The Bats Have Left the Bell Tower: Reflections on Graveyard Poetry and Post-Punk Goth

Love Among the Gravestones (1981) 

Photo by Kirk Field

 

 

La Rochefoucauld famously suggested that people never would have fallen in love if they hadn’t first learnt about it in works of art. And one wonders if something similar might also be said of the morbid and sometimes macabre fascination that many young lovers have for skulls, coffins, epitaphs and worms, i.e., all the trappings and paraphernalia of death. 

 

Would, for example, the two teens pictured above have spent so much time smooching in cemeteries were it not for the influence of the Graveyard Poets upon the erotic imagination?

 

It's doubtful. 

 

For whilst their post-punk queer gothic sensibility was primarily shaped by Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Sex Gang Children - along with numerous other bands from this period (early-1980s) - we can trace their love of the uncanny and the occult all the way back to these 18th-century poets, whose mournful meditations on mortality and the love that tears us apart foreshadowed the work of songwriters like Ian Curtis and Nick Cave.   

 

There is - perhaps not surprisingly - much debate within critical circles about what constitutes a graveyard poem and about which authors should be classified as belonging to the Graveyard school (and it might be noted that the term itself was not used to refer to a style of writer and their work until coined by a literary scholar in 1893). 

 

What we can say, however, is that the following four poems remain crucial to our understanding of it:

 

Night Piece on Death (1722) - Thomas Parnell

Night-Thoughts (1742-45) - Edward Young

The Grave (1743) - Robert Blair

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard  (1751) - Thomas Gray

Obviously, none of these works have the pop brilliance of songs by the above bands and artists, but readers who are interested in melancholic 18th-century poetry to do with life, death, ghosts and graveyards should certainly check them out. 

 

Be prepared, however, for a tedious amount of Christian moralising; for it's an unfortunate fact that didacticism and piety often detract from the delicious decadence and horror of these works.    

 

 

Musical bonus: Public Image Ltd., 'Graveyard', from the album Metal Box, (Virgin, 1979): click here.

 

 

Concrete Afterlife: Or How to Become Your Own Gravestone

 

The result is a unique, self-contained and virtually eternal 

concrete object that represents what the person was in life.

 

 

I. 

 

Concrete is a composite material made up of fine and coarse aggregates often bonded with cement that hardens over time into a durable stone-like substance. It is one of the most frequently used building materials in the world; we use twice more concrete (ton for ton) than we do steel, wood, or plastic combined.

 

For the Romans, who also used concrete extensively, it was a revolutionary material which allowed them to build structures that were not only more complex, but bigger and stronger than previously possible; the Colosseum is largely made of concrete and the Pantheon is sealed beneath what remains to this day the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. 

 

It's not, as one might imagine, the kind of material likely to appeal to D. H. Lawrence; a writer who hated stone monuments intended to last for millennia and who hated Imperial Rome which "smashed nation after nation and crushed the free soul in people after people" [1]. 

 

Within his hierarchy of materials, Lawrence ranks wood way above concrete and he praises peoples like the Etruscans who built their houses and temples of the former, so that their towns and cities eventually vanished as completely as flowers: 

 

"Myself, I like to think of the little wooden temples of the early Greeks and of the Etruscans: small, dainty, fragile, and evanescent as flowers. We have reached the stage where we are weary of huge stone erections, and we begin to realise that it is better to keep life fluid and changing, than to try and hold it fast down in heavy monuments. Burdens on the face of the earth, are man's ponderous erections." [2]

      

It's the imposition of stone and concrete that Lawrence loathes; the attempt to impress with a display of wealth and power and to materially manifest the superiority of one's culture over that of one's neighbour who prefers to build in softer materials and keep things on a human scale. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, one might have thought that Lawrence's wife, Frieda, would've been (or should've been) aware of her husband's views on this subject. Thus her decision - made five years after his death - to have his corpse exhumed and cremated, so that she might then mix the ashes into a concrete block remains puzzling and troubling [3].

