Notes on 'The Birds' by Daphne du Maurier

Cover to the Virago 2004 edition

Illustration by Jamie Keenan

For many people 'The Birds' (1952) is Daphne du Maurier's greatest short story.

Whilst I'm not sure I'd agree with this critical assessment, it would be foolish to deny its genius, or its appeal for those of us who like the idea of humanity's vulnerability in the face of a malevolent natural world in which - if we did but realise it - even our feathered friends hate us and dream of revenge.

As Patrick McGrath rightly points out, whilst some suggestion is made that freak weather conditions are possibly to blame for the sudden violent behaviour of the birds, the real power of the story resides "in the reader's suspicion that there exist other, less narrowly scientific explanations, rooted perhaps in cosmic punishment for humanity's sins".

In other words, it's the ambiguity of the story - particularly concerning the avian aggression - that makes it so disturbing; the horror of people pecked to death by a thousand tiny beaks is never described in detail by du Maurier. (In fact, she tells us more of the little corpses of robins, finches, wrens, sparrows, and blue tits than she does of farmer Trigg and his wife, Jim the cowman, or the village postman, who all fall victim to the birds.) 

This ambiguity is continued to the very end of the tale: Nat Hocken, sheltering with his wife and children in the kitchen of his little cottage, eating soup with bread and dripping, decides to smoke his last cigarette, like a condemned man who is reconciled to his fate: "He reached for it, switched on the silent wireless. He threw the empty packet on the fire, and watched it burn."

But as he listened to the sound of the birds relentlessly pecking at the windows and doors, he also, rather philosophically, wondered "how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, behind the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them the instinct to destroy mankind with all the deft precision of machines".

That's a lovely way to end a tale; revealing yet again du Maurier's dark, inhuman brilliance. No wonder Hitchcock loved her so ...*

Notes

Daphne du Maurier, 'The Birds', in The Birds and Other Stories, (Virago Press, 2004).

Patrick McGrath, 'Mistress of menace', The Guardian (5 May 2007): click here to read online.  

* Interestingly, du Maurier didn't like Hitchcock's 1963 adaptation of 'The Birds'. To be fair, the latter did abandon everything in the original story except the title and the central idea of birds inexplicably attacking human beings. But as he once said, his job was to create cinema, not remain faithful to every detail on the written page of a book.    

Let Them Eat Bananas

Image credit: Dan Murrell / New Statesman (20 May 2018)

I.

Let them eat cake is the standard (slightly inaccurate) English translation of the French phrase Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

A phrase, according to Rousseau, spoken by a great princess upon learning that the peasants had no bread and thereby displaying either her callous contempt of the people, or her inability to comprehend the grinding, desperate reality of poverty.

Commonly attributed to Marie Antoinette, there's no record of her having said it. And so it could just as easily have come from the lips of some other overly-privileged royal cunt; Maria Theresa of Spain, for example, or, indeed, the retired Hollywood actress-cum-Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle ... 
 

II.

I don't know why the latter decided to pay an impromptu visit to the One25 charity in Bristol last Friday - an organisation that helps women who used to be called prostitutes, but who have now been rebranded as sex workers - nor, indeed, do I know why she would drag poor Prince Harry along with her.  

One assumes the royal couple went along to meet volunteers and demonstrate their support by helping to assemble parcels of food, warm clothing and condoms for the women on the streets; something which is not quite pandering, but is arguably enabling a lifestyle of vice and (unofficially) giving the royal seal of approval to such.    

And the fact that Meghan - entirely off her own bat - decided to inscribe the bananas that were being handed out with inspirational messages only lends weight to this argument. But it is also peculiarly offensive to tell vulnerable women leading dangerous, often desperate but otherwise depressingly ordinary lives, that they are strong and special. 

American schoolchildren might find such patronising bullshit empowering, but surely the whores of England aren't such snowflakes as to be taken in by this ...? Indeed, one might hope that the next time the lovely Meghan decides to slum it in a red light district they tell her exactly what she can do with her bananas.

Note: for those interested in seeing filmed footage of the Duchess personally signing pieces of fruit, click here. 

Jumping the Shark (With Reference to the Case of Maldoror)

Dr Louzou: Maldoror et le requin femelle (2008) 
obscur_echange.livejournal.com

I.

