On Comic Relief and the Figure of the Great White Saviour (with Reference to the Case of Stacey Dooley Vs David Lammy)

Look what I'm holding!

I.

Labour MP David Lammy isn't often right.

But he's fully justified in his recent criticisms of Comic Relief: Stacey Dooley and friends do perpetuate "unhelpful stereotypes" about Africa and the peoples thereof and they do irritate and embarrass many of us as they play the role of Great White Saviour for the cameras amidst a sea of smiling black faces. 

No one questions the good intentions of those celebrities who participate in charitable projects such as Red Nose Day (although, in some cases, we could and probably should do just that).

But such projects can inadvertently descend into poverty porn and I agree with Lammy that Comic Relief has helped ingrain negative images of Africa into the popular imagination by blurring the fifty-four separate nations that make up the continent into "a single reservoir of poverty, grief and suffering", thereby reinforcing the Band Aid view of Africa as a place where nothing ever grows.


II.

Miss Dooley, MBE, is an English TV presenter, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and all-dancing media personality who has made a career out of the shit that goes on in the developing world. So you'd think she might know better than to ask, naively, whether the objection Lammy raises has anything to do with her being white.

For the blindingly obvious answer is that, yes, of course it does - but it's also an issue to do with wealth, fame, class, power and privilege, which is why it's equally offensive when Meghan Markle turns up on the scene to distribute her empowering bananas, for example [click here].    

No one is denying that Africa has problems and faces some huge challenges. But there's a lot of positive things happening there too and Comic Relief "should be helping to establish an image of African people as equals to be respected rather than helpless victims to be pitied".

More than this, it should also challenge its audience "not just to feel guilty, but angry" about the West's political and economic complicity in the war, poverty, and corruption that has plagued the continent in the postcolonial period.

In sum: whilst the fundraising (and international aid) is important and worthwhile, "the Red Nose Day formula is tired and patronising to Africans" and non-Africans alike.  

See: David Lammy, 'Africa deserves better from Comic Relief', in The Guardian (24 March 2017): click here to read online.

See also the excellent article on this topic by Afua Hirsch, 'Ed Sheeran means well but this poverty porn has to stop', The Guardian (5 December 2017): click here.

Faith and Feminism in Pakistan

(Folio Books, Lahore, 2018)

The new book by feminist scholar and activist Afiya S. Zia - Faith and Feminism in Pakistan (2018) - asks a very simple question (with a post-Freudian undertone): what do women in Pakistan (and other Muslim majority countries) desire most; religious agency or secular autonomy? 

That is to say, do they want identities shaped by and within a theocratic order that come with ready-made meaning and promise fulfilment; or do they want the godless freedom to create their own non-essential selves and individual values that may very well prove to have tragic consequences?

In Nietzschean terms, the choice is this: live piously - or live dangerously.

Dr. Zia has clearly chosen option B. Indeed, she lives more dangerously than almost anyone I know and I very much admire her for that.* I also think she's right to contend that female piety - be it Muslim, Christian, or Jewish in origin - presents no serious challenge to the patriarchal structures that produce it. 

However, where she and I differ is that she seems to believe that her own choice is one that all women can (and should) make for themselves and that as more and more women affirm secular autonomy this will lead to a radical transformation of society. I'm sceptical about this. For not only do I not subscribe to any kind of universal project of liberation, but I don't really undertstand why exceptional women - and Afiya is an exceptional woman - fail to understand their own exceptionality and wish to think collectively in terms of gender or class, for example.        

Having said that, what do I know about any of these things - particularly within a Pakistani context? Not much. Whereas Dr. Zia has spent many years thinking through these questions - and has done so not from the (relative) safety and security of professional exile in the West, but whilst continuing to live and work in Karachi.

Thus, whilst this book is full of sophisticated theory and analysis, it's also very much shaped by direct experience. For Afiya, the personal is the political; but the political is also personal and that lends her text an intense sincerity that puts to shame those who pride themselves on their ability to discuss everything with intellectual reserve and objective irony.   

The book is forthright in its assault upon those scholars in the West who not only turn a blind eye to the manner in which the reactionary forces of religious miltancy encroach upon and often violently usurp secular spaces, but seem to think there's something rather thrilling about this in terms of radical alterity and cultural diversity, etc. 
 
As Dr. Zia notes in her introduction, by advocating the "anthropological recovery of Muslim women's non-liberal agency" [3] those who now think it radical (or profitable) to promote religious identity politics betray years of hard work by feminists who have fought for secular rights and freedoms.

I think that's a brave thing to say: for she's arguing that it's not just Islamism that has set the women's movement back in Pakistan, but also the lack of active support from liberals outside the country who are afraid of exposing the "misogyny and hatecrimes enacted or inspired by faith-based politics" [3] lest they should be accused of Islamophobia. 

