Forever Dead and Lovely: Notes on Melanie Pullen's High Fashion Crime Scenes

Melanie Pullen: Untitled (ELLE), 2014 

From the series High Fashion Crime Scenes (2003-17)

melaniepullen.com

If, like me, you love Izima Kaoru's Landscapes with a Corpse for their drop dead gorgeousness and thanatological interest, then you're also gonna love the work of Melanie Pullen in her photographic series High Fashion Crime Scenes ...


Born in 1975, in New York, but currently living and working in Los Angeles, Pullen grew up in the West Village in a family home regularly visited by poets and painters, including Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol. She acquired her first camera as a teen and began shooting images of rock bands for various publications and record labels.     

Pullen is most noted, however, for her extensive series of  pictures based on vintage crime scene images taken from the files of the NY and LAPD. Inspired by cinematic images and photojournalism, she employed not only well-known actresses and models, but the services of a huge technical crew so that her photo shoots often resembled elaborate movie sets. Each of her pictures could take up to a month to create and the High Fashion Crime Scenes series used millions of dollars worth of designer clothing and accessories. 

Surprisingly - or perhaps not - Pullen claims to dislike violence. She is curious, however, about the role that violence plays within the arts and wider culture, as well as the response that people have to violent images. Her work might therefore be described not as an attempt to make violent crime seem glamorous or stylish by dressing up bodies in haute couture, but a critical examination of the way in which the horror and traumatic effect of murder, rape and suicide can be diminished via its aesthetic interpretation and/or portrayal in the media.  
 

Pullen herself has expressed concern with the way that images and descriptions of female corpses - often naked or semi-naked - are used to titilate or add sleazy sensational interest to a narrative; be it a film, a play, a news story, a coroners report ... or even a blog post.

See: Melanie Pullen, High Fashion Crime Scenes, with an introduction by Luke Crissell and essays by Robert Enright and Colin Westerbech, (Nazraelie Press, 2005), 128 pages.  

To read a sister post to this one - Notes on Izima Kaoru's Landscapes with a Corpse - please click here.

Forever Dead and Lovely: Notes on Izima Kaoru's Landscapes with a Corpse

Izima Kaoru: Kimura Yoshino wears Alexander McQueen #484 (2007)

Part of the Landscapes with a Corpse series

Galerie Andreas Binder (Munich)

artnet.com

 

No matter how we die, we will travel up to the world 

beyond the sky without regretting how we lived

The phrase drop dead gorgeous, popular with necrophiles and thanatologists alike, also inspired the Japanese fashion photographer Izima Kaoru to stage elaborate death scenes featuring attractive models and well-known actresses dressed in expensive designer outfits that oblige viewers to consider the cultural fascination with the beautiful female corpse.

The sequence of images begin with wide-angle shots and gradually narrow to close-ups of the model. The resulting pictures look rather like film stills and remind us that there's nothing more cinematic than the death of a beautiful woman (to paraphrase Poe), although Kaoru's work demands to be contextualised within a wider art history; one that includes traditional Japanese woodcuts [Ukiyo-e].

It's also important to understand the influence of the Buddhist practice of maranasati - a musing on one's own mortality using various visualisation techniques - upon Kaoru's photography. Thus it is that, prior to taking any pictures, Kaoru asks his models to imagine the circumstances surrounding their deaths (where, when, how, etc.) and to consider also what would constitute the most sightly way of exiting this world (leaving behind a beautiful corpse is never an easy task). 

In sum, Kaoru's pictures are a highly stylised and aesthetically pleasing form of what we in the West term memento mori and not merely images to do with fashion, sex, and cinema born of the floating world (though even if they were that alone, they'd still appeal to me). 

Izima Kaoru: Kimura Yoshino wears Alexander McQueen #483 (2007)

Part of the Landscapes with a Corpse series

Galerie Andreas Binder (Munich)

artnet.com

See: Izima Kaoru, Landscapes with a Corpse, German and English text by Roy Exley, Yuko Hasegawa and Peter Weiermair, (Hatje Kantz, 2008), 192 pages, 171 colour illustrations.