I don't know if the erotic fascination with sharks, or selachophilia as I imagine it's known, is recognised as a distinct subclass of zoophilia, but I'm guessing that it must be pretty rare to want to sexually engage a great white or hammerhead.*

Dolphins, I can see the attraction of and have, in fact, previously written here on delphinophilia. I am sympathetic also to those who, like Troy McClure, have a thing for fish and have posted too on the subject of icthyophilia.

But getting jiggy with Jaws seems to me to be taking things a bit too far - by which I mean moving into the realm of pure fantasy, not overstepping some kind of moral boundary. Indeed, the only case of a human-shark relationship that I know of is found in Lautréamont's great poetic novel Le Chants de Maldoror (1868-69).          

II.

The Songs of Maldoror is a queer gothic study of a misanthropic and misotheistic protagonist who, like a Sadean libertine, renounces conventional morality and devotes himself to a life of evil. Its transgressive, experimental, and often absurd style both anticipated and influenced Surrealism; Dalí was such a fan that he even illustrated an edition of the work.    

Each of the 60 chapters (or verses) can be read independently and in isolation, as there seems to be no narrative continuity or even any direct relationship between events. One strange episode simply follows another, as if in a dream or nightmare.

Having said that, there are certain common themes and recurrent images and there's also a noticeably large number of animals passing through the work, who seem to be admired by Maldoror for their nonhumanity and inhumanity.

One of these animals is the female shark with whom he copulates in this memorable, rather charming passage:

"They look into each other's eyes for some minutes, each astonished to find such ferocity in the other's eyes. They swim around keeping each other in sight, and each one saying to themselves: 'I have been mistaken; here is one more evil than I.' Then by common accord they glide towards one another underwater, the female shark using its fins, Maldoror cleaving the waves with his arms; and they hold their breath in deep veneration, each one wishing to gaze for the first time upon the other, his living portrait. When they are three yards apart they suddenly and spontaneously fall upon one another like two lovers and embrace with dignity and gratitude, clasping each other as tenderly as brother and sister. Carnal desire follows this demonstration of friendship. Two sinewy thighs press tightly against the monster's flesh [...] arms and fins are clasped around the beloved object, while their throats and breasts soon form one glaucous mass amidst the exhalations of the sea-weed [...] and rolling on top of one another down into the unknown deeps, they joined in a long, chaste and ghastly coupling!"

Whether, technically, it would be possible for a human male to sexually penetrate the body of a female shark, I don't know: a penis isn't quite the same as a clasper and a cloaca not quite as welcoming as a mammalian vagina. Still, you never know until you try I suppose: however, any would-be lovers should be warned - sharks play rough ... 

Notes

* There are probably significantly more people who fantasise about being attacked and eaten by a shark, but that's an entirely different kettle of fish; that is to say, whilst vorarephilia has an erotic element to it, it's not the same as wishing to fuck what used to be known by sailors as a sea dog. 

Le Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and Poems, trans. Paul Knight, (Penguin Books, 1978). The passage quoted is in Part II, Chapter 13, pp. 111-112.    

Rocking the Lobster Look with Elsa Schiaparelli, Salvador Dalí and Cosmo Kramer

Lobster evening dress by Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Salvador Dalí

Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer in Seinfeld wearing his lobster shirt 

I.

The surreal genius of Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer in Seinfeld is not to everyone's taste. In fact, of the four central characters I find Kramer the least interesting and sympathetic. But I do like his comic hipster dress sense, including the short-sleeved white lobster shirt with red print.   

I don't know from where the character drew his sartorial inspiration, but it's nice to think that this particular item is an hommage to the work of the great Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, who had a penchant for marine crustaceans with their hard protective shells and soft insides, particularly lobsters, which appear in several of his iconic works, including a dress made in collaboration with the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli ...       

II.

If Coco Chanel ever had a serious rival, it was Elsa Schiaparelli - one of the most fabulous figures in fashion between the wars, whose designs displayed the influence of several prominent artists, including Dalí and Jean Cocteau, though it should be noted that her great inspiration and teacher was master couturier Paul Poiret.