Push comes to shove, I suspect that Dr. Zia prefers the open enmity of the former to the spinelessness of the latter who find what she says a bit awkward at times. Her real anger, however, is reserved for those diasporic scholars of South Asian, Middle Eastern, or North African origin based in Western institutions, who regard themselves as postsecular and postfeminist and spend much of their time mocking secular women's rights activists in these regions as Western collaborators or native informants. 

This, as Afiya notes, is ironic to say the very least ...

And whilst these retro-Islamist scholars insist that they are "simply reviving and interrogating a different way of being by show-casing the interiorised subjectivities of [...] pietist Muslim women", the danger is that their project "runs the risk of rehabilitating [...] patriarchal and nationalist agendas" [8] that seek to purge all rights-based initiatives and movements of Western influences.   

In a series of powerful passages Dr. Zia concludes:

"Those critics who keep pretending that religion and local cultural codes are not the immediate sources that limit women's progress or freedoms and who argue that women may be comforted by introspective spirituality and should negotiate with the tools available only within their domestic and communal locations, are missing the points being raised by [...] secular feminists." [178]

"Neither is it adequate to argue that it is not religious politics but really something called 'liberal-secularism' that is the source of all political damage in Muslim societies. Instead, it has been in the political subversion of Islamic law and reversion to the universalist and 'secular spirit' of the Constitution that has allowed an expansion of material and legal rights for women in the last decade." [178]

"Those advocating an anti-Modernity, anti-enlightenment, nonliberal, supposedly alternative Muslim politics need to acknowledge [...] that in practical terms, feminism and human rights activism is being successfully silenced in Pakistan. If there is a contest between feminism and faith-based politcs, it is quite clear which is the front-runner." [181]

And clear, too, who are are ultimately the real losers: the women and girls of Pakistan ...

* Note: it's worth keeping in mind that there are female activists and politicians in Pakistan who live under constant threat and require around-the-clock protection.

Readers interested in a guest post on Torpedo the Ark written by Afiya Zia (in 2014), should click here. 

Psychrophilia: Or Love (and Death) in a Cold Climate

Portrait by Tamara de Lempika (1929)

The white races, having the arctic north behind them, the vast abstraction of ice and snow, 

would fulfil a mystery of ice-destructive knowledge, snow-abstract annihilation.

Opening Remarks

Psychrophilia is another form of sexual fetishism encountered in the work of Mr. D. H. Lawrence - although often disguised beneath a pronounced fear and loathing of snow and ice - and I thought it might be interesting to examine his subzero-eroticism here, with reference to the doomed love affair between Gudrun and Gerald in Women in Love.

What amuses me is how Lawrence takes a relatively simple pleasure - in this case, one in which a person gains arousal via contact with cold objects or by exposing others to low temperatures - and incorporates it into his own perverse aesthetico-philosophical project.

Most psychrophiles are happy to simply rub an ice cube on their partners nipples, or play with a dildo that has spent the night in the freezer. But Lawrence is compelled to explore psychrophilia in relation to what Nietzsche terms the crisis of modern European nihilism. In other words, for Lawrence, psychrophilia becomes a question of racial-cultural destiny more than merely a sexy form of brain freeze.           

I. Snow

The two couples - Ursula and Birkin and Gudrun and Gerald - decide to head off to the mountains for a winter holiday in the Alps. Unsuprisingly, there is snow everywhere: and whilst they all find the sheer whiteness and perfect silence of this alien world exhilarating at first, so too do they find it terrifying.

Only Gudrun feels truly at home surrounded by the "terrible waste of whiteness". It fills her, writes Lawrence, with a strange sense of rapture: "At last she had arrived, she had reached her place. Here at last she folded her venture and settled down like a crystal in the navel of snow, and was gone."

But Gerald also loves being high up amidst the snow-covered mountains: "A fierce, electric energy seemed to flow over all his limbs" and he felt himself superhumanly strong. When he fucks Gudrun for the first time in this frozen environment he feels his heart ignite like a flame of ice.

She, however, remains frigid in every sense of the term; dead to love and, ultimately, dead to life. For whilst she can see that the peaks of snow looked beautiful in the blue of evening - "glistening like transcendent, radiant spikes of blossom in the heavenly upper-world, so lovely and beyond" - she can't feel part of it: "She was divorced, debarred, a soul shut out."

Ursula and Birkin, meanwhile, aren't great fans of the snow and the frighteningly cold air. Underneath the glamour and the wonder of it all, Ursula detected something malevolent and murderous. And Birkin is forced to admit that he couldn't bear to be there were she not by his side, protecting him with her warmth from the snow-stillness and frozen eternality.

