On the Case of Russell Brand and Mark Fisher

Messrs. Fisher & Brand

 

 

I. 

 

One of the more unexpected consequences of the media storm surrounding the allegations of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse levelled at the comic revolutionary-cum-spiritual wellness guru Russell Brand is that it has reignited an online controversy surrounding a ten-year-old essay by political philosopher-cum-cultural commentator Mark Fisher, in which he openly expresses his admiration for the former ...  

 

Published in 2013, 'Exiting the Vampire Castle' [1] is probably my favourite piece by Fisher, despite the fact - or, if I'm being honest, it's probably due to the fact - that at the time it pissed a lot of people off.

 

Here, I'd like to revisit the essay, particularly those sections that refer to Brand - whose case increasingly fascinates me - and then discuss a retrospective defence of Fisher and his text, written by one of his closest allies, Matt Colquhoun, in response to the present hoo-ha.

 

 

II.

 

Fisher himself concedes that his essay was born out of depression and exhaustion. But that doesn't, of course, lessen its brilliance or weaken its arguments. Tired, fed-up, and bored is often a great combination when it comes to producing work that has a vitriolic edge; happy souls don't always create the best art or have the most interesting ideas. 

 

The trick is to weaponise and affirm negative thoughts and feelings and not wallow in them or allow them to coalesce into bad conscience and ressentiment; i.e., one must learn to hate with a certain gaiety, like Nietzsche, who is very much present in 'Exiting the Vampire Castle'.          

 

Like Fisher, I don't care so much about what an individual has said or done - no matter how objectionable - I worry more about the manner in which they are "personally vilified and hounded" afterwards. It's this that leaves behind the stench of witch-hunting moralism. 

 

This wasn't said by Fisher at the time with Russell Brand in mind, but I repeat it here and now thinking very much of the latter.

 

I'm sure that Brand's behaviour in the past was appalling at times; though whether it was also criminal is another matter. But the behaviour of his critics - many of whom were former friends and colleagues - as they rush to disassociate themselves from him is just as shocking and just as vile.

 

Fisher crossed paths with Brand at a so-called People's Assembly, held in Ipswich. Recalling the encounter, he confesses that he'd "long been an admirer of Brand - one of the few big-name comedians on the current scene to come from a working class background."

 

Then, in an astonishing series of paragraphs, Fisher couples a passionate endoresement of Brand to an excoriating critique of those po-faced puritans on the left of the political spectrum who sneer and wag fingers at him. For Fisher, Brand is not only cool, sexy, and intelligent, but queer "in the way that popular culture used to be". 

 

If, as those on the moralising left claim, Brand is prone to making inappropriate and offensive remarks, thereby breaching "the bland conventions of mainstream media 'debate'", Fisher is prepared to cut him some slack - and I respect him for that. 

 

Yes, Brand should apologise for some of his behaviour and sexist language; but any such apology should be accepted, says Fisher, in a spirit of comradeship and solidarity. And above all Brand should be admired for daring to bring up the taboo topic of class - one that so embarrasses many on the left with their public school backgrounds and ultra-posh accents [2].            

 

Admired too, for standing up to smug and condescending TV interviewers, like Jeremy Paxman, who seem to think celebrities shouldn't express political views and that "working class people should remain in poverty, obscurity and impotence lest they lose their 'authenticity'" [3]. 

 

Fisher writes:

 

"For some of us, Brand's forensic take-down of Paxman was intensely moving, miraculous; I couldn't remember the last time a person from a working class background had been given the space to so consummately destroy a class 'superior' using intelligence and reason. This wasn't Johnny Rotten swearing at Bill Grundy - an act of antagonism which confirmed rather than challenged class stereotypes. Brand had outwitted Paxman - and the use of humour was what separated Brand from the dourness of so much 'leftism'."

Brand, concludes Fisher, is an inspirational figure. That is to say, one who "makes people feel good about themselves; whereas the moralising left specialises in making people feed bad, and is not happy until their heads are bent in guilt and self-loathing" [4].  

 

III.

What then, you might ask, is wrong with anything said here by Fisher in 2013?

 

The answer - as far as I can see - is nothing. The claim that this essay caused lasting damage to his reputation is exaggerated and overlooks the fact that there are some readers, like me, who think highly of Fisher mostly on the basis of this text. Nevertheless, Fisher's essay caused a big fuss then and it's causing a big fuss once again.

 

And this is due to the controversy surrounding the (undeniably charismatic if slightly unhinged) figure of Russell Brand, who, let us remind ourselves is innocent under the law, having not been found guilty of - or even charged with - any crime of a sexual nature and who completely refutes the accusations made against him in the media by several women relating to the period between 2006 and 2013, when he was at the height of his fame.

 

Despite this, Fisher is once again being painted by some not only as an early (and aggressive) opponent of woke politics and cancel culture, but as an anti-feminist who, in celebrating Brand back in 2013, wilfully turned a blind eye to the latter's already apparent sexism, misogyny, and abuse of power. 

Matt Colquhoun - a writer and photographer known for their work on Fisher's writings and their relationship with the latter [5] - is having none of this, however, and says that such a grotesque caricature makes Fisher "wholly unrecognisable to those who knew him or who are more familiar with his work" [6]. 

 

Colquhoun goes on to argue that post-Vampire Castle and following his death in 2017, Fisher has "too often been reduced to a pawn in an online discourse that obscures the ways in which he moved on from this polemic to build a far more positive project ..." [7]  

 

Fisher's celebration of Brand was, writes Colquhoun, due to his life-long fascination with "people who, at one time or another [...] bridged the gap between the mainstream and the underground" [8] and believed in the revolutionary potential of a (chaotic and often comic) popular modernism, that someone such as Brand seems to personify.  

 

So far, so good: Colquhoun hasn't said anything that I find problematic, although, if I'm being completely honest, the claim that Fisher moved on in order to construct a far more positive project is one that makes me slightly concerned. 

 

But the following paragraph from Colquhoun really rankles, however: 

 

"Then and now, the inclusion of Brand in Fisher's argument stains it overall. The allegations now facing Brand, who was already mistrusted by many for his sexual politics [...] are all the more damning and serious. For some, they also vindicate the ire first directed at Fisher over a decade ago. But whereas Brand is accused of very real crimes, Fisher was only guilty of an intellectual misstep - one that he would spend the next few years trying to remedy." [9]

 

That, I think, is an outrageous statement and I'm almost certain that Fisher would not approve of the language of moral pollution; as if the very mention of Brand's name is tainting. 

