From Duck Soup to Duck Rock: On Malcolm McLaren and the Marx Brothers

From Duck Soup to Duck Rock 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I.

 

Although Malcolm McLaren's album Duck Rock [1] was dedicated to his hero Haywire Mac [2], the title is actually a reference to the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup (1933) and it's no coincidence that McLaren is pictured on the record sleeve wearing a high-cut, double-breasted corduroy jacket based on the one famously worn by Chico [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Duck Soup is a musical black comedy with a satirical edge, directed by Leo McCarey and written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin). Released by Paramount Pictures in November 1933, it stars the four Marx Brothers; Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo (the latter making his final film appearance). 

 

At the time, the film was not particularly well received; neither by audiences nor critics [4]. However, it's now regarded - along with A Night at the Opera (1935) - as the Marx Brothers' finest achievement, although, personally, I must confess I still don't find it funny even if I have come to appreciate the film's cultural and political significance [5].   

 

Apparently, it was McCarey who suggested the film be called Duck Soup, after earlier working titles - including Firecrackers, Grasshoppers, and Oo La La - had all been abandoned. Amusingly, McCarey had previously used Duck Soup for a silent film starring Laurel and Hardy [6]. 

 

A popular slang expression in the US at that time, duck soup referred to something easy to do (just as, conversely, to duck out of something meant to avoid doing it altogether). 

 

 

III.

 

Paul Gorman mentions that McLaren enjoyed watching Marx Brothers' films at a flea-pit cinema in northwest London during his student days [7], so there's a good chance he saw Duck Soup at this time. 

 

And, interestingly, due to the fact that the film ridicules war and nationalism and also pokes fun at censorship, it was popular with many others on the radical left (or associated with the so-called counterculture) in the 1960s [8].

 

But who knows what Malcolm found so appealing about this movie? 

 

If it wasn't the anarchic, anti-authoritarian, and irreverent elements, then perhaps it was simply the ducks swimming in a kettle and quacking away quite happily that most struck a chord with him; one thinks, for example, of the refrain used in 'Buffalo Gals': Duck! Duck! Duck!   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Duck Rock was released in 1983 on Charisma Records. I have previously published posts inspired by several of the tracks on the album, including 'Buffalo Gals' and 'Double Dutch' - click here and here.

[2] Harry K. McClintock (1884 - 1957), aka Haywire Mac, was (among other things) an American singer-songwriter in the hobo-punk tradition. He is arguably best known for his song "The Big Rock Candy Mountains", about which I have written here. 

[3] The Chico Jacket was part of the McLaren/Westwood collection 'Nostalgia of Mud' (A/W 1983): click here, for a post on this if interested. Unlike Chico Marx, McLaren chose to match the jacket with an Appalachian mountain hat, rather than Tyrolean style headgear.  

 

[4] Duck Soup was not a box office failure - in fact, it was the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1933 - but it didn't go down as well as the producers hoped, possibly because audiences found the anarchic buffoonery and cynicism of the Marx Brothers inappropriate at a time of economic and political crisis.

 

[5] Wishing to play down the political nature of the film, Groucho Marx insisted it had no real significance and was simply four Jewish comics trying to get a laugh. Nevertheless, the Brothers were delighted to hear that Mussolini banned the film in Fascist Italy, having found it personally insulting.

 

[6] The Laurel and Hardy silent short comedy Duck Soup (1927), was directed by Fred Guiol, with Leo McCarey acting as a supervising director. The film was considered lost until a print was discovered in 1974. It was remade as Another Fine Mess in 1930 (dir. James Parrott). 

 

[7] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), pp. 499-500. 

      The cinema attended by McLaren was the Tolmer, situated just a short walk from Euston Station. It was known as the cheapest cinema in London and attracted what might be described as a mixed audience, including cinephiles, prostitutes, and pensioners. It closed in 1972.

 

[8] Whether that includes Woody Allen and The Beatles is debatable, but both the director of Bananas (1971) and the stars of Help! (dir. Richard Lester, 1965) have admitted they drew insparation from Duck Soup.  

 

 

Bonus: to watch the official Duck Soup (1933) trailer on YouTube, please click here.

