It's Creepy and It's Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky: Notes on Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie (Part 2)

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) author of 

The Weird and the Eerie (2016)

 

 

I. 

Fisher's opening discussion of the eerie is perhaps my favourite section of his book and deserves to be quoted at some length:

"As with the weird, the eerie is worth reckoning with in its own right as a particular kind of aesthetic experience. Although this experience is certainly triggered by particular cultural forms, it does not originate in them. You could say rather that certain tales, certain novels, certain films, evoke the feeling of the eerie, but this sensation is not a literary or filmic invention. As with the weird, we can and often do encounter the sensation of the eerie [...] without the need for specific forms of cultural meditation. For instance, there is no doubt that the sensation of the eerie clings to certain kinds of physical spaces and landscapes." [a] 

 

But the feeling of the eerie is very different from that of the weird: "The simplest way to get this difference is by thinking about the [...] opposition [...] between presence and absence." [61]

 

The weird is the presence of that which does not belong; "the eerie, by contrast, is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence" [61]. That's a nice definition. It means that the sensation of the eerir occurs "either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something" [61]. 

 

The only way to dispell this sensation is with knowledge; for the eerie concerns the unknown (although that doesn't mean that all mysteries generate the eerie).

 

Finally, Fisher returns to a point made in the introduction to his book. Behind all the manifestations of the eerie lies the question of agency: 

 

 "In the case of the failure of absence, the question concerns the existence of agency as such. [...] In the case of the failure of presence, the question concerns the particular nature of the agent at work." [63]

 

The key point is: "Since the eerie turns crucially on the problem of agency, it is about the [often invisible and/or unconscious] forces that govern our lives and the world." [64]

 

 

II. 

 

It makes me happy that Fisher discusses the work of Daphne du Maurier, as I'm a devotee of her work. 

 

(On the other hand, it makes me feel ashamed of my ignorance when he discusses the work of Christopher Priest about whom I know nothing at all.)  

 

'The Birds' (1952) is a tale I wrote about on Torpedo the Ark back in Feb 2019: click here. 

 

Funny enough, I don't remember describing it as eerie - I think I stressed its malevolence, ambiguity, and inhuman brilliance - but that's not to say Fisher isn't right to use this term. Maybe the fact that the birds seem to possess an unnatural degree of agency is eerie.       

 

Fisher also discusses 'Don't Look Now' (1971), another tale I have twice referred to on this blog: click here and here. Whilst on neither occasion did I use the word eerie, again, I understand why Fisher does; because there is definitely something eerie about fate as a form of obscured agency [b].    

 

And as for the unconscious - if it exists - of course it's eerie, full as it is of absences, gaps, and other negativities. 

 

 

III.

 

Mightn't it be that there's a subjective element in what constitutes an eerie landscape? That eeriness, like beauty or any other aesthetic phenomena, is in the eye of the beholder? 

 

Probably. 

 

Though that's not to deny that a landscape - as an object in its own right - will often demand "to be engaged with on its own terms" [76] and if it happens to be "desolate, atmospheric, solitary" [77] well then it's eerie, no matter who happens to perceive it.

 

Insensitivity to the mood of an environment - be it moorland or an inner city wasteland - is a failure of the individual and can be a dangerous failing too. For we underestimate the powerful agency of a terrain at our own peril. 

 

We might, after Lawrence, call this mood-cum-agency the spirit of place and think in terms of "different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity" [c]. This sounds a bit like pseudo-science, but the spirit of place is, insists Lawrence, a great reality, however we choose to describe it.

 

Of course, the spirit of place needn't always be malevolent and openness to it might lead one into an ecstatic encounter with otherness that is "pulsing beyond the confines of the mundane" [81] and is "achingly alluring even as it is disconcertingly alien" [81] [d]. 

 

In other words, sometimes wandering outside the gate brings joy and can help restore a sense of primordial wonder (which is precisely why Nietzsche encourages philosophers to do their thinking in unexplored realms of knowledge).   

 

 

IV.  

 

As someone who has been researching in the field of thanatology for the best part of two decades, a section entitled 'Eerie Thanatos' is bound to attract my interest ...

 

By this term, Fisher refers to "a transpersonal (and transtemporal) death drive, in which the 'psychological' emerges as the product of forces from the outside" [82]. The theme is beautifully explored, says Fisher, in the work of Nigel Kneale, an author best known for writing Quatermass and the Pit [e].

 

For Kneale - as presumably for Fisher (and for me) - "the material world in which we live is more profoundly alien and strange" [83] than most people care to imagine. And rather than "insisting upon the pre-eminence of the human subject who is alleged to be the privileged bearer of reason, Kneale shows that an enquiry into the nature of what the world is like is also inevitably an unraveling of what human beings had taken themselves to be" [83]. 

 

To quote from Fisher at length once more if I may:

 

"At the heart of Kneale's work is the question of agency and intent. According to some philosophers, it is the capacity for intentionality which definitively separates human beings from the natural world. Intentionality includes intent as we ordinarily understand it, but really refers to the capacity to feel a cerain way about things. Rivers may possess agency - they affect changes - but the do not care about what they do; they do not have any sort of attitude towards the world. Kneale's most famous creation, the scientist Bernard Quatermass, could be said to belong to a trajectory of Radical Enlightenment thinking which is troubled  by this distinction. Radical Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza, Darwin, and Freud continually pose the question: to what extent can the concept of intentionality be applied to human beings, never mind to the natural world? The question is posed in part because of the thoroughgoing naturalisation that Radical Enlightenment thought had insisted upon: if human beings fully belong to the so-called natural world, then on what grounds can a special case be made for them? The conclusions that Radical Enlightenment thinking draws are the exact opposite of the claims for which so-called new materialists such as Jane Bennett [f] have argued. New materialists such as Bennett accept that the distinction between human beings and the natural world is no longer tenable, but they construe this to mean that many of the features previously ascribed only to human beings are actually distributed throughout nature. Radical Enlightenment goes in the opposite direction, by questioning whether there is any such thing as intentionality at all; and if there is, could human beings be said to possess it?" [83-84] 

 

That's the direction I head in too: a direction that leads to the Nietzschean conclusion that life is only a very rare and unusual way of being dead. A conclusion which Freud, following Nietzsche, also (reluctantly) arrived at in his work on Thanatos and the death drive:

 

"By striking contrast with the new materialist idea of 'vibrant matter', which suggests that all matter is to some extent alive, the conjecture implied Freud's positioning of Thanatos is that nothing is alive: life is a region of death. [...] What is called organic life is actually a kind of folding of the inorganic." [84]

 

But ...