 

I mean, wtf was she thinking? Lawrence would've hated the thought of a concrete overcoat. It seems, however, that some people today love the idea ...

 

Indeed, there are now businesses offering to add the cremains of your loved one to concrete and then pour the mix into a mould of your choosing. You can, for example, turn great-uncle Bertie into a concrete bird bath, or perhaps transform a hen-pecked husband into a lovely set of paving stones so that you can continue to walk all over him in death as you did in life. 

 

As Diego Belden and Arturo Acosta of project Concrete Afterlife note: 

 

"The corpse's ashes become a self-sufficient and unique statement of who he/she was in life, almost as eternal as the soul it has parted with. The flexibility of the material and process, allow this concrete avatar to blend much more easily with its surroundings. Whether it is placed among decorative items on a coffee table or shelf, stands silently in the garden, or is disguised as an odd looking rock in a remote natural location." [4]

 

Far be it from me to criticise those who want to have this done - either with their own ashes, or the ashes of a loved one - but, personally speaking, I'm not convinced. I want my remains mixed up with the wind and the rain, not confined within concrete and I have no desire to effectively become my own gravestone.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Sketches of Etruscan Places, in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta De Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 9.  

[2] Ibid., p. 32. It might be noted that Lawrence doesn't just object to ancient monuments; he also complains of "new concrete villas [and] new concrete hotels" [p. 25] being built along the Roman coast in towns like Ladispoli.   

[3] I have written in an earlier post about the fate of Lawrence's ashes: click here.  

[4] To know more about Diego Belden's and Arturo Acosta's project - Concrete Afterlife - see the online magazine Designboom (19 April, 2013): click here. Note that the image and blurb used above is taken from here (the latter having been very slightly revised).  

Where There is Woman There is Swan

The Swan Maidens by Dagfin Wereskiold (1892-1977) 

Oslo City Hall, Norway
Photo: George Rex

imagesgeorgerex.blogspot.com

 

 

Who doesn't love swan maidens? Those beautiful creatures belonging to the mytho-pornographic imagination who shapeshift from human form to bird form and back again. 

 

Tales of young girls bathing in a pool of water are already sexually charged; but that these nymphs might also slip in and out of a skin (or magical robe) of pure white feathers only intensifies the erotic element and it's no wonder many a man has lost his heart to a swan maiden (though it should be noted that forced marriages rarely end well).   

 

As might be expected, variants of the swan maiden myth can be found all over the world. But whilst I don't deny the universality of the this tale - where there is woman there is swan - I do tend to think of it as having special significance within Nordic culture. Thus it is, for example, that we find the colourful relief wood carving pictured at the top of this post in the entrance courtyard of the City Hall in Oslo. 

 

The work, by Norwegian artist Dagfin Wereskiold, depicts three valkyries (Alrund, Svankvit and Alvit) who, when not flying above the battlefields and deciding the fate of fallen warriors, had a penchant for appearing in swan form. I think what I like most about the piece is the fact that the figures seem to be wearing 1950s style full circle skirts and getting ready to dance, rather than go for a swim.     

 

Still, maybe we shouldn't be surprised that swan maidens love to dance as their story is almost certainly the basis for the ballet Swan Lake (1876). 

 

Interestingly, whilst the revised 1895 version of Tchaikovsky's ballet depicted the maidens as mortal women who had been transformed into swans via the curse of an evil sorcerer, the original libretto of 1877 depicted them as actual swan maidens who could transform from human to bird and back again at will and were not the victims of magic needing to be rescued.

 

As I think it important - from a feminist perspective - that a swan maiden is not denied her autonomy or in any way disempowered, then if we are to imagine her today it's best she keep her feathers on and look tough enough to survive within the contemporary world; look rather like the way that Alexander McQueen imagined her in his Fall 2009 ready to wear collection (The Horn of Plenty):   

Model: Sigrid Agren

 

 
Note: for an earlier post related to this one, click here. 