 

And what, pray, would Fisher think of the claim that unproven allegations are damning? Or the idea of vindication - a term also drawn from a moral vocabulary? Or that he was guilty of an intellectual misstep - as if a philosopher should always walk carefully along a well-beaten and carefully sign-posted path.

 

I don't doubt that Colquhoun's motives in writing their piece for the New Statesman were well-intentioned and honourable. But I really don't think Fisher needs to have anyone apologise on his behalf, or attempt to justify his work. 

 

And to be reminded once more of the claim made by some of Fisher's online supporters that his "defiant support of Brand, against advice to the contrary, was a product of mental ill-health" [10], is, I think, shameful.    

 

If he has a grave, then I fear that poor Mark Fisher will be turning in it ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Mark Fisher, 'Exiting the Vampire Castle', Open Democracy (24 Nov 2013): click here. 

 

[2] Writing about the fragile and fleeting nature of class consciousness, Fisher says:

      "The petit bourgeoisie which dominates the academy and the culture industry has all kinds of subtle deflections and pre-emptions which prevent the topic even coming up, and then, if it does come up, they make one think it is a terrible impertinence, a breach of etiquette, to raise it."

 

[3] Jeremy Paxman did his best to make Russell Brand look a fool on BBC's Newsnight on 23 October 2013, but, arguably, it was the latter who exposed the former for what he was. The full interview can be watched by clicking here. 

[4] The latter, says Fisher, are driven by "a priest's desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant's desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster's desire to be one of the in-crowd" and they inhabit the Vampires' Castle - an institution which "feeds on the energy and anxieties and vulnerabilities" of the young and lives by "converting the suffering of particular groups - the more 'marginal' the better - into academic capital". This is a hugely important idea and one which I hope to return to and discuss in a future post.

 

[5] Matt Colquhoun is the author of Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher (Repeater Books, 2020). Colquhoun also edited Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire lectures (Repeater Books, 2021). They blog at xenogothic.com: click here.

 

[6-10] Matt Colquhoun, 'Mark Fisher was not Russell Brand', in the New Statesman, (18 Sept 2023): click here. 

      Readers who are not subscribers to this publication and don't wish to register in order to be able to access three free articles a month online, will sadly come up against a paywall. I'm grateful to Colquhoun for kindly emailing me a copy of their text, so that I could read it at my convenience.     

Notes on Hauntology and Ghost Modernism

Artcodex: Venn Diagram (2013) [1] 

artcodex.org

 

 

It was Derrida who coined the neologism hauntology in a 1993 lecture on Marx, to refer to the manner in which old ideas, hopes, memories, and dead authors come back to haunt us like ghosts; opening up an uncanny space for thought in which socio-cultural elements from the past, present, and future collapse into an atemporal zone [2].   

 

The term has since been invoked by thinkers in many different fields; not just philosophy, but also the visual arts, music, anthropology, politics, and literary criticism [3]. Indeed, I recall that when I was researching a paper on spectrophilia some years back, I also spoke of hauntology in relation to another Derridean term - différance (i.e., the difference and deferral of meaning, origin, and presence) [4].

 

Arguably, however, it was the English cultural commentator Mark Fisher [5] who popularised Derrida's term and, in the process, made it very much part of his own critical vocabulary. 

 

For Fisher, the key idea is one of lost futures and he argues that postmodernism and neoliberalism between them cancelled the revolutionary promise of modernism and Marxism; gradually (but systematically) depriving artists, activists, and theorists of the resources necessary to produce the New. 

 

In other words, Fisher bemoaned cultural and political stagnation; the endless repetition and recycling of old ideas that were given, at best, a novel form of repackaging. In contrast to the nostalgia and retro-aesthetics of postmodern culture, Fisher promoted hauntology as a means of overcoming the impasse of the perpetual present and he refused to abandon the desire for a better future (or to remain forever pining for a future that failed to arrive). 

 

Discussing the political relevance of the concept, Fisher wrote:

 

"At a time of political reaction and restoration, when cultural innovation has stalled and even gone backwards [...] one function of hauntology is to keep insisting that there are futures beyond postmodernity's terminal time. When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past." [6]

 

To be honest, I have certain reservations about this ... 

 

And when I see members of Artcodex drawing Ven diagram wall installations in order to manifest collective hopes and fears and organise their thoughts to do with modernism, postmodernism, and what they playfully term ghost modernism, it intensifies these reservations. For I simply don't share their longing to revisit the grand narratives of modernity and see how ideals of utopia and universality might be made relevant to the 21st-century [7].         

 

For me, incredulity remains the key and postmodern irony the melody ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This wall installation with three intersecting circles representing Modernism, Postmodernism, and Ghost Modernism was developed by the art collective Artcodex whilst in residency at Transparent Studio (Brooklyn, NY) in Feb-Mar 2013. 

      Painted directly on the wall with blackboard paint, people were invited to use the chalk and erasers made available to list the things they associated with modernity, postmodernity, and ghost modernity, whilst rubbing out any earlier entries with which they disagreed. Then, in April of that year, they created a larger version of the Venn diagram for exhibition, alongside other works exploring the theme of ghost modernism (see note 7 below). 

 

[2] See Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx, trans. Peggy Kamuf, (Routledge 1994). 

      The work was first presented as a series of lectures during a conference on the future of Marxism held at the University of California, Riverside, in 1993. Despite being an important concept in the book, the word hauntology appears only three times. For Derrida, the words hauntology and ontology are homophonous when spoken in French. If the latter is the philosophical study of being, then, in Derrida's mind, hauntology is a state of non-being that forever shadows ontology. I mentioned Derrida's text in a post published on Torpedo the Ark earlier this month in response to a 6/20 paper by John Holroyd: click here.

 

[3] As might be imagined, there is little agreement about what the concept of hauntology means exactly and different writers, working in different fields, have used it in different ways. Here, I will argue that it was the English cultural theorist Mark Fisher who popularised Derrida's term and made it very much part of his own critical vocabulary.   

 

[4] A Treadwell's paper entitled 'Spectrophilia' and due for presentation on 7 October 2014 was, unfortunately, cancelled at the last moment. Although I was more interested in notions of the queer gothic, perverse materialism, and the role played by ghosts in fictional works such as Wuthering Heights, I touched on hauntology as a philosophical concept and discussed Freud's notion of the uncanny. Some of my introductory remarks to this paper were recently published on TTA: click here.