Punk rockers may be amused to discover, for example, that it was Schiaparelli - and not McLaren and Westwood - who first made clothes with visible zips as a key element of the design. She also loved to experiment with synthetic materials, unusual buttons and outrageous decorative features. It was her designs produced in collaboration with Dalí, however, that remain amongst her best known, including the so-called Lobster Dress of 1937.*

As can be seen from the above photo, the dress was a relatively simple white silk evening dress with a crimson waistband and featuring a large lobster - painted by Dalí - on the skirt. Whilst not as amusing as his Lobster Telephone created the year before, the dress - famously worn by Wallis Simpson - is just as provocative I think, bringing surrealist elements of eroticism and cruelty into haute couture (for Dalí, lobsters invariably symbolised sex and suffering). ** 

Notes

* The three other works that came out of the Schiaparelli-Dalí collaboration are the Tears Dress (1938), a pale blue evening gown printed with rips and tears and worn with a long veil; the Skeleton Dress (1938), a black crêpe number which used trapunto quilting to create ribs, spine, and leg bones; and the Shoe Hat (1937-38), which, as one might guess, is a hat shaped like a high heeled shoe.

** Two years later, at the New York World's Fair (1939), Dalí unveiled a multi-media experience entitled Dream of Venus, which featured semi-naked female models dressed in outfits made of fresh seafood, including lobsters used to cover their genitalia. See the photo below taken by German-American fashion photographer Horst P. Horst.

Surprise musical bonus: click here.

On Dalí's Queer Fascination with Hitler

Salvador Dalí: The Enigma of Hitler (1939)

Oil on canvas (95 x 141 cm)

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

I.

A lot of comedians find the figure of the Führer funny; from Charlie Chaplin to Mel Brooks there's a long tradition of laughing at Hitler and the Nazis. But some artists and aristocrats have a queer fascination with fascism and find the Führer rather sexy with his neat mustache and Aryan eye, bright blue.

This is certainly true of the great Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí. He had a thing for Hitler, whom he identified with the misanthropic, misotheistic figure of Maldoror and wasn't shy about admitting so in openly erotic terms: 

"I often dreamed of Hitler as a woman. His flesh, which I had imagined whiter than white, ravished me..."
  

Such statements, along with his 1939 work, The Enigma of Hitler, were the final straw for André Breton and his fellow Surrealists: it was one thing Dalí airing his dirty laundry in public - including a pair of shit-stained underpants - but to confess an attraction for the German leader on the eve of war, that was beyond the pale.

Thus, Dalí was (finally) expelled from the group with whom he had been affiliated for a decade. His argument that Hitler was merely a manifestation of his own decadent aestheticism didn't really wash. Nor did his insistence that Hitler might himself be regarded as a kind of Surrealist, prepared to launch a war solely for the pleasure of losing and seeing the world in ruins - the ultimate act of gratuitous violence.


II.

Dalí would in later years paint two more pictures of Hitler: Metamorphosis of Hitler's Face into a Moonlit Landscape with Accompaniment (1958) and the charming watercolour entitled Hitler Masturbating (1973). But it's the Engima work, reproduced above, that shows Dalí at his best and most recognisable; many of his favourite themes, symbols and motifs are on display here.   

Critics who like to approach art from a psychoanalytic perspective suggest the picture is all about Dalí's fear of domineering authority figures, or his anxious concerns to do with impotence. And, who knows, maybe they're on to something. However, such readings don't exhaust the work and, intriguing as the psychosexual elements are, I think it's the political nature of the painting that most interests.

For whilst Breton and company insist it glorifies the German dictator, it seems to me far more ambiguous (as all art should be). Thus, one could just as reasonably argue that the painting seems humorously critical of the fact that Hitler threatens to land us all in the soup ...       

Note: readers interested in other recent posts on Dalí can click here and here.

Orwell Versus Dalí

You can tell a lot about a man by his moustache ...

I.

One of the things I like about Salvador Dalí is that, like Bataille, he really got under the skin of André Breton, who objected to his counter-revolutionary fascination (and flirtation) with fascism and his love of fame and fortune.