See also the documentary film by Chad Fahs, Landscapes with a Corpse (2014), which follows Izima Kaoru on a journey to create new work and perhaps find the answer to the question of what best constitutes a beautiful death. 

Readers interested in a sister post to this one - on Melanie Pullen's High Fashion Crime Scenes - should click here.

Cover Girl Killer (1959)

Sex and horror are the new gods 

in this polluted world of so-called entertainment

I.

There are many reasons to love the black and white British film Cover Girl Killer (dir. Terry Bishop, 1959).

For one thing, it stars Harry H. Corbett in a pre-Steptoe role that demonstrates what a fine dramatic actor he was; one trained in Stanislavski's system (famously developed as method acting in the US). He may never have become England's Marlon Brando, as some critics predicted, but he coulda been a contender, could've been somebody, instead of a rag-and-bone man ...

      

II.

The film is set in the seedy but seductive world of post-War Soho; a world of strip-clubs, brothels, and dirty bookshops, where it was de rigeur to wear a raincoat whatever the weather.

Corbett plays a psychopath who hopes that, by killing the young models who appear on the cover of a notorious glamour magazine, he may free himself from his unsavoury obsessions and the lustful images that corrupt his thought.  

(It's always shocking to be reminded that murder and misogyny are often regarded as less shameful than masturbation by puritans who, as a matter of fact, have been driven insane by their own moralism, rather than corrupted by pornography.)

Having killed several young women - including Gloria, the showgirl with the most on show - Corbett's creepy character is lured into a trap set by the police and the publisher of Wow magazine, with the very lovely Felicity Young (as June) providing the bait. This results in a pervylicious climax to the movie, as the latter is chased around backstage at the Kasbar theatre in her underwear ...  

Cover Girl Killer may not be a great film - it's no Peeping Tom, Michael Powell's masterpiece that was released a year later - but it is, arguably, a seminal one that anticipates the direction that cinema (and popular entertainment in general) was moving: sexually explicit and ultra-violent; two decades later and the slasher movie was a staple of the horror genre and Mary Millington was starring in The Playbirds (1978).  

Well done to Talking Pictures TV (Sky 343, Freeview 81, Freesat 306) for deciding to broadcast it as part of their superb archive of films.

Harry H. Corbett and Felicity Young in Cover Girl Killer (1959)

To watch the trailer to Cover Girl Killer (1959): click here.

Reflections on Madam Butterfly 2: Puccini's Influence on Pop and Fashion

Galliano for Dior: Japanese New Look (S/S 2007)

Model: Ai Tominaga

I. Hip-Hopera

Taken from the album Fans (1984), the single 'Madam Butterfly' is a perfect fusion of opera and electronic beats, performed by Betty Anne White and Debbie Cole, with the added bonus of having Malcolm McLaren in the role of Lt. Pinkerton.

It's a kind of punk version of Hooked on Classics, which sounds as if it really shouldn't work, yet somehow does work - and works in a way that even Puccini would have approved of, belonging as it does to the post-Romantic tradition of verismo that he favoured (a form of realism that often deals with violent and sexual themes, but in a seductively beautiful manner).   

I once conducted an informal interview with Malcolm in which I asked him about his fascination with opera and particularly the work of Puccini. He explained that, for him, what appealed most was the intensity of feeling and the authenticity of emotion expressed. Opera was the very opposite of what he later termed karaoke culture. It was this sincerity of expression that opera and punk rock shared that made them so powerful.   

II. Cio-Cio San on the Catwalk

John Galliano may say terrible things when drunk, but he remains one of the undisputed geniuses of British fashion who, during a fourteen year period as artistic director at Dior, ruled Paris and the world. In 2007, celebrating his tenth year at the company, he presented a spring/summer couture collection called Japanese New Look, inspired by Puccini's legendary opera, Madama Butterfly.

The collection featured an elegant, yet bold use of colour that mixed and matched gentle cream tones with bright yellows, lime greens, and hot pinks. The tailoring, of course, was impeccable (as was the geometric detailing). Stephen Jones designed the extraordinary headpieces (think bonsai trees and cherry blossom), whilst Pat McGrath produced showstopping makeup that suggested a contemporary geisha look (or a rather punkish Cio-Cio San).   

I mentioned in a sister post to this one discussing Puccini's musical masterpiece, that there are some people now who find the opera problematic on woke political grounds ...

Doubtless, these same people would also object to Galliano's 2007 collection due to its cultural appropriation and his use of mostly white models, although it should be noted that the Japanese model Ai Tominaga, pictured above, happily participated in the Paris show, as did the Chinese model Emma Pei (below), who took to the catwalk to the sound of Malcolm McLaren's unique take on Madam Butterfly ...   

Notes

My taped interview with McLaren has been transcribed, edited, and posted on Torpedo the Ark: click here.

To read the sister post to this one on Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly (1904): click here.

Play: Malcolm Mclaren, 'Madam Butterfly', single from the album Fans (Charisma Records, 1984): click here.

Or click here for the promotional video to the above, directed by Terence Donovan. Set in a Turkish bath and featuring a languid parade of beautiful young women, the video was banned by Top of the Pops on the grounds that the artist - McLaren - fails to appear in it.  

Watch: Galliano's Japanese New Look couture show for Dior (S/S 2007): click here.

Reflections on Madam Butterfly 1: The Opera

Poster for Madama Butterfly (1904) 

by Adolfo Hohenstein

Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala 116 years ago today ...

Based on a short story by the American author John Luther Long, the work has become a firm favourite with opera goers the world over, although, in its original two act version, it was poorly received, obliging Puccini to significantly revise it; dividing the second act in two, for example, and inserting the Humming Chorus as a bridge to what became Act III.

These and other changes did the trick, although Puccini continued to revise the work, producing a fifth and final version in 1907 - the composer's cut - which has become the one most often performed today.

And, rather surprisingly perhaps, Madama Butterfly is still frequently staged, despite our living in a politically woke era obsessively concerned with racism and sexual abuse, things that are central to this tragic tale of an American naval officer's exploitation and betrayal of a 15-year-old Japanese girl and her subsequent suicide.   

I suppose this shows that whilst some contemporary audience members - as well as some members of the cast and production team - may struggle to reconcile their enjoyment of this musical masterpiece with the fact that it was written by a dead white European male indulging in Orientalism of the first degree, most members of the paying public don't give a shit as long as they get to hear one of the most famous (and beautiful) of arias, Un bel dì vedremo.

The fact is, when most people pop along to the theatre, they do so hoping to be entertained; they don't buy tickets for Madama Butterfly because they are concerned about white male privilege or the sexual exploitation of vulnerable young women in the developing world, any more than when buying tickets to The Phantom of the Opera it's because they care about facial disfigurement or the condition of the sewers in 19th century Paris ...

Play: Maria Callas, 'Un bel dì vedremo', from The Very Best of Maria Callas, (EMI, 2002): click here. 

To read a sister post to this one, on Puccini's influence on pop and fashion - with reference to the work of Malcolm McLaren and John Galliano - please click here. 

 

The Shamrock and the Swastika: Notes on Irish Republicanism and National Socialism

Statue of Seán Russell
Fairview Park, Dublin

Oh here’s to Adolph Hitler / Who made the Britons squeal

Sure before the fight is ended / They will dance an Irish reel

I.

Whilst my knowledge of Irish history and politcs is rather limited, I was surprised to hear that Sinn Féin had polled almost a quarter of all votes cast in the recent general election; more than any other party, gaining them 37 of the 160 available seats.

A left-leaning republican party, Sinn Féin emerged in its current form during the Troubles, when it was linked to the IRA. Since the Good Friday Agreement (1998), however, they've successfully rebranded themselves as a populist movement and in 2018 they completed their transformation by announcing Mary Lou McDonald as party leader, succeeding the far more sinister figure of Gerry Adams.