 

[5] Mark Fisher - also known under his blogging alias k-punk - was an interesting figure; a writer, critic, theorist, etc., who cared passionately about politics, music and popular culture. Arguably we had this and quite a few other things in common; for example, we both belonged to that haunted generation born in the 1960s and both studied for a Ph.D in modern European philosophy at Warwick in the 1990s. 

      However, for one reason or another, he and I never crossed paths, nor even exchanged a single email. Someone did once jokingly suggest I was a poor man's Mark Fisher, but, even if that were true, the fact remains, dear reader, that he's dead and I'm alive (although, considering our topic in this post, such a distinction is meaningless and Fisher might now be said to haunt TTA).

 

[6] Mark Fisher, 'The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology', in Dancecult, Vol. 5, No. 2, (2013), p. 53. Click here to read as a pdf online. Readers who are interested might like to also see Fisher's article 'What Is Hauntology?' in Film Quarterly Vol. 66, No. 1 (Fall 2012), pp. 16-24 (click here to read on JSTOR) and his book Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, (Zero Books, 2014). 

 

[7] I'm referring here to Artcodex; the name used by Vandana Jain and Mike Estabrook for their work produced in collaboration with many other artists. Via a number of different projects, the aim is to create spontaneous communities that are able to explore issues within contemporary culture. Click here to visit the Artcodex website. 

      As for ghost modernism, Artcodex claim this started off as simply a pun or funny term of phrase "that came in the middle of the night" and which was then adopted for the title of a 2013 exhibition at the Quartair Gallery in The Hague (NL): click here. 

      However, as we have seen, the concept of hauntology has been around since 1993 and Mark Fisher was already using the term ghost modernism in a blog post published in July 2008: click here. Indeed, Fisher readily admits that Marshall Berman anticipates the idea in his classic 1982 work All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. I'm sure members of Artcodex are aware of this, but, as far as I can see no acknowledgment of such a genealogy is given on their website and that seems something of an oversight to me; credit where credit is due, and all that ...

   

In Memory of a Man from U.N.C.L.E.

David McCallum (1933-2023) as Illya Kuryakin 

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68)

 

 

Thanks to Tom Cruise's big-screen reboot, many people believe that Mission: Impossible was the greatest secret agent series of the sixties. 

 

But it wasn't.

 

At any rate, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was far more fun and whilst I remember pretending to be Napoleon Solo as a child - and obsessively wearing a Man from U.N.C.L.E. flicker ring until it eventually cut into my finger [1] - I don't recall wanting to be Jim Phelps or a member of the IMF. 

 

Obviously, the two shows share certain similarities; both, for example, have implausible (some would say ridiculous) storylines and both have fantastic opening theme tunes [2]. But I preferred The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to Mission: Impossible because it was more lighthearted - or more camp, as Susan Sontag would say [3].

In other words, it didn't seem to take itself too seriously - and that's something I loved as a child and still like today. It's why, for example, I prefer the Monkees to the Beatles; Adam West's Batman to the brooding figure of the Dark Knight as played by Christian Bale; and Roger Moore's Bond over Daniel Craig's 007. 

 

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also had the advantage of having David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin playing alongside Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo. And that was a big advantage, as the Scottish actor proved to be hugely popular with the viewing public; particularly the younger audience who loved his Beatle-style haircut in contrast to Vaughn's clean-cut appearance and who inundated the actor with adoring fan mail [4].

 

But McCallum wasn't just eye-candy for pre-teen girls; he was an excellent actor and received two Emmy Award nominations in the course of the show's four-year run (1964–'68), for his role as the enigmatic and intelligent Russian-born agent.

 

Sadly, McCallum died yesterday, at a hospital in New York, one week after his 90th birthday. Like a lot of other people - particularly of my generation - I will remember him fondly as someone who, partnered with Robert Vaughn, captured my imagination as a child.  

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I also had a die-cast toy car made by Corgi with figures of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin which popped in and out of the car windows firing guns when you pressed on a button protruding through the car roof (see the image above at the end of the post).

 

[2] The main theme for Mission: Impossible was composed by Lalo Schifrin and is noted for unusually being in 5/4 time. Click here to play the Season 1 opening titles.

      The theme music for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was originally written by Jerry Goldsmith, although other scores were produced by other composers and the changing musical style reflected the show's different seasons; some, using brass instruments and martial rhythms, were intended to be dramatic; others, using flutes and bongos, were deliberately more jazzy. Click here for the opening title sequence to the Season 1 episode 'The Giuoco Piano Affair' (Nov 1964), featuring Goldsmith's original theme.

 

[3] See Sontag's famous essay of 1964, 'Notes on Camp', which can be found in her first collection of essays, Against Interpretation (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1966). 

 

[4] Originally, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was conceived as a vehicle for Vaughn and McCallum's role was intended to be peripheral. McCallum, however, managed to turn the character of Kuryakin into a pop cultural phenomenon and, recognising his on-screen chemistry with Vaughn, McCallum was given co-star status by the show's producers. Incredibly, while playing Kuryakin, McCallum received more fan mail than any other actor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's history - including such popular stars as Clark Gable and Elvis Presley.

 

 

A Brief Note on the Queer Gothic, etc.

Margarita Dadykina: Cathy's Ghost (2019) 

Sculpted figure (58 x 20 cm)

I. 

 

Sometimes, a literary genre and a theoretical framework can become so inextricably entwined that it is difficult to discuss the one without reference to the other. Thus it is, for example, that next month sees the publication of a new collection of essays exploring the gothic from a queer perspective [1].   

 

This notion of the queer gothic was one that I dipped in-and-out of over ten years ago, producing three papers presented at Treadwell's Bookshop; the first on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891); the second on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850); and the third on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) [2]. 

 

Anyway, in anticipation of the Edinburgh Companion, here are some remarks I made back in 2014 in an attempt to (loosely) define what I understood by gothic queerness (as well as related terms, including the uncanny and the perverse) ... 

 

II. 

 

My concern with the gothic relates to a form of fiction that emerges during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. I'm not concerned with Germanic tribes migrating about early Europe causing trouble for the Romans, or spiky-forms of medieval architecture (even if the ruins of the latter often provide a setting for many a gothic tale). 

 

Primarily, then, it's to a bizarre, yet, in some ways, rather conventional literary genre I refer when I use the term gothic, whilst happily acknowledging that elements of this have infected many other cultural forms and fields of inquiry, including queer studies. Indeed, such is the level of intimacy between queer studies and gothic studies that many scholars promiscuously drift back and forth from discussing the politics of desire, gender and sexual nonconformity to issues within hauntology and demonology. 