My Brush with Scientology

Results of the Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis [1]

which I completed on 9 November 1984

 

 

Watching an episode of Peep Show in which Jez and Super Hans join a religious cult [2], reminded me that I was once persuaded to take a free personality test administered by the Church of Scientology ...

Friday 9 November 1984 [3]

 

Assured that it wouldn't take more than twenty minutes to complete and that I'd have the results within the hour - and as it's always amusing to discover how others see one - I agreed. Of the 200 multiple choice questions, I answered 198 and left two blank; one that was too stupid to even consider and one concerning my voting habits (as an anarchist, that's not a political process I participate in).  

      Afterwards, I went to Dillons to look for a book on fairy tales by Jack Zipes, recommended to me by Malcolm. On the way back, I stopped to pick up my test and was given a brief explanation of the results (all conveniently plotted on a graph) by a friendly (though somewhat earnest) young woman who said, amongst other things, I was depressed, nervous, overly critical, and irresponsible. 

      All of these things may very well be true, but I begged to differ with her conclusion that I was in need of urgent attention - although everyone at Charisma seemed to think that was probably the case, particularly Jon, who found it all very amusing.     

 

      

Notes

 

[1] The Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis is a long list of questions (each of which can be answered yes, no, or maybe) purporting to be personality test and administered for free by the Church of Scientology as an important part of its global recruitment process. 

      However, it is not a scientifically recognised test and has been criticised by numerous professional bodies. The results of the test are invariably negative, as might be expected.

 

[2] Peep Show, episode six of series five; 'Mark's Women' (dir. Becky Martin, 2008).

      Jez and Hans are busking opposite The New Wellness Centre operated by a mysterious new religious movement (don't call it a cult). Deciding that it will be warmer in the Centre and that it might also be fun to laugh at the freaks, they go inside, only to then sign up as fervent new members. Click here and here for a couple of clips on Youtube.  

 

[3] This is (a slightly revised) entry from The Von Hell Diaries (1980-89). 

      Just to clarify: Dillons was a famous Bloomsbury bookshop (founded by Una Dillon in 1936); Jack Zipes is an American professor of German literature and cultural studies (the book I wanted was Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales (1979); the Malcolm that I mention is Malcolm McLaren; Charisma was a famous independent record label based in Soho; Jon is Jon Crawley, director of Charisma Music Publishing.  

 

The Perfect Poem (Adapted from Balzac's Short Story Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu)

 

 

 

"You may know your syntax thoroughly and make no blunders in your grammar, 

but it takes that and something more to make a great poet." [1]

 

I.

 

On a cold December morning just after Christmas, a friend mentioned a poem he had been working on for over a decade. That seemed an awfully long time to me, but he was adamant that it would be the verse by which he would finally make his name in the world of letters. 

 

'Besides', he added, 'what are ten short years in the eternal struggle with language?'   

 

I said I'd be happy to read it, if he wanted me too, but he was somewhat taken aback - even slightly offended - by the suggestion: "No, no! It's not perfect yet; something still remains for me to do."

 

Which is fair enough. The mysterious poem, a work of patience on which he had wrought so long in secret, was doubtless also a work of genius - for my friend was a man of great passion and enthusiasm who sees above and beyond mundane reality. But until he wished for it to be read, there was nothing further I could say.   

 

II. 

 

The following spring, my friend sent me a text asking if I could come visit him at his retreat in Cornwall.   

When I arrived, I was shocked. For he had "fallen a victim to one of those profound and spontaneous fits of discouragement that are caused, according to medical doctors, by indigestion, flatulence, fever, or enlargement of the spleen; or, if you take the opinion of the Spiritualists, by the imperfections of our mortal nature". 

 

The poor devil had exhausted himself in putting the finishing touches to his magnificent poem. Slumped in a huge armchair upholstered in blue velvet, he glanced up at me like a man who had sunk into depression. 

 

Naturally, I asked him what was wrong: 'Alas!' he cried, 'for one joyous moment I believed my work was finished, but now I'm sure there are still lines that need rewriting.'

 

As was his wont in times of despair, he had decided to flee abroad: 'I am going to France, to Germany, to Greece in search of inspiration - I don't know when or if I'll be back!'

 

Thinking it might help, I again offered to read the poem. He looked at me aghast: 'What! Show you my verse in all its imperfection - never! I would sooner kill myself - and kill you, my friend - than do that.'