Another thing I like about Dalí, is that he also repulsed George Orwell; that talented mediocrity whom, as G. K. Chesterton rightly pointed out, is precisely the kind of person the English love best; a man of sound reason who speaks his mind in plain and simple language. 

We find this mixture of common sense and candour - not to mention splenetic moralism - in Orwell's essay Benefit of Clergy: a series of notes written on the great Spanish artist who had recently published his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942).

As we shall see, Orwell considered Dalí's text flagrantly dishonest, seemingly unable to grasp that it was a surreal and fictionalised version of his life, rather than an attempt to write a truthful and accurate account. Dalí was perverting the genre of autobiography and playing with language in a darkly humorous manner, just as he played with paint on canvas.

II.

Actually, to be fair to Orwell, he does seem to understand that Dalí's text has been "rearranged and romanticised" and is more a "record of fantasy" than a genuine autobiography - it's just that he doesn't like it. He thinks it's a narcissistic book and a form of exhibitionism: "a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight" - which is the worst kind of limelight there is in Orwell's homophobic imagination.

Its only value, says Orwell, is in revealing how far the "perversion of instinct" has gone within the modern world and he then lists several episodes from Dalí's life to illustrate this process of corruption: "Which of them are true and which are imaginary hardly matters: the point is that this is the kind of thing that Dali would have liked to do."

Well, maybe ... Or maybe it's the case that Dali writes these terrible things - like kicking his little sister in the head or throwing another young child off a bridge - not because they are what he secretly wanted to do, but so that he doesn't have to think of doing them any longer; maybe, as D. H. Lawrence suggests, we shed our sickness in books.   

Interestingly, Orwell places masturbation alongside animal cruelty on his spectrum of corruption, as if choking the chicken and biting a dead bat in half are one and the same thing. Two things, he says, stand out from Dalí's paintings and photographs: sexual perversity and necrophilia - "and there is a fairly well-marked excretory motif as well".

It's true, of course, that Dalí - again like Bataille - was pornographically fixated on heterogeneous matter and that one can find plenty of unpleasant and disturbing elements in his work: shit-stained underwear, decomposing corpses, dead donkeys, and mannequins with huge snails crawling all over them. But Orwell makes no attempt to ask why this might be and to examine the role of base materialism within Surrealism.

All he wants to do is hold his nose and look away and that's not what one expects of a critic - even a left-leaning critic to whom such things are simply signs of bourgeois decadence.   


III.

To his credit, however, Orwell does at this point in his essay spring something of a surprise on his readers by admitting that whilst Dalí is an antisocial flea who makes "a direct, unmistakable assault on sanity and [human] decency", he is nevertheless "a draughtsman of very exceptional gifts". Orwell continues:

"Dalí is also, to judge by the minuteness and the sureness of his drawings, a very hard worker. He is an exhibitionist and a careerist, but he is not a fraud. He has fifty times more talent than most of the people who would denounce his morals and jeer at his paintings."

That, I think, is true. But it's admirable of Orwell to concede such of someone he clearly despises and in so doing differentiate himself from those reactionary philistines who "flatly refuse to see any merit in Dalí whatever" and are incapable of admitting that "what is morally degraded can be aesthetically right".

Orwell doesn't stop here though: he also takes a pop at those devotees of Dalí who refuse to hear a word said against him or his work. If you say to such people that Dali, though a brilliant draughtsman, "is a dirty little scoundrel, you are looked upon as a savage. If you say that you don’t like rotting corpses, and that people who do like rotting corpses are mentally diseased, it is assumed that you lack the aesthetic sense."

Orwell concludes that this makes the question of obscenity almost impossible to discuss: "People are too frightened either of seeming to be shocked or of seeming not to be shocked, to be able to define the relationship between art and morals." It's unfortunate, says Orwell: for one ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously "the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other."


IV.

In effect, says Orwell, Dalí's defenders are claiming a kind of benefit of clergy. In other words, the artist is thought to be "exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people [...] So long as you can paint well enough [...] all shall be forgiven you".

Personally, I rather like this idea: as someone who doesn't subscribe to the equality of all souls and universal rights - who thinks that exceptional people with exceptional tastes and talents should be allowed a certain licence - it doesn't offend me in the manner it does Orwell. I don't think individuals of genius should be allowed to get away with blue murder or ought never to be questioned. But nor do I think they should be subject to the same petty morality of the slave. 


