On Georg Simmel's Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies

Georg Simmel (1858 - 1918)

 

 

I. 

 

One of the founders of German sociology at the beginning of the 20th-century, Georg Simmel mainly interests today for his concept of purposeful concealment - a concept via which he attempts to revalue the notion of secrecy.

 

According to Simmel, when conceived in a positive and profound sense, secrecy enables life to unfold on an imaginatively far more complex plane than it otherwise would and this makes secrecy one of the "greatest accomplishments of humanity" [1]. 

 

Simmel also argues that what most characteristically defines (and differentiates) human social structures is the degree of mendacity (and ignorance) operating within them. The concealment of truth, therefore, is perhaps more vital than its exposure; secrets and lies are what hold us together (this is true even for married couples who like to believe otherwise).   

 

Anticipating Byung-Chul Han, Simmel recognises that complete transparency between individuals - if such a thing were ever to be possible - would not, therefore, be particularly desirable; it would certainly not be without consequence, radically changing how people relate to one another and live collectively [2].

 

In an essay published in 1906, Simmel also offers some fascinating remarks on the attraction of the Geheimgesellschaft ...  

 

 

II.

 

 

We can define a society as secret when its activities, inner functioning, and membership are all shielded from public scrutiny. Secret societies may even attempt to conceal their very existence, for, as Simmel notes, invisibility is an effective protective strategy. 

 

If readers are wondering why individuals might feel the need to take such measures, it's worth noting that secret societies often emerge "as a correlate of despotism" [3] and one of their key functions is to offer protection against the State for dissidents and heretics of all kind. 

 

As well as teaching how to become-imperceptible, secret societies are also highly effective at instructing members on the art of silence, which is a good thing in my view (indeed, I think it would be an excellent idea if our schools taught children how to sit still, sit straight, and stay silent; i.e., taught self-discipline, rather than encourage self-expression) [4].

 

Having said all this, Simmel is aware that some secret societies that start out as countercultural, ironically end up reproducing the oppressive structures and institutions of the wider society that forced them into the shadows or underground in the first place.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies', in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jan. 1906), pp. 441-498. The line quoted from is on p. 446. The essay is available on JSTOR: click here.

 

[2] See my three-part post on Byung-Chul Han's book The Transparency Society (2015): part one can be accessed by clicking here. 

[3] Georg Simmel, 'The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies' ... p. 472. 

 

[4] Three cheers for Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and head teacher of the Michaela Community School, Wembley. 

 

 

Essentially, this post might be seen as a kind of preview to a paper entitled 'In Defence of Isis Veiled and in Praise of Silence, Secrecy, and Shadows', that will be presented at Treadwell's bookshop - 33, Store Street, London, WC1 - on Thurs 7 September. Further details can be found on the Torpedo the Ark events page: click here. 

    

Readers are also reminded of a related post entitled 'In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets' (14 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

In Memory of Jamie Reid

 Jamie Reid (16 January 1947 – 9 August 2023) 

 

"Radical ideas will always get appropriated. The establishment will rob everything they can, 

because they lack the ability to be creative. That's why you always have to keep moving."

 

 

Although never entirely on board with his far-left politics - and rather uncomfortable with his mystical-hippie beliefs (and appearance) - the fact remains that Jamie Reid's artwork for the Sex Pistols (almost) means more to me than the records they were intended to promote. 

 

As Malcolm rightly said, his design for the single 'God Save the Queen' in 1977, based on a Cecil Beaton photograph, was National Gallery standard [1].

 

I think it's also probably fair to say that, along with Winston Smith, whose graphic designs in collaboration with Jello Biafra for the Dead Kennedys were equally essential, Reid defined the punk aesthetic. 

 

And so I was sorry to discover earlier today that the only sure method of leaving the 20th century sadly involves making a terminal exit ... RIP Jamie Reid.      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This now (ironically) iconic portrait of Her Majesty - as well as several other of Reid's provocative punk designs - can be found on Torpedo the Ark: click here.    

 

 

D. H. Lawrence and the Cashless Society

gbnews.com

 

 

I. 