 

I must confess myself amazed by the murderous vehemence with which these words were spoken and knew not how to reply to this utterance of an emotion as hyserical as it was profound. Was it the fabled madness of the poet or had my friend "fallen a victim to some freak of the artist's fancy?"

 

'Okay', I said. 'But be careful you don't die in the process of trying to find the perfect wording and leave the poem unfinished.'

 

 

III.

 

It was a cold December morning just before Christmas when next I heard from Moisés, back from his travels and renting rooms in London. 'Come and visit me at once,' he cried. 'My poem is perfect and I can now show it you with pride.'

 

His small studio flat was in disorder and covered with dust; a few pictures hung here and there upon the wall of dead poets and pop stars from another time. 

 

Without even offering me a drink, he pressed a single sheet of A4 paper into my hands. His dyed-black hair was disordered and his face glowed "with a more than human exaltation". 'Here it is!' he cried. 'Did you ever think that language was capable of such perfection? Have I not spoken with such elemental power that a new world is brought into being?' 

 

I looked at the sheet, but could see nothing written there, just the brilliant whiteness of the paper. Only in the bottom right-hand corner he had signed his name with such delicate beauty that it made me smile and I began "to have some understanding, vague though it was, of the ecstasy in which he lived".  

 

The next day, I heard my friend had killed himself, having first destroyed his perfect poem and all other writings.

 

   

Notes

 

[1] This was spoken by Maître Frenhofer, the main character in a two-part short story by Balzac entitled Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu ("The Unknown Masterpiece"). 

      It was first published in L'Artiste, a weekly illustrated review, in August 1831. It was later published  in Balzac's Études philosophiques (1837) and integrated into La Comédie humaine in 1846. The work is a reflection on art which had a profound influence on the thinking of both Cézanne and Picasso.

      This post is adapted from Balzac's tale and both paraphrases and incorporates lines from it. The original story can be read as a Project Gutenberg ebook: click here. 

 

Aphrodite's Girdle

Aphrodite's Girdle, contributed by Mary Metzer to

The Museum of Fictional Literary Artifacts [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The girdle has a long, long history, reaching back into an ancient time that fashion historians term BP (Before Playtex). 

 

Perhaps the most famous girdle of all was one said to have been worn by Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love - although whether it was recognisably a girdle in the modern sense is debatable [2]. 

 

According to Homer, the girdle was imbued with the magical power to arouse desire in mortals and gods alike [3]. Thus, it can legitimately be regarded as an erotic accessory rather than merely a garment worn for practical reasons; Aphrodite, one assumes, didn't require any help maintaining her shape.  

The same might not be true of Hera, who had a fuller, more matronly figure and sometimes borrowed the girdle from Aphrodite when looking for a little extra something in order to capture the attentions of her husband (and brother) Zeus [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, later authors claim that Aphrodite also lent her embroidered girdle to Helen, to ensure that Paris would succumb to her natural charms. 

 

But Aphrodite was always keen to have the item returned to her as soon as possible, however, and the 18th-century German poet and playwright Schiller explains why that is so in his long philosophical essay On Grace and Dignity (1793) [5]. 

According to Schiller, Aphrodite - or Venus as he prefers to call her in the Roman manner - can be stripped naked and still remain beautiful; but without her girdle she lacks grace - and without grace she is no longer so alluring. 

 

In other words, even a naturally beautful woman is desexualised the moment she is stripped naked; something that Roland Barthes picks up on in his essay on striptease in Mythologies. 

 

Ultimately, it's the clothes and jewellery and make-up - "in short the whole spectrum of adornment" [6] that give the living flesh its erotic fascination and places the body within the realm of luxurious objects.

   

 

Notes

 

[1] The Museum of Fictional Literary Artifacts is an amusing digital project created by students at Dakota State University. The aim is to establish an online archive of imaginary objects that might - had they been actual things - have been sought after by collectors. The MFLA houses a vast number of such artifacts found in all genres of literary work, from novels to comic books. For more details, please click here.  

 

[2] The Girdle of Aphrodite has variously been imagined as a strap, a belt, or a breast-band rather than a girdle as we might think of it today in a post-Playtex world of rubber. Whatever it was, Aphrodite's girdle has been a popular theme in the arts and literature of Europe, particularly during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods.  