However, whilst Ms McDonald might not carry the same paramilitary baggage as Adams, it might be noted that the other two main political parties in Ireland - Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil - continue to regard Sinn Féin as beyond the pale and have so far refused to consider any form of coalition with the latter.

We might also recall that Ms McDonald has also attracted criticism herself in the past; for example, for allowing her campaign office to sell IRA souvenirs and memorabilia and for speaking at a rally in Dublin in 2003 to commemorate Seán Russell -  an IRA leader with links to Nazi Germany.           

II.

I understand that, sometimes, it's strategically necessary and politically expedient to enter into alliances with the Devil himself. And the ancient proverb about the enemy of one's enemy being one's friend provides philosophical justification for such pact-making. But, even so, it's a bit shocking to discover just how far along a very slippery and dangerous slope Seán Russell was prepared to tread ...

In the summer of 1940, Russell occupied a villa outside Berlin where he was accorded every privilege possible by his Nazi hosts, including a chauffer driven car and the services of an interpreter. He was also, more significantly, given access to the Brandenberg military camp in order to study the latest techniques in sabotage and guerilla warfare. His liaison at this time was the SS officer Edmund Veesenmayer, who would later become an architect of the Final Solution in Hungary and Croatia.

It was Russell's hope that the German high command would enlist the services of the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern Ireland and on the UK mainland and that, following the planned invasion of Britain, he and his comrades would be duly rewarded. Unfortunately for him, on his return to Ireland aboard a U-boat, he suffered the rupturing of a gastric ulcer and this proved fatal. 

None of this, of course, proves that Russell was sympathetic to or in agreement with Nazi doctrine. But it should surely give us all pause for thought about the way in which romantic nationalism and political idealism can easily collapse into the black hole of fascism. At best, Russell was outrageously naive - though whether that excuses him of his active collaboration with the Nazis (who were busy at that time occupying Western Europe) is debatable.

It might also be noted that Russell wasn't the only one within the IRA supporting the Third Reich. In July of 1940 the leadership issued a joint statement declaring that German forces would be welcomed as friends and liberators should they land in Ireland. The public was assured that the Nazis had no interest in occupying the country or further frustrating the dream of independence, but merely wished to see Ireland play an active role in the new Europe.  

Worse still was the fact that the IRA's main publication - War News - began to adopt openly anti-Semitic language and expressed their satisfaction at what was happening on the Continent, as the cleansing fires of the Wehrmacht drove the Jews from Europe. Shamefully, the leaders of Sinn Féin at this time also indulged in such rhetoric, repeatedly attacking the alleged Jewish influence in Ireland.

One dreads to imagine what would have happened to Ireland's tiny Jewish community (numbering only a few thousand) had the Nazis chosen to invade the Emerald Isle and paint it black. As the Irish historian Brian Hanley notes:

"Across Europe a variety of ethnic and political groups collaborated with the Nazis in order to further their own agendas. Inevitably this meant active involvement in Nazi persecution of Jews and political opponents. It also meant becoming a part of the Nazi governmental machine. Does anyone seriously believe that the IRA would have avoided playing this role?"   

Ultimately, I don't like nationalisms of any variety: Irish, German, Scottish, Catalan ... even English. As Nietzsche pointed out, subscribing to such a politics in its vulgar modern form, is, for free spirits, profoundly mistaken; a deliberate deadening of our higher natures.    

See: Brian Hanley, "'Oh here's to Adolph Hitler" ... The IRA and the Nazis', History Ireland, Vol. 13, Issue 3 (May/June 2005): click here to read online.

Repress Nothing! In Memory of Otto Gross

Otto Gross (1877 - 1920)

Otto Gross - the maverick psychoanalyst and utopian anarchist whom radicals and exponents of free love continue to revere - died 100 years ago today: from pneumonia; aged 42; in a Berlin hospital, having been found lying in the street, starving, penniless, and half-frozen to death.