D. H. Lawrence and the Myth of Maternal Impression

Der det er kvinne er det svane

 

 

I. 

 

Perhaps my favourite sequence of poems by D. H. Lawrence is inspired by the Leda myth and playfully imagines the queer idea of a modern woman giving birth to a baby that is part-human, part-bird:

Won't it be strange, when the nurse brings the new-born infant 

to the proud father, and shows its little, webbed greenish feet

made to smite the waters behind it? [1]

 

That certainly would be strange: one might even think it ludicrous and quite impossible. 

 

The poet insists, however, that, far-off, at the core of space and the quick of time, swims a wild swan upon the waters of chaos. A great white bird who will one day return amongst men with a hiss of wings and a sea-touch tip of a beak in order to frighten featherless women and stamp his black marsh-feet on their white and marshy flesh [2]:

 

And in the dark unscientific I feel the drum-winds of his wings

and the drip of his cold, webbed-feet, mud-black

brush over my face as he goes

to seek the women in the dark, our women, our weird women whom he treads

with dreams and thrusts that make them cry in their sleep. [3]  

 

 

II.

 

Normally one would regard this purely as poetic fantasy. But I strongly suspect that Lawrence intends us to take his vision seriously and that he passionately believes in an occult theory of maternal impression - i.e., the belief that a powerful psycho-physiological force exerted on a pregnant woman may influence the development of the unborn baby.  

 

As a medical theory of inheritance seeking to explain the existence of birth defects and congenital disorders, maternal impression has long been discredited and should not be confused with the empirically validated genetic phenomenon of maternal effect. 

 

To be absolutely clear: the mother of Joseph Merrick was not frightened by an elephant during her pregnancy! Or, if she was, this did not leave a monstrous imprint on the gestating foetus. And just because a mother-to-be is feeling blue, this will not result in her child being marked with depressive tendencies.   

 

The fact that Lawrence believed in this sort of thing is made clear in a letter written to Bertrand Russell, in December 1915, whilst engaged in reading Sir James Frazer whom, he reported, confirmed his already established belief in blood-consciousness as something not only independent of mental consciousness, but superior to it. 

 

Via sexual intercourse, says Lawrence, he can establish a blood contact with a woman: "There is a transmission, I don't know of what, between her blood and mine, in the act of connection." And then he adds the following paragraph which is crucial to our discussion here: 

 

"Similarly in the transmission from the blood of the mother to the embryo in the womb, there goes the whole blood consciousness. And when they say a mental image is sometimes transmitted from the mother to the embryo, this is not the mental image, but the blood-image. All living things, even plants, have a blood-being. If a lizard falls on the breast of a pregnant woman, then the blood-being of the lizard passes with a shock into the blood-being of the woman, and is transferred to the foetus, probably without intervention either of nerve or brain consciousness." 

 

"And this", concludes Lawrence, "is the origin of totem: and for this reason some tribes no doubt really were kangaroos: they contained the blood-knowledge of the kangaroo" [4].

 

As one commentator notes:

 

"It is difficult of course to take such ideas any more seriously than Lawrence’s solemn pronouncements upon the importance of the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion to the health of human blood-knowledge, or his earnest belief that tuberculosis is caused by love. Yet we must at least pay attention when Lawrence himself indicates that an idea or principle is of vital significance to him." [5]

 

That's a true and fair thing to say. It's also important: for by paying attention to what Lawrence says about maternal impression we find a new way of reading numerous scenes in his work; one wonders, for example, if Ursula might have given birth to a centaur if she hadn't miscarried ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Won't it be strange -?', Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 380.  

[2] I'm paraphrasing here from several of the poems in the Leda sequence found in Pansies, including 'Swan', 'Leda', and 'Give us gods'. See Poems, ibid., pp. 378-80. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Give us gods', Poems, ibid., p. 380. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Bertrand Russell (8 December 1915), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 469-71. I wish there was someway of knowing Russell's reaction when he first read this letter, or how he replied to it (if he ever did). 