 

As is well-known, D. H. Lawrence regarded mankind's money-mania as a collective form of insanity: "Money is our madness, our vast collective madness." [1]

 

And his proposed solution to this madness (which he elsewhere describes as a perverted instinct which rots the brain and corrupts the soul) is to terminate the present financial system: "Kill money, put money out of existence." [2]

 

Society, he says, must establish itself upon a different (revolutionary) basis from the one we have now; for endlessly chasing a fistful of dollars results in vicious competition and turns us all into fiends [3].    

 

Whilst these tiny snippets, taken from Lawrence's 1929 poetry collection Pansies, might not constitute a comprehensive political critique of capital - might, in fact, simply be the musings of a romantic poet dreaming of a socialist utopia in which food, housing, and heating would be free for everyone [4] - they do at least make it clear that Lawrence hated having to earn, save, and spend money. 

 

 

II. 

 

The question that arises, however, is this: would Lawrence have welcomed a cashless society of the type presently evolving and being promoted by many politicians and bankers? 

 

I doubt it: for clearly the so-called cashless society only allows those who govern us and run the financial system to exercise still more power and control; to strangle us ever-tighter in their octopus arms [5]. It's not a return to the a world prior to notes and coins, where barter was the system of exchange, but a slide into a (dystopian) future where money has been digitalised (i.e., turned into a form of electronic information or data).    

 

I know all the arguments made in favour of a cashless society - it's quick and convenient, it's safe and secure, it prevents crime, lowers business costs, and even reduces the transmission of disease [6] - but I'm also aware of the dangers that threaten from a society founded upon total surveillance of the individual and the complete control over their money (their savings and financial transactions).   

 

It's not just a loss of privacy that concerns - but a loss of freedom. There's also the question of what happens to those who don't have (or might not want) bank accounts; will millions of people effectively become non-citizens and be despised and discriminated against as such? 

 

In sum, I don't want to belong to a cashless economy and certainly don't welcome the idea of a central bank digital currency, allowing that coldest of all cold monsters, the State, to monopolise the cashless payment system. Thus, whilst I'm sympathetic with Lawrence's call to kill money, I'm (paradoxically) supportive of those, such as Nigel Farage, who are working to ensure the survival of cash [7].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Money-madness', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 421. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Kill money', The Poems, Vol. I, p. 422. 

[3] See the poem 'Wages' in the above volume, p. 452. 

[4] See the poems 'Money-madness' and 'Kill money' once more. In the latter, Lawrence writes: "We must have the courage of mutual trust. / We must have the modesty of simple living. / And the individual must have his house, food and fire all free like a bird." 

[5] See the poem 'Why?' in The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 391-92.  

[6] We should, I think, interrogate all of these alleged advantages of going cashless. Just to take the last of these claims, for example, whilst it's true that dirty old banknotes and grubby coins can carry disease-causing organisms (such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Covid-19), cash has been found to be less likely to transmit disease than commonly touched items such as card terminals and PIN pads. 

 

[7] Readers who also wish to protest the move towards a cashless society in the UK may like to support the GB News campaign - 'Don't Kill Cash' - which Farage is spearheading: click here. 

 

 

This post was inspired by a remark made by David Brock in a recent email, for which I am grateful.

 

 

Express Yourself: On How Individualism Becomes Socially Corrosive

Madonna performing in the video for 

her 1989 single 'Express Yourself' [1]

"Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling 

and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realised." [2]

 

 

I. 

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that individualism as a moral and political philosophy is intimately connected to capitalism, which is why Marx spoke of it as a bourgeois form of abstraction, heaping scorn on liberal thinkers who conceived of men and women existing prior to, outside of, or free from social relations and insisted that these individuals had a fundamental right to express themselves and their desires.

 

Of course, one needn't be a Marxist to find such an idea problematic. Indeed, there are many on the right of the political spectrum who oppose such thinking, arguing that if you deny or dissolve the bonds that hold a people together by sanctioning individual rights and modes of conduct over and above their duty to (and kinship with) others, then you threaten social stability. 

 

Nietzsche, for example, brands liberal capitalism as political degeneracy; a form of anarcho-nihilism in disguise [3]. For Nietzsche, the sovereign individual is the supreme product of culture and society, like a beautiful (but quickly fading) flower. Without the latter providing nourishment and vital support, the former would never blossom.