A sad and premature (arguably all-too-predictable) end to the life of a charismatic drug-addict who spent much of his adult life in and out of psychiatric institutions and who rejected all caution and restraint; a man who was even evicted from the community of bohemians at Ascona for trying to instigate orgies at which participants could openly explore their bisexual desires. [1]    

Inspired by his readings of Max Stirner, Nietzsche and Kropotkin, it's said that Gross influenced in turn many artists and writers with his neo-pagan (and proto-feminist) attempt to revalue all values, including D. H. Lawrence - which, of course, is where my interest in him comes from, rather than his relationship to Freud and Jung, who basically thought him a hopeless madman about whom the less said the better.

Lawrence, of course, never met Gross and doesn't directly refer to him in his writings. [2] But his wife, Frieda, had had an affair with the latter in 1908 (at the same time that Gross was also involved with Frieda's sister, Else) and so a lot of his revolutionary ideas to do with politics, culture, the unconscious and human sexuality, were transmitted via her. It's almost certain that Lawrence also read Gross's letters to Frieda (which she treasured throughout her life):

"They affirmed the idea of the saving sexual relationship outside the bonds of society: they stressed how a sexually liberated woman could escape the trammels of the ordinary and be an inspiration for intellectual and striving men; they showed a passionately thinking man struggling to come to terms with the new and to escape the past. In many ways, they offered Lawrence the themes for his next eight years of writing; and (above all) they offered a way of thinking about Frieda [whom Gross regarded as the woman of the future]." [3]

Having said that, it's important to stress that Lawrence would have mistrusted (and disliked) Gross in person and to note that he soon saw through his idealism - including his sexual and political idealism.

And for us, living here in 2020, does Gross's thinking still trouble, still challenge? Or does it only bore and depress? Unfortunately, that's a question that some also ask of Lawrence ...

Notes

[1] Perhaps more interesting from a thanatological perspective, is the fact that Gross affirmed the sovereign freedom of the individual not merely in sexual terms, but also as the right to be ill and to die in a manner (and at a time) of their own choosing. He regarded neurosis and suicide as legitimate expressions of protest against a repressive social order.    

[2] Lawrence gives us a fictionalised representation of Otto Gross in his unfinished novel Mr Noon (written 1921-22); the character of Eberhard appears in Part II of the work. 

[3] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 443-44.

See also: John Turner, Cornelia Rumpf-Worthen and Ruth Jenkins, 'The Otto Gross - Frieda Weekley Correspondence: Transcribed, Translated, and Annotated', in The D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 22, No. 2, (Summer, 1990), pp. 137-227. Click here to read online. 

On This Day I Complete My Fifty-Sixth Year

Richard Westall: Lord Byron (1813)

Oil on canvas (36" x 28")

National Portrait Gallery (NPG 4243)

I would describe my character as more ironic than Byronic. However, there are many things I admire about the Romantic English poet and traits which we might be said to have in common, including, for example, a fondness for animals.* 

We are also, Byron and I, astrological kin; each blessed by being born beneath the sign of Aquarius. But, like him, I'm also prone to a certain melancholy whenever another birthday rolls around and another step taken towards the Abyss: 


My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm - the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!**


That just about sums up how I'm feeling today ...

Still, as Byron also noted, the great object of life is to feel something, even if that something is pain or existential angst. Only when the heart is completely unmoved by anything should one consider seeking out a soldier's grave.

Notes

* Byron loved his dog, Boatswain, so much that when the latter contracted rabies, he nursed him without any thought or fear of infection and, although deep in debt at the time, he commissioned a large marble monument for Boatswain at Newstead Abbey when the dog succumbed to the disease. Byron also kept a tame bear whilst a student at Cambridge, thereby amusingly circumventing rules forbidding the keeping of pet dogs. At one point he even considered applying for a fellowship on the creature's behalf. 

** Byron, 'On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year', written on 22 January, 1824: click here to read in full on the Poetry Foundation website.  

Bad Boys (With Reference to the Cases of Johnny Strabler and George Costanza)

Two Bad Boys: Marlon Brando as Johnny Strabler 

and Jason Alexander as George Costanza

I.