 

[3] See Homer, Iliad 14: 159-221. Homer. An English translation of the full text by A.T. Murray can be found on the Perseus Digital Library: click here to read Book 14.

 

[4] Theirs was not what you might call a happy marriage; she may have found him agreeable at first - just as he found her sexually attractive - but their relationship is marked by infidelity, jealousy, and violence. 

 

[5] Über Anmut und Würde (1793) is an attempt to reconcile aesthetics and ethics based upon the philosophy of  Immanuel Kant. For Schiller, the trick is to synthesise the physical and spiritual nature of man and thus produce a beautiful soul. An English translation of this essay by George Gregory can be read as a pdf online via the Schiller Institute website: click here.

 

[6] Roland Barthes, 'Sriptease', in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, (The Noonday Press, 1991), p. 85.   

 

  

A Tale of Two Ears and Notes on Aural Regeneration

This ear? 

Yes, that there.

 

 

I. 

 

For Síomón Solomon, the human ear "is not merely a passive cavity or vacuous opening but a transfigurative chamber of auditory fantasy" [1]. If this makes it for some the most poetic organ, so too does it help to explain why for ear fetishists aural sex is the only game in town.

 

One famous lughole lover is the American filmmaker David Lynch, who not only assigns the severed, decomposing ear crawling with ants discovered in a field at the start of his cult movie Blue Velvet (1986) symbolic importance, but gives it something of a lead role [2]. 

 

For as Solomon goes on to note, Lynch became so fixated with the prosthetic ear, that he and his make-up supervisor Jeff Goodwin referred to it as a character in its own right - 'Mr Ear' - and designed it out of silicone rather than latex, "even embellishing it, in a superbly disquieting fetishistic signature, with locks of Lynch's own scissored hair" [3]. 

 

Lynch's ear serves much the same function for Jeffrey Beaumont as the rabbit hole does for Alice; it is what leads him (and us) into a troubling and dangerous underworld. It is only when he finally comes through his ordeal that he (and we as viewers) exit the ear.

 

Of course, not all detached ears found lying on the ground have such a serious symbolic role to play. In Carry On Screaming! (dir. Gerald Thomas,1966), for example, Oddbod's ear has a strictly comic function, allowing for a couple of predictable (but still amusing) gags. 

 

Whether the ear possesses the same remarkable regenerative capacity as the repulsive-looking finger which Oddbod also loses, wasn't made clear in the film, but the possibility of regrowing lost tissues or organs is an intriguing one worth looking at in a bit more detail ...

 

 

II.

 

Salamanders are well-known for their ability to regenerate complex body parts and this has long fascinated scientists keen to discover if people too may one day be able to regrow lost limbs, etc. 

 

Whether this would involve genetically engineering human-salamander hybrids or simply transplanting blastema tissue from these loveable amphibians, I don't know. But, either way, it would be remarkable if doctors found a way to induce regeneration (and tumor regression) in animals such as ourselves with a limited ability to repair our own bodies and a penchant for the quick-fix of forming scar tissue. 

 

Having said that, it might prove easier simply to 3D print new bits and bobs in the lab, as in the recent case of a young Mexican woman who had her external ear reconstructed using this technique to create a living tissue transplant. 

 

According to press reports [4], the transplant procedure was successfully carried out at a US hospital in March 2022 and such newly developed technology promises to transform the lives of people born with microtia; a rare congenital condition in which one or both outer ears are absent or incompletely formed.

 

The company behind this groundbreaking work  - 3DBio Therapeutics - said the new ear was composed of a 3D-printed collagen hydrogel scaffold using the patient's own cartilage cells. Clinical trials involving several other patients are ongoing, but fingers crossed the organ won't be rejected so that what's ear today won't be gone tomorrow.    

 

 

 

Photos from the Microtia-Congenital Ear Institute 

and 3DBio Therapeutics

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Síomón Solomon, Hölderlin's Poltergeists, (Peter Lang, 2020), p. 101. For further discussion of Solomon's audiopoetics, see the post of 10 May 2021: click here.

 

[2] To watch the scene in Blue Velvet in which Jeffrey Beaumont (played by Kyle MacLachlan) discovers the ear, click here.