 

Further, it's worth recalling that Nietzsche values the individual for their power of self-stylisation and self-mastery - i.e., not the fact they express an authentic, pre-supposed self, but, rather, that they create and shape out of chaos an identity via discipline and cruelty. This is what he designates as a great and rare art [4].    

 

II.

As one might suspect, individualism vs. collectivism is a common dichotomy in cross-cultural research. 

 

Comparative studies have found that the world's cultures vary in the degree to which they value personal freedom over conformity to social norms. Since, as we have indicated, individualism is strongly correlated with liberal capitalism, the cultures of more economically developed regions tend to be the most individualistic in the world. 

      

Despite this, there are still some on the radical left who insist - like Oscar Wilde - that only with the abolition of private property and the triumph of socialism, will we witness the emergence of a true, beautiful, and healthy individualism. 

      

In his famous essay, 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism', Wilde went on to equate individualism with art, arguing that the crucial value of such is that it disturbs the "monotony of type, slavery of custom, and tyranny of habit" and saves man from being reduced to the "level of a machine". 

 

Many other artists and philosophers have also argued in favour of individualism - indeed, as a youth, I was all for a punk form of anarchic individualism too. But that's a long time ago and now and I'm no longer quite so seduced by those who insist on their absolute right to lead an aberrant and unconventional lifestyle regardless of how this impacts on others.

 

Thus, for example, when presented with Joseph Brodsky's proposition that the "surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism" [5], I would now ask what protects us from the latter when it has itself become malevolent?    

 

And surely there is little doubt that we are now living in an age of what we might term toxic individualism; i.e., a form of individualism in which self-expression has given way to narcissistic (and solipsistic) self-obsession. 

 

I don't quite want to say that TikTok threatens the future of civil society, but it's undeniable that a culture's understanding of the notion of selfhood and individual rights has broad (ethical and political) implications and is at the heart of many of the issues being contested today. 

 

My concern is, if you raise a generation in which each individual is convinced of their own uniqueness and their absolute right to live how they like (in the name of authenticity and in accord with their feelings), then that's probably not going to end well (unless you think the atomisation of society a good thing). 

 

In sum: this is obviously a large and complex topic - one way beyond the scope of a post such as this. However, the all-pervasive spread of toxic individualism and the consequences of this (i.e., the dissolution of traditional institutions and structures) are increasingly obvious. As Marx predicted long ago, with the triumph of bourgeois modernity all that is solid melts into air ... [6]       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The music video was directed by David Fincher. The single was taken from the album Like a Prayer (Sire Records, 1989). 

      In an interview, Madonna explained what the ultimate message behind her song was; namely, that if you don't express yourself, you will remain "chained down by your inability to say what you feel or go after what you want". See Mick St. Michael, Madonna 'Talking': Madonna in Her Own Words, (Omnibus Press, 2004), p. 59.

      If interested in watching the video and listening to the song on YouTube, click here.   

 

[2] Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart, (University of California Press, 1996), pp. 333-334.

 

[3] See the post entitled 'Nietzsche and Capitalism' (4 Oct 2013): click here. 

 

[4] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §290. 

[5] Joseph Brodsky, speaking in his commencement address at Williams College (1984), quoted by Robert Inchausti in Thinking through Thomas Merton: Contemplation for Contemporary Times, (SUNY Press, 2014), p. 110.  

      To be fair to Brodsky, he came to this conclusion after living for thirty odd years in a regime in which individual rights were not exactly top of the agenda. In 1963, his poetry was denounced as pornographic and anti-Soviet. This resulted in continuous state harassment until he finally left Russia for the United States in 1972. Not only were his papers confiscated, but he was twice confined in a mental institution, and eventually charged with social parasitism. For this latter crime, Brodsky was sentenced to five years hard labour, although his sentence was commuted in 1965 after protests by prominent cultural figures, including Jean-Paul Sartre. Little wonder then that he became such a strong advocate of individualism. 

[6] This is a famous line from the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto (1848), trans. Samuel Moore (1888). 

 

 

Marxist Musings on Being a Fish Out of Water

Wood carved fish (Raphael Park)

Photo by SA/2023 

 

 

I suppose many people have felt like a fish out of water at some time or other; that is to say, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, surrounded by the wrong people [1].

 

But for some, this is far more than just an occasional feeling of discomfort due to their being in an unfamiliar environment or awkward social situation. For some people, indeed, it's essentially a state of being; they are permanently estranged (or alienated) from others and perhaps even themselves and their own lives.

 

Marx certainly knew a thing or two about individuals not being in their element, although, as far as I'm aware, he never used the English expression [2]. 

 

However, in a collection of manuscripts written in collaboration with Friedrich Engels between the autumn of 1845 and the spring of 1846, and first published as Die deutsche Ideologie in 1932, Marx does say this:

 

"The 'essence' of the freshwater fish is the water of a river. But the latter ceases to be the 'essence' of the fish and is no longer a suitable medium of existence as soon as the river is made to serve industry, as soon as it is polluted by dyes and other waste products and navigated by steamboats, or as soon as its water is diverted into canals where simple drainage can deprive the fish of its medium of existence." [3] 

 

In such circumstances, when existence no longer corresponds with 'essence', what's a poor fish to do? Quietly accept the fact that external conditions have irrevocably changed? See this in terms of an unalterable fate, or an unavoidable result of progress? 

Marx suggests otherwise: he suggests that the fish should - like the millions of proletarians in capitalist society - rise up and, by means of a revolution, bring their existence once more into harmony with their 'essence'.

 

At least, that's my understanding of Marx - which is admittedly limited and may even be mistaken - that via an active, practical alteration of material reality we can radically change the interior life of men (and fish) and end their self-estrangement. We can, in other words, not only make free but make happy and build a world in which everyone feels at home and is able to fit in (i.e., a communist society). 

 

Obviously, I have problems with this Marxist vision, as I do with every other form of utopianism. And as I looked at the above wood carving in my local park, I couldn't help but recall Michel Foucault's remark about Marxism as something out of place and unable to survive in the world today: 

 

"Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought like a fish in water: that is, it is unable to breathe anywhere else." [4] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This expression was first used by Chaucer in The Cantebury Tales (1387-1400) to describe a seaman's awkwardness when obliged to ride a horse and a monk's discomfort when in the world at large rather than safely cloistered in the monastery. 

 

[2] Although German speakers, like Marx, cerainly refer to people not being in their element - nicht in seinem Element sein - I'm not sure they use the idiomatic expression fish out of water. However, I may be wrong about this and I'm happy to be corrected if so. 

 

[3] See Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, B: The Illusion of the Epoch. This can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[4] Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (Tavistock Publications, 1970), p. 262.

 

 

In the Shower with Leslie Phillips

 

Fig. 1 Leslie Phillips and Shirley Eaton in Carry On Constable (1960)

 Fig. 2 Leslie Phillips and Andrea Allan in Spanish Fly (1976)

 

 

On-screen nudity can either be suggestive or explicit. 

 

But just as a porn film that lacks graphic content has no raison d'être and will fail to arouse its viewers, so too a comedy that moves beyond sexual innuendo and the briefest flash of bare flesh into the full-frontal realm will ultimately cease to amuse its audience. 

 

For it seems that in order to sustain laughter, even a risqué comedy requires bath towels and bed sheets. It must remain rooted, that is to say, in a sexually repressed culture of inhibition and embarrassment; a nudge-nudge, wink-wink culture of drawn curtains and lights out - not a pornified culture of indecent exposure.

 

This is illustrated by two scenes in films starring Leslie Phillips ...

 

The first is in one of my favourite films of the Carry On series - Carry On Constable (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1960). 

 

In his role as PC Tom Potter, Phillips is called to a house to investigate a suspected intruder. But what he discovers is a young woman (played by Shirley Eaton) taking a bath. Whilst viewers are treated to the sight of her naked back, the scene retains its charm, its innocence, and its good humour. 

 

In contrast, however, there's a rather gratuitous shower scene in a film described by Barry Norman [1] as the least funny British comedy ever made, Spanish Fly (dir. Bob Kellett, 1976).