By the very next day, Ursula has had enough of it; "the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her, she felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb." Suddenly, she decides she wants to go away - that she must escape from the world of snow and ice and return to the world of dark earth in which oranges and olives grew.*

And so Ursula and Birkin take their leave ...


II. Snowed Up**

As soon as Ursula and Birkin have left, the relationship between Gudrun and Gerald becomes increasingly frosty. His heart turns to ice at the sound of her voice; her flesh chills whenever he physically comes close. Even for psychrophiles, this is not a good sign. As Gudrun rightly concludes, their attempt to find love has been a total failure.

And so, here they are nowhere with nowhere left to go. Full of a cold passion of anger, Gerald imagines killing his mistress. And Gudrun is increasingly afraid that he'll do so. Only she doesn't intend to be killed: "A fine thread still united her to him. It should not be her death which broke it." 

With Gerald feeling ever more snow-estranged, Gudrun begins to openly flirt with an artist called Loerke. One day, she goes for a sleigh ride with him. When Gerald arrives on the scene, he punches Loerke to the ground and then proceeds to strangle Gudrun. The scene is described in sexually charged language that must surely delight sadists with a penchant for erotic asphyxiation.

Although she has the life squeezed out of her, Gudrun isn't killed. At the last moment, Gerald, full of self-disgust, releases his grip and then drifts off, unconsciously, into the snow, where he lies down to sleep and to die (perchance to dream).

III. Exeunt

"When they brought the body home, the next morning, Gudrun was shut up in her room. [...] What should she say? What should she feel? What did they expect of her? She was coldly at a loss."

Ursula and Birkin return and the latter goes to view the corpse of his friend:

"He had loved him. And yet he felt chiefly disgust at the inert body lying there. It was so inert, so coldly dead, a carcase, Birkin's bowels seemed to turn to ice. He had to stand and look at the frozen dead body that had been Gerald. [...] He reached and touched the dead face. And the sharp, heavy bruise of ice bruised his living bowels. He wondered if he himself were freezing too, freezing from the inside."

Birkin also touches "the sharp, almost glittering fair hair of the frozen body" and as his heart begins to freeze so too does the blood in his veins turns to ice-water: "So cold, so cold, a heavy, bruising cold pressing on his arms from outside, and a heavier cold congealing within him, in his heart and in his bowels."

What can he do at last but turn away and cease to care. His friend was no more - just a strange icy lump lying there and Birkin doubtless came to the same conclusion that he had reached once before when considering the case of Gerald Crich:

"He was one of these strange white wonderful demons from the north, fulfilled in the destructive frost-mystery. And [...] fated to pass away in this knowledge, death by perfect cold [...] an omen of the universal dissolution into whiteness and snow."

Still, who knows, perhaps that's why the fires of hell are so necessary - to warm us up again, in death, so that we may be reborn. Perhaps all is not lost ...

Notes

* It's interesting to note that Loerke, like Ursula, is also a psychrophobe, rather than a psychrophile; his nightmare vision is of a world gone cold, where snow fell everywhere "and only white creatures, polar-bears, white foxes, and men like awful white snow-birds, persisted in ice cruelty". This is probably the only thing the two characters have in common. 

** Readers might be interested in a sister post to this one in which I develop this section in relation to the question of erotic asphyxiation: click here.  

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1987). All lines quoted are from Chapters XXX-XXII, pp. 398-481, with the exception of the quotation prior to the opening remarks and the final quotation in section III, which are both taken from Chapter XIX, p. 254.

Asphyxiophilia: Reflections on the Case of Gerald and Gudrun

Oliver Reed as Gerald and Glenda Jackson as Gudrun in 
Women in Love (dir. Ken Russell, 1969)

I. Asphyxiophilia

As someone who has always had trouble swallowing and breathing, I've no practical interest in the subject of erotic asphyxiation (or asphyxiophilia as it's also known). That anyone should wish to strangle the object of their affection, or intentionally restrict their own supply of oxygen - even for the purposes of sexual stimulation - is a disconcerting thought. 

However, it seems that a lot of people are aroused (or at least intrigued) by the prospect of gasping or making gasp; they long to induce and/or experience the delirious, semi-hallucinogenic state known as hypoxia (a state that intensifies orgasm). This can be achieved via various methods, including hanging, suffocation, or strangulation.

Obviously, the practice can be dangerous and there have been a number of well-documented fatalities resulting from erotic asphyxiation (particularly when engaged in as a solosexual activity). Thus, as in so many other things, caution is highly recommended (one of the key words in Deleuze and Guattari's lexicon that is often overlooked); living dangerously doesn't mean dying stupidly.       


II. Strangulation

Strangulation accounts for a small but significant number of murders. It can involve the use of a ligature, such as a rope or an electric cord, or it can be accomplished manually for a more intimate and truly hands on experience.   