 

[3] Síomón Solomon, Hölderlin's Poltergeists, pp. 99-100. 

[4] See for example Roni Caryn Rabin, 'Doctors Transplant Ear of Human Cells, Made by 3-D Printer', The New York Times (2 June 2022), and/or Nicola Davis, 'Woman's ear rebuilt with 3D-printed living tissue implant' The Guardian (2 June 2022).

Nothing Changes on New Year's Day

Lasciate ogni speranza per il 2024

 

 

I don't like - and have never liked - the Irish rock band U2.

 

But that isn't to say they haven't written some fine songs, including 'New Year's Day', which contains the killer line: Nothing changes on New Year's Day [1] - a line which counters all the mad optimism of those gawping at fireworks, popping champagne corks, and singing 'Auld Lang Syne' without any idea of what the phrase means. 

 

Often, these are the same people who criticise others for being despairing about the past or present and who insist on being hopeful for the future - even though the expectation of positive outcomes with respect to temporal progress seems entirely groundless.   

 

I don't want to sound too diabolical, but it seems to me that the phrase lasciate ogni speranza written above the gates of Hell is actually a sound piece of advice [2]. For Nietzsche may have a point when he suggests that it is hope which prolongs the torments of man and is thus the most evil of all evils [3].    

 

Finally, let me remind readers also that whilst hope may be one of the great Christian virtues, in Norse mythology it is simply the drool dripping from the mouth of the monstrous Fenris Wolf and courage a term for the gay bravery displayed by the warrior in the absence of hope.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] U2, 'New Year's Day', released as a lead single from the album War (Island Records, 1983): click here to play the official video (dir. Meiert Avis). 

 

[2] The line in full reads Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate ('Abandon all hope, ye who enter here') and it concludes an inscription above the gates of Hell according to Dante. See Inferno Canto III, line 9: click here.

[3] See Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, II 71: click here.

Ross Barkan's Dream of a New Romantic Age

Ross Barkan (2017) 

Award-winning novelist, journalist, and new romantic

rossbarkin.com 

 

According to the American writer Ross Barkan, the times they are a-changin' and we are about to witness a romantic backlash to technology as the younger generation discover that it is in fact possible to live offline: "A rebellion, both conscious and unconscious, has begun." [1]  

 

Having said that, the truth is Barkan isn't sure about this coming cultural upheaval. After all, the future cannot be predicted, so he is merely putting forward a hypothesis (i.e., hazarding a guess) in order to produce an interesting end of year column for The Guardian.  

 

Thus, whilst he insists that this nascent new romanticism echoes "in its own way, a great shift that came more than two centuries ago, out of the ashes of the Napoleonic wars", he still qualifies his argument by placing it in the non-space between maybe and might.  

 

Personally, I doubt that this rebellion against digital order and technology's enframing of existence will amount to very much. Those whom Barkan calls the young may be superstitious and in search of spiritual meaning - may indulge in nostalgia for a time they never knew and amuse themselves by constructing retro-futures - but I don't see them switching off their smartphones.  

 

Indeed, when I spoke to a small group of pagan witches a few months ago in praise of silence, sececy, and shadows [2], they were receptive to the ideas, but it was also clear that, as Barkan points out, the digital era has permanently changed the way people view the world and interact with one another: 

 

"For thousands of years, mature human beings knew how to be alone in their own thoughts and tolerate boredom. The smartphone's addictive entertainments immolated attention spans." 

 

And that's the problem, is it not? 

 

The changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution were certainly significant and wide-ranging, but the poets, painters, and philosophers of Romanticism had not had their attention spans immolated, their imaginations captured, or their brains rewired. And so they could still think, feel, and dream in a recognisably human manner. I'm not sure, however, that's still the case today. 

 

For, arguably, the thing which the Romantics feared most has happened; not merely the enslavement of flesh and blood to the iron machine, but technology's "encroachment on the human spirit" and the emergence of an inhuman (and transhuman) future.        

 

Betraying his own romantic optimism, Barkan ultimately hopes, like Nietzsche, that art will prove to be the counternihilistic force par excellence [4]; art, that is, made by a creative class of men and women who, although beleagured, have retained something of their humanity and are ready to rise up - not the mediocre art produced by AI.     

 

If, for now, smartphones are ubiquitous and the tech giants still own and dominate the present, it is not clear whether they will own and dominate the future [3]. For generational change is coming, says Barkan, and "romanticism won't hold still; it promises, at the minimum, a wild and unsteady flame" that might illuminate the world to come in an unexpected manner: "Perhaps we are ready to be surprised and amazed again." [5]   

 

Yeah, perhaps ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Ross Barkan, 'The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms', The Guardian (28 Dec 2023): click here. All lines quoted in this post are from this article by Barkan, unless otherwise indicated.

 

[2] See 'In Defence of Isis Veiled: What a Practice of Ocuultism Might Mean in an Age of Transparency' (9 Sept 2023): click here. 

      As a matter of fact, Barkan holds out even less hope than I do in the power of magic; it will take more than spells and incantations to challenge the digital world order and irrationality, on its own, is no virtue: 

      "Embracing the paranormal or believing, wholeheartedly, that star positions can determine personalities can be harmless fun –-until the delusions become life-consuming and despair takes hold when they inevitably do not deliver on their promise." 

 

[3] Writing in a slightly different version of his piece in The Guardian published on his substack (Political Currents), Barkan says: 

      "Facebook and Twitter are losing their grip. TikTok rises, but will last only so long. Instagram hums through its strange middle period, no longer a place for genuine photography, reflecting unreality back to us. None of these platforms will vanish. But I would bet they will all matter less in ten years." 

      See Ross Barkan, 'The New Romantic Age' (28 Dec 2023): click here.

 

[4] For Nietzsche, if we are ever to move beyond the impasse of the present and give birth to new forms and ways of being, then "unheard-of-artistic powers will be needed". For art alone is the "great means of making life possible [...] the great stimulant of life". I think we might do well to question such romanticism with respect to the potential of art as means of cultural rehabilitation (and, indeed, Nietzsche will himself later insist on tying his own aesthetics to a form of Dionysian pessimism). 

      The lines quoted from Nietzsche can be found in 'The Philosopher: Reflections on the Struggle between Art and Knowledge', in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Humanities Press International, 1993), p. 9, and The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 452, respectively.

 

[5] Ross Barkan, 'The New Romantic Age' ... click here.  

 

 

On Defeminisation and Remasculinisation

Jonathan Borofsky: Male/Female (2000)

colour lithograph and screenprint (47" x 32")

borofsky.com

 

 

If losing a mother may be written down as a Wildean misfortune, then to lose one's sister and an ex-wife in the same year certainly looks like carelessness on my part - although since two of the above removed themselves from my life of their own volition, that perhaps mitigates any accusation of negligence. 

 

What's striking is how these deaths have resulted in a significant defeminisation of my world and how it got me thinking that perhaps that's not such a bad thing; that, arguably, wider society might also benefit from a cultural defeminisation (and, indeed, a dequeering). 

 

For perhaps just as we need what is most evil in us for what is best in us, so too an active element of masculinity - even at its most heteronormatively toxic - is essential for human wellbeing. 

 

However, as models of masculinity have varied across time and place, what it might mean to remasculinise culture is debatable and I can't stand those idiots who think it's just a question of manning up [1].

 

D. H. Lawrence would probably insist it's more a matter of rediscovering what he terms phallic tenderness [2].  

Notes

[1] Having said that, I have in the past been willing to let this phrase pass: click here. 

[2] Lawrence introduces this notion in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) and other works from this late period. In brief, for Lawrence, the phallus is not merely an organ belonging to the male body, but a sacred symbol of relatedness which forms a bridge between man and woman (and to the future); as for tenderness, that's his term for a passionate form of human contact based upon the inspiration of touch - i.e., it's his word for the desire that is productive of social reality. 

 

 

What Was I Thinking? (28 December)

 

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

28 December (2013-2021)

 

Sometimes, it's interesting to look back and see what one was thinking on the same date in years gone by - and sometimes it's simply embarrassing ...

 

Our God is Woman: Our Mission is Protest! 

On this date in 2013, for example, I was keen to express my support for a twenty-year old philosophy student and Femen activist, Josephine Witt, who staged a one-woman protest at St. Peter's Cathedral in Cologne, briefly disrupting a televised Christmas mass by getting her tits out and declaring herself to be God, before half-a-dozen horrified clerics wearing an assortment of robes pulled her from the altar, bundled her out of the building, and handed her over to the secular forces of law and order. 

 

I'm not sure I would now be quite so sympathetic to such an action. 

 

 

In Praise of an Unnatural Death 

 

Skip forward three years and on this date in 2016 I was keen to challenge the judgement of God by refusing to accept what medical professionals describe as death by natural causes; i.e., the all-too-predictable kind of death that results from illness, old age, or an internal malfunction of the body and its organs. 

 

As a philosopher, I argued, one should always desire and seek out the opposite of this; i.e., the joy of an unnatural death, be it by accident, misadventure, homicide, suicide, or that mysterious non-category that is undetermined and which, for those enigmatic individuals who pride themselves on their ambiguity, must surely be the way to go.

 

I then confessed my own preference to be executed, like William Palmer, the notorious nineteenth-century murderer known as the Prince of Poisoners, who is said to have climbed the gallows and placed a foot tentatively on the trapdoor before enquiring of the hangman: Is it safe? 

 

I would like, in other words, to go to my death with the cool courage and stoicism of the dandy and a ready quip on my lips that might cause even my executioner to smile (and serve also to annoy the po-faced authorities who demand seriousness and expect contrition in such circumstances).

 

 

To See More Clearly Than Ever Before 

 

In December 2018, meanwhile, I was entering my Daphne Du Maurier phase - a phase that never really passed and became a long-lasting love for the author and her astonishing body of work. On the 28th of this month I wrote a series of notes on one of her near-perfect short stories - suggested to me by the poet Simon Solomon - 'The Blue Lenses' (1959).

 

The premise of the post and story was the same: what if everyone were to suddenly lose their human features and be seen with the head of the creature that best expresses their inhuman qualities; not so much their true nature, as what might be termed their molecular animality - would we still find this gently amusing? I suspect not: in all likelihood, initial astonishment would quickly give way to horror. 

 

However we choose to describe it, du Maurier's tale is not simply an imaginative fantasy and she, like D. H. Lawrence, is "another of the writers who leave us troubled and filled with admiration" precisely because she was able to tie her work to "real and unheard of becomings". Hers is a genuinely black art, as Deleuze and Guattari would say.   

 

Judenstern

 

Making particular reference to the case of Serge Gainsbourg, back on 28 December, 2019 I was concerned with the history of the badge that Jews were often obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., in order to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders). 

 

Although we tend to think of this practice in the context of Hitler's Germany, the Nazis were actually drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.  

 

Gainsbourg was required to wear such as a young boy in wartime Paris; an experience he made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded, and which he eventually wrote a song about: click here. 

 

 

Piquerism and Notes on Knife Play

 

On 28 December of the following year, 2020, I expressed my fascination with piquerism; i.e., the practice of penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects, including pins, razors, and knives - something that I traced back to young childhood and the time I placed a drawing pin on a fat girl's chair in order to see if she would explode like a balloon with a loud bang.

 

Following this, I then explored episodes of knife play in the work of D. H. Lawrence, of which there are several, including the notorious scene in chapter XXIII of The Plumed Serpent (1926) in which Cipriano publicly executes a group of stripped and blindfolded prisoners with a bright, thin dagger, plunging the latter into their chests with swift, heavy stabs. 

 

I think even at the time I was uncomfortable with this and not able to dismiss it with the same ease as Kate Leslie who, if shocked and appalled at first by the killings, eventually concludes that her new husband's penchant for a little ritualised murder is fine if carried out in good conscience.

 

 

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes

 

If over the Xmas period in 2018 I was reading Daphne du Maurier, in 2021 I was enjoying the work of J. G. Ballard, including a short story entitled 'Prima Belladonna' which was included in the collection Vermilion Sands (1971) - a collection which celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality. 

 

The alien female figure of Jane Ciracylides, with her rich patina-golden skin and insects for eyes, has continued to fascinate me to this day. Who knows, perhaps I'll get to play i-Go with her one day (even if she always cheats).  

 

Dermatillomania: On Blogging as an Itch One Simply Has to Scratch

Simon Reynolds 

blissblog

 

 

Although I don't think of myself as a blogger [1] - and although I don't regularly read any blogs - I appreciated a piