastrophic - decline is, apparently, unclear. But, of course, we all know in our hearts what (and who) is to blame for the destruction of habitat and widespread use of pesticides on an industrial scale for decades ... Oh, the humanity!  

As the authors of the study conclude, this largely unacknowledged loss of insect biomass must henceforth be taken fully into account when evaluating ecosystems and, ultimately, the sustainability of life on earth in all its astonishing diversity.

Otherwise, the ultimate selfie will be taken by der letzte Mensch alone in a lifeless world.    

See: Hallmann CA, Sorg M, Jongejans E, Siepel H, Hofland N, Schwan H, et al, 'More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas', article in Plos One (Oct 18, 2017): click here to read online.

See also: Christian Schwägerl, 'What’s Causing the Sharp Decline in Insects, and Why It Matters', in Yale Environment 360, (July 6, 2016): click here.

On Mini-Skirts and Morality in Africa

A young woman modelling a mini-skirt 
with an African print: what's not to love? 
laviye.com

Someone wrote to ask why it is I often return to the topic of fashion which, in their view, is both besides the point and after the fact and thus, ultimately, an irrelevance. Surely, they say, there are far more important things to write about than shoes, mini-skirts and stocking tops.

Obviously, as a passionate exponent of a philosophy on the catwalk which is primarily concerned with a politics of style and the interplay between art and popular culture that fashion exemplifies, I don't agree with this. And so, here's another post that demonstrates how and why clothes are a crucial concern and the body - particularly the female body - remains a battleground around the world ...

Back in the sixties, the question of hemlines and morality in wake of the mini-skirt was an issue that exercised many minds. Nowhere more so than in Africa, where those newly in positions of authority saw Mary Quant's creations as fundamentally un-African and believed them to be yet another example of the West's corrupting influence, particularly on young, urban, independent women who were susceptible not only to fashion, but to feminism.     

Such women, who felt liberated by wearing mini-skirts and earning their own income, were branded as prostitutes and as witches who drained phallocratic society of its vital energy. They were subject not only to verbal abuse, but often serious physical violence.

In Tanzania, for example, the ruling party launched a campaign targeting what it regarded as indecent clothing. Gangs of youths patrolled the streets on the lookout for girls they deemed to be inappropriately dressed. Similar attacks on women wearing mini-skirts also took place in Ethiopia, one of which resulted in a riot that caused at least fifty people to be injured.     

In Malawi, meanwhile, president Kamuzu Banda, described mini-skirts as a fashion that was diabolic in origin and which he intended to completely eradicate from his homeland. Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, agreed; citing the mini-skirt and apartheid as the two great evils.

One might have hoped that things would be different in Africa today. But, alas, with the increase and spread of religious stupidity - both Christian and Islamic in origin - things have, if anything, only got worse for those women who would otherwise love to show off their legs. Early this century, for example, idiots in Uganda called for a ban on mini-skirts worn in public, claiming that they were a dangerous distraction to (male) drivers. (To be fair, this is at least conceivable.)

More seriously, cases of women being stripped and beaten by gangs of men acting as both morality police and fashion critics continue to be reported in numerous countries including Kenya, Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Happily, groups of astonishingly courageous women have staged defiant mini-skirt protests in which they demand the right to dress as they please and to be afforded legal protection from violence.      

The irony, of course, is that the notions of deceny that are being defended are arguably more un-African than the alien fashions and other cultural expressions that are so feared. I would suggest that those gripped by a post-colonial determination to be free of foreign influence might want to conduct a genealogy of morals, rather than just dabble with dress codes ...     

Note: those interested in an alternative take on the politics of the mini-skirt in Africa might like to see an article from 2014 by the Kenyan blogger Owaahh: click here.

Zettai Ryouiki: On the Zen and the Art of Entering the Absolute Territory

絶対領域 4:1:2.5

I: On the Erotics of Intermittance

Zettai ryouiki refers to the area of bare skin in the gap between overknee socks or stockings and the hemline of a miniskirt; what is known by worshippers as the absolute territory and regarded as a kind of sacred space that no one can intrude upon without permission. Zettai Ryouiki can also describe the erotico-aesthetic combination and charm of these three elements: skirt, thigh and stocking top.