 

"But the inorganic is not the passive, inert counterpart to an allegedly self-propelling life; on the contrary, it possesses its own agency. There is a death drive, which in its most radical formulation is not a drive towards death, but a drive of death." [84-85] 

 

Thus ...

 

"The inorganic is the impersonal pilot of everything, including that which seems to be personal and organic. Seen from the perspective of Thanatos, we ourselves become an exemplary case of the eerie: there is an agency at work in us (the unconscious, the death drive), but it is not where or what we expected it to be." [85] 

 

This argument - which I believe to be correct - is surely the most important in Fisher's book. I'm less convinced, however, by his (somewhat hopeful) suggestion that science - as an equally impersonal process - offers us a way beyond. To paraphrase Quatermass himself: Maybe death is as good as it gets. Perhaps it's a cosmic law.  

 

 

V.

 

Fisher provides an excellent reading of Margaret Atwood's novel Surfacing (1972) as a book which, in some respects, "belongs to the same moment as such texts as Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus" [101]. 

 

That is to say, works which "attempt to rise to the challenge of treating discontent, abjection and psychopathology as traces of an as yet unimaginable outside rather than as symptoms of maladjustment" [101]. 

 

Having said that, Fisher thinks that the novel's unnamed narrator at the point of schiophrenic break-rapture is actually more in tune with Ben Woodard's dark vitalism [g], which is an interesting idea, but not one I wish to discuss here, as frankly, I can't quite see how the latter relates to the eerie. This might be shortsightedness, or a sign of my own intellectual limitations; or it could be that Fisher is now hallucinating visions of the eerie and seeing it in places where it really doesn't exist. 

 

So far, I've enjoyed and been impressed by the manner in which Fisher has taken a rather hackneyed idea - the eerie - and given it an original twist as well as a strong degree of conceptual rigour. But I think he should have wrapped things up with the notion of eerie thanatos, having already offered us his central insight; i.e., that the eerie is ultimately the trace of an inhuman (and inorganic) drive. 

For the first time, after a hundred odd pages, I'm starting to get just a wee bit bored and to feel that Fisher is now simply namechecking a few more of his favourite things à la Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965) and flexing his muscles like an intellectual version of Tony Holland [h].

 

Having said that, I don't like to abandon a book before the end once I've begun to read it. And so, let's continue, fast-forwarding past Jonathan Glazer's 2013 film Under the Skin [i] and arriving at the final couple of chapters, 'Alien Traces' and ''The Eeriness Remains' ...

VI.

 

Any consideration of outer space, says Fisher in the first of these chapters, "quickly engenders a sense of the eerie" [110]: is there anybody (anything) out there? Again, I suppose that's true - so obviously true, in fact, that it could have fallen from the mouth of Sybil Fawlty [j].  

 

Fisher also claims that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a "major contribution to the cinema of the eerie" [112]. 

 

But it's also one of the most boring films I have ever had to sit through and I'm not sure I'd agree with this judgement; I mean, I can see that of Kubrick's The Shining (1980) - and enjoyed Fisher's analysis of the latter - but 2001 ... I'm unconvinced.  

 

Let's just say that when it comes to eeriness, ghostly twins always trump aliens ... and if anyone thinks I'm going to discuss the "possibility of an eerie love" [121], well, they've got another think coming; I'm afraid that I do find this suggestion sentimental "as well as emotionally and conceptually excessive" [121]. 

 

VII.

 

I mentioned in section III of this post how the eerie needn't always be malevolent and openness to it might lead one into an ecstatic encounter with otherness; that wandering outside the gate may even bring joy and help restore a sense of primordial wonder.

 

Well, Fisher clearly agrees with this and that is why he closes his study with a discussion of Joan Lindsay's brilliant novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967):   

 

"Not only because Picnic at Hanging Rock is practically a textbook example of an eerie novel - it includes disappearances, amnesia, a geological anomaly, an intensely atmspheric terrain - but also because Lindsay's rendition of the eerie has a positivity, a languorous and delirious allure, that is absent or suppressed in so many other eerie texts." [122]

 

Whereas the outside is usually seen as dangerous and deadly, Picnic at Hanging Rock invokes an outside which involves "a passage beyond the petty repressions and mean confines of common experience into a heightened atmosphere of oneiric lucidity" [122]. 

 

Fisher concludes: "The novel seems to justify the idea that a sense of the eerie is created and sustained simply by withholding information." [126][k]  

 

I could elucidate, but the above note seems to encourage one to recognise that sometimes it's best to say no more ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, (Repeater Books, 2016), p. 61. Future page references to this work will be given in the main text.   

[b] Etymologically speaking, it's weird - rather than eerie - that suggests fate; the Old English term wyrd meant having the power to shape the latter and thus control one's destiny. Readers will probably recall that the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, often known as the Weird Sisters, have this ability.     

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Spirit of Place', Studies in Classic America Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambride University Press, 2003), p. 17.  

 

[d] Edward Hunter and Simon Solomon seem to understand this in their short film Room (2010) set on the North Yorkshire Moors. Unfortunately, I can provide no further details of this work or give any links at this time.   

 

[e] Quatermass and the Pit is an influential British science-fiction serial transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. A Hammer Films adaptation was released with the same title in 1967, directed by Roy Ward Baker and scripted by Kneale.

      Fisher also discusses the fantasy novel Red Shift (Collins, 1973) by Alan Garner in his chapter on eerie thanatos in relation to the question of human free will, but this is another book and author about which and about whom I again know nothing and so prefer to pass over in silence here (with no disrespect to Garner).       

 

[f] I discussed Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter (Duke University Press, 2010) in a post published on 10 April 2015, in which I express my dislike of her material vitalism: click here. 

 

[g] See Woodard's Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation and the Creep of Life (Zero Boks, 2012). 

 

[h] Tony Holland is a British bodybuilder known for his musical muscle man act. He achieved national fame in the UK after appearing on Opportunity Knocks in 1964 - which, unbelievably, he won six times. 

      Click here to watch him perform (joined by Kenny Lynch) to what became his cha-cha theme tune; 'Wheels', originally recorded (and released as a single which reached number 8 in the UK charts) by the String-A-Longs in 1960. As a very young child, I always found it weirdly disturbing when Holland came on TV and hearing this tune today still makes my skin crawl.     

 

[i] I intend to (i) watch this film and (ii) write a future post on it - and that's why I don't discuss it here. 

      I don't know why I haven't already seen this film; I'm beginning to think I sometimes have blackouts like Rip Van Winkle and when I wake up the world has moved on and certain cultural productions have simply passed me by. The fact that I have been denied an opportunity of seeing Scarlett Johnasson on screen playing an alien young woman stalking human males really irritates.

 

[j] I'm referring here to a famous exchange between Basil and Sybil in the final episode of Fawlty Towers [S2/E6] entitled 'Basil the Rat' (dir. Bob Spiers, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, 1979): click here. 

 

[k] As Fisher reminds us: 

      "In the case of Picnic at Hanging Rock, this literally happened: the form in which the novel was published was the result of an act of excision. In her original manuscript, Lindsay provided a solution of sorts to the enigma [at the heart of the novel], in a concluding chapter that her publishers [wisely] encouraged her to remove [...] This 'Chapter Eighteen' was published separately, as The Secret of Hanging Rock [1987]." [126] 

 

 

To read the first part of this post - on Fisher's notion of the weird - click here.  

 

  

It's Creepy and It's Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky: Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie (Part 1)

Front cover image from Mark Fisher's 

The Weird and the Eerie (Repeater Books, 2016)

 

 

I. 

 

Let me confess from the outset that one of the main problems I have with Mark Fisher's work is that I'm unfamiliar with many of the books, films, and records that he chooses as points of reference, so often feel unable to comment. Thus, I intend sticking here to his more general remarks on the weird and the eerie, about which I feel better able to discuss.

 

According to Mark Fisher, the weird and the eerie are closely related (but distinct) modes of strangeness, each with their own properties. The former draws our attention to that which does not belong and instills a sense of wrongness; the latter troubles the notion of agency (human and non-human) and makes us question existence and non-existence. 

 

Neither terrifies or deeply distresses, so much as make us feel vaguely apprehensive or uneasy.    

 

And neither has much to do with with Freud's concept of the unheimlich and should not be equated to the latter. The attempt to do so, says Fisher, is "symptomatic of a secular retreat from the outside" [a]; i.e., returning to the safety of a long familiar (if hugely influential) idea that ultimately serves to domesticate and contain the outside "in terms of a modernist family drama" [10]. 

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, Fisher begins his study of the weird by turning to H. P. Lovecraft - a writer whom Graham Harman predicts will one day displace Hölderlin as the philosopher's favourite [b] and someone who intuitively grasped that nothing is weirder than reality (i.e., the natural-material cosmos).

 

As Fisher rightly says, when you really stop to think about it, a black hole is weirder than a vampire or werewolf. 

 

Lovecraft is the daddy of weird fiction; the man who long before George Michael encouraged characters and readers alike to venture outside - even if doing so "often ends in breakdown and psychosis" [16] for the former and fascination "mixed with a certain trepidation" [17] for the latter.

 

There is nothing surprising or suspensful or even truly terrible in Lovecraft's weird tales. And yet they compel our attention, even as they repel us at the same time with their inhuman quality; i.e., their insistence that "human concerns, perspectives and concepts have only a local reference" [18].    

Fisher is spot-on to insist that Lovecraft is neither a horror writer nor a fantasy author; that his weird realism is something very different from either of these genres and that his tales "depend for their power on the difference between the terrestrial-empirical and the outside" [20][c] and on their sheer originality.

 

 

III.

 

Like Lovecraft, H. G. Wells also understood something of the weird, even if his work is, in many respects, very different from the former's. 

 

One thing both writers shared is a concern with thresholds and the fatal possibility of "contact between incommensurable worlds" [28], an idea best illustrated in an episode of Seinfeld when George's independence (and sanity) are threatened by the transcendental shock of worlds colliding [d].   

 

It's probably always best (if not always possible) to keep worlds apart, although the weird, as a phenomenon, is that which unfolds in the space between them. 

 

 

IV.  

 

Moving on, Fisher introduces a notion of the grotesque, which, like the weird, "evokes something which is out of place" [32] - although unlike the latter it often evokes laughter (the only humour in Lovecraft, says Fisher, is accidental).

 

And the "confluence of the weird and the grotesque is no better exemplified than in the work of the post-punk group The Fall" [33], particularly in the period 1980-82. 

Unfortunately, my knowledge of Mark E. Smith's combo is limited. In fact, I can only name one of their songs; the 1980 single 'How I Wrote Elastic Man' (and that's only because I often heard it on John Peel, not because I went out and bought it). 

 

So I'll just have to take Fisher's word for it when he insists The Fall "are remarkabe for the way in which they draw out a cultural politics of the weird and the grotesque" [33] and produced "what could be called a popular modernist weird [...] with all the difficulties and compulsions of post-punk sound" [33] [e].

 

In the same period Fisher was getting worked up over The Fall, I was listening to Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow and had more interest in post-punk piracy than the weird and grotesque; indeed, I seem to remember finding groups like The Fall too depressing (perhaps even too Northern) for my tastes; even their laughter issues "from a psychotic outside" [35] and that didn't sound very funny to me at the time.           

 

However, if what Fisher says is true, I would probably find The Fall more amusing now (although I suspect I would still find them a band more interesting to read about, than fun to listen to).   

 

 

V.

 

Is there not an intrinsically weird dimension to the time travel story? 

Mark Fisher thinks so:

 

"By its very nature, the time travel story [...] combines entities and objects that do not belong together. Here the threshold between worlds is the apparatus that allows travel between different time periods [...] and the weird effect typically manifests as a sense of achronism." [40]

 

Again, that's one of those true-but-kind-of-obvious statements that Fisher seems to specialise in. Here's another: time-paradoxes also trigger a feeling weirdness. Indeed - who would argue with that?  

 

 

VI.

 

"There is another type of weird effect that is generated by strange loops [...] not just tangles in cause and effect [...] but confusions of ontological level." [45]

 

These confusions particularly play out at the level of simulacra and simulation, putting the nature of being and reality into question - just ask Thomas (Neo) Anderson. Or Baudrillard. Is there anything weirder than living in a world one knows to be a cleverly constructed simulation but which still feels real?      

 

 

VII.

 

If it wasn't in the least surprising that Fisher should open his study of the weird with Lovecraft, it's equally unsurprising that he should close it with the director of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, David Lynch.

 

For in many ways Fisher seems weirdly trapped in the 1980s and '90s; a man still gripped by the same philosophical ideas (and postmodern obsessions) that shaped his thinking when writing his Ph.D. on cybernetic fiction-theory [f]. Indeed, Fisher readily admits that his fascination with the weird and eerie goes back as far as he can remember. 

     

Now, whilst some might suggest he move on and find new interests, I rather admire the manner in which he has stayed true to the authors, singers, and filmmakers, he loves best. But David Lynch isn't a particular favourite of mine, I'm afraid; there are certainly films by the other two Davids - Fisher and Cronenberg - I like more than Mulholland Drive (2001), though they're perhaps not as weird in the sense that Fisher uses the term.   