 

Now in his fifties, but still playing the smooth-talking Lothario for which he was famous, Phillips is directing a photo-shoot in Menorca with a group of four models, including an Australian girl known as Bruce (played by Andrea Allan), whom he encounters in a hotel bathroom. 

 

Whilst viewers are afforded plenty of opportunity to ogle her (rather magnificent) breasts and watch as Phillips washes her back, the scene lacks precisely the charm, the innocence, and good humour of the one in Carry On Constable and makes for slightly uncomfortable viewing in an age of #MeToo. 

 

Sadly, as the sauciness of the late-1950s and early-1960s gave way to the soft-core seediness of the 1970s and Phillips et al were obliged to compete against much younger, raunchier actors - such as Robin Askwith, who starred in the Confessions movies (1974-77) - the triumph of latrinalia was complete [2].  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Barry Norman, for those who don't know, was a British film critic and journalist. He famously presented a film review series on the BBC from 1972 to 1998. 

      I tend to think his assessment of Spanish Fly is a bit harsh. It's not quite as dire as many like to believe and although the script is piss poor (much like Sir Percy's wine), it has a strong cast that not only stars Leslie Phillips and Terry-Thomas, but also features Frank Thornton, Sue Lloyd, and seventies sex bomb Nadiuska. 

      Plus, the film also features a rather catchy song performed by the Irish singer Geraldine, called 'Fly Me' (written by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter and released as single on EMI in July 1975). Infinitely more enjoyable than anything released by recently deceased (and hugely overrated) Sinéad O'Connor, readers are invited to click here.    

[2] Many critics at the time decried this triumph of soft-porn smut, largely blaming it on the sexual infantilism of the viewing public. It should be noted, however, that the British sex comedies of the 1970s were enormously successful at the box office and have since undergone significant critical reappraisal. 

      Ultimately, although I prefer Carry On Constable to Spanish Fly (or Confessions of a Window Cleaner), I would hope that my view isn't simply rooted in a mixture of moralism and snobbery. 

 

 

Bonus 1: Click here for the Carry On Constable trailer. 

 

Bonus 2: Click here for the Spanish Fly trailer (in HD). 

 

Bonus 3: Click here for the VHS trailer for Confessions of a Window Cleaner (dir. Val Guest, 1974).

On Lightness of Being (In Memory of Milan Kundera)

 

'Life which disappears once and for all, which does not return is without weight 

and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime means nothing at all.'

 

I. 

 

Milan Kundera, the Czech-French novelist who died earlier this month, aged 94, was one of those writers whom I tried (but failed) to read and to love - Umberto Eco would be another such author. 

 

And so it is that the only work of his to which I ever returned was the philosophical novel for which he is best remembered, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) [1]. And it's this work about which I'd like to make some brief remarks ...

 

 

II.   

 

Set in the late 1960s and early '70s - i.e., during and just after the so-called Prague Spring period - it is the tale of a sex-obsessed surgeon, Tomáš, who eventually learns how to love and remain faithful to his wife, Tereza, an animal-loving photographer with hang-ups about her body. 

 

It is the story also of Tomáš's mistress and confidante, Sabina, an artist who has declared war on kitsch and puritanism and wishes to lead a life of extreme lightness [2].

 

Essentially, the novel challenges Nietzsche's thought of eternal recurrence; an idea which, were it true - or were we to take it seriously and act as if it were true - would lie upon our actions as the greatest weight. 

 

Kundera obliges his characters (and readers) to ask themselves how they would live were they to know for sure that they only have one life to live and that which occurs in life does so once and once only - would this lightness of being bring freedom and happiness, or become unbearable: for without weight (i.e. existential meaning), do not all our actions become trivial and worthless? [3]

 

 

III.

 

Einmal ist keinmal, as our German friends like to say - i.e., once is never enough; indeed, once is as good as never having happened at all. If a human life, for example, fails to forever return, then once it is over it is truly over and the universe can simply carry on in utter indifference.