 

Obviously, this is facilitated by the fact that not only do gothic fictions and queer theories have common obsessions, but they often rely on a shared language of transgression to explore ideas. It has even been suggested that the gothic imaginatively enables queer and provides an important historical model of queer politics and thinking [3].

 

We can certainly never overestimate the role that gothic fiction played in the unfolding history of sexuality. For not only does it anticipate the later codification and deployment of sexualities, but it also participates in what Foucault terms the perverse implantation of these new forms of subjectivity [4]. 

 

If it is generally accepted that Horace Walpole's Castle of Ortanto is the first gothic novel - published in 1764 - it is also usually agreed that by the publication of Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820, the popular craze for gothic fiction had already peaked. 

 

Nevertheless, the genre continued to flourish and mutate at the margins of more respectable literature in the decades that followed. Indeed, many of the works now most commonly associated with it were written in the late-Victorian period: this includes Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). 

 

However, whilst slowly changing in form, content, and setting over the years, many things remained the same within the gothic text to the point of cliché; not least of all the continued narrative fascination for perverse sexual practices and abnormal individuals. In this, it is similar to pornography. Both types of writing share a compulsive and "seemingly inexhaustible ability to return again and again to common tropes and similar situations" [5]. 

 

Indeed, some critics argue that, like pornography, gothic fiction might ultimately serve a conservative function in that it perpetuates stereotypes and thus ultimately re-inscribes the status quo. And it's true that gothic tales often conclude with the moral order restored and reason triumphant (though rarely with a happy ending). However, at the same time, gothic horror seems to possess an uncanny ability to pass "beyond the limits of its own structural 'meaning'" and in this manner transform "the structure of meaning itself" [6]. 

 

And so, whilst gothic literature might often be predictable, it's never boring. It constantly opens up new worlds of knowledge and provides an opportunity to explore the pleasures of socio-erotic transgression; incest, rape, and same-sex desire are all familiar themes within the genre, not to mention paedophilia, necrophilia, and spectrophilia. 

 

Arguably, Sade takes things furthest in his One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom (written in 1785, but not published until 1904), his masterpiece of torture-porn often described as a gothic novel, even though the Divine Marquis himself rejected the term on the grounds that there was nothing supernatural about the horror and sexual violence in his books [7]. 

 

So, to conclude this briefest of brief introductions to the gothic, let me make clear that what excites about the genre is not that it simply causes gender trouble or allows for things to go bump in the night. More than this, it challenges (and in some cases overturns) many of our ideas about what it is to be human - and, indeed, of how to be human. This gives it broader philosophical importance than those who sneer at ghosts and ghouls might appreciate. 

 

And if, at times, gothic fiction fails as art due to its overreliance on sensational and supernatural elements, it nevertheless more often than not succeeds as a form of resistance to conventional thinking and the heteronormative status quo. And it is this, as indicated, which qualifies it as queer [8]. 

 

And what do I mean by queer?  

 

Well, let me stress that I'm certainly not using the term queer or the concept of queerness as synonymous with either homosexuality or gayness [9]. Indeed, I vigorously object to those who conflate ideas in this manner and use queer as an overarching and unifying label for what are distinct forms of practice, behaviour and identity (often with nothing queer about them). 

 

For me, the appeal of queerness is twofold: 

 

Firstly, it is not a positivity or subject position. It's a transpositional negativity - i.e., a mobile and ambiguous concept that resists any fixed categorical definition and remains permanently at odds with all forms of legitimacy and identity. Queer, ultimately, doesn't refer to anyone or anything; it's a form of non-being "utterly inimical to [...] authentic existence, ontological or natural" [10]. 

 

Secondly, it subsumes and dissolves all forms of dualism; not only sexual and gender oppositions, but also that model of thinking which would keep life and death as absolutely distinct and separate categories. Ultimately, it's this thanatological project that I most wish to further, even if that involves unfolding it within a spooky sexual context. This project, which is both morbid and material, picks up on Nietzsche's contention that life isn't categorically different from or opposed to death; that being alive is, in fact, simply a rare and unusually complex way of being dead [11].

 

Death, we might say, is the material kingdom of the actual and vital signs, although real, are but an epiphenomenal effect of matter. Or, to put it another way, life is a momentary stabilization of solar energy that upon death is released from its molar entrapment back into unformed chaos and an infinite process of molecular disintegration [12]. This becomes important when arguing that there can't really be any serious philosophical objections to romancing corpses or getting it on with ghosts - even whilst there may well be legitimate moral, social, and cultural reservations. 

 

Moving on, we must of course mention the perverse ... 

 

The perverse might be thought of as a more aggressive and transgressive form of queerness; one that takes us to the very heart of a game involving desire, deviation, and damnation. Historically, perversion is tied to political insurrection and involves straying or being diverted from a path, destiny, or objective which is understood as natural or right. To those who live their whole lives on the straight and narrow it is obviously an abhorrent concept. But, personally, I think it’s a good thing to stray off the path; just as it's preferable to fall into sin, rather than fall into line [13]. 

 

Figures like Heathcliff or Dorian Gray are irresistibly drawn towards the perverse. Which is to say they are intellectually predisposed towards evil and that which is unnatural or anti-natural. The former, for example, knowingly engages in practices such as necrophilia and spectrophilia. And there's the rub; Heathcliff is fully aware of what he's doing and what he wants to do. It's the perversion of free will that leads to transgression, says Augustine. And it is transgression that brings death into the world. 

 

But it is also that which brings understanding and gives pleasure and we should never forget or underestimate the pleasure of perversion. As Freud was led to conclude, it's the perversions alone that ultimately make happy [14].

 

Finally, there's one more term which we simply must mention; one made famous by Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche ...

 

The uncanny is, arguably, also a form of queerness. But in designating the sinister, gruesome, and lugubrious it moves beyond sexual strangeness and gender troubling. The uncanny is more likely to give us the creeps than excite our desire. Wuthering Heights is, for me at least, the greatest of all uncanny novels; familiar, yet alien, seductive, yet repulsive; a book in which even the mortal status of the lovers is never fixed.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Queer Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, ed. Ardel Haefele-Thomas, (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). 

      There seems to be some interesting material in this 368 page book divided into three main sections - Queer Times, Queer Monsters, and Queer Forms - although, having said that, it does seem slightly old hat (though maybe I'm just miffed that I wasn't invited to contribute to the book). 