Originally, the term derived from otaku slang as one of the attributes of moe characters in anime and manga, but it is now used widely in Japan and by those in the know outside of Japan with a penchant or fetish for this kind of thing.

Whilst to non-aficianados debate concerning what is and is not a true example of zettai ryouiki and what the perfect ratio between the length of the skirt, the exposed portion of thigh and the height of the stocking should be might seem trivial, for the devotee the devil is precisely in the detail.

Ideally, whilst the skirt should be short, the socks should be long and held properly in place; if too much leg is exposed, then expect to be downgraded.* For as Roland Barthes points out, what excites is not the flesh itself, but the gap between two edges; "it is intermittance ... which is erotic: the intermittance of skin flashing between two articles of clothing ... it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance".       

Thus whilst zettai ryouiki is not quite a science, it's certainly an art and a discipline of philosophical interest ...

 

II: On Zettai Ryouiki as Part of an Ars Erotica

In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault famously examines how ancient non-Western cultures, such as that found within Japan, developed a non-scientific discourse around sex as an object of knowledge; what he terms an ars erotica.

The truth that this esoteric way of knowing concerns itself with is the truth of sensual pleasure and how it can be experienced and intensified; there is no moral concern with what pleasures are permitted and what ones should be forbidden and neither is there an attempt to arrive at an objective-factual account of the body as organism.

The ars erotica, we might say, is a form of libidinal materialism that concerns itself directly with bodies and their pleasures; the model of scientia sexualis developed in the modern West is, in contrast, the pleasure of analysis and of exchanging lived experience for representation (of getting sex-in-the-head, as D. H. Lawrence would say). 

But - and this is important - the latter is still a pleasure and still belongs to an economy of desire. It's profoundly mistaken to divide the two things off in an absolute sense in order to construct a binary opposition. For man lives just as richly in the mind and the imagination as in the body. 

Ultimately, ideas - like erections - are seminal expressions of joy and there's nothing wrong with preferring to perv over images of zettai ryouiki, rather than physically interact with actual objects which, ironically, often object to their sexual objectification ...              

*Note that there are six grades of zettai ryouiki ranging from A-F. For purists, grades C-F - where socks are of knee-height or below - are sub-standard and ultimately forms of failure. To help secure socks and achieve the perfect look, it's acceptable to use a special glue. Readers interested in knowing more about zettai ryouiki might care to visit the page about such on Know Your Meme: click here. And for an animated treat, click here.

Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Hill and Wang, 1975), pp. 9-10.

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998).

A Short History of Hot Pants with Reference to the Case of Iris Steensma

Jodie Foster as Iris Steensma in Taxi Driver 

wearing a signature pair of hot pants

Although the term hot pants is often used generically, they are more than merely short shorts, as worn for example by athletes. For hot pants belong to the world of fashion, not sport. Thus it is that the term was first used by Women's Wear Daily in 1970 to describe garments made from glamorous materials such as velvet and satin and designed explicitly to catch the eye, unlike gym shorts made from cotton or nylon that serve a dreary practical function.

Personally, I would also distinguish hot pants from the tight denim cut-offs known as Daisy Dukes. For the latter have a distinctive history and allure all of their own and should only be worn by feisty Southern gals who drive like Richard Petty, shoot like Annie Oakley, and know the words to all of Dolly Parton's songs (and if they like to go barefoot whilst wearing them, all the better).

I suppose what I'm saying is that, in my mind, hot pants - like the mini-skirt - are associated very much with Swinging London and when I think of someone wearing them I visualise women such as Madeline Smith, Jenny Hanley, and Carol Hawkins, rather than all-American beauties like Raquel Welch.

There is, however, one exception to this: Iris Steensma, the twelve-year-old prostitute played so brilliantly by twelve-year-old Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1976); a character renowned for her signature outfits assembled from hot pants, crop tops, platform shoes, a silver studded white belt and floppy sunhat.