[5] Chris Baldick, 'D. H. Lawrence as Noah: Redemptions of the Inhuman and «Non-Human»,' essay in L'inhumain, ed. André Topia, Carle Bonafous-Murat, and Marie-Christine Lemardeley (Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2004), pp. 47-55. Click here to read online.  

 

For a sequel to this post, on swan maidens, click here.

 

 

Real Men Wear Gingham

Sean Connery as James Bond and Claudine Auger as Domino 

in Thunderball (dir. Terence Young, 1965)

 

Everyone loves gingham, don't they? 

 

The medium-weight, plain-woven cotton fabric which, although originally striped when imported into Europe in the 17th-century, is now famous for its checked pattern (often in blue and white).

 

The beauty of gingham is not only its extreme versatility, but that it seems to mean whatever people want it to mean. For example, it can signify wholesome innocence when worn by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939), or it can signify stylish sophistication when worn by English mods and French sex kittens. 

 

It can even signify that one has a licence to kill - did Sean Connery's Bond ever look better than when wearing an unbuttoned camp-collared pink and white gingham short-sleeved shirt (with matching Jantzen shorts and Wayfarer-style sunglasses) on the beach in Thunderball (1965)? 

 

I don't think so ... Unless it's in the blue version of the shirt that he also wears in Thunderball, or, indeed, the long-sleeved gingham shirt that he sports on screen two years earlier in From Russia with Love (1963). 

      

This shirt, which Bond naturally wears in a casual manner - untucked and with the sleeves turned back - is also in cornflower blue and comes with two large square patch hip pockets. It's fastened with distinctive silver-toned metal buttons.   

 

It all just goes to show that real men are unafraid to wear whatever the hell they want and can make anything look masculine ...

Sean Connery as James Bond and Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench 

in From Russia with Love (dir. Terence Young, 1963)

 

Atomic: The D. H. Lawrence Memorial Post (2021)

 

Jo Davidson's clay bust of D. H. Lawrence made four days before the 

latter's death on 2 March 1930. Lawrence judged the result mediocre; 

others have since found it slightly macabre.

 

 

I. 

 

Tomorrow is the 92nd anniversary of the death of D. H. Lawrence. 

 

That's quite a long time ago: long enough, I'm guessing, for a fair few of his atoms to have penetrated me, you, and everybody else on the planet, making us all neo-Lawrentians at some infinitesimal level - just as, indeed, we are all the other names in history (Louis XIV didn't know the half of it).   

 

I've written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark about atomic reincarnation and how even the dead don't rest in peace [click here]. But it's a subject that, as a thanatologist, I never tire of and which I'm always happy to resurrect given the opportunity. 

 

So, once more unto the grave dear friends ...   

 

 

II. 

 

In February 1923, Lawrence famously consoled a grieving friend: "The dead don't die. They look on and help." [1] 

 

And, for the most part, that's true ...

 

For whilst the dead don't look on - obviously - they never really die because the atoms that made them are immortal: they are in the food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, etc. It's a category error to equate the personal death of the individual with non-being. 

 

And, in as much as the dead lend us their atoms, I suppose they could be said, in a very real sense, to help us. 

 

 

III.

 

Now, as Jennifer Aniston used to say, here comes the science bit - concentrate ... 

 

According to the theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, one out of every 2.1 × 10^16 hydrogen atoms and one out of every 2.6 × 10^16 oxygen atoms in your body was formerly in any dear departed individual you care to name. 

 

That maybe doesn't sound like a lot, until you remember that "there are 4.3 × 10^27 hydrogen atoms and 1.7 × 10^27 oxygen atoms in a typical human body" [2]. Which means that there are approximately 200 billion hydrogen atoms and 65 billion oxygen atoms gathered from dead souls.

 

Siegel further notes that, because atoms are so outrageously numerous, if you do the maths you'll discover that "approximately one atom in everyone's lungs, at any moment" [3], came from D. H. Lawrence on his death bed as he exhaled his final breath.