V.

In conclusion: I still dislike Orwell, but I agree with Jonathan Jones that his attempt in this essay on Dalí "to express the delicate possibility that art can be right and wrong, good and bad, a work of genius and a thing of shame", shows a certain courage and intellectual honesty on his part.

See:

Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, (Dial Press, 1942). 

George Orwell, Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali (1944): click here to read online. 

Jonathan Jones, 'Why George Orwell was right about Salvador Dalí', The Guardian (9 June 2009): click here to read online.

For another recent post on Dalí, click here.

The Surreal Resurrection of Salvador Dalí

Still from a promotional video for Dalí Lives (2019)

© Salvador Dali Museum, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL.

If someday I die, though it is unlikely, I hope the people will say: 'Dali is dead - but not entirely'.

I.

I have to admit: I've never been a great fan of Dalí.

Having said that, I did once make a trip to Figueres, his hometown, in order to visit the Dalí Theatre-Museum, that's famously topped with giant eggs.

And I do love the fact that the railway station at Perpignan, which Dalí declared to be the centre of the universe after experiencing a moment of cosmogonic epiphany there in 1963, has a large sign proclaiming the fact.  

What's more, Dalí is also responsible for inspiring the title of Serge Gainsbourg's infamous love song, having once declared: "Picasso is Spanish ... me too. Picasso is a genius ... me too. Picasso is a communist ... moi non plus."

So, whilst not a fan, there are elements of his work and aspects of the man and his life that I nevertheless greatly admire. Not least of all his attitude towards death: a biological fact that he refused to believe in. Indeed, in his final public appearance (until now), Dalí made a brief statement to the effect that, because of their vital import to humanity, a genius doesn't have the right to die. 

This idea amuses me and, as someone who - despite the evidence - doesn't quite accept their own death as a future certainty, I'm sympathetic to it. That is to say, whilst I understand it's a possibility - and, since my own father died, death could even be said to run in the family - I also think that, as a writer, as long as I still have something to say, then this affords me protection.


II.

Thirty years after his death, aged 84, in January 1989, Dalí is back - proving once more that Nietzsche was right to assert that some individuals are born posthumously and that the day after tomorrow belongs to them.  

I don't know how Jesus pulled off his final stunt, but Dalí has achieved his uncanny resurrection with the assistance of the curators at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, working in collaboration with the clever people at San Francisco ad agency Goodby Silverstein and Partners, using the very latest AI-based digital technology.

Visitors to the exhibit, which opens in April, will be able to interact with the artist via a series of screens, as well as enjoy the collection of his works. For those who can't wait or those who, like me, can't go, here's a taste of what can be experienced: click here.  

Thanks to Kosmo Vinyl for tipping me off about the exhibition and suggesting this post.

Übernatürlich: Jason DeMarte's Augmented Reality

Jason DeMarte: Invasive Apathy

(Photo Assemblage / Pigmented Ink Print, 2018)

I.

The idea of art as an innocent imitation of nature is, of course, a very old one. Indeed, despite everything that's happened during the last 150 years, there are people who still subscribe to this ancient Greek concept of mimesis.

Personally, however, I tend to agree with Nietzsche on this question and view art more as a metaphysical supplement to the reality of the natural world; one that transforms rather than merely represents the latter.

Art is thus a way of either enhancing or diminishing nature; perfecting or perverting reality. And the most interesting artists - artists like Jason DeMarte - understand the ambiguous character of this game; how nature can paradoxically appear more-than-natural and less-than-natural (even unnatural) at one and the same time.        

It's been said that DeMarte's cleverly composed works combining images of flora and fauna with artificial objects and sugary treats would make Mother Nature blush - though whether that would be with pride, passion, anger, embarrassment or shame, isn't clear. His playful yet sophisticated juxtapositions call into question the relationship of nature and culture and what it might mean for man to be translated back into the former, or to conceive of culture as a form of transfigured physis.  


II.