 

Obviously, as a floraphile - that is to say, as one who loves flowers and locates their beauty precisely in the fact that they bloom and then fade with no sense of shame, or responsibility, or significance - I am not particularly troubled by such a thought, nor do I accept the logic. 

 

And whilst I don't think we can ever become soulless like the flowers - or that this would be desirable - that doesn't mean that men and women should forever live as beasts of burden, weighed down by moral seriousness.      

 

Similarly, as a lover of birds, I approve of young women like Sabina learning how to fly in defiance of the spirit of gravity - even if that means they must first hollow out their bones; it is better to live in freedom with nothing to eat, than un-free and over-stuffed, as someone once wrote [4]. 

 

However, like Nietzsche, I would also counsel taking things slowly, cautiously. 

 

For if, like Sabina, you want to learn how to fly, then you must first learn how to stand and to walk and to run and to climb. And to do that, you need to develop strong legs and that means remaining true to the earth and practicing a little weight training.     

     

 

Notes

 

[1] Written in 1982, in Czech, as Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, it was first published in a French translation as L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être (Gallimard, 1984). That same year, it was also translated into English from Czech by Michael Henry Heim and published by Harper & Row in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK. 

 

[2] The novel also introduces us to Sabina's other lover, Franz - a kindly academic and idealist who might have been better advised to stick to his books and not get mixed up with women like Sabina - and a smiling, cancer-ridden dog belonging to Tomáš and Tereza who, for all their flaws, love this poor mutt and so pass what for Kundera is the true moral test of mankind; namely, whether one can or cannot display kindness for those creatures at one's mercy.

 

[3] Kundera is aware that this debate within philosophy between those who favour weight and those who champion lightness is as old as the Greek hills and can be traced back to the pre-Socratic thinker Parmenides (who thought the latter positive and the former negative).

 

[4] See the post entitled 'On Dance as a Method of Becoming-Bird' (10 Oct 2015): click here.  

With thanks to Thomas Bonneville for providing the insight into Kundera's animal-based ethics.

 

 

On the Traditional Beauty of Japanese Women (2): White Skin

色の白いは七難隠す

 

Whilst the emergence of mass marketed skin lightening products was an early 20th-century phenomenon, the Japanese desire for blemish-free fair skin is as old as the hills. 

 

In other words, whiteness has been an aesthetic ideal for many centuries. In the Nara period (710-794), for example, women belonging to the upper class would powder their faces with oshiri to look more beautiful. 

 

There's even a word for this: bihaku. 

 

And there's also an ancient proverb which promises that women with less than perfect features can still look good providing they're pale enough: iro no shiroi wa shichinan kakusu ('white skin covers the seven flaws'). 

It's important to note, however, that for the Japanese, whiteness signifies holiness as well as beauty. And so the Japanese woman's preference for fair skin is not the result of western imperialism; it emerges from within Japanese culture - or, if you prefer, Japanese racism - itself. 

 

That the Japanese regard their whiteness of skin as uniquely different from that of other peoples, is made clear by the writer Jun'ichirō Tanizaki in the following astonishing passages:

"From ancient times we have considered white skin more elegant, more beautiful than dark skin, and yet somehow this whiteness of ours differs from that of the white races. Taken individually, there are Japanese who are whiter than Westerners and Westerners who are darker than Japanese, but their whiteness and darkness is not the same. [...] For the Japanese complexion, no matter how white, is tinged by a slight cloudiness." [1]

 

Thus it is that Japanese women resorted to cosmetics:

 

"Every bit of exposed flesh - even their backs and arms - they covered with a thick coat of white. Still they could not efface the darkness that lay below their skin. It was as plainly visible as dirt at the bottom of a pool of pure water. Between the fingers, around the nostils, on the nape of the neck, along the spine - about these places especially dark, almost dirty, shadows gathered. But the skin of the Westerners, even those of a darker complexion, had a limpid glow. Nowhere were they tainted [...] From the tops of their heads to the tips of their fingers the whiteness was pure and unadulterated. Thus it is that when one of us goes among a group of Westerners it is like a grimy stain on a sheet of white paper. The sight offends even our own eyes and leaves none too pleasant a feeling." [2]

 