 

[2] 'Elements of Gothic Queerness in The Picture of Dorian Gray' was presented at Treadwell's on 18 May, 2011. This was followed by 'The Scarlet Letter: An Earthly Story with a Hellish Meaning' on 4 July, 2013 (advertised as 'A Slice of American Gothic for American Independence Day'). 

      As for the paper entitled 'Spectrophilia and Other Queer Goings On in the Tale of Wuthering Heights', this was due to be presented at Treadwell's on 7 October, 2014, but unfortunately had to be cancelled due to unforeseen (and unrecalled) circumstances. 

      Together, these essays formed part of a wider project to do with perverse materialism.

 

[3] See George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

 

[4] See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998). 

 

[5] George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, p. 9. 

 

[6] Ibid., p. 10. 

 

[7] Sade did admire at least one gothic novel, namely Matthew Gregory’s The Monk: A Romance (1796), a work in which every attempt was made to outrage readers in as many explicit, violent, and perverse ways as possible. 

 

[8] I don't want to overstate the case or make too wide a claim here. Haggerty is right to carefully resist the temptation to uncritically celebrate the gothic and its literary-cultural significance. As he points out, the genre was always somewhat marginal and semi-legitimate and never succeeded in challenging the dominant mainstream fiction of the age, which remained rigidly straight and heteronormative. 

      Also, if it provided alternative (queerer) ways to think through the politics of desire, it was ultimately powerless to prevent the "imposition of sexological thinking at the end of the nineteenth century". At best, the gothic continued to cast a shadow across the bright new world of scientia sexualis. See Queer Gothic, p. 19. 

 

[9] Elisa Glick is a Marxist critic guilty of this; see p. 11 of her book Materializing Queer Desire (SUNY Press, 2009), where she rather weakly explains her reasons for wanting to employ (and I would say misuse) the term queer synonymously with gay, lesbian, and homosexual. 

 

[10] Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 140. 

      I’m tempted, in fact, to drop the term queer altogether here and use instead a notion of the uncanny, which is closely related but without the sexual overtones. 

 

[11] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), III. 109, p. 168. 

 

[12] Those who attended Treadwell's regularly in 2006 will perhaps remember my six week course on thanatology in which these ideas were discussed in detail and at length. The work can be found in The Treadwell’s Papers, Vol. II, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

[13] Even such a trite and common expression as the straight and narrow - thought of as the one true path into the future - reveals something crucial about Western metaphysical thinking; note the linkage of truth with linearity and teleology. People think they are strolling along this path naturally or by choice, but in fact they march along it by arrangement and coercion. 

 

[14] Freud made the attainment of (non-functional, non-reproductive) pleasure central to his theory of perversion and stressed that it is the perversions that make happy; their repression which causes suffering and neuroses. Freud also understands that this is why many normal individuals strongly dislike queers who dare to manifest and flaunt their perversity; not only do they find them monstrous and threatening, but also seductive and this places them in the uncomfortable position of having to overcome a secret envy of those who enjoy illicit pleasures. 

      Note too how Freud compares the perversions to the grotesque demons used to illustrate the temptation of the saints. This is precisely how such images and descriptions continue to function within gothic literature; i.e. as uncanny manifestations and queer embodiments of the perverse; a threatening excess of difference and deformity. See his Three Essays on the Theory of Human Sexuality, (1905). 

 

On Suzy Kendall, Tuesday Weld, and the Curious Sex Appeal of Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore, Suzy Kendall & Tuesday Weld

 

"Dudley possessed a pagan, almost Pan-like ability to attract women." 

                                                                               - Jonathan Miller

 

I. 

 

Other than the fact that he was funny and highly talented, the thing I admire about diminutive Oxford-educated Essex boy Dudley Moore [1] was that he had an excellent eye for the ladies - four of whom he even married, including two that I'd like to speak of here: Suzy Kendall and Tuesday Weld ... [2]

 

II.

 

Suzy Kendall is one of those beautiful blonde British actresses best known for her film and TV roles in the late 1960s and early 1970s [3]. 

 

I remember her fondly, for example, as Kay Hunter in an episode of The Persuaders! entitled 'The Man in the Middle' (dir. Leslie Norman, 1971), which also co-starred Terry-Thomas as Brett's cousin Archibald Sinclair Beachum: click here to watch her first scene alongside Roger Moore and Frank Maher. 

 

Born in Derbyshire in 1937, Kendall was an art student turned fabric designer turned photographic model, before finally becoming established as an actress - not just in the UK, but in Italy also, where she appeared in several giallo films [4]. 

 

Kendall married Dudley Moore in 1968 and although they divorced just four years later, she remained close friend's with Moore until his death in 2002; she even hosted his memorial service.    

 

Having retired from acting in 1977, Kendall made a return to the big screen in 2012 as a special guest screamer in the (giallo-inspired) psychological horror film Berberian Sound Studio, directed by Peter Strickland and set in a 1970s Italian horror film studio.

 

 

III.

 

Tuesday Weld is a beautiful blonde American actress, born 1943, who began acting as a young girl and progressed to adult roles in the 1950s. The name Tuesday - which she officially adopted in 1959 - was an extension of a childhood nickname (Tu-Tu) and doesn't reflect the fact she's full of grace.

 

Weld often played impulsive and reckless young women acting out sexually; at least that's how I remember her - as a bit of a rock 'n' roller, with curves and attitude [5]. Danny Kaye, who played her father in The Five Pennies (1959), described her as 'fifteen going on twenty-seven' and so she was perfectly cast the following year as Jody in the classic comedy Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) [6].

 

Interestingly, like Suzy Kendall, Weld once acted alongside Terry-Thomas [7]. But the main thing these two women had in common was that they both accepted a proposal of marriage from Dudley Moore; Weld tied the knot with the latter on 20 September, 1975, and they had a son the following year. Sadly, they divorced in 1980 (though Weld received a generous financial settlement, plus alimony and child support). 

 

Newly single, Weld enjoyed the attentions of some of Hollywood's leading male actors including Al Pacino, Omar Sharif, Richard Gere, and Ryan O'Neal, before eventually marrying husband number three, in 1985 (an Israeli violinist and conductor whom she divorced in 2001). 

 

Meanwhile, away from the romantic rollercoaster she seemed trapped upon, Weld's acting career continued to blossom and she won the critical acclaim of her peers throughtout the 1970s and 80s [8]. She retired from acting in 2001, having given over 45 years of her life to the profession (which is long enough to give to anything). 

 

IV.

So, returning to Dudley Moore ... What was it about him that women such as Suzy Kendall and Tuesday Weld found so attractive? 