 

As for Inland Empire (2006), not only have I not seen it, I've not even heard of it - how weird is that?

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, (Repeater Books, 2016), p. 10. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the main text. 

 

[b] See Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (Zero Books, 2012).

 

[c] Just to be clear: "The outside is not 'empirically' exterior; it is transcendentally exterior; i.e. it is not just a matter of something being distant in space and time, but of something which is beyond our ordinary experience and conception of space and time itself." - Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, p. 22. 

 

[d] Seinfeld, 'The Pool Guy' [S7/E8], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by David Mandel (1995). Click here to observe the devastating effect it has upon George's mental health when he experiences the colliding of worlds: George is getting upset! Nevertheless, it's interesting to note that this tale unfolds within a weirdly comic universe, rather than a weirdly tragic or melancholic one.

 

[e] Perhaps the only author who writes with such intense conviction about the pop music they love is poet and playwright Síomón Solomon; see his 2020 text Hölderlin's Poltergeists in which he celebrates that other critically-acclaimed post-punk band from Manchester, Joy Division.     

 

[f] Fisher's Ph.D. thesis was entitled: Flatline constructs: Gothic materialism and cybernetic theory-fiction. It was completed in the Philosophy Dept. at the University of Warwick and submitted in July 1999. A PDF of this work is available via the University of Warwick publications service website: click here. The first line opens with the words "Isn't it strange [...]". 

      Fisher was a founding member of the interdisciplinary collective inspired by the work of Nick Land and Sadie Plant known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. Although I was also in the Philosophy Dept. at Warwick at this time and initially had Land as my Graduate Progress Committee member overseeing my own doctoral research project, I never crossed paths with Fisher, which, looking back, I now rather regret.  

 

 

Part two of this post - on the eerie - can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

When Jerry Seinfeld and Quentin Tarantino Met Lawrence Tierney ...

Lawrence Tierney as Elaine's father Alton Benes 

Seinfeld (S2/E3, 1991)

 

 

I. 

 

Twice recently, I have encountered a Lawrence Tierney look-alike on the 174 bus to Romford and have been tempted to start humming 'Master of the House' [1].

Of course, that would be silly, as he isn't the real Lawrence Tierney - i.e., the American actor best known for his portrayal of mobsters and tough guys in a career that spanned over fifty years and who died in 2002.

 

And even if it were the real Lawrence Tierney, miraculously resurrected and living in Essex, I doubt he'd appreciate me reminding him of his one-off appearance on Seinfeld which didn't end well ...

 

 

II. 

 

'The Jacket' is a very early episode of Seinfeld [2], but contains one of my favourite scenes, in which Jerry and George meet Elaine's father, played by Lawrence Tierney, in the lobby of his hotel and are made to squirm by the latter's gruff, no-nonsense manner while waiting for Elaine - who's late - to arrive.   

 

Tierney's magnificent performance as Alton Benes was praised by cast and crew alike. However, they were ill-prepared for his rather eccentric and intimidating on-set behavior, particularly when, during filming, it was discovered that Tierney had attempted to steal a butcher knife from the knife block in Jerry's apartment set.

 

Seinfeld decided to confront Tierney and, in a lighthearted manner, asked him what he had in his jacket pocket. Rather than try to lie or bluff his way out of the situation, Tierney pulled out the knife and jokingly re-enacted a scene from Psycho, holding the knife above his head and advancing towards Seinfeld with mock murderous intent.

 

Understandably, everyone was a little freaked out by this and so there were no further appearances on the show for Tierney, even though Alton Benes was intended to be a recurring character. Later, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine) would express her regret about this, but conceded that whilst Tierney was a wonderful actor, he was also a total nutjob [3].   

 

I don't know if the latter description was fair, but it's certainly true that Tierney had a long history of violent and often drunken behaviour [4] and even managed to get himself fired from the set of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) the following year, after he and the director came to blows [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] My reason for this is not because Tierney appeared in the musical Les Misérables, but because he appeared in an episode of Seinfeld in which George (Jason Alexander) repeatedly sings this song. It certainly is catchy: click here. 

 

[2] 'The Jacket' is the third episode of the second season and only the show's eighth episode overall. Directed by Tom Cherones, written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, it aired on 6 Feb 1991. To watch a clip from the episode featuring the meeting between Jerry, George, and Lawrence Tierney as Alton Benes, click here. 

 

[3] See Inside Look: 'The Jacket' (Seinfeld season two DVD extra): click here.

 

[4] Tierney's numerous arrests for being drunk and disorderly and jail terms for assaults on civilians and police officers cast a dark shadow over his career as an actor. Between 1944 and 1951, for example, he was arrested over twelve times in Los Angeles and served several months behind bars.

 

[5] Tierney played crime boss Joe Cabbot in Tarantino's debut movie. During filming of Reservoir Dogs in July 1991, Tierney was arrested and jailed for firing a gun at his nephew in a drunken rage and had to be given special day release so that he could complete his scene. 

      After firing him, Tarantino described Tierney as a complete lunatic, thereby lending support to Julia Louis-Dreyfus's character assessment. Click here for a clip from the movie featuring Tierney in his role as Joe Cabbot assigning aliases to the members of his gang. Click here for a short video in which Tarantino reminisces about his experience of working with Tierney. Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for sending me the latter link.   

 

Yiff Yiff Hooray! Three Cheers for Furries and the Otherkin

 

Three members of the furry fandom and an 

elf-girl member of the otherkin community

 

 

Opening Remarks 

 

The following material consists of revised extracts from Chapter 5 of Zoophilia, Vol. III of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

It was originally presented as part of a series of talks at Treadwell's Bookshop in 2006 and might be said to have anticipated the direction our culture was heading vis-à-vis questions of identity, etc.

 

These questions, however, have mostly been thought through (and fought over) in terms of sex, gender, and race, rather than our humanity as such. 

 

Thus, even though in the years since I first wrote on the subject of becoming-animal and/or becoming-other, there has been far more academic and media attention given to therians, furries, and otherkin, most members of the public still remain blissfully unaware of the term transspeciesism, even whilst obsessively worrying about issues to do with transsexuality and gender fluidity.

 

 

The Furry Fandom

 

I.

 

Whilst there's a level of crossover with the therian community - which I discussed in a recently published post [1] - the furry fandom is often looked down upon by members of the former, who regard furries as frivolous and lacking in respect for the true nature of the animals they like to dress up as. 

 

On the other paw, however, members of the fandom often accuse therianthropes of taking the idea of metamorphosis too far and themselves too seriously. 