Tanizaki concludes that rather than become self-loathing and ashamed of their impurity, the Japanese chose to display the cloudiness of their skin to their best advantage and sink themselves into the shadows, with whom they develop a profound and complex relationship: 

 

"If whiteness was to be indispensible to supreme beauty, then for us there was no other way, nor do I find this objectionable. The white races are fair-haired, but our hair is dark; so nature taught us the laws of darkness, which we instinctively used to turn a yellow skin white." [3] 

 

And nothing makes the whiteness of a Japanese woman's face look whiter than supernatural green lips and black teeth:

 

"I know of nothing whiter than the face of a young girl in the wavering shadow of a lantern, her teeth now and then as she smiles shining a lacquered black through lips like elfin fire. It is whiter than the whitest white woman I can imagine. The whiteness of the white woman is clear, tangible, familiar, it is not this other-worldly whiteness." [4] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Leete's Island Books, 1977), pp. 31-32. 

[2] Ibid., p. 32. Tanizaki, rather controversially, then adds a statement which might be seen to justify white racism: 

      "We can appreciate, then, the psychology that in the past caused the white races to reject the coloured races. A sensitive white person could not but be upset by the shadow that one or two coloured persons cast over a social gathering." 

      Of course, this remark appears in the context of a book written in praise of shadows.

[3] Ibid., p. 33. 

[4] Ibid., pp. 33-34. Readers interested in knowing more about the Japanese penchant for green lips and black teeth should see the first part of this post: click here. 

On the Traditional Beauty of Japanese Women (1): Green Lips, Black Teeth

Nothing fascinates more than the ghostly beauty of the geisha

 with her iridescent green lips and blackened teeth ...

 

 

There are three traditional elements which compose the beauty of the Japanese woman: white skin; black teeth; green lips. Here, I'd like to discuss the last two of these elements and then, in part two of this post, examine the significance and appeal of the first.

 

Green Lips

 

The art of painting lips is an ancient one in Japan and the traditional lip colouring was called Komachi-beni - a name derived from the red pigment extracted in minute amounts from the thistle-like safflower, known as benibana in Japanese. 

 

The use of beni grew in popularity during the 17th-century and by the end of the 19th-century it was found on every fashionable woman's dressing table, contained in a small porcelain bowl called an ochoko, where, interestingly, it would dry into a shimmering green powder (this providing proof of its authenticity).

 

Whilst beni would turn back to red when moistened with a finger tip or lip brush, something of this natural greenness continued to shine through when layered on the lips. Sometimes, women wishing to intensify this iridescent effect would first paint their lips with beni, then use a green pigment obtained from the stem of a bamboo plant.  

 

Sadly, but hardly surprisingly, during the 20th-century - particularly after 1945 - Western cosmetics (and Western ideals of beauty) rose to dominance and handy oil-based lipsticks (in more conventional shades) became the norm.  

 

 

Black Teeth

 

Prior to the Meiji era, Japanese women may have loved their red-green lips and milk-white skin, but, like women in other Southeast Asian and Oceanic cultures, so too did they have a penchant for blackening their teeth.

 

Whilst this practice, known as ohaguro, certainly had an erotic as well as an aesthetic aspect - pubescent girls would paint their teeth black in order to signal their sexual maturity - it was primarily (and somewhat ironically) done to prevent tooth decay.

Sadly, in 1870, the government banned ohaguro and the practice had died out almost entirely by the 1920s. In the contemporary era, you might sometimes see a performer at a cultural festival with blackened teeth, or an actor on stage, or perhaps - if lucky - you may encounter a geisha girl who still likes to indulge in the habit. 

 

However, whilst a small number of Westerners may show a fetishistic fascination for the blackened teeth of geisha girls, most will react with horror - particularly if combined with green lips. For whilst we may not insist on the redness of the latter, we value teeth for their pearly whiteness; a sign, for us, not only of oral hygiene, but wealth.  

 

 

She Was Only a Farmer's Daughter ... Notes on the Case of Miriam Leivers

Heather Sears as Miriam Leivers in 

Sons and Lovers (dir. Jack Cardiff, 1960)

 

I.

