In Praise of a Well-Turned Ankle

A judge and contestant in an ankle contest 
organised by the Women's Section of the 
British Railways Social Club, 
Oxford, 1949 

I.

Some men are very fond of shapely female legs. Others are partial to a pretty pair of feet. But I've always been an admirer of that erotic zone where these things intersect; the so-called talocrural region. Indeed, if a woman has ugly ankles, then it's almost irrelevant to me how shapely her legs or how pretty her feet.

And the key to a lovely looking ankle?

The curve: that and a pronounced narrowing from calf to foot (an effect easily enhanced by wearing a pair of high heels). Ideally, there should also be a little vein - visible, but not overly-prominent - cutting across the malleolus (whether this be the medial or lateral malleolus is a matter of personal preference).

Essentially then, it's fair to say that fine ankles determine my desire; just as they did for the ancient Greeks, who often explicitly related the (un)desirability of woman to the slenderness of her ankles. According to the lyric poet Archilocus, for example, a woman with fat ankles deserves to be thought of as a vulgar object of loathing.


II.
 
I have to admit, this seems a bit harsh - certainly by modern standards. So maybe it's just as well that Archilocus wasn't around in the 1930s and '40s to judge the ankle contests that were very popular in England at this time, with even an annual pageant on the rooftop of Selfridges.

Originally, the contestants were concealed behind a thick curtain, only displaying their lower-legs and feet and still wearing their stockings and shoes. In later years, however, the organisers did away with this aspect which was meant to afford anonymity and modesty.

Once the women were lined up, a judge - usually but not always a man (and, strangely, often the local bobby) - would slowly walk up and down, occasionally stopping for a closer inspection and to take a few measurements. Finally, he would announce the lucky winner who - as the events were often sponsored by hosiery companies - could expect to receive a prize pair of stockings, as well as the adulation of her local community.

Now, I know what some will say about these contests. But such spoil-sports view everything with an evil eye and are possessed by the spirit of gravity. Women should be proud of their ankles, poets should sing of them, and honours should be bestowed upon those who possess the prettiest looking pairs.

Surprisingly, the associate fashion editor of The Guardian agrees, arguing that the ankle "should be a focus of national celebration". It's a blessing, she writes, that whilst British women are often large of thigh and chunky of calf, they have ankles "made in the image of Persephone".   


See: Jess Cartner-Morley, 'What makes a nice ankle?', The Guardian, (12 April 2006): click here to read online.

See also Phoebe Jackson-Edwards, 'Best foot forwards ...' Daily Mail (14 Oct 2015), an article which is illustrated with marvellous black and white photos of ankle contests in the 1930s and '40s, including the one below, taken in Hounslow, in July 1930. Click here.

Reflections on the Death Mask (With Reference to the Case of L'Inconnue de la Seine)

 L'Inconnue de la Seine (c. late-1880s) 
A favourite pin-up of necrophiles

I. How Even the Dead Can Continue to Make an Impression

Napoleon, Nietzsche, Alfred Hitchcock, James Joyce, and Malcolm McLaren have at least one thing in common: they all left behind them a death mask, which, for those who don't know, is a post-mortem portrait sculpted from a wax or plaster impression made of an individual's face shortly after their passing (either with or without their permission).

Although such masks have a long tradition, I suspect that most modern people find them a bit creepy and would happily consign them to some dark corner of the uncanny valley out of sight. But, even today, we find them displayed in libraries, museums, and art galleries.

Dead kings, politicians, philosophers, poets, and even notorious outlaws including Ned Kelly, have all been commemorated in this manner. One of the most famous death masks, however, is that of an unidentified teenage girl known as L'Inconnue de la Seine ...


II. The Unknown Woman of the Seine

At the end of the 19th century, the mask of a pretty young suicide fished out of the Seine became a must-have fixture on the walls of fashionable people's homes and inspired numerous literary works. The story goes that a pathologist working at the Paris Morgue was so enchanted by her serene beauty that he felt compelled to immortalise her features.  

Rilke and, later, Albert Camus both compared her eerily joyful expression to the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, whilst, in The Savage God (1972), Al Alvarez notes that L'Inconnue was the erotic ideal for an entire generation of girls in the pre-War period who morbidly based their look on hers.

And, amusingly, the face of the world's first CPR training mannequin - known as Resusci Anne and designed by a Norwegian toy maker - was modelled after this unknown adolescent corpse (thus adding a darkly perverse element to the already slightly queer act of administering the kiss of life to a rubber doll).