Research on homicidal strangulation suggests that most of the victims are female and that in the majority of cases the perpetrator and the victim are known to one another, often having a family relationship. Studies also show that men who strangle women frequently do so in order to facilitate rape or to express violent sexual emotions such as jealousy.


III. The Case of Gerald and Gudrun

As a murderous motif, we might say that strangulation is the perfect coming together of sex and violence. No wonder then that it attracted the attention of D. H. Lawrence whose erotic vision is often tied closely to his thanatological musings (i.e., shot through with death). This is well illustrated in what I believe to be his finest novel, Women in Love (1920).   

Gudrun and Gerald have travelled to the Alps in order to meet their fate: only one of them will leave the mountains alive. Initially, they are accompanied by Ursula and Birkin, but this latter couple soon leave, finding the malevolent whiteness and silence of the snow unbearable.

The relationship between Gudrun and Gerald becomes increasingly frosty, to say the least. His heart turns to ice at the sound of her voice; she chills whenever he physically comes close. Even for psychrophiles, this is not a good sign. As Gudrun says, their attempt to be lovers has been a failure.

It's not long before Gerald's cold passion of anger induces murderous thoughts and Gudrun is rightly afraid that he will kill her: "But she did not intend to be killed. A fine thread still united her to him. It should not be her death which broke it."

Gerald's snow-estrangement continues until, finally, he snaps and Lawrence writes a disturbing scene that must surely delight readers with a penchant for erotic asphyxiation:

"He took the throat of Gudrun between his hands, that were hard and indomitably powerful. And her throat was beautifully, so beautifully soft. Save that, within, he could feel the slippery chords of her life. And this he crushed, this he could crush. What bliss! Oh what bliss, at last, what satisfaction, at last! The pure zest of satisfaction filled his soul. He was watching the unconsciousness come into her swollen face, watching her eyes roll back. How ugly she was! What a fulfilment, what a satisfaction! How good this was, oh how good it was, what a god-given gratification, at last! He was unconscious of her fighting and struggling. That struggling was her reciprocal lustful passion in this embrace, the more violent it became, the greater the frenzy of delight, till the zenith was reached, the crisis, the struggle was overborne, her movement became softer, appeased."

Gudrun, however, isn't dead. At the last moment, full of self-disgust, Gerald releases his grip and then drifts off, unconsciously, into the snow, where he lies down to sleep and to die (perchance to dream).

The next day, Gudrun is pale-faced and impassive: unwilling to speak; unable to shed a tear ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 452, 471-72.

Helinä Häkkänen, 'Murder by Manual and Ligature Strangulation', Ch. 4 of Criminal Profiling: International Theory, Research, and Practice, ed. R. N. Kocsis (Humana Press Inc., 2006). Click here to read as an online pdf. 

For a related post on psychrophilia, out of which this one emerged, click here. 

Surprise musical bonus (a classic slice of late '70s punk): click here. 

Surprise comedy bonus (a darkly hilarious clip from an '80s TV classic): click here.

Slippery When Wet: Reflections on D. H. Lawrence's Aquaphilia

Image via derpibooru.org

Aquaphilia is yet another form of sexual fetishism that we often come across in the work of Mr. D. H. Lawrence and I thought it might be interesting to examine several instances of his water-based eroticism here ...

I: The White Peacock

There's a very lovely scene in Lawrence's first novel in which Cyril and his friend George frolic naked in a pond ...

"The water was icily cold, and for a moment deprived me of my senses. When I began to swim, soon the water was buoyant, and I was sensible of nothing but the vigorous poetry of action. I saw George swimming on his back laughing at me, and in an instant I had flung myself like an impulse after him. The laughing face vanished as he swung over and fled, and I pursued the dark head and the ruddy neck. [...] As I came up to him and caught him, with my hand on his shoulder [...] George was floating just beside me, looking up and laughing."

This is already a fairly explicit piece of homoerotic and aquaphilic writing, but it's interesting to note the words deleted from the original MS at this point: "and his white breasts and his belly emerged like cool buds of a firm fleshed water flower" - a line that could only have come from Lawrence's pen.  

Afterwards, having returned to the land, Cyril and George "stood and looked at each other as [they] rubbed [themselves] dry".


II: The Trespasser

What's interesting about the case of Siegmund, the protagonist of Lawrence's second novel, The Trespasser, is how his aquaphilia takes on an autoerotic character and moves towards a becoming-fish ...

"He chose his bathing place [...] threw his clothes on a high rock [...] ran laughing over the sand to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the heavy green water.
      It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep [...] afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear green water.
      He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play, even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner."