As fashion historian Valerie Steele rightly notes, by the mid-seventies hot pants had long ceased to be an item associated with the playful character of the sixties; instead, they had entered the darker regions of the pornographic imagination and were increasingly associated with underage prostitution. Such sleazy associations meant that they quickly fell out of favour with the majority of women.

However, forty years on and Iris Steensma is now regarded by fashionistas as a style icon and her distinctive look has captured the imagination of many designers. Marc Jacobs, for example, produced a spring/summer collection in 2011 that was openly indebted to the character (see image below) and Alessandro Michele's penchant for soft pinks frequently paired with deep reds has also been said to owe something to Iris.

Ultimately, is there anything the fashion world loves more than illicit eroticism twinned with nostalgia ...?

Futuristic Fashion: The Sci-Fi Mini-Skirt

Gabrielle Drake as
Lt. Gay Ellis in UFO (1970-71)

I think I've mentioned that I'm not a great lover of science fiction. But the future of female fashion, however, as imagined within the genre, certainly does excite my interest ...

I'm particularly struck by the fact that the mini-skirt is predicted to become almost de rigueur and worn by space babes throughout the universe, whatever their planet of origin; often silver-metallic in design, as worn, for example, by everybody's favourite Moonbase commander, Lt. Ellis, with matching top and boots. 

The question is: how did the short - often dangerously short and knicker-flashing - skirt become such a staple of futuristic fashion as conceived within 20th century science fiction?

It's been suggested that the pulp artwork of Earle K. Bergey, produced in the 1940s, was seminal to this development. Certainly by the fifties, the sci-fi micro-mini was ingrained within the pornographic imagination and the girls on Space Patrol regularly took raised hemlines not only to the outer limits of the universe, but the upper levels of the thigh; as did the lovely Anne Francis as Altaira in the sci-fi classic, Forbidden Planet (dir. Fred M. Wilcox, 1956).    

A decade later, when well above the knee skirts and dresses were officially designated by British fashion designer Mary Quant as minis, we find the women of Star Trek, including Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, also happily showing lots of leg and thus affording Captain Kirk and his mostly male crew the opportunity to perv whilst allowing her, apparently, to feel liberated and empowered.   

There is, of course, no reason why very short skirts shouldn't be popular in the 23rd century; women have been wearing them for almost as long as they've had legs ...

Archaeologists have found evidence, indeed, that neolithic lovelies liked to parade around in such, distracting their menfolk from hunting and other activities (cf. Wilma and Betty in The Flintstones) and Bronze Age beauties in Northern Europe, such as the Egtved Girl, also dressed to impress by wearing very short skirts and midriff-baring crop-top combinations.

So, it's perfectly feasible that women in the distant future and farthest reaches of space will continue to choose playfully provocative outfits that speak of youthful exuberance and optimism; to keep on dancing and reaching for the stars, whilst their hemlines go boldly upwards and their nipples burst through like hyacinth tips, as Germaine Greer once put it ...    

To see more examples of sci-fi minis, go to the Mini Skirt Monday page (#190) on Retrospace: click here.

On Superbugs, Quantum Dots and the Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse

Quantum dots glowing with visible light 

Photo: Tayfun Ruzgar / Shutterstock

As we all know, antibiotics revolutionised medicine in the twentieth-century, allowing doctors to treat and prevent a whole range of nasty and potentially deadly bacterial infections.

However, as many of us also know, laziness and stupidity on the part of healthcare professionals, farmers and consumers, resulted in their misuse and overuse. Ultimately, prescribing and popping antibiotics as if they were medicinal Smarties, allowed bacteria to develop increasingly effective resistance; to become, in tabloid parlance, superbugs.

Antimicrobial resistance is now such a serious concern that England's chief medical officer, Prof. Dame Sally Davies, has taken to the airwaves to warn that modern medicine as currently practised is under threat and that many thousands of lives are already being lost due to drug-resistant infections.*

Indeed, somewhat hysterically, Davies refers to the possibility of a post-antibiotic apocalypse and demands that governments around the world take immediate action to prevent this. Otherwise, no more organ transplants, hip replacements, or caesarian sections. Cancer treatments would also become far riskier in the future - won't somebody please think of the children?