Note: 

Anyone interested in having a death mask - or a memorial sculpture - made of themselves or a loved one (which can be cast in a variety of materials, including marble and bronze), should contact the British sculptor Nick Reynolds, who is renowned for his work in this field and has produced masks of, amongst others, the film director Ken Russell, actor Peter O'Toole, and his own father, Bruce Reynolds, mastermind of the Great Train Robbery: click here. 

Bliss it Was in that Dawn to be Alive: Reflections on the Event of May '68

For all its romantic idealism and revolutionary fanaticism, there's still something about May '68 that I can neither fully renounce nor denounce.

Indeed, fifty years on, and it seems to me that there's still something glowing red and magnificent, like a burning ember, at the heart of this irreducible and indeterminable event - albeit an event which, as Deleuze and Guattari say, failed to unfold on a collective level; something which deserves not merely nostalgic recollection, but active rekindling.

For as a punk-provocateur, reared in the politics of the Situationist International, I still think that offering creative (sometimes criminal) resistance to the status quo and challenging all forms of orthodoxy is the only ethical thing to do with one's life. In other words: It is right to rebel (a slogan originating in Marx, Mao or Marcuse, but which I learned from Malcolm McLaren).

But Johnny, what are you rebelling against?

Well, against all forms of reactionary stupidity for a start. And against that long list of words which begin with the letter C and induce boredom, including: capitalism, consumerism, cliché, conformity, convention, comfort and convenience. 

I was told recently that I would never make a very good philosopher, as I'm too impatient to read slowly and too shallow to care about fundamental ideas: "You're part blogger, part comedian - always looking for a catchy turn of phrase or an amusing punchline."

That's probably true: I certainly love those fabulous slogans that were sprayed on the walls of Paris: Il est interdit d'interdire! Soyez réalistes - demandez l'impossible! And, most famously, Sous les pavés, la plage! If this makes me a Marxist of the Groucho tendency, then so be it; as someone born in May '68 it's hardly surprising after all ...


Notes 

Deleuze and Guattari, 'May '68 Did Not take Place, Two Regimes of Madness, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (Semiotext(e), 2007, pp. 233-36. 

As I say above, for Deleuze and Guattari May '68 was (is) a pure event; i.e., an unstable condition without cause that opens up a new field of possibility or becoming. It might be quickly co-opted, but there's something in it that can never be outmoded; thus May '68 is, in a sense, still unfolding now/here. One is tempted to say something similar of punk - which is why the slogan punk's not dead is, technically correct (if not for the reasons that many adherents of the movement believe). And it's why even Joe Corré, despite his uniquely privileged (or accursed) position, cannot declare its passing; no matter how much shit he burns nor how many piles of ash he assembles in a Mayfair art gallery.  

On the Politics of the Female Nipple

Bella Hadid shows how to free the nipple in style

Photo: Getty Images for Dior (2017)

I.

It's true that both men and women have nipples. But the female nipple isn't merely a physiological fact; it's also the site of culture, politics and socially constructed meaning.

For whilst the male nipple is just as sensitive to certain stimuli and can also be erotically aroused, it isn't subject to the same pornographic fascination or taboo within our culture. The male nipple can be freely displayed in a way that the female nipple cannot.

The latter has, therefore, been hidden away since the Victorian era and its public exposure is still considered immodest, if not criminally indecent; perhaps not on the beaches of Europe or in the British tabloids, but certainly in the United States where female toplessness is far more regulated and the glimpse of a nipple, even for a split second, can cause a moral panic (readers will recall the case of Janet Jackson performing at the Super Bowl in 2004).   

Facebook and other social media companies have thus struggled with the problem posed by the female nipple. Wanting to be seen to share community standards concerning nudity and sexually explicit material, they nevertheless don't want to be viewed as sexist for upholding an antiquated form of gender discrimination that allows images of male but not female nipples.

II.

An ongoing campaign, Free the Nipple, has gained a good deal of attention and celebrity support since it was launched by filmmaker Lina Esco in 2012. Campaigners argue that it should be legally and culturally acceptable for women to bare their breasts in public; that it is a form of injustice that allows men to go topless, but not women.      

Of course, there's a naivety in this campaign and the related topfreedom movement - as there always is in such campaigns and movements which never seem to consider the law of unintended (or unforeseen) consequences.

Consider, for example, what happens when famous singers, actresses and models jump on board and start posting images of their perfect breasts and super-perky nipples. It doesn't result in a great leap forward for womankind; it leads, unfortunately, to greater insecurity and a new trend in plastic surgery - so-called designer nipples.