 

The farmer's daughter is a stock character and comic stereotype drawn from the pornographic imagination. A fresh-faced country girl, often barefoot and with straw or ribbons in her hair, she likes to wear a short sundress or a halter top and is usually portrayed as both faux-naïf and sexually curious.

 

Bawdy jokes and stories about the farmer's daughter and her willingness to be seduced by any passing stranger - much to the fury of her father [a] - can be traced back to the medieval period, if not earlier; there are, for example, numerous ballads about valiant knights falling in love with comely farm girls and even the Vikings enjoyed hearing quasi-pornographic tales of love among the haystacks [b]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, however, the farmer's daughter is often portrayed quite differently in works of literature; take the case of Miriam, for example, in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913) ...

 

Sixteen-year-old Miriam is depicted as an intelligent girl keen to escape her dreary life on the family farm. A voracious reader, she dreams of belonging to the world of culture and higher education and is resentful of the expectation that she will eventually marry and settle down, accepting her fate as a farmer's wife, tending the pigs [c]. 

 

Lawrence describes her as a romantic soul, inclined to religious mysticism, who imagines herself as a princess trapped in the body of a farm girl. Not only does Miriam consider her brothers brutes, but she doesn't hold her father in particularly high esteem for desiring a simple life in which his meals are served on time. 

"She hated her position as swine-girl [...] She could not be princess by wealth or standing. So, she was mad to have learning whereon to pride herself [...] Learning was the only distinction to which she thought to aspire." [d]

Whilst not sexy in the stereotypical manner, dark-eyed Miriam nevertheless had a quiveringly sensitive kind of beauty that combined elements of shyness with wildness. The protagonist of the novel - Paul Morel - is (unsurprisingly) keen to fuck her. He watches her closely as she moves around the farmhouse kitchen in a strange, dreamy almost rhapsodic (but acutely self-conscious) manner, wearing an old blue frock.

Unfortunately, Miriam is one of those spiritual women who thinks sex as something low and beastly - more a dutiful vicar's daughter, than a farmer's daughter, alas, or like "one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead" [184], as Lawrence puts it.  

 

She's happy for Paul to teach her algebra and help improve her French, and she might even exchange a few kisses, but she isn't interested in taking him as a lover: 

 

"The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish [...] perhaps because of the continual business of birth and begetting which goes on upon every farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such intercourse." [198] 

 

Eventually, after years of frustration and increasing bitterness, it all becomes too much for Paul and he sends Miriam a rather cruel letter on her twenty-first birthday, in which he calls her a nun; i.e., one incapable of accepting love in the physical sense (and rendering him incapable of giving such). 

 

Naturally, Paul's words wound her deeply and, perhaps, puzzle her also; after all, she was only a farmer's daughter ... [e]     

 

 

Notes

 

[a] I suppose I first became aware of the angry farmer and his daughter trope via Carry On Camping (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1969), where the latter is played by Patricia Franklin (and the former by Derek Francis). 

 

[b] See the essay entitled 'Male Bedpartners and the "Intimacies of a Wife"', by David Ashurst in Masculinities in Old Norse Literature, ed. Gareth Lloyd Evans and Jessica Clare Hancock, (D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 183-202. Ashurst discusses a tale involving an erotic encounter between two foster-brothers and a farmer's daughter on p. 191.

  

[c] For a discussion of female dissatisfaction with the world of the farm, see the post entitled 'Desperate Farmwives' (22 July 2023): click here. 

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 174. Future references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the post.

[e] Readers will probably be aware that Sons and Lovers has an autobiographical aspect; that the platonic relationship beween Paul and Miriam is (to some extent) based on Lawrence's own sexless relationship with the farmer's daughter Jessie Chambers. 

      In the winter of 1909, having been romatically fixated with her for eight years, Lawrence finally made a move, informing Jessie that, because he loved her, it was inevitable they would eventualy fuck - which they did, in the spring of the following year, consummating their relationship on several occasions (usually outdoors among the flowers and dead leaves). Unfortunately, it was, writes John Worthen, "an awful experience for them both", resulting in shame and regret all round.

      For full details of the relationship between Lawrence and the farmer's daughter, see Worthen's D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005). The line quoted is on p. 79.