Last night, on TV, they showed The Wild One (1953) - László Benedek's classic biker movie starring the impossibly beautiful Marlon Brando in an iconic role as Johnny Strabler, leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club.

When Johnny meets good-girl Kathie Bleeker (played by Mary Murphy) working at the local café-bar, he asks her out to a dance. Although she politely (somewhat coyly) turns him down, she's clearly intrigued (and excited) by Johnny's brooding personality.

In other words, Kathie digs the bad boy ...

II.

I don't know if we should classify the bad boy as a cultural archetype, stereotype or trope, but I do know that there's something in the idea that at least some women - who probably should know better - find the rebellious rogue male or romantic outlaw figure irresistibly attractive.

These women might claim to want caring, sharing boyfriends who are in touch with their feminine side and happy to help with the housework, but the evidence suggests otherwise; namely, that self-obsessed psychopaths with a cool persona and striking good looks always triumph over  the former when it comes to getting the girl.

There are many types of bad boy - including the punk, the pirate, the gangster, and the mad, bad and dangerous poet in all his Byronic splendour - but they all share a dark triad of personality traits: narcissism, thrill-seeking, and deceitfulness. I don't know if these traits have a genetic component - or if the women who find them attractive are genetically predisposed to do so - but it wouldn't suprise me if that were the case.

III.

The female susceptibility to bastards was very amusingly spoofed in a season eight episode of Seinfeld, when George suddenly finds himself playing the role of bad boy (which mostly consists of chewing gum). 

Elaine warns her colleague Anna (Rebecca McFarland) to keep her distance from her friend George, even though he seems harmless: "He's a bad seed. He's a horrible seed. He's one of the worst seeds I've ever seen." Of course, this immediately makes Anna interested in him.

Jerry, of course, is familiar with the syndrome and so when George expresses his surprise at being contacted out of the blue by Anna - after she has previously rebuffed his advances with extreme prejudice - he knows exactly what's going on: "Anna digs the bad boy" - much to George's bemusement ...

For George has never been the bad boy before. He likes the role, however, and intends to exploit his new (unfounded) reputation for badness, setting up a rendezvous with Anna in the park. Elaine's attempt to put an immediate stop to their relationship only makes Anna more attracted to George and soon she's wearing his Yankees jacket. 

Things only cool off when Elaine persuades Anna that, actually, George is a good and decent soul - a fine seed. Desperate to prove his bad boy credentials, George attempts to bootleg a movie. Of course, George being George, he bungles the operation and is arrested.

Worse, when the police officer shouts at him, George begins to cry and has to be comforted by Anna. Now, of course, it's really over; for girls hate cry babies as much as they love bad boys.

Watch: Seinfeld, 'The Little Kicks' (S8/E4), written by Spike Feresten, directed by Andy Ackerman (NBC, 10 October, 1996): the bad boy scenes between George and Anna can be viewed by clicking here. 

In Memory of Dollie Radford

Robert Bryden: Dollie Radford 
Woodcut (1902)

The English poet and playwright Caroline Maitland - better known as Dollie Radford - died 100 years ago today. 

I know this not because I'm a great fan of her work, which combines a conservative aesthetic with radical politics - Radford was a close friend of Eleanor Marx - but because of the D. H. Lawrence connection.

She first met the latter in the spring of 1915 and, unusually, found him to be rather sweet; "so simple and kind, touchingly childlike, and brim full of sensibility and perception".*

Responding to her warmth and generosity, Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, became firm friends with Radford. In a letter written to Dollie in January 1916, Lawrence told her that whilst her poems were exquisite, they made him feel rather sad:

"They make me think of the small birds in the twilight, whistling brief little tunes, but so clear, they seem almost like little lights in the twilight, such clear, vivid sounds."** 

Which is just about as nice a thing as Lawrence ever said to anyone ... 

Notes

* Quoted in Edward Nehls, ed. D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography (3 Vols.), (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957-59), Vol. I., p. 292.

** The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 515.