For it turns out that many women don't want to free their nipples; at least not straight away. They want first to have botox fillers injected into their areola so that their nipples might look like those of their favourite celebrities. Only when they have permanently erect-looking and symmetrical on-trend nipples do they feel confident enough to wear sheer dresses or see-through tops and make themselves subject to the world's gaze.

Thus, ironically, an attempt to emancipate women, make them proud of their bodies and further equality, ends in lining the pockets of already very rich and invariably male cosmetic surgeons. Idealism, it seems, always collapses into gross materialism; for such is the evil genius of the world.   

Note: To read an earlier post on the female nipple, click here.

In Praise of the Bob

Louise Brooks with trademark shingle bob 
in The Canary Murder Case (1929)

As is evident throughout his work, D. H. Lawrence had a decided preference - I wouldn't quite say fetish - for long hair and beautiful women who liked to sit and brush their flowing locks in the sun: an action in which, according to Lawrence, we glimpse something divine; a manifestation of god, with the latter defined as a great creative urge towards being incarnate.   

Not surprisingly, therefore, Lawrence didn't approve of the fashion for bobbed hair. Not only were such cuts at odds with his sexual politics, but they presented him with theological problems too. Which is a shame, as the bob remains, in my eyes at least, one of the wonders of the modern world. Always contemporary and liberated-looking, the bob is sexy, stylish and subversive in its atheistic chic.    

Post-War, although still seen by many within the older generation as a sign of immorality and decadence rather than youthful independence, the bob became increasingly popular thanks to society beauties such as Lady Diana Cooper, trendsetters like the dancer Irene Castle, and, of course, movie stars, including Mary Thurman, Colleen Moore, and the iconic figure of Louise Brooks (everybody's favourite flapper).

By the mid-1920s, the bob in all its numerous versions, including my personal favourite, the so-called shingle bob - a cut that is tapered very short at the back thereby exposing the hairline at the neck, whilst the sides are formed into a single curl or point on each cheek - was the most sought after female style in the Western world (and beyond), as women everywhere signalled their modernity and rejection of traditional roles, norms and values.

As Coco Chanel once said: A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life.   

 

Since then, the bob has passed in and out of fashion - but never out of style. In the mid-1960s, for example, Vidal Sassoon gave us his distinctive take on the cut. Whilst Uma Thurman's character, Mia Wallace, in Tarantino's 1994 cinematic masterpiece, Pulp Fiction, will forever be remembered for her ankle-cropped black slacks, crisp white shirt, and beautifully bobbed hair; she looks clean, she looks sharp, and she looks powerful.

In a word, she looks perfect ...         

I Will Show You How to Sneer With a Handful of Dust: Ash from Chaos by Joe Corré

Joe Corré: Ash from Chaos (2018)
Photograph: Vianney Le Caer/Rex/Shutterstock

Having already written on Joe Corré's controversial and, at the time, much derided decision to destroy his collection of Sex Pistols memorabilia back in 2016 [click here], I suppose I'm obliged to now comment on his latest attempt to exorcise demons and finally come to terms with his own heritage.

Ash from Chaos features the remnants from the above Burn Punk London event placed inside a glass casket surrounded by votive candles and with a replica of his father's death mask sat morbidly - but also kind of brilliantly - on top. It's an obscene gesture demonstrating all the bad taste and insensitivity that Malcolm himself was more than happy to trade in: I will show you how to sneer with a handful of dust.    

For all his claims that punk is something that no longer interests him and that he understands how it has become (and perhaps always was) something to consume and to assist with the marketing of a wide variety of other things - from alternative lifestyles to credit cards and fast food - he seems to still care very much; the work radiates intense personal emotion and he talks about the sincerity of his ideas.

Indeed, one of the things he criticises his father for was precisely his lack of sincerity; pointing out that, for Malcolm, it was mostly about the fun of the prank. Eventually, argues Corré, people get bored with provocation for its own sake and want to explore and experience things that have real meaning and value. 

And so, for Corré, Ash from Chaos, isn't just another caper or a continuation of the Swindle. It's intended - in all sincerity - as an environmental polemic; a critique of consumerism and a world that piles up rubbish and pollutes even the remotest places on earth with its plastic waste. The work ultimately betrays his mother's influence, more than McLaren's; it's done to make Vivienne proud of him - not to simply avenge himself upon his father's ghost, as some have suggested. 