Now, I'm not saying for certain that he jerked off in the sea. But Lawrence writes in such a queerly erotic manner that this is certainly implied: "He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea's passion ... the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm breath. He delighted in himself."

And if he did, in fact, choose to ejaculate his sperm upon the naked waters, mightn't this be said to mark his becoming one with his aquatic environment, just like a wave-thrilled fish?    


III: The Rainbow

Suddenly, in her penultimate term, Ursula Brangwen discovers that a "queer awareness existed between herself and her class-mistress, Miss Inger [...] a rather beautiful woman of twenty eight" who also happens to be the school's swimming instructress:

"Ursula trembled and was dazed with passion. Her hopes were soon to be realised. She would see Miss Inger in her bathing dress.
      [...] In the great bath the water was glimmering pale emerald-green, a lovely, glimmering mass of colour within the whitish, marble-like confines. Overhead the light fell softly and the great green body of pure water moved under it as someone dived from the side.
      Ursula, trembling, hardly able to contain herself, pulled off her clothes, put on her tight bathing suit, and opened the door of her cabin. Two girls were in the water. The mistress had not appeared. She waited. A door opened, Miss Inger came out, dressed in a red-tunic like a Greek girl's, tied round the waist, and a red silk handkerchief round her head. How lovely she looked. Her knees were so white and strong and proud, she was firm-bodied as Diana. She walked simply to the side of the bath, and with a negligent movement, flung herself in. For a moment Ursula watched the white, smooth, strong shoulders and the easy arms swimming. Then she too dived into the water.
      Now, ah now she was swimming in the same water with her dear mistress. The girl moved her limbs voluptuously, and swam by herself, deliciously, yet with a craving of unsatisfaction. She wanted to touch the other, to touch her, to feel her."

Miss Inger invites Ursula to race her: and so the latter sets off in chase; just as Cyril chased George in The White Peacock:

"The mistress was just ahead, swimming with easy strokes. Ursula could see the head put back, the water flickering upon the white shoulders, the strong legs kicking shadowily. And she swam blinded with passion. Ah, the beauty of the firm, white, cool flesh! Ah, the wonderful firm limbs. If she could but hold them, hug them, press them between her own small breasts!"

Lawrence concludes this hydrosapphic fantasy:

"They neared the end of the bath - the deep end. Miss Inger touched the pipe, swung herself round, and caught Ursula round the waist, in the water, and held her for a moment against herself. The bodies of the two women touched, heaved against each other for a moment, then were separate."  

Lawrence, however, can't resist giving us a further scene of aquatic lesbianism later in the same chapter ...

Miss Inger has invited Ursula to stay with her for the weekend at a country cottage and suggests a midnight swim. They undress in the bungalow, Ursula a little nervously. And then they venture outdoors, naked, feeling the "soft air of night upon their skins". Because Ursula is uncertain of the path, Miss Inger holds her close, and gives her a reassuring kiss.

Then, she picks up her student and volunteers to carry her into the water: "Ursula lay still in her mistress's arms, her forehead against the beloved, maddening breast." Before they can enter the water, however, a heavy shower of ice-cold rain begins to fall on their "flushed, hot limbs" and brings their aquaphilic adventure to a premature close.    


IV: Women in Love

Finally, I would like to draw attention to a scene in Chapter IV of my favourite novel by Lawrence, Women in Love, in which Gerald delights (solipsistically) in his own movement through water - and arouses the desire and envy of Gudrun in the process ...

"Suddenly, from the boat-house, a white figure ran out [...] It launched in a white arc through the air, there was a bursting of the water, and among the smooth ripples a swimmer was making out to space, in a centre of faintly heaving motion. The whole otherworld, wet and remote, he had to himself. He could move into the pure translucency of the grey, uncreated water.
      Gudrun stood by the stone wall [...] watching the motion on the bosom of the water, as if fascinated. [...]
      And she stood motionless gazing over the water at the face which washed up and down on the flood, as he swam steadily. From his separate element he saw [her], and he exulted to himself because of his own advantage, his possession of a world to himself. He was immune and perfect. He loved his own vigorous, thrusting motion, and the violent impulse of the very cold water against his limbs, buoying him up."

Lawrence continues:

"Gerald suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, with a side stroke. He was alone now, alone and immune in the middle of the waters, which he had all to himself. He exulted in his isolation in the new element, unquestioned and unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting with his legs and all his body, without bond or connection anywhere, just himself in the watery world.
      Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary possession of pure isolation and fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable, that she felt herself as if damned, out there on the [dry land]."

Gudrun's aquaphilia, in other words, expresses itself not as a desire to fuck under water, but to shed her humanity and become-mermaid in her own weird, underwater world ... 

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 222-23, and see the editorial note on p. 386. 