Unlike many visual artists, DeMarte has a clear conceptual insight into his own project, as can be seen from the following statement found on his website that he has very kindly granted me permission to reproduce here in full:


"I am interested in modern understandings of the natural world and how that compares to the way western society approaches its immediate consumer environment. It’s important for me to compare established idealist utopian ways of representing the landscape to the hyper-perfect way products and modern consumer life are represented in media. I’m particularly interested in the idea of disillusionment through false or misleading representation. I’m interested in creating photographs that merge simulated forms of life and colorful processed foodstuffs with idyllic pop material goods, in an effort to create a dialog of consumption, duplicity and homogenized ecstasy.

I work digitally combining images of fabricated and artificial flora and fauna with commercially produced and processed products. I look at how these seemingly unrelated and absurd groupings or composites begin to address attitudes and understandings of the contemporary experience. I represent the natural world through completely unnatural elements to speak metaphorically and symbolically of our mental separation from what is 'real' and compare and contrast this with the consumer world we surround ourselves with as a consequence. Ultimately this work is an investigation into the manipulation of truth.

My process draws from a long history of constructed narratives in photography, artist like Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margret Cameron, were early pioneers in manipulating truth with the medium, while later artists like Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall and Anthony Goicolea made the ordinary surreal with their highly choreographed stills. My process aims to simultaneously embrace a manipulation of truth by hyper exaggerating the ordinary and to also work within a kind of truth by utilizing the inherent believability of the photographic medium.

Like the early tableau photographers I draw inspiration from painting, specifically naturalist painting from movements like the Hudson River School. I’m interested in rekindling the romantic notions of nature while simultaneously subverting those romantic notions by juxtaposing pop consumption and visual gluttony."


III.

I find all of this fascinating: particularly his confession that at the heart of his project (or process as he calls it) is the question of truth - something which Nietzsche decouples from goodness and beauty and provocatively describes as that from which we would perish were it not for the skilful and deceptive reworking to which it is subjected by the artist.

Only art, says Nietzsche, has the power to make experience bearable by providing us with vital illusions. And for that we should be grateful ...  

Notes

Jason DeMarte's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, both in the US and abroad, and featured in numerous journals, books, and other publications. He is currently represented by Rule Gallery in Denver Colorado and is part of the Photographers Showcase at Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe. 

He is also an Associate Professor of Photography in the School of Art and Design at Eastern Michigan University and Assistant Professor of Photography in the College of Architecture, Art and design at Mississippi State University. 

Those interested in knowing more can visit his personal website by clicking here.

Nietzsche was preoccupied with the question of truth in relation to art throughout his writings. He does not reject the importance of the former as a will expressed in science, for example, but does question whether such might prove nihilistic and harmful to life. He proposes that the untruth of art might ultimately be more conducive to human wellbeing. The lines to which I refer above are found in The Will to Power, section 822, and The Gay Science, section 107.   

In Praise of Vintage Fashionistas (With Reference to the Case of Anastasiia Grigoruk)

Miss Anastasiia Grigoruk

Vintage fashion model

I.

Vintage fashion is an attempt to harvest the glamour of the past by wearing the clothes, accessories, hairstyles and makeup from a previous era, sometimes creating an entirely new look by mixing and matching styles and periods. Nietzsche might describe the latter chaos of styles as a form of barbarism, but as someone with a punk background this doesn't greatly trouble me.

That is to say, whilst I want people to invest care in their sartorial ensembles, I don't demand absolute authenticity and I'm happy to see non-vintage elements added, including retro designs that merely imitate the originals.  

II.

I'm particularly smitten with some of the vintage fashionistas who go to extraordinary lengths to create a stylish and sovereign model of agency and find a new mode of relating to contemporary reality and the passing of time; of capturing something of the eternal feminine that is not beyond the present but still immanent within it.

Those puritans who criticise these young women for being vacuous and conceited and sneer at their constant posting on social media, are simply not Greek enough to understand what their passion for artifice and things of the surface tells us.

Such moralists think it's just a silly game of dressing up and recycling appearances; a nostalgic exchange of real history for hopeless fantasy. But the revolt into vintage style, like other forms of dandyism, signifies something philosophically important; for it transgresses the principle of utility and seriousness to which the grey-beards would keep the world tied and affirms instead gay insouciance.

III.

What's more, to be successful within the terms set by such an elaborately mannered ethic requires admirable self-discipline; thus one might even suggest there's an element of stoicism within the world of vintage fashion. Again, the idea of building and maintaining a lifestyle is often derided, but people who think it's easy obviously haven’t tried it.

In order to become who she is, a girl like Anastasiia Grigoruk has to spend many long hours before her mirror and display an almost fetishistic obsession with the smallest of details. The adding of style to one's nature is much more demanding than accepting a pre-given way of being. It demands sustained activity and knowledge of what Foucault terms the arts of existence and techniques of self:

"those intentional and voluntary actions by which [individuals] not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria."


IV.

Finally, I'd like to close by commenting on the notion of community within the world of vintage fashion; for it strikes me that amongst those who devote themselves to such there's a good deal of shared kindness and mutual support. 

If, first and foremost, vintage fashionistas are driven by a will to create a singular existence, they nevertheless seem to instinctively understand: (i) this is not something that can be carried out in isolation - that giving birth to the dancing star of the self is not an experiment in solitude, but a true social practice; and (ii) that when a line of narcissistic flight collapses into the black hole of solipsism, this is a sign of failure. For being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with, as Heidegger says. 


See: Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 10-11.

For a sister post to this one on the fabulous French vintage fashion model Miss Alba Banana, click here. 

The Queer Case of Barry Jeans (aka The Menace)

One of the most charismatic - and yet also least vital - characters in literature is Barry Jeans, aka The Menace: Daphne du Maurier's movie heart-throb: "someone with wide shoulders and no hips" who, like most tough guys, doesn't say much or betray any hint of emotion. Women around the world adored the little scar on the side of his temple "that suggested a brush with a rhino or a knife thrown in a Shanghai joint [...] But above all it was the mouth, firm and decisive above that square jaw with the cleft in the chin, which maddened millions".

Commentators often discuss his apparent asexuality: the fact that he felt no interest in making love to women - including his wife - and would never dream of making a pass at a beautiful broad. This becomes starkly evident when Barry is taken by his all-male entourage, known as the boys, to Poncho beach, in order to revive his libido. Unfortunately, not even a parade of naked teens or the young lovelies at the Silver Slipper can do the trick; all Barry can think about is having his porridge. 

But what many readers of the tale fail to pick up on is the reason for Barry's lack of interest in conventional pleasures of the flesh: the fact that he prefers to direct his tenderness towards objects rather than human beings, with a special fascination for cars and sail-boats. In other words, The Menace is an objectum sexual and once one has discovered the seductive charm of inanimate objects, then, as du Maurier writes: "It makes ordinary romance seem so trivial." 

Thus, it's not his lost love Pinkie and her rice puddling that rekindles Barry's fire and gets his Force rating up from a G to an A, it's the fact that, knowing his erotic penchant for furnishings as well as modes of transport, she takes him back to her apartment and "made him lie down on the settee in the living room and take his ease" [my italics].   

I'm reading this idiomatic expression as a euphemism for masturbate and I think the piece of newspaper she gives him "so that he did not spoil the new covers" is not intended to go under his feet. While she made him some breakfast in the kitchen, Barry stretched out his long legs and "settled himself more comfortably on the cushions".

Yes, he enjoys looking at Pinkie's photos of her family and reminiscing about the past. But it's the opportunity to romance the settee with her blessing (and perhaps even with her watching) that really moves and excites him: "'I can't tell you, Pinkie,' he said, 'what this has meant to me.'" Before leaving and giving her a perfunctory kiss goodbye, Barry washes (the semen off) his hands.

Obviously, this is a speculative and rather queer reading of the tale by du Maurier. But it's not, as we have seen, one without some textual support - and nor is it one I feel she'd be shocked by or unhappy with. 

Note: the image, by Chester Gould, is of Dick Tracy, but it's how I imagine The Menace would also look from du Maurier's description of him. 

See: Daphne du Maurier, 'The Menace', in The Breaking Point, (Virago Press, 2009), pp. 200-39. All lines quoted are from this edition. 

I have written several recent posts on tales from The Breaking Point - click here and here, for example. I have also written previously on objectum sexuality and encourage readers interested in this topic to click on the appropriate label.