 

And you thought coronavirus was the only thing to worry about in your respiratory system ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to John Middleton Murry (2 Feb 1923), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 375.     

[2] Ethan Siegal, 'Ask Ethan: How Many Atoms Do You Share With King Tut?', Forbes, (14 May, 2016): click here to read online.

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

 

Banksy

Banksy: Girl with Balloon (London, 2002) 

 

(Note the chalked message on the wall; if that doesn't make you want to 

vomit, pop the balloon and shoot the artist, I don't know what would.)

 

 

I. 

 

There's a rather poignant moment in his interview with the Sex Pistols when Bill Grundy mourns the passing of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Brahms. Classical composers mocked by Rotten as wonderful people whom, as Steve Jones reminds us, are long since dead [1]. 

 

It's as if Grundy realises that his time too is over and that the world he knows and loves - in which the majority shared his values and musical preferences - is coming to an end. 

 

Strangely, I felt something similar when I recently discovered that Britain's favourite artwork (according to a poll of 2,000 people conducted in 2017) is Girl with Balloon (2002) by Banksy ... 

 

Turner, Constable, Blake and Bacon have all died and no longer turn anybody on it seems, apart from a few old farts, myself included, and it's just our tough shit if tastes have changed and people now want banal (because immediately accessible) images and naive political clichés - which, let's be honest, is mostly what Banksy trades in - instead of complex, challenging works.

 

 

II. 

 

Now, just to be clear, I've nothing against a former public school boy making millions from the art world with his (sometimes amusing) stencilled designs whilst posing as part cultural prankster, part urban guerilla. And if people want to regard him as a folk hero and put his prints on their walls, that's fine by me. 

 

But, having said that, I do tend to agree with Alexander Adams, who argues that when one compares Banksy with, for example, Jean-Michel Basquiat - "another artist who started in the streets and moved to art galleries" - we soon discover the former's limitations: 

 

"Basquiat's art is alive because we see the artist changing his mind, discovering, adapting and revising. We see the art as it is being made. While Basquiat's art is palpably alive, Banksy's is dead - it is simply the transcription of a witty pre-designed image in a novel placement. There is no ambiguity or doubt, no possibility of misinterpretation. There's no fire and no excitement." [2]

 

Ultimately, concludes Adams - himself an artist, as well as a critic and poet - "Basquiat's art is so much richer and more inventive than Banksy's, which by contrast seems painfully limited and shallow" [3].

 

I'm not sure I agree, however, that a century from now people will still be viewing Basquiat and will have forgotten Banksy. And, as regular readers of Torpedo the Ark might appreciate, I have a lot of problems with several of the terms used here:   

 

"Banksy lacks most of the characteristics of a serious artist: originality, complexity, universality, ambiguity, depth and insight into human nature and the world generally." [4]

 

Indeed, reading this almost makes me want to embrace Banksy and tell Adams to keep his opinions to himself. 

 

One also wonders if Adams isn't just a tad jealous of an artist who, like Damien Hirst, has achieved such astonishing fame and fortune (speaking personally, I know that I would love to wield even a fraction of Banksy's influence over the popular imagination and envy both his talent for graphic design and flair for self-promotion).   

 

But, then, just when I'm starting to feel a certain fondness and admiration for Banksy, I think again of the above image and its message of hope and realise that Adams is right to ultimately brand him nothing but a "cosy culture warrior and peddler of pedestrian homilies" [5].     

 

Notes

 

[1] Bill Grundy's infamous interview with the Sex Pistols on the Today programme took place on 1 December, 1976: click here to relive the moment on YouTube - one which is as significant and as memorable for those of the punk generation as the Kennedy assassination was for those who witnessed events in Dallas on 22 November, 1963.

 

[2] Alexander Adams, 'Banksy and the triumph of banality', essay in The Critic (Jan 2020): click here to read online. Adams is quoting here from an earlier article of his which appeared on the Spiked website comparing Banksy and Basquiat.   

 

[3-5] Ibid. 