D. H. Lawrence. The Trespasser, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 73.

I am also paraphrasing a line from Lawrence's magnificent poem 'Fish' in this section of the text, which can be found in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923). See The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Vol. I, pp. 289-94. 

D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 311,  313-16. 

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthn and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 46-7. 


This post is dedcated to Brenda Sumner, Secretary of the D. H. Lawrence Society, for all her kind help and support over the years.

Eco-Apocalypse: It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

One of three images for the Destroying nature is destroying life campaign 

by the environmental group Robin Wood (2016)

I.

Someone writes to tell me that I should spend less time writing about trivial matters such as fashion and focus instead on the unfolding eco-apocalypse - the latter being something caused by human activity and which has, apparently, been confirmed by numerous scientific studies. 

I have to admit, I'm a bit sceptical about this green-tinged end of the world narrative and tend to share the view expressed by Phil Hammond and Hugh Ortega Breton that it's best understood "neither as a near-timeless feature of human culture nor as a reasoned response to objective environmental problems. Rather, it is driven by unconscious fantasy; the symbolic expression of an alienation from political subjectivity, characteristic of a historically specific period in the life of post-Cold War societies."

If it's true that some environmental activists find apocalyptic language not only appropriate but sexy, many regard such alarmist rhetoric as problematic and often counter-productive - not least of all because, actually, the science doesn't support such quasi-religious mania, even whilst confirming there are important issues we need to address as a species.

II.

Having said that, I must confess that there was a period, in the late 1980s, when I wilfully bought into this fantasy of eco-apocalypse: I even joined the Green Party! I was soon expelled, however, for holding extreme views that threatened to bring the party into disrepute.

(This was fair enough: but I smiled when, shortly afterwards, party spokesman David Icke revealed on primetime TV that he was the Son of God and gleefully predicted the world was about to be devestated by a series of natural catastrophes.) 

Thankfully, by the time that James Lovelock was issuing his final warning and Al Gore was telling anyone who would listen his inconvenient truth, I was no longer convinced (nor secretly thrilled) by such climate porn and doom-laden prophecy concerning the collapse of civilisation and extinction of all life on earth.

Indeed, I had spent a good deal of time in the 1990s deconstructing my own eco-romanticism influenced by such figures as D. H. Lawrence, Martin Heidegger, and Jaz Coleman and although my Ph.D was meant to be an examination of Nietzsche's cultural pessimism and political philosophy, it was basically an opportunity for me to confront the elements in my own thought that had led towards the black hole of fascism.      

So, I understand perfectly where my critic is speaking from; for I used to occupy much the same space and share many of his concerns. The difference is, whereas he stood his ground and allowed his views to become fixed beliefs, I kept moving and kept questioning things - particularly those social anxieties that function as truths within contemporary culture.

In a sense, that's what torpedo the ark means: refuse all dogma and interrogate everything; including radical environmentalism which mixes ascetic idealism and crusading mythology into a potent brew designed to intoxicate the young and provide a sense of revolutionary mission - for a little child shall lead them ...             

See: Philip Hammond and Hugh Ortega Breton, 'Eco-Apocalypse: Environmentalism, Political Alienation and Therapeutic Agency', Ch. 8 of The Apocalypse in Film: Dystopias, Disasters, and Other Visions about the End of the World, ed. Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Angela Rewani, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). Click here to read online. 

Play: REM: 'It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)', single from the album Document (I.R.S. Records, 1987): click here. Note: the video was directed by James Herbert and features a young skateboarder called Noah Ray.

And They Dance by the Light of the Moon ...

A Buffalo Gal as imagined by Mclaren and Westwood

 in their Nostalgia of Mud collection (1982/83) 

I.

Buffalo Gals is a popular 19th-century American folk song, written and published by the blackface minstrel John Hodges (aka Cool White) in 1844, although earlier versions are likely to have existed.

Contrary to what many people believe, the song doesn't refer to a particularly tough breed of cowgirl who hunted bison on the Great Plains. Rather, it refers to the dancing girls who performed in the many bars, concert halls, and brothels in the notorious Canal district of Buffalo, New York. 

However, the song continues to incite many imaginative interpretations. For example, some insist that it takes its inspiration from an old legend that tells of how the spirits of wild animals sometimes take the form of attractive young women, in order to seduce innocent cowboys sleeping beneath the stars.


II.

Unsurprisingly, when I hear the words Buffalo Gals, I also think of the 1982 single by Malcolm McLaren and the World's Famous Supreme Team, produced by Trevor Horn, that combines scratching with square dancing in a fabulously eccentric hip-hop manner - much to the horror of the record company bosses who were initially reluctant to release the track.        

In many ways, this song was more groundbreaking than Anarchy in the UK, helping as it did introduce hip-hop culture to a wider (whiter) audience; the video for the song not only featured breakdancing - courtesy of the Rock Steady Crew - but also showed rappers and graffiti artists in action.