 

I suppose, if one wanted to be unkind and offer a crude stereotype of both parties, one could say that whilst therians are genuinely barking, furries are simply mimicking animal noises. 

 

 

II.

 

Essentially, the furry fandom is a movement that celebrates the hybridization of humans and animals in cartoons, comics, and films. It is, therefore, predominantly composed of persons with artistic and literary interests, rather than occult or fetishistic leanings. 

 

That said, many members of the fandom do have a strong attraction to animal cosplay and like to indulge their transformation fantasies - some of which are overtly erotic in character and involve the loss or rippage of human clothing - whilst being suitably attired in a fursuit. 

 

Those who have a particular penchant for furry sex are sometimes labelled as furverts and, whilst these people compose only a small minority of the fandom, they are the ones who - rightly or wrongly - excite most interest from those outside of the fandom [2]. 

 

 

III.

 

The furry fandom started as a discussion group that met at various science fiction and comic-book conventions in the early 1980s and who were interested in all kinds of anthropomorphic characters, but particularly those covered in fur. By 1987, enough interest had been generated for there to be a furry convention in its own right and these have continued to be held annually in Europe and the US ever since [3].

 

With the rise and spread of the internet, the furry fandom has also grown rapidly around the world as an on-line community with many of its own specialised sites and virtual meeting places.

 

Those fans possessing handicraft skills, often like to make their own plush toys, or design elaborate costumes in a wide range of styles and worn either for private pleasure, or when participating at furry events. 

 

Whilst those fans who are more technologically-minded, often create their own anthropomorphic animal avatars called - predictably enough - fursonas (or tiny-bodies), via which they engage in (sometimes kinky) role-playing games with others of their kind in a virtual world.

 

 

IV.

 

As mentioned, for the most part, furries and therians don't usually have much to do with one another and the two phenomena legitimately deserve to be regarded as separate concepts attracting different types of people. 

 

However, there are those - known as furry lifestylers - who blur this distinction by occupying the space between the two categories. 

 

These individuals have beliefs similar to those who practice animal related religions and philosophies, such as shamanism. Thus it is that some lifestylers often claim they have a totem animal that watches over them, or that they are the reincarnation of an animal spirit. 

 

Other lifestylers, meanwhile, are keen to promote the idea that animal instincts exist within humans as part of our genetic code and hope to translate man back into nature, as Nietzsche would say; i.e., to strip away the anthropocentric conceit that has blinded us to our own reality and fooled us into vainly thinking we are of a different origin and higher status to other animals. 

 

That may be, as Nietzsche says, a queer and possibly insane task, but it's certainly a revaluation of values [4]. 

 

 

The Otherkin

 

I.

 

The term otherkin is a rather nice neologism, coined in the early-mid-1990s when it became clear that a distinct new sub-culture was emerging on-line out of various other communities. 

 

Like therians, members of the otherkin like to think of themselves as essentially non-human, to a lesser or greater degree. But whereas therians believe themselves to be part-animal, the otherkin often regard themselves as being part mythological or legendary creature; such as centaurs, mermaids, or elves, for example.

 

Some members of the otherkin also identify in terms of fictional characters who have arisen within modern popular culture; and some, albeit far fewer in number, identify as plants, abstract concepts, or natural phenomena, which is philosophically interesting and one wonders if those who think of themselves as a weather system, for example, wish to become-imperceptible - i.e., reach the point at which they can no longer be identified in human terms, but only acknowledged as a chaos of non-subjectified effects and impersonal elements that must be mapped meteorologically ...?

 

If so, that's kind of cool, speaking as a Deleuzian ...

 

 

II.

 

Whilst almost all otherkin insist that they are neither fantasizing nor role-playing - claiming, for example, that their nonhuman aspect is spiritual in nature and not merely an assumed persona or self-constructed identity - others attribute it to unusual psychology or neurodivergence and do not hold any spiritual beliefs. 

 

Some even suggest that they are biologically other, considering themselves to be directly descended from the species with which they identify via a primeval marriage at some point with mankind. Again, that's very interesting; it reminds one of the fact that stories of humans descending from animals, giants, aliens, or gods are common among tribal peoples all over the world and very often involve illicit sexual relations.

 

Others, meanwhile, believe in a multitude of parallel universes, wherein supernatural or sapient non-human beings exist to whom they are psychically attuned or able to visit via a form of astral projection. I don't know if many otherkin speak in terms of possession, but such a concept surely provides an explanation for their altered state of consciousness and associated behaviours that is found in many religions.

 

But again, just as I understand why furries don't wish to be thought furverts, I understand why members of the otherkin can be a little uncomfortable with being thought part of a weird neo-pagan religion or occultists (despite sharing an obvious interest in the paranormal). 

 

Sadly, there's already a peculiar degree of public fear and suspicion (as well as scorn) directed their way - as there is for others who are perceived as threatening the predominant moral and social order - so no need to also add to this by openly declaring themselves to be devil-worshippers or involved in the dark arts.      

 

Personally, whatever beliefs the otherkin may choose to hold and however they may choose to modify their physical appearance so as too resemble the being it is they identify with (or as), I wish them well and would happily fly the Fairy Star flag if asked to do so ... [5]

 

      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'Madness and Animality: Notes on Therianthropy' (6 Oct 2023): click here.

 

[2] It's perhaps not surprising that the question of sex has at times been a source of controversy and division within the furry fandom. Some members strongly object to what they regard as the distasteful and deviant aspects amongst the community and the term furvert has been coined to specifically identify a sub-section of the fandom that deliberately sexualises anthropomorphic animal characters. 

      Many outsiders also find the pornification of cute and childish animal imagery troubling. But furverts are quick to stress that they have no interest in paedophilia - anymore than they do in zoophilia - and that furvert activity consists primarily of creating, exchanging, and collecting illustrations of their own particular furry fetish character online; a genre of erotic image making known as yiffy art; yiff being a widely used slang term within the furry fandom which, like fuck, has various meanings, applications, degrees of nuance, and which etymologically derives from an onomatopoeic representation of the sound made by mating foxes.

      Whilst it's certainly the case that not all furries are furverts, whether the more prudish members of the fandom like it or not, there is an overlap between furverts and those who enjoy pornography, as well as participants within the world of BDSM and - fairly or unfairly - this has attracted a fair deal of attention, even inspiring an episode of CSI back in 2003 (S4/E5: 'Fur and Loathing') and a book by Michael Cogliantry in 2009 (Furverts, Chronicle Books) - both of which infuriated many furries. 

 

[3] Click here for a peek at ConFuzzled 2023, held at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel (26-30 May).  

 

[4] See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, VII. 230.