 

 

Gelassenheit: Notes on Heidegger and the Money Calm Bull

 This is the Money Calm Bull

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ads on TV that I find intriguing (and, indeed, faintly amusing) is by an online price comparison business specialising in financial services, featuring a bull who, apparently, is calmer than a banana [1]. 

 

"Why? Because with countless ways to save, from car insurance to energy, his bills are under control with MoneySuperMarket." [2]

 

He is thus able to handle whatever life throws at him - including stress-inducing situations ranging from the socially awkward to the life-threatening. Even when an asteroid threatens to smash into the Earth, the Money Calm Bull keeps his cool.      

 

Indeed, he's more than just stoical in the face of danger, he's positively serene; one might even argue that the Money Calm Bull displays an instinctive understanding of an important concept belonging both to Christian mysticism and Heideggerian philosophy: Gelassenheit ...

 

 

II. 

 

Within the Anabaptist tradition, Gelassenheit not only means composure or serenity, but implies submission to God's will and an acceptance of the world as is - the latter being an idea that Nietzsche develops in his teaching of the eternal recurrence, demanding an affirmation and not merely an acceptance of mortal existence, with every pain as well as every joy repeated ad infinitum.

 

For Heidegger, on the other hand, who developed the concept of Gelassenheit in his later thought as a fundamental attunement to being, the key aspect is releasement - a letting go of self and a letting be of others, or, more precisely, of things, in all their mystery and uncertainty. 

 

Heidegger may have rejected humanism, but Gelassenheit provides a powerful ethical component to his work (what we might term after Hölderlin its saving grace) - one that frees us from having to will and worry all the time and allows us to become a bit more like the Money Calm Bull. 

 

Of course, it's crucial to keep in mind that Heidegger is not arguing for a mere reversal within what he terms the domain of the will (i.e., the realm within which modern humanity has historically determined its essence):

 

"Rather, Heidegger's thought calls for a twisting free of this entire domain of the will and a leap into a region of non-willing letting-be that is otherwise than both will-ful activity and will-less passivity." [3] 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] The first ad in the series, created by those clever people at the Engine Group, began airing in June 2020. It was directed by Nick Ball (Blink Productions), has a voice over provided by the actor and comedian Matt Berry, and utilises Mozart's famous Piano Concerto No. 21 (1785) for the score. Click here to watch on Vimeo.       

 

[2] I'm quoting from a MoneySuperMarket web page featuring the Money Calm Bull: click here. 

[3] Bret W. Davis, 'Will and Gelassenheit', Ch. 12 of Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts, ed. Bret W. Davis, (Routledge, 2014), pp. 168-182. 

 

Four Fascinating Things About the Amish

Photo by Debra Heaphy (2012)

 

The Old Order Amish [1] are a strange people; Christian traditionalists of Swiss-German origin, they are closely related to the Mennonites with whom they have shared Anabaptist roots in the so-called Radical Reformation of the 16th-century. 

 

For a variety of reasons, many Amish left Europe in the early 1700s for the New World and ended up in Pennsylvania, where they were free to practice their religion and breed (six or seven children still being the norm even now when infant mortality rates have significantly decreased).  

 

They are probably best known for their asceticism and resistance to the modern world and its technological innovations - including what Catweazle called elec-trickery - which they regard as disruptive of a humble lifestyle [2]. 

 

Anyway, here are four things (in no particular order) about the Amish which I find particularly intriguing ...

 

 

1. Amish Children Play With Faceless Dolls

 

Many children - even in non-Amish communities - play with rag dolls. But only Amish children get to play with faceless rag dolls ... 

 

Indeed, one suspects that a lot of non-Amish children (and parents) would find a faceless doll a little creepy; an unworldly inhabitant of the Uncanny Valley. But as someone who hates identity, loves anonymity, and has written extensively on the politics of (losing) the face and becoming-imperceptible [click here and here, for example], I'm fascinated by these soft-bodied objects of American folk art. 