Oh, and of course, it also featured models wearing McLaren and Westwood's latest fashions from their brilliant Nostalgia of Mud collection; a collection which attempted to show how haute couture and other aspects of Western culture retained primitive roots; or how even modernity essentially lives off the traditions it insists it has left behind.

Further, as Yvonne Gold, the make-up artist who worked on the McLaren-Westwood fashion shows, points out, the soft, unstructured tailoring with exposed seams that characterised the above collection was the antithesis of the yuppie power suit:   

"Buffalo girls wore hip-slung dirndl skirts over padded petticoats, with baby-sling-bags across their backs and hoodies topped with Buffalo hats, or T-shirt Grecian toga dresses with conical vintage satin bras worn over the top."

She continues: 

"The legacy of raw-edged, reversed-seamed sheepskin coats lives on as a classic, and wearing a hoodie under a tailored jacket or a bra as outerwear has become standard. The conceptual black painted strip mask is still seen on catwalks in infinite variations. Three and a half decades later, the iconic Buffalo hat has been revitalized by [musician] Pharrell, and you can find entire ensembles in the collections of international museums and individual collectors [...] keeping the Buffalo legacy alive."

It's such a pity, therefore, that the McLaren-Westwood design collaboration ended soon afterwards. We can only dream of what might have been, for whilst, obviously, we know how Westwood's career in fashion developed post-Malcolm, we don't know what sartorial innovations the latter would have produced had he continued working in the rag trade.*

* Having said that, see the astonishing post by Paul Gorman on McLaren's 'lost collection' intended to accompany his album Fans (1984): click here.

See: Yvonne Gold, 'Vivienne Westwood's Radically Chic Nostalgia of Mud', Another Magazine (15 March, 2016): click here to read online.

Play: Malcolm McLaren and the World's Famous Supreme Team, 'Buffalo Gals' (1982), single from the album Duck Rock (Charisma Records, 1983): click here. 

Pretty in Pink (Notes on the Engendering of Baby Mia)

Baby Mia in a salmon pink cardigan

I.

Now that baby Mia is recognisably human - though still outside language - she is being colour-encoded by her parents within a traditional gender stereotype. In other words, she's being assigned a romantic and floral model of femininity (sweet-natured, sensitive, girly) and taught how to look, to act, and to think of herself as pretty in pink.   

However, like everything, the colour pink as sign and symbol is itself subject to changing cultural interpretation and reinterpretation; it has no essential character and can just as easily be tied to a model of masculinity should it become desirable or fashionable to do so. Indeed, young boys in the 19th century often wore pink, whilst their sisters were dressed in blue and white.

It wasn't until the early-mid-20th century that the colour became almost exclusively associated with girls and ladylike women - Mamie Eisenhower's decision to wear a pink dress at her husband's inauguration as US President in 1953 being a crucial factor in this latter association.

It also replaced lavender as the colour associated with male homosexuality and effeminacy; the Nazis obliging queer inmates of concentration camps to wear outfits embroidered with a pink triangle (though sadly not with matching accessories).      

Meanwhile, the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli had created a bold and assertive new variety of the colour in 1931 - so-called Shocking Pink - made by mixing magenta with a small amount of white; a shade much loved by Surrealists at the time and by punk rockers in the 1970s looking to turn the world day-glo.

Sadly, many parents of baby girls still prefer to opt for a more muted princess pink that is more Barbara Cartland than Poly Styrene ...    

II.

Interestingly, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), in New York, recently had an exhibition entitled Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color (2018-19), which emphasised the provocative potential of pink (not least its ability to sharply divide opinion).  

Organised by the Museum's director and chief curator Valerie Steele, the show featured approximately 80 outfits dating from the 1700s to the present, including work by Schiaparelli and a fabulous piece from the 2016 Comme des Garçons fall collection entitled 18th Century Punk.

I've no idea what kind of young woman baby Mia will grow up to be, but I do hope she'll dress like this: 

See: Valerie Steele (ed.), Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color, (Thames and Hudson, 2018).

Click here to visit the Museum at FIT website which provides full details of the Pink exhibition and a short audio tour with Valerie Steele. 

And for a (predictable) musical bonus from the Psychedelic Furs (original 1981 version): click here.

In Praise of the Fatwa Boys 2: Larry David's Finest Hour

The Fatwa Boys: Salman Rushdie and Larry David 
in a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm [S9/E3]

In the long-awaited ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry incurs a death sentence from the Supreme Leader of Iran after satirizing the Ayatollah on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in promotion of his latest project - a musical comedy called Fatwa! - based on The Satanic Verses controversy in which a similar religious ruling was passed against the novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989 [see part one of this post]. 