 

[5] A regular heptagram known as the Elven Star or Fairy Star is used to denote nonhuman identity. It was designed by the Elf Queen's Daughters and first published in the Green Egg newsletter in March 1976. The background colour added here is my own and does not (as far as I know) have any significance within otherkin circles.  

 

Madness and Animality: Notes on Therianthropy

Theta-Delta: a widely acknowledged symbol 

of therianthropy created in 2003

 

 

I.

 

Thanks to the internet, an entire sub-culture has developed that has adopted the word therianthropy [1] to describe a sense of spiritual or psychological identification with a non-human animal. Members of this sub-culture typically refer to themselves as therianthropes, or, simply, therians. 

 

Because therianthropy is often a very individual matter, there are no fixed rules governing what it does and doesn't involve. This can make it a rather difficult subject of which to speak - particularly for outsiders such as myself. However, I shall do my best (with apologies in advance to any therians reading who might find what I say crass, mistaken, or offensive).  

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps the first question that arises is: How do therians understand their non-human side and how does this relate to their human aspect; is it separated or integrated, experienced mutually or exclusively? 

 

Those who are keen to promote a more esoteric understanding of therianthropy, believe that they either partly or fully possess the spirit or soul of an animal. Such persons often draw inspiration from stories of shape-shifting found in Celtic, Norse, and Native American mythologies and argue that they are reviving an ancient shamanic tradition.

 

On the other hand, those therians who prefer a more material explanation of their condition argue for some peculiarity in their neurophysiology, or perhaps suggest a genetic difference. Some even adopt concepts such as species dsyphoria and transspeciesism.

 

But most therians, however, are content to accept that what they are engaged in is simply fantasy and/or a sometimes extreme form of role play. 

 

 

III.

 

Usually, therians identify with a single species of animal. And the species with which a particular therian identifies is sometimes referred to as that individual's theriotype.

 

However, there are those - known as cladotherianthropes - who identify with all members of an animal family and even some who (schizophrenically) identify with a whole menagerie of completely dissimilar creatures. 

 

It comes as little surprise to discover that the majority of therians identify with large felines and canines, such as tigers and wolves. But there are some who identify in non-mammalian terms as reptiles, birds, or even insects (the latter overly-identifying perhaps with Gregor Samsa). 

 

 

IV.

 

Another term often heard in therian circles is shifting ... One which is used to signify a radical change of perception and cognitive outlook following a move made from human to nonhuman identity. 

 

This shift may be partial or complete, substantial or subtle, but it is always subjectively dramatic unless one happens to be a contherianthrope; a term coined to refer to those individuals who feel that rather than shifting between human and nonhuman ways of being, they always embody and experience both forms simultaneously and have merged human and animal aspects into a single integrated whole. 

 

For contherianthropes, shifting, if the term means anything, is akin to a mild change of mood.

 

More controversially is the claim made by some therianthropes that they undergo an actual physical change to their appearance. This, however, is very much a minority view and most people - both within the therianthrope sub-culture and outside it - remain sceptical that gross physical transformations à la Lawrence Talbot can actually occur. 

 

 

V.

 

The question that ultimately arises is: Are therians mentally disturbed? 

 

By which I mean, can therians be characterised as individuals who manifest a clinically significant disturbance in their cognition, emotional regulation, and/or behaviour that is usually associated with distress or impairment in important areas of functioning?

 

The answer, I suppose, depends ... 

 

For whilst some therians can legitimately be labelled as schizophrenic, struggling as they seem to be with a serious dissociative identity disorder - and whilst a rare few might even be diagnosed as suffering from clinical lycanthropy, a condition in which the subject fully believes he or she has transformed into an animal and behaves in a manner that seriously impacts upon their ability to function socially - the majority of therianthropes are probably suffering no more than a type of body dysmorphia. 

 

That is to say, a non-clinical condition which, whilst resulting in an acute dissatisfaction with their human form and appearance, is ultimately little different from the feeling experienced by those who seek gender reassignment or wish to undergo other types of surgical and non-surgical body modification, for example. 

 

Personally, I don't have a problem with such people and find those who do raise objections on moral and/or pseudo-medical grounds, as far more disturbed and disturbing. But it does lead into the wider debate concerning madness and animality, which is interestingly addressed by Foucault in his work Madness and Civilization (1964) [2] ...

 

 

VI. 

 

For Foucault, animality - like insanity - is a constructed category that is determined differently in different times and places. During the Middle Ages, he writes, "legions of animals, named once and for all by Adam, symbolically bear the values of humanity" [3]. 

 

But, by the beginning of the Renaissance, "animality has escaped domestication by human symbols and values; and it is animality that reveals the dark rage, the sterile madness that lie in men's hearts" [4]. 

 

Animality and wildness were now firmly linked, but still the mad were thought to embody some of the more positive qualities of animals, making them potential sources not only of inhuman passion, but also divine revelation. This, however, was to radically change in what Foucault thinks of as the Classical Age of Reason (c.1650-1800). 

 

During this period, madness was completely "divested of spiritual and pedagogic value" [5] and whereas animality "once had value as the sign of the extra-worldly" [6] it was now simply identified as a form of inferior being and degraded existence. Those who now gave themselves over to madness and behaved like wild beasts, would be denied human status and all the accompanying privileges; they would be treated like animals and subjected to harsh disciplinary training: 

 

"Those chained to the cell walls were no longer men whose minds had wandered, but beasts preyed upon by a natural frenzy: as if madness, at its extreme point […] managed to rejoin […] the immediate violence of animality.” [7]

 

For Foucault, the dehumanization process is crucial here and has the following meaning: it shows that man no longer has any deep fear of (or respect for) the animal and that "animal metamorphosis is no longer the visible sign of infernal powers" [8]. 

 

Foucault continues: 

 

"The animal in man no longer has any value as the sign of a Beyond; it has become his madness, without relation to anything but itself … The animality that rages in madness dispossesses man of what is specifically human in him; not in order to deliver him over to other powers, but simply to establish him at the zero degree of his own nature. For classicism, madness in its ultimate form is man in immediate relation to his animality […]" [9]

 

The 18th-century is the great century of the animal-madmen - as it is of vampires and werewolves - the century of lunatics with superhuman strength that protected them from ill health and extreme conditions of hunger, cold, and pain (thus they had no need for adequate food or clothing, or for kind treatment); the century in which the treatment of the insane is based upon the perceived need not to restore the human element, but to eradicate it entirely. 

 

For only when the madman has completely become a beast, can the true scandal of madness, which is the presence of the animal in man, be resolved. 

 

 

VII.

 

Where, then, does this leave us? 