Thankfully, there is some good news to report; science might be able to meet the challenge of the superbugs not just with newly developed antibiotics, but with nanotechnology in the form of so-called quantum dots, or artificial atoms ...     
 

Thanks to these strange, nano-sized crystals - invisible to the human eye - we have a significantly more potent weapon against drug-resistant microbes. In fact, QDs can supercharge traditional antibiotics making them up to a thousand times more effective.

Reacting as they do to certain frequencies of light, QDs can be photo-stimulated in such a manner as to disrupt vital chemical reactions that microbes - including superbug strains of E. coli and MRSA - require for their own well-being. It also appears that the dots can produce a compound known as a superoxide, which is readily absorbed by bacterial cells, further fucking-up their ability to produce energy and to develop.        

It was discovered that QDs best carry out their murderous work when subject to green light. Unfortunately, green light can only penetrate a few millimetres beneath the surface of the human body, which means that QD-enhanced antibiotics can at present only treat skin infections or open wounds. The idea is that, eventually, hard-working biophysicists will work out how to trigger them with infra-red light.

Still, it's good to know that, thanks to quantum mechanics, there's hope that we won't all die off in the bacterial apocalypse imagined by Dame Sally and certain doom-mongering members of the World Health Organization.

As for those with concerns about using nanotechnology to fight disease, well they may continue to drink their own urine, perform caffeine enemas, or dabble with dragon's blood as is their wont ... 


*Presently, the number of lives lost each year to drug-resistant infections is estimated to be 700,000. Failure to address the issue, however, is likely to see this figure increase globally to 10,000,000 by 2050.

On Black Dandyism (With Reference to the Case of Jean-Michel Basquiat)

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988) 

The New York Times Magazine (10 Feb 1985)

"Being a black man", says Ekow Eshun, "means being subject to the white gaze". 

But if that means becoming an object of prejudice, suspicion and negative stereotype, so also does it mean becoming an object of fascination and, indeed, admiration. Certainly when it comes to the crucial question of style, it would simply be churlish to deny that many black men possess it to a high degree and fully understand its importance as a politics of resistance.

Indeed, without wishing to appear full of self-loathing or a sense of racial inferiority, I know exactly what Adam Ant means in Kings of the Wild Frontier when he says that for those of us with pale skin - even when we're healthy and our colour schemes delight - down below our dandy clothes we remain a shade too white.        

And so, whilst there are plenty of good-looking, very elegantly dressed white men in the world, the dandyism of the black man always seems to have something extra; to be that bit sexier and more provocative; to be invested with attitude (which is why the idea of a black actor playing James Bond isn't as outlandish as some suggest - it could only add a certain frisson to the character). 

This is exemplified in the above photo of Jean-Michel Basquiat on the cover of the New York Times Magazine in 1985; arguably the greatest artist of the late-twentieth century, he was certainly the most fashionable.

Pictured here in one of the Armani suits in which he loved to work, Basquiat knows that dandyism is, at its most interesting, not merely a method of flaunting one's individual beauty, but of flouting social conventions governing ideas of class, race, gender and sexuality; a means of saying fuck me and fuck you at one and the same time. 

To be clear: it's not what he's wearing, but how he's wearing it that matters; with barefoot insouciance, completely unconcerned about the fact that the expensive suit is paint-spattered (for he knows he still looks clean) and "confounding expectations about how black men should look or carry themselves in order to establish a place of personal freedom: a place beyond the white gaze, where the black body is a site of liberation rather than oppression" ...

In other words, black styles matter ...

See: Ekow Eshun, 'The subversive power of the black dandy', The Guardian, (04 July 2016): click here to read online. 

See also: Shantrelle P. Lewis, 'Black Dandyism is Back, and It's Both Oppositional Fashion and Therapy at Once', How We Get to Next (30 Sept 2016): click here. 

To read The New York Times Magazine feature on Basquiat, 'New Art, New Money', by Cathleen McGuigan, click here.  

Note: the first large-scale exhibition in the UK of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat is currently showing at the Barbican (London) and runs until 28 Jan 2018: click here for details.