This, I think, is a brave thing to do - arguably far more daring than his usual schtick of breaching social conventions and examining the micropolitics of every day life in obsessive detail. Brave too, I might add, of HBO to agree to this; for these days there aren't many producers willing to be involved in a project that might offend the religious sensibilities of Islam (they might claim their reticence is a sign of respect, but I think we all know it's a sign of fear).      

Post-The Satanic Verses controversy, post-the murder of Theo van Gogh, post-the Danish cartoon crisis, and post-the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the West has learned to appease Islam and limit its own right to freedom of expression. In other words, fear of deadly reprisals has succeeded in bringing about cultural self-censorship. So again, hats off to Larry David!

And hats off too to Salman Rushdie for not only agreeing to make fun of what was, for many years, a truly horrible situation, but also to take part in an episode of the show, where - to brilliant comic effect - he instructs Larry on all the advantages of living under a fatwa (including fatwa sex, which, according to Rushdie, is the best sex there is). 

As one commentator on this episode pointed out, the reason such jokes constitute one of the most effective weapons against Islamic fundamentalism is precisely because - as Khomeini once said - there's nothing funny about Islam.

The ninth season of Curb met with mixed reviews and audience figures were, I believe, much lower than for season 8. Critics said the world had moved on in the six years between the two seasons and that the show belonged to another time.

Maybe that's true: but, ultimately, what matters is the fact that Larry David, in collaboration with Rushdie, demonstrated how best to respond to those fanatics who would have us all submit to their religious mania: with courage and with humour.      


Click here to watch a scene with Larry David and Salman Rushdie (the self-styled Fatwa Boys) from 'A Disturbance in the Kitchen', episode 3 / season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, dir. Jeff Schaffer (HBO, 2017). 

In Praise of the Fatwa Boys 1: Remembering the Rushdie Affair

The Fatwa Boys: Salman Rushdie and Larry David 
Image credit: John P. Johnson / HBO

On Valentine's Day, 1989, when the rest of us were sending flowers to loved ones, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran - Ayatollah Khomeini - decided to issue a fatwa against the British writer Salman Rushdie: a religious decree that urged Muslims around the world to kill the author (and publishers) of The Satanic Verses (1988); for it was a novel that was said to offend the sacred values of Islam.   

This grey-bearded cleric, aged 89, and with only months left to live, added that any good Muslim who was killed trying to carry out the death sentence should be considered a martyr, i.e., one whose place in paradise was guaranteed. Just in case that wasn't a strong enough motivating factor, a $2.8 million bounty was also placed on Rushdie's head.    

The writer was immediately granted police protection by the British government, though many seemed to resent the fact (and the cost to the public purse). Rushdie then spent many years moving between safe houses and living a life in which everyday activities - like kicking a football in the park with his son - became either impossible or subject to tight security measures.

Many Muslim countries around the world banned the import and sale of the book and encouraged violent protests against the West. In Bradford, a mob publicly burned copies of the work and echoed the call for Rushdie's execution. Whilst some authors, including Susan Sontag and Tom Wolfe were vocal in their support, others - who shall remain nameless - were noticeably silent on the issue (some even implied that Rushdie got what he deserved for insulting a great religion).   

It was only in the 1990s that Rushdie was able to gradually recover something approaching a normal life once more, eventually moving to New York. But the threat to his life remained; Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, stated in 2005 that as Rushdie was still an apostate his killing was authorised within Islam and he again stressed the irrevocable nature of the fatwa in 2015.

Thirty years on, not only does Rushdie remain a figure of hate for Islamists across the Muslim world, but the issue of blasphemy - in 2019! - remains an incendiary one; people are still being killed or threatened with death for any perceived insult to God or his prophet Muhammad (the case of Asia Bibi is just the latest grotesque example).   

The problem, of course, is that laws designed to protect religious sensibilities ultimately stifle intellectual debate and artistic expression. Indeed, as Christopher Hitchens notes, the fatwa issued against his friend Rushdie was essentially the opening shot in a war on cultural freedom: after The Satanic Verses controversy came the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004; followed a year later by the Danish cartoon crisis; and then the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015 ...

Happily, three decades on, Rushdie is alive and well and - as we'll see in the second part of this post - able to laugh at his own nightmarish experience. Even if, again to quote Hitchens, "the culture that sustains him, and that he helps sustain, has twisted itself into a posture of prior restraint and self-censorship in which the grim, mad edict of a dead theocrat still exerts its chilling force".


See: Christopher Hitchens, 'Assassins of the Mind', Vanity Fair (February 2009): click here to read online.

To read part two of this post, click here. 

Rushdie with a copy of his offending text (London, 1989)

Photo credit: PA Photos / Landov