For Moore was a man acutely aware of his own inferiority; the fact that he was only 5' 2" tall and had a club foot was something about which he remained self-conscious throughout his life. But he was still regarded as a sexually charismatic figure and perhaps this demonstrates that if you are intelligent and can make a woman laugh, then physical limitations don't matter ...?

 

Or perhaps it shows that if you combine confidence with a certain vulnerability - and then openly profess a desire and a need to be loved - you'll soon have women eating out of your hand ...?

 

But then again, it could simply be that having international movie stardom and millions of dollars in the bank pretty much enables you to fuck whoever you want ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dudley Moore (1935-2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer, who first came to prominence (alongside Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, and Peter Cook with whom he formed a hugely popular and influential double act) as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He later achieved big-screen success in Hollywood; including a role in one of my favourite Goldie Hawn pictures, Foul Play (dir. Colin Higgins, 1978), about which I have written here. 

 

[2] Moore was married (and divorced) four times: to actresses Suzy Kendall (1968-1972); Tuesday Weld (1975-1980); Brogan Lane (1988-1991); and Nicole Rothschild (1994-1998). In writing here of only the first two women, I mean no disrespect to Lane and Rothschild. 

 

[3] Other actresses who might be categorised in this manner include Susan George and Juliet Harmer - both of whom, like Kendall, appeared in an episode of The Persuaders!

 

[4] In Italian cinema parlance, giallo refers a genre of murder mystery movie combining elements of sex, horror, and psychological suspense in order to create a unique form of violent thriller. The genre developed in the mid-1960s and peaked in popularity during the 1970s. It was a predecessor to - and a significant influence upon - the later American genre of film known as the slasher movie.  

 

[5] Weld played alongside Elvis in Wild in the Country (dir. Philip Dunne, 1962) and had a brief off-screen romance with Presley.

 

[6] Click here to watch the official trailer. Stanley Kubrick was so impressed by her performance in Sex Kittens Go to College, that he selected Weld as his first choice for the role of Lolita in his 1962 film adaptation of Nobokov's notorious novel. Weld, however, turned the offer down, explaining that she was already living the part so didn't need to play it on screen.  

 

[7] Weld and Terry-Thomas star together in Bachelor Flat (dir. Frank Tashlin, 1962).

 

[8] Weld was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in the 1972 movie Play It as It Lays (dir. Frank Perry); for an Academy Award for her role in the 1977 movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar (dir. Richard Brooks); and, finally, for a BAFTA for her role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984). 

 

 

On the Flintiness of Language in D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law

Ellie Nunn as Minnie Gascoyne in D. H. Lawrence's 

The Daughter-in-Law (Arcola Theatre, 2018)  

 Photo by Idil Sukan

 

 

Read almost any review or commentary on D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law (1913) and you'll be struck by the repetition of the following claims: 

 

(i) the play is a much neglected and underrated tour de force of English theatre ... 

 

(ii) Lawrence is superior to Chekhov as a dramatist and storyteller ... 

 

(iii) the language used has not only great lyrical beauty, but also an elemental potency best described as flinty ...

 

The first of these points can be swiftly dealt with. For whilst it's true that Lawrence never saw this work performed in his own lifetime and that the text of The Daughter-in-Law wasn't even published until 1965, ever since Peter Gill's celebrated production at the Royal Court Theatre two years later, it has been staged - and positively received - on numerous occasions. 

 

Most recently, for example, a 2018 production at the Arcola Theatre in London, directed by Jack Gamble, was described by Michael Billington writing in The Guardian as "arguably the best account of working-class life in British drama" [1]. 

 

It has also been adapted for radio and filmed for television and its reputation has, as Lawrence biographer John Worthen correctly says, gone from strength to strength. So it’s really something of a myth or popular misconception that The Daughter-in-Law remains neglected and underrated: we've all seen it and we all agree; it's a masterpiece of twentieth-century English drama. But it's certainly not unsung. 

 

As for the subsequent claim that Lawrence is a superior playwright to Chekov and that The Daughter-in-Law pulls feathers from The Seagull (1895) and flattens The Cherry Orchard (1903), well, that's a matter of opinion. Lawrence himself was rather fond of the Russian author and found in his work something new and important. Personally, however, I think Chekov even more boring than Ibsen and find almost anything preferable to his sub-textual theatre of mood. 

 

As for the third point; the flintiness of Lawrence's dialogue, we might ask what it even means to describe language in this manner ...

 

Flint is a hard, sedimentary, cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz and is categorized as a variety of chert. It is chiefly found in rock such as chalk and limestone and is usually dark grey or black in colour, often having a smooth, rather waxy surface. 

 

But when critics like Charles Spencer, writing in The Telegraph, refer to the "marvellously flinty vernacular" used in The Daughter-in-Law [2], they don't mean that Luther and Minnie sound as if they belonged like Fred and Wilma to the Stone Age (although, the Midland’s mining community they inhabited is, to us, over a hundred years on, almost as alien and far-off as that of Bedrock). 

 

Rather, they mean that their speech has a down-to-earth solidity and directness. 

 

Further, I think they also wish to imply that the words have an elemental potency and/or some kind of primordial authenticity. This is particularly true of the almost incomprehensible words and phrases spoken in dialect which, if Lawrence is to be believed, directly articulate the body and its strange forces and flows; not so much as signifying units of meaning, but as units of sound. 

 

Thus it is that, in The Daughter-in-Law - as in the novel Son and Lovers (1913) to which it is closely related - Lawrence skilfully combines elements of naturalism, kitchen sink realism, and his own often transgressive philosophy. Like Nietzsche, he attempts to write in blood and doesn't want to be simply read, so much as passionately experienced. 

 

For whilst Lawrence often regarded the emotions as counterfeit, he always believed in and attempted to solicit the genuine feelings of those who bothered to engage with his work. And, like Heidegger, Lawrence seemed to think it was his duty to safeguard the power of the most elementary words. For, just like our favourite Nazi, Lawrence was prone to a form of linguistic mysticism in which certain words and phonemes have greater essential value than others. 

 

Such a belief is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which posits that the earliest form of language was that spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden. Whether this language was also used by God to address Adam and is therefore divine in origin, or whether it was invented by Adam in order to name all things, including Eve, is open to debate. Either way, this notion of a forgotten, sacred language has fascinated many occultists, poets, and philosophers, including Lawrence and Heidegger, both of whom seemed to suffer from a kind of nostalgia for a time when we didn't speak words, but, on the contrary, they spoke us. 

 

Rightly or wrongly, Lawrence seemed to imagine that via a use of dialect, regional slang, and archaic terms he might somehow tap into this language of Paradise, thereby expressing mankind's deepest feelings and highest hopes. It's not without reason that the Cambridge edition of his plays contains a fifteen page glossary of such terms. 

 

Amusingly - and controversially - by the time he came to write his final novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, (1926), Lawrence had added several expletives to his elementary vocabulary in order to startle us out of what he calls our mob-selves. 

 

Now, if I'm honest, there was a time when, like many Lawrentians, I happily bought into this idea of a flinty, obscene ur-language of the feelings inscribed in our hearts via which we might speak the truth and not merely pass the word along. Keith Sagar, for example, never abandoned his faith in words such as sluthering and slikey to be sufficiently powerful to not only charge Lawrence's dialogue with magical force, but also re-vitalise audience members. 

 

Now, however, I have certain doubts and reservations about this - although, fortunately, these doubts and reservations needn't get in the way of one's enjoyment of The Daughter-in-Law as a rip-roaring piece of theatre [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Michael Billington, 'The Daughter-in-Law review - is this the best British working-class drama?', The Guardian (29 May 2018): click here to read online. 

 

[2] Charles Spencer, writing in a piece for The Telegraph in September 2006, after watching a performance of The Daughter-in-Law (dir. Kirstie Davis) at the Watford Palace Theatre. Spencer went on to argue that Lawrence was, in fact, a far finer playwright than novelist (or, at any rate, that his plays have lasted rather better than his novels). 

 

[3] This post is an edited version of a review of the opening night performance of The Daughter-in-Law, directed by Kirstie Davis, at the GBS Theatre, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, on 5 Feb, 2014, and featuring five final year students: Eliza Butterworth as Mrs. Gascoigne; Tom Varey as Joe; Anna Krippa as Mrs. Purdy; Lianne Harvey as Minnie; and Joe Blakemore as Luther - all of whom were excellent.

      Indeed, for such young actors, they seemed more than capable of rising to the challenge of the often complex and intense nature of the play's sexual politics and class concerns and even managed to make what are not particularly likeable characters seem sympathetic. That's the magic, I suppose, of having youth, beauty, and talent on your side.

      Finally, mention should also be made of Isobel Power Smith for her set and costume design; Peter Small (lighting design); Harry Butcher (sound); and dialect coach Helen Ashton - although I couldn't really tell (and didn't really care) how authentic the East Midland's accents were on the night.       

Headscarves and Headlines

Luke Perry: The Strength of the Hijab (2023)

 

An inscription at the base of the above sculpture reads: 

 

"It is a woman's right to be loved and respected whatever she chooses to wear. 

Her true strength is in her heart and mind."  

 

 

News just in ... 

It seems that Iranian MPs have approved the trial implementation of a new mandatory hijab law; a law under which women who refuse to wear the headcovering can face harsh punishments, including a lengthy prison spell of up to ten years. 

 

However, as the authorities point out, most women who flout or break the new law, will probably just receive a fine - and possibly a flogging, to ensure future compliance.  

The same authorities warn businesses of closure and other serious consequences if they are found to be providing services to women dressed in an improper manner. Patrols by the so-called morality police are to be stepped up, so that a close eye can be kept on shopkeepers who might dare to sell an unveiled woman some figs. 

 

Iranian authorities are also investing heavily in smart cameras that use facial-recognition technology, according to women's rights activists inside the country.

This comes one year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. Her death - after allegedly being beaten by police - led to a wave of popular unrest in Iran.

 

Even the UN are describing the new law - which was vetted by Iran's Guardian Council, a powerful body comprising of twelve men and headed by a recently re-elected 97-year-old cleric - as an attempt to forcibly implement gender apartheid. 

 

Now, I'm no Islamic scholar, but I think we can agree that this is not a great idea in practice, for either men or women. 

 

 

Meanwhile, in other news ...

 

A new sculpture - believed to be the first of its kind anywhere in the world - will be unveiled in the Smethwick area of Birmingham next month, celebrating women who wear hijabs. 

 

Designed by the English artist Luke Perry, the monumental (rather grim-faced) five metre tall steel piece is entitled Strength of the Hijab. 

 

Without any trace of irony, Perry has declared the work will empower the veiled woman by making her more visible. It will also, apparently, help her to feel happy and heroic, as well as more confident and comfortable with her own identity.

 

While Perry acknowledged that his new sculpture could be viewed as controversial for many different reasons, he dismissed these as invalid and said critics of his work simply wished to deny difference and divide communities.

 

Now, I'm no art critic, but I think we can all agree that Mr. Perry is an idiot. 

Release the Hounds! (With Reference to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights)

 

Sayuri as Brandy the Pitbull in Quentin Tarantino's  

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

 

 

Those who have seen the Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will recall that the movie ends in an orgy of violence, at the centre of which is a ferocious pitbull, called Brandy, who attacks two members of the Manson Family on the command of her master, stuntman Cliff Booth [1]. 

 

Anyway, re-watching the above on TV the other night, made me think of the equally harrowing scenes involving savage dogs in Emily Brontë's queer-gothic masterpiece, Wuthering Heights ... [2]

 

Dogs appear throughout Wuthering Heights and, as critics have pointed out, they not only help us to better understand personality traits of the main human characters, but are also used to presage events about to unfold in the novel. And, of course, they add an extra element of violent horror (as if such were needed in a book which is, in some respects, far more shocking and transgressive than any of Tarantino's movies).  

 

Although poor Lockwood [3] isn't the only victim of a vicious dog attack, the first chapter scene in which he first visits his landlord Heathcliff is the one that immediately comes to mind. Sitting surrounded by snarling dogs with curled lips, including a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer and a pair of grim-shaggy sheep-dogs, Lockwood attempts to remain calm. 

 

But when Heathcliff goes down into the cellar to fetch some wine and Lockwood is left alone with the dogs, his anxiety levels are significantly raised. Foolishly, he winks and makes faces at the animals and the bitch becomes so infuriated, that she leaps onto his knees. 

 

This, in turn, arouses the other flea-bitten curs lurking about the house and before he knows it, Lockwood is being attacked by half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, who bite at his heels and tear at his clothing. In fear for his life, he picks up a poker from the fireplace in order to try and fend them off. 

 

Brontë thus cleverly reveals that even in a domestic setting, danger and violence are never far from the surface. 

 

Despite the profoundly unsettling nature of his experience, Lockwood returns to Wuthering Heights on a snowy afternoon in chapter two, only to be attacked once more by two hairy monsters named Gnasher and Wolf, who leap at his throat and knock him to the ground when he attempts to leave the remote moorland farmhouse:

"Fortunately, the beasts seemed more bent on stretching their paws, and yawning, and flourishing their tails, than devouring me alive; but they would suffer no resurrection, and I was forced to lie till their malignant masters pleased to deliver me ..."

 

Later, in chapter six, it's a young Catherine Earnshaw who has the misfortune of being attacked by a dog; this time a bull-dog called Skulker. The devil latches onto her fair ankle, preventing her from fleeing and inflicting a nasty bite. 

 

Despite the pain, Cathy doesn't yell out and, fortunately, Heathcliff is with her. Picking up a large stone, the boy thrusts it between the dog's jaws and tries to shove it down its throat. Eventually, a servant arrives on the scene and he pulls Skulker away, half-throttling the animal whose huge purple tongue hangs out of a mouth that drools with a mixture of blood and saliva.   

Finally, it should be noted that not all dogs in the fictional world of Wuthering Heights - or, indeed, in real life - are aggressive: Isabella Linton's little dog, Fanny, is a harmless creature who tragically falls victim to human cruelty; the poor thing being hanged by her abusive husband, Heathcliff, in an attempt to reveal his true nature, stripped of all deceitful softness (see chapter fourteen).  

 

 

An lllustration by Fritz Eichenberg for the 1943 Random House edition 

of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

 

 

Notes

 

[1] So convincing was professionally-trained dog Sayuri in her role as Brandy, that she was the recipient of the Wamiz Palm Dog Award for Best Canine Performance. The award was accepted on her behalf by Tarantino, who said he was honoured to do so and described Sayuri as a great actress who gave a great performance. 

      The final fight scene from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), featuring Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, and Sayuri as Brandy, can be watched on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

[2] Wuthering Heights was initially published under Brontë's pen name Ellis Bell in 1847. It is rightly considered to be one of the greatest novels written in English, even though early commentators were appalled by its depictions of mental and physical cruelty and its repeated transgression of Victorian morality. One reviewer writing for Graham's Lady Magazine wrote: "It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors."

      Lines quoted here from Wuthering Heights are from the Project Gutenberg eBook: click here.   

 

[3] Mr. Lockwood is initially the tale's narrator. He rents a property from Heathcliff - Thrushcross Grange - in order to retreat from society (although soon decides society is far preferable to a life on the North Yorkshire Moors). After chapter four, the main narrator, Nelly Dean - having worked as a servant to three generations of the Earnshaws and two of the Linton family - picks up the story. I'm not going to give further character notes here, assuming that most readers will be familiar with the novel. 

 

For a post on a vaguely similar theme to this one, please click here.  

 

 

On American XL Bully Dogs and Ancient Greek Hounds

An American XL bully and the Ancient Greek hell-hound Cerberus 

as imagined by William Blake (c.1824-27)

 

 

 I. 

 

There are a lot of stories in the news at the moment about American XL bullies and, apparently, the breed will be banned in the UK as of the end of this year under the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991). 

 

Clearly, that's a good thing, although, in my opinion, it doesn't go far enough and there should be no certificates of exemption issued to owners no matter how fit and proper they are deemed to be. 

 

You can't have ultra-aggressive mutts with stocky, muscular bodies and powerful jaws running rampage on the streets and in the parks, causing serious injury to people and other canines. Six of the ten fatal dogs attacks in the UK last year were due to these illegally bred beasts.       

 

However, if you think the XL bully living next door is a nightmare and genuine threat to the safety of your children, then probably best you don't read the next section of this post in which we discuss a three-headed hound of Hades ...

 

 

II. 

 

According to ancient Greek mythology, guarding the gates of the Underworld is a monstrous, raw flesh-devouring dog named Cerberus, whom you really don't want to mess with (i.e., if you're dead, it's probably best to accept the fact and not attempt to leave). 

 

Cerberus was the polycephalic offspring of Typhon and Echidna and described as having a serpent for a tail and snake-heads protruding from multiple parts of his body, ensuring that his bite was infinitely worse than his bark. 

 

Thanks to his superhuman strength - and a wooden club - Heracles was just about the only one who could handle him, but, even then, I wouldn't have granted a dog license to this demi-god, nor allowed him to arrogantly parade Cerberus on a chain leash through the streets of Greece.       

 

A ravenous animal like Cerberus belongs in Hades ensuring the dead don't come back to extract their revenge upon the living. Alternatively, let him guard over the gluttons who inhabit the Third Circle of Hell [1], giving them a few hard bites in order to encourage them to repent of their sins and eat less. 

 

 

III.      

Finally, just to end on a slightly happier, more dog-friendly note, let me remind readers of another mythological mutt from ancient Greece; one much-loved by Odysseus and called by the name Argos ... 

 

According to Homer [2], after fighting in the Trojan War and battling monsters for twenty-odd years, Odysseus finally made it home to Ithaca. But as he approached his palace, he noticed an old dog lying on heaps of mule and cattle dung piled up outside the front gates. The poor creature was in a terribly neglected state, infested with fleas and other parasites. 

 

Nevertheless, when Argos heard a familiar human voice, he raised his tired head and pricked up his ears. As soon as he was sure it was his master, he wagged his tail in excitement, but lacked the strength to get to his feet and greet Odysseus properly.  

 

Seeing this - and touched by the fact that his dog clearly still remembered him after such a long time - Odysseus wiped away a tear, although, in his heart, he was angry that Argos had not been properly cared for in his absence and had fallen on hard times.

 

Tragically, having witnessed his master's homecoming, the loyal dog passed into the darkness of death - but what a good boy he was!

 

 

Argos and his master Odysseus [3]

Print by Frederick Stacpoole after Briton Rivière (1885)

Notes

 

[1] The third circle of hell, as depicted in Dante's Inferno, is reserved for the punishent of those who have committed the sin of gluttony; a realm of freezing mud which, just to make matters worse, is also inhabited by the three-headed hound Cerberus, who torments the excessively greedy by tearing at their flesh.

 

[2] See Homer's Odyssey, Book 17, lines 290-327. My paraphrased account is based on various English translations and MLG's recollection of the tale, particularly with reference to Argos.

       

[3] Print by Frederick Stacpoole, after Briton Rivière (1885); held in the collection of the British Museum under the title Ulysses and Argus. Click here for more information.

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one on a related theme, please click here.