 

Ironically, however, whereas for the Amish these dolls comply with the biblical injunction against graven images and symbolise that God makes no distinction between human beings - we are all his children and all equal in his eyes - for a Deleuzian, such as myself, there could be nothing more anti-Christian than a faceless figure ...  

 

Also ironic is the fact that these simple rag dolls have become highly collectable and authentic antique figures can sell for over a $1000. Naturally, this has led to the manufacture of fake dolls intended to deceive the unwary. 

 

It might also be noted that as commercial tourism has increased over the years, some Amish communities have made faceless dolls for sale in souvenir shops - a development that both surprises and disappoints. For whilst I accept that even the Amish have to make a buck, this commodification of their own culture (and childhood) seems a bit questionable ...      

 

 

2: The Amish Don't Care About Having Good Teeth and a Nice Smile

 

Although some Amish families opt for modern dental care and practice good oral hygiene, many still prefer the old way - i.e., to yank teeth out at the earliest opportunity and make do with dentures. 

 

Not only is extraction the cheaper option - and the Amish reject medical insurance as they do all other forms of financial cover - but some regard it as the option more in keeping with their values (they fear that caring for their teeth will quickly lead to other forms of personal vanity).  

 

Being British, I suppose I'm in no position to knock others for bad teeth - and besides, it's quite a punk thing to not care about having rotten gnashers; how d'you think Johnny got his name?    

 

 

3: The Amish Hate Buttons (Koumpounophobia)

 

The Amish are famous for their plain and simple (some might say minimalist) style of dress: men wear solid coloured shirts, broad-rimmed hats, and plain suits; women wear calf-length dresses in muted colours, along with bonnets and aprons. 

 

The aim is to fit in and look like everyone else; not to express individuality or draw attention to the body. For to take pride in one's appearance is regarded as sinful by the Amish and one of the things that there is fierce disagreement over within their world is the question of fastenings. 

 

Those within the more orthodox Old Order disdain the use of buttons, which are seen as far too flashy and veering dangerously away from the functional towards the ornamental. Instead, they advocate the use of hook and eye fastenings to secure their clothing (or, if needs must, metal snaps). Only the more progressive Mennonites have fancy buttons on their garments ...    

 

The irony here is that whilst they say they don't care about appearance or fashion, the Amish obviously care about even the smallest detail of their dress in a manner which is almost fetishistic. In trying so hard to make themselves look inconspicuous, they succeed only in making themselves more noticeable. 

 

 

4: Teenage Rampage: The Amish Have a Word For It ...

One might assume that Amish parents would be particularly strict with their adolescent offspring. And, by the standards of the English (i.e. the outside world), they are. 

 

But, having said that, they do cut teenagers some slack, allowing behaviour which would almost certainly result in the shunning of an adult. They even have a term for this period of tolerated nonconformity: Rumspringa - a Pennsylvanian German term that means running around, or jumping about, though it should be noted that not all Amish youth choose to rebel against established norms and customs. 

 

Rumspringa is also the time for romance and finding a potential spouse. Boys get to ride around in a small courting-buggy and girls get to paint their yard-gate blue, indicating that they are of marriageable age and affable.      

 

At the end of this de facto rite of passage - and it must be stressed that adolescents are not formally given permission to go wild and still remain under the authority of their parents - a youth must decide whether they wish to be baptised into the Amish church or leave the community; something which would be a major decision to make at any age, let alone sixteen [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The term Amish was originally used as an insult or term of disgrace [Schandename] for followers of Jakob Amman who, unhappy with the way things were going within his local church of Anabaptists, decided to break away in 1693. 

      Then, in the latter part of the 19th-century the Amish divided into a hardcore Old Order and a more progressive new group known as the Amish Mennonites. The latter were less concerned about retaining traditional culture at all costs and had no objection to members adapting to the modern world. When most people think of the Amish, they are usually thinking - as I am here - of the Old Order.      

 

[2] Demut (humility) is a key concept for the Amish; one which is founded upon a rejection of Hochmut (self-regard or arrogance). 