By his own admission, Corré isn't a fucking artist. He is, rather, a loving son, a concerned citizen, and a committed activist with a social conscience (all proceeds from the show will be donated to charity, though I doubt very much that anyone will pay the £6 million reserve price). In sum: he means it man.

But two questions remain: What kind of phoenix will rise from the ashes of punk? And does anyone under the age of fifty really give a fuck?


Note: Ash from Chaos is at Lazinc Gallery, London, until 7 May: click here for details. 

For a promo video directed by Nigel Askew and produced by Joe Corré and Gas Media (2018) uploaded to YouTube, click here.

Upskirting

Calvin Klein ad featuring Klara Kristen 

Photo by Harley Weir (2016)

As long as there are young women wearing short skirts and pretty underwear then the phenomenon of upskirting is not going to go away - even if you criminalise the activity, as is now proposed. All (heterosexual) men want to catch a glimpse upskirt or peek downblouse, be they 18th century French painters, like Fragonard, or 21st century voyeurs surreptitiously using a smart phone.

Without wishing to subscribe to the moral hysteria that surrounds this subject - and even though I'm not female - I can understand the objection to some prick taking an unauthorised photograph and then posting the image online or circulating it via social media. Everyone is surely entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy within a public space and not to be sexually harassed or humiliated.

Ultimately, however, I see this more as an ethical issue rather than a legal one. Or perhaps simply as a question of etiquette; one simply doesn't do this kind of thing in polite society. It's so rude! as a member of the Brodie Set would say.

The problem, of course, is that we don't live within polite society. We live, rather, within a pornified (or sexually liberated) culture where the recording, distribution, and consumption of images via sophisticated technology - including images that are intended to be obscene or provocative in nature - has become absolutely normalised.

Because I'm a bit old-fashioned, it seems to me to be bad manners to upskirt a stranger without their knowledge or consent. But ads such as the one shown above, featuring a picture by the young and highly acclaimed (female) photographer Harley Weir for Calvin Klein, clearly help construct a kinky code of conduct that encourages and endorses what at one time would have been branded as overtly deviant behaviour.

After the orgy, there's clearly a need for a new sexual ethos. But who could we possibly task to draw up such? I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable handing the job over to feminist academics such as Clare McGlynn and Erica Rackley, for example, who argue that upskirting belongs next to revenge porn on a continuum of image-based sexual abuse, reinforcing as it does a rape culture that fundamentally violates a woman's human rights.

As indicated earlier, I'm really not convinced that we need a more comprehensive politico-legal response to upskirting. I would really rather there were fewer laws, not more.

Nor - at the risk of minimising the nature and impact of upskirting - do I think it's helpful to encourage women who have had some creep take an illicit photo regard themselves as victim-survivors. To feel that your dignity has been stolen and self-worth destroyed simply because someone caught sight of your knickers (or even your genitalia) is, I would suggest, an overreaction.

And, finally, anyone who imagines for one moment that life and love can be made to unfold entirely within a framework (and safe space) of human rights is laughably mistaken: for life is tragic and love is deadly and we are all of us - whatever our gender - violated and humiliated on a daily basis by the evil genius of the world.

Notes 

As far as I'm aware, there is still no specific law against upskirting in the UK, although, in 2010, Scotland broadened the definition of voyeurism to explicitly cover the non-consensual taking of images beneath clothing - presumably this included kilts - either for the perpetrator's sexual gratification, or in order to cause the victim harm or distress. It should be noted, however, that there have been successful prosecutions for upskirting in England and Wales under the common law offense of outraging public decency. One might have thought that this suggests there's no real need for further legislation, though if women like the Conservative MP Maria Miller (Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee) and Sarah Green (of the End Violence Against Women Coalition) are successful in their campaigning, then the horrific crime of upskirting will soon be on the statute books.

See: Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, and Ruth Houghton, 'Beyond Revenge Porn: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse', in Feminist Legal Studies, Vol. 25, Issue 1 (April 2017), pp. 25-46: click here to read online.          

On Human Plasticity, DNA Data Storage and the Singularity

Imagine an individual, says Nietzsche, who could embody the entire history of mankind; assimilating all that was once strange and alien and accessing knowledge and experience long forgotten. Such plastic power would make him a god, would it not?

Well, thanks to the possibilities opened up by new techniques and technologies, including DNA data storage, perhaps we might all one day have the opportunity to carry around within us every book, every image, every piece of music, every memory, every possibility ...    

Scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute have already converted digital data into the four nucleobases found in DNA and then successfully stored and retrieved the text and audio files - which included Shakespeare's sonnets - with between 99.99 and 100% accuracy (i.e. with an extremely low rate of data loss).

Obviously, there's still some way to go before we might use a little finger as a flash drive, but the future is fast approaching at an ever-accelerated rate and rather than fear it, perhaps we should go with the flow and ensure that artificial superintelligence also belongs to us and not just our machines in a posthuman world ...

Note: Just to provide some idea of how pressing the problem of data storage is and why DNA is such a potentially fantastic solution ... In 2020, it's estimated that we'll need to store 40 trillion gigabytes of data. That requires 2.6 billion hard drives, or 42 billion USB sticks. However, just a single gram of DNA can also do the job.   

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

Image: Shutterstock / Wikicommons / Big Think

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

 breaking down polyethylene terephthalate into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol - 

two delicious and yet environmentally benign substances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freud in the Age of Neuroscience

Image: Alison Mackey / Discover (2014)

As a matter of fact, although Freud is often described as the father of psychoanalysis and credited with discovering the unconscious mind, he didn't invent the term Unbewußte.

It was coined, rather, by the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling and was first used in his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800); a work that some regard as a precursor to Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (1899). One of Schelling's readers happened to be the influential poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and it was he who introduced this concept into the English-speaking world.

I think it's important to be reminded of this. Reminded, that is to say, of the metaphysical and romantic origins of Freudian analysis. For whilst it has always liked to present itself as a modern science, this is highly contestable and I don't think it coincidental that many of its concepts have continued to exert their strongest appeal amongst philosophers, literary critics, film theorists, and those working in the arts, such as the Surrealists.    

This is not to belittle the huge cultural impact of psychoanalysis, nor deny that Freud was a true founder of discursivity, to use Foucault's phrase, establishing an almost infinite number of new ways to think and speak the self, the non-self, and other. But, psychoanalysis isn't - and never has been - a legitimate science.

For one thing - as Karl Popper pointed out - its theories have either not been tested or are unable to be tested and so can neither be verified nor shown to be false. Other well known figures, including the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker and evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould, have also criticised psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience. The theoretical physicist Richard Feynman even went so far as to dismiss practitioners of psychoanalysis as witch doctors.              

And then there are eliminative materialists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the mental states and structures that those subscribing to Viennese folk psychology accept as realities. For them, there are brains and we should stick to talking about brain activity and neural networks when putting forward any theory of  mind. Thus, there is no unconscious that we can locate and which is home to all kinds of horrors and oedipal desires (let's not even mention mythological archetypes).       

I have to admit, I'm certainly sympathetic to this way of thinking and - push comes to shove - I can't help seeing recent developments in neuroscience as fatal to psychoanalysis; making it look not just obsolete and irrelevant, but, simply, wrong - and at times laughably so (I'm thinking of Freud's ideas concerning psychosexual development, for example).

Finally, be it noted that Freud's notion of psychic determinism - which posits that any and all mental processes have significance (even those things that seem arbitrary or banal) - also appears to be a lot of phooey. For research has shown that a large amount of what goes on in the brain can be regarded as ephemeral cognition and perceptual junk. And this includes our precious dreams - described by Allan Hobson as randomised imagery that has nothing to do with unconscious desires or dramatised wish-fulfilment.*

So where now and what next for psychoanalysis? Well, it seems that in order to survive in this age of neuroscience it is having to adapt and evolve into a hybrid discipline known as neuropsychoanalysis.

Adherents to this new movement - led by the South African neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst Mark Solms - fully support modern brain research, but, on the other hand, they're appalled by eliminativism and argue that the mind and the subjective laws that determine mental life are real and thus deserve be taken seriously.

It seems to me, however, that they mostly want to rehabilitate their master's name; thus their constant reminding us of the fact that the young Freud was a qualified medical doctor who spent many years working in the area of natural science as a neuropathologist. For Solms et al, it seems that no matter how much he got wrong, Freud remains worthy of respect - and not just in the humanities and social science departments.   

*Interestingly, this was also D. H. Lawrence's position in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922), where he writes that most dreams are purely insignificant; just "heterogeneous odds and ends of images swept together accidentally". It is, says Lawrence, "beneath our dignity to attach any real importance to them". Indeed, to imagine them loaded with meaning is simply a sign of our narcissism. Readers interested in the chapter on 'Sleep and Dreams' can read it free online thanks to Project Gutenberg by clicking here. 

This post grew out of discussion with Dr Simon Solomon to whom I am grateful.