 

Well, in a sense, I kind of admire those therianthropes and other lunatics today who defiantly declare themselves to be beasts; perhaps it takes a certain degree of courage as well as mania to travel to the very edge of humanity and into an unnatural animal becoming, if only as a mad fantasy. 

 

The category of animality will undoubtedly one day be constructed differently; perhaps we will even come to value and admire animals once more. But in the meantime, for any man or woman to identify themselves as a therian is to say in a Rimbaud-like manner: I am a beast, and I am of an inferior species for all eternity [10]. 

 

 

Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence Talbot 

in The Wolf Man (1941)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Therianthropy is a generic term for any transformation of a human being into another animal form, derived from the Greek terms, therion, meaning beast and anthrōpos, meaning man. Often, the term lycanthropy - which, strictly speaking, refers to were-wolfism - is used as a virtual synonym, but I prefer to use the former term in order to avoid confusion.

 

[2] Focault's work was originlly published in 1961 as Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique. The 1964 English translation by Richard Howard was an abridged version of this book. I am using the 2004 Routledge edition of this text. 

 

[3] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p. 18.

 

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, 'The Animal Question in Continental Philosophy', an introduction to Animal Philosophy, ed. Peter Atterton and Matthew Calarco, (Continuum, 2004), p. xxi.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p. 68. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. 69.

 

[9]  Ibid.

 

[10] I'm paraphrasing Rimbaud writing in his extended prose poem Une Saison en Enfer (1873); see the section translated into English as 'Bad Blood' where he confesses that he has always belonged to an inferior race. 

 

This material is a revised extract from 'In the Company of Wolves: Animal Transformation Fantasy', Chapter 5 of Zoophilia, Vol. III of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

      

A related post to this one on the furry fandom and otherkin - also taken from the above work - can be read here.  

The Tiger's Bride

Rachel M. Esposito: The Tiger's Bride

rachelmesposito.com

 

 

"Like the tiger in the night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until ... in sensual ecstasy, 

having drunk all blood and devoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire ..." [a] 

 

 

I. 

 

I love the above lines from D. H. Lawrence. 

 

But Lawrence wasn't the only English writer to evoke the feline spirit and dream of becoming-tiger. Angela Carter also fantasised about entering into unholy matrimony with a tiger and losing her all too human skin, and it's Carter's short story 'The Tiger's Bride' that I'd like to look at here ... [b]

  

II.

Essentially, 'The Tiger's Bride' was Carter's reimagining of Beauty and the Beast [c]: 

 

A beautiful young girl moves in with a mysterious masked figure, known as the Beast, after her father loses her to him in a game of cards. The Beast is eventually revealed to be a tiger masquerading as a man. Having fallen in love with him, the young girl agrees to become his mate and transforms into a beautiful tigress; the suggestion given that this is as much her true nature as it is his [d].  

 

Usually, this tale is discussed in the familiar terms of power, identity, and otherness; often from a feminist, psychoanalytic, or postmodern perspective [e]. There's nothing wrong with that, but neither is there much point in simply offering another analysis in and on the same terms and seen through the same critical lens.

 

And so, here, I'll at least try to say something vaguely novel, whilst, at the same time referring to work first presented at Treadwell's back in 2006 [f]. 

 

 

III.

 

Carter's perversely sensual fantasy of animal transformation raises one key question: is there a fundamental and non-negotiable human nature, or a fixed type of being that is uniquely human and therefore not open either to evolutionary change or magical metamorphosis? 

 

For essentialists of all kinds, the answer to this onto-theological question concerning being and becoming will be a very definite Yes. But for those who reject all such idealism and happily affirm shape-shifting and parahuman hybrids, preferring as they do to conduct their thinking in terms of constant mutation and change, the answer has to be No. 

 

Personally, my sympathies are with the latter; i.e. those who believe in the the dynamic and interchangeable nature of forms. I'm also sympathetic to those who, like Carter, put forward the shocking idea that even virgins born on Chistmas day might prove to be as amoral and as savage as any beast. 

 

Having been handed over by her father to the Beast, Beauty can't help wondering what the exact nature of his beastliness might entail and, prior to her first meeting with her husband-to-be, she recalls the stories her English nanny used to tell her when she was young in order to frighten her. She remembers too how she first discovered the secret of the sexual mystery from watching farmyard animals copulate. 

 

When Beauty first sets eyes on La Bestia she is struck by his size and crude clumsiness, as well as his odd air of self-imposed restraint; "as if fighting a battle with himself to remain upright when he would rather drop on all fours" [155-56]. For all that, he is not much different from any other man, although wearing a mask "with a man's face most beautifully painted on it [… and] a wig, too […] of the kind you see in old-fashioned portraits" [156]. 

 

The Beast has but a single demand to make of Beauty when she is brought before him; "to see the pretty young lady unclothed nude without her dress" [160]. Shocked and insulted, Beauty laughs scornfully at the request and tells him that if she is to be treated like a common whore then she expects not only to be fucked, but also given "the same amount of money that you would give to any other woman in such circumstances" [161]. 

 

This hurts the Beast and he sheds a tear, which, Beauty hopes, is one of shame. However, this doesn’t stop him from making the same request for a second time - with the same results: "Take off my clothes for you, like a ballet girl? Is that all you want of me?" [163], cries Beauty, and again the Beast is forced to shed a tear. 

 

Eventually, when one day out riding, the Beast decides that since she will not reveal herself naked to him then she must be prepared to see him undressed. As he starts to remove his human disguise and finery, Beauty's composure deserts her and she finds herself on the brink of panic as the Beast reveals himself to be: "A great, feline […] whose pelt was barred with a savage geometry of bars the colour of burned wood” [166]. 

 

Beauty can't help noticing the subtlety of his muscles, the profundity of his tread and the "annihilating vehemence of his eyes, like twin suns" [166]. She feels her breast ripped apart as if she had suffered a marvellous wound and she realises that since the tiger will never lie down with the lamb, then she, Miss Lamb, must learn how to run with tigers. 

Having come to this fateful conclusion, Beauty finally decides to strip: 

 

"I therefore, shivering, now unfastened my jacket, to show him I would do him no harm. Yet I was clumsy and blushed a little, for no man had seen me naked and I was a proud girl. Pride it was, not shame, that thwarted my fingers so; and a certain trepidation lest this frail little article of human upholstery before him might not be, in itself, grand enough to satisfy his expectations […]" [166]

 

Continuing with the narration of her tale, Beauty says: "I showed his grave silence my white skin, my red nipples, and the horses turned their heads to watch me, also, as if they, too, were courteously curious as to the fleshy nature of women." [166] 

 

Having finally conceded to his original request of her, the Beast informs Beauty that she is free to return to her father. But, of course, she now finds herself so taken with the Beast's inhuman nobility that she doesn't want to leave him. Rather, she wants to stay and learn how to feel happy in her own nakedness; for the idea of living without clothes still left her troubled and she rightly connected it to a loss of her humanity: 

 

"I was unaccustomed to nakedness. I was so unused to my own skin that to take off all my clothes involved a kind of flaying. I thought the Beast had wanted a little thing compared with what I was prepared to give him; but it is not natural for humankind to go naked, not since first we hid our loins with fig leaves. He had demanded the abominable. I felt as much atrocious pain as if I was stripping off my own underpelt […]" [168]

 

Still, despite the cost, Beauty gives herself to the Beast of her own accord. He, in turn, abandons his human disguise and no longer wore strong perfumes to mask his own distinctive animal scent. Beauty is still concerned about his ferocity and the fact that he might yet gobble her up, but perhaps, she reasons, his appetite need not mean her death. 

 

The story concludes with a very lovely and highly erotic scene that any zoophile or therianthrope must surely treasure; a scene typical of Angela Carter in that it profoundly disrupts "both our expectations […] and our customary moral and aesthetic response" [g]: 

 

"I squatted on the wet straw and stretched out my hand. I was now within the field of force of his golden eyes. He growled at the back of his throat, lowered his head, sank on to his forepaws, snarled, showed me his red gullet, his yellow teeth. I never moved. He snuffled the air, as if to smell my fear; he could not. 

      Slowly, slowly he began to drag his heavy, gleaming weight across the floor towards me. 

      A tremendous throbbing […] filled the room; he had begun to purr. […] The reverberations of his purring rocked the foundations of the house […] I thought: 'It will all fall, everything will disintegrate'. He dragged himself closer and closer to me, until I felt the harsh velvet of his head against my hand, then a tongue, abrasive as sandpaper. 'He will lick the skin off me!' 

      And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shiny hairs. My earrings turned […] to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur." [169] 

 

 

IV.

 

What, then, are we to make of this zoosexual fantasy of transformation? 

 

Clearly, it challenges traditional moral understandings of the human, the animal, and the relationship that exists between them. Of course, some might dismiss it on the grounds that in being a magical as well as a sexual fantasy, it has nothing to tell us about the so-called real world. And Carter herself concedes that the tale, unlike the more respectable short story, makes no attempt to imitate life or faithfully record everyday experience. 

 

But for Carter, this is precisely the strength and importance of the tale; in transfiguring the mundane via the extraordinary, the tale challenges our usual assumptions and beliefs about the world and doesn't betray its readers into false certainty and common sense. Tales are always of the unexpected and set in a world wherein the rules governing the boundaries between the true and the false, or concerning identity, are not entirely suspended, but made far more fluid than in ours. 

 

As a matter of fact, Carter's reimagining of La Belle et la Bête is not actually all that radical. It's violence, amorality, and sexual content is found in many of the earliest folk versions that pre-date the more sanitized fairy tales written in the 18th and 19th centuries. Essentially, Carter is reviving an oral tradition in which girls and women are far from helpless or submissive; in which they are, on the contrary, shrewd, quick-witted, and highly skilled. 

 

But as significant as this aspect of the tale is, for me, what really fascinates is that it belongs to a tradition concerning metamorphosis or animal transformation fantasy. Carter too is clearly intrigued by the dialectic of continuity and change and to what extent our humanity is simply skin-deep; if not merely a matter of clothing. 

 

We are obliged to ask the following questions: In stripping naked, and in then stepping out of her very skin, has Beauty realised or lost an essential self? Has she been effectively raped and devoured, or sexually fulfilled via a becoming-animal? It's because such questions make many people uncomfortable - particularly as they are raised within a zoosexual context - that, strangely enough, the overtly bestial content of this and other such tales is often entirely overlooked. 

 

Indeed, it almost makes one wonder if the idea of sex between young girls and beasts isn't something inconceivable to them. But, probably, it simply shows fear; either the fear that our humanity is not so essential and determined after all, or the older, more irrational fear that bestiality will result in the birth of monsters ... [h]

 

 

Illustration by Aleksandra Waliszewska [i]

  

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', Twilight in Italy, in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 117.

 

[b] 'The Tiger's Bride' can be found in Angela Carter's astonishing collection of short fiction published as The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, (Golancz, 1979). 

      In this work, Carter doesn't so-much offer us her own versions of traditional fairytales, as reactivate the latent violence and sexual politics at the heart of such well-known stories as 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Beauty and the Beast'. Some have described Carter's writing style as a form of queer gothic feminism, although more usually it is considered to be magical realism. Concerns with female identity and female empowerment are pretty much present throughout, as are supernatural elements often involving metamorphosis. 

      The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories remains one of my favourite books by any author and I would encourage torpedophiles to read (or re-read) it. It can be found on the Internet Archive: click here. However, please note that page numbers given here refer to Angela Carter's collected short stories, published as Burning Your Boats, (Vintage, 1996). 

 

[c] La Belle et la Bête is a fairy tale written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740. It was rewritten and published in the form most people now know it by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756. Scholars have traced the origin of the story back over 4000 years, although, ultimately, it's impossible to know where or when a story was first told.   

 

[d] I will offer a closer reading of the text in Part III of this post.

 

[e] See for example a series of online articles by Ana Isabel Bugeda Díaz under the heading 'Postmodern Retellings 101', which includes a discussion of Angela Carter's 'The Tiger's Bride': click here. 

      The author cheerfully condemns Western dualism, anthropocentrism, rationalism, patriarchal society, the denial or exclusion of Otherness, etc. whilst speaking positively of desire, animality, emotional intelligence, and the need to subvert traditional narratives. Again, I've no problem with this, it's just that it now strikes me as formulaic and a bit old-fashioned.     

 

[f] I'm referring to the six-part series of essays Zoophilia (published as Vol. III of The Treadwell's Papers, Blind Cupid Press, 2010). In particular, I will be referring to the fifth of these essays, on animal transformation fantasy.  

 

[g] Caroline Walker Bynum, 'Shape and Story: Metamorphosis in the Western Tradition' (Jefferson Lecture, 1999): click here to read online.

 

[h] As a matter of biological fact, human-animal hybrids, or parahumans, cannot be bred sexually; attempts to mate a human and a chimpanzee have been made, but they inevitably failed. However, synthetic biology and genetic engineering does potentially open the way for a world in which such inter-species hybrids become possible.

     

[i] To find out more about this Polish artist visit Marta Lucy Summer's blog Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: click here.