      Another important idea is that of Gelassenheit, which we might translate into English as calmness or serenity, but which within the Anabaptist tradition of Christian mysticism also implies a passive submission to the will of God and an acceptance of the way things are; a letting-be, if you want it in more Heideggerian terms (and, of course, Heidegger borrowed this concept of Gelassenheit and absorbed it into his own later thinking). 

      For the Amish, Gelassenheit also entails a yielding of the present to the traditions of the past; their way of life is the antithesis of the modern world's aggressive individualism and obsession with newness and progress. In this way, the Amish are profoundly un-American.      

 

[3] The vast majority - between 85 and 90% - of Amish teenagers do in fact choose to be baptised and remain within their community, so clearly the parents are doing something right and the lifestyle offered has a strong appeal for those reared within it. For those interested in knowing more about this topic, see Tom Shachtman's Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish, (North Point Press, 2006) and/or Richard A. Stevick's book, Growing up Amish: The Teenage Years, (John Hopkins University Press, 2007). See also the documentary dir. Lucy Walker entitled The Devil's Playground (2002): click here to watch an early-stage fundraising reel (there was no official trailer made for the film).

 

Bonus: an amusing clip from episode 3 of Kevin Eldon's BBC Two sketch show - It's Kevin - featuring the Amish Sex Pistols making a mug of an Amish Bill Grundy: click here. The episode aired on 31 March 2013. To watch the sketch alongside the original interview with Johnny Rotten and friends from December 1976: click here.     

 

 

On Useful Idiots

 

I. 

 

Perhaps seduced by its cynical charm, I've always had a thing for the political term and concept of a useful idiot ...

 

That is to say, an individual - usually a well-intentioned idealist of some description - who promotes a cause without fully understanding what's in play or what's at stake and who can be easily manipulated by those who do. 

 

I believe the idea originated early on during the Cold War to describe those left-leaning liberals and communist sympathisers in the West regarded as particularly susceptible to Soviet propaganda. Although some like to give Lenin credit for coining the term, this attribution is unsubstantiated and it seems to have first been used in a New York Times article in June 1948. 

 

Prior to this, however, some were already speaking (in rather less brutal terms) of useful innocents to refer to those confused and misguided souls whose tears of compassion for the suffering of others prevented them from seeing clearly when it came to the reality of life under communist rule. 

 

Those like the British Labour MP Diane Abbot, to give a relatively recent example, who, in 2008, was still putting the case for Maoism and said of the Chinese dictator that, on balance, he did more good than harm, blithely ignoring the fact that he was responsible for tens of millions of deaths [1]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Unfortunately, Abbott is by no means alone in being a useful idiot. Contemporary politics is full of 'em, on all sides, and not necessarily just doing the work of the far left. For many of the most useful of idiots today belong to (supposedly) radical environmental groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, and are unintentionally serving corporate interests and those promoting a Great Reset and/or a new industrial revolution. 

 

To be fair, however, thanks to social media and the way that the world now operates, perhaps we are all in some sense being made fools of; thus it is that one commentator proposes "a new, analogous term more appropriate for the age in which we live: useful hypocrites" [2]. 

 

Again, whilst that sounds a bit harsh, one suspects nevertheless that it's pretty much how the masters of the digital universe do in fact view us (and they have the data concerning our behaviour to back it up).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm not making this up: appearing alongside Michael Portillo on This Week (a politics and current affairs show hosted by Andrew Neil on BBC One), Abbott - who would stand for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2010 and eventually serve as Shadow Home Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn (2016-2020) - really did attempt to put the case for Mao: click here. 

      Twelve years later, in November 2020, Abbott was forced to apologise for appearing on a livestream with Li Jingjing, a journalist working for the state owned CGTN, who denied human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, suggesting they were a fiction invented by China's enemies in order to to try and provoke a race war. At no point did Abbott challenge these remarks.   

 

[2] John Naughton, 'Why the internet has turned us into hypocrites', The Guardian (16 Nov 2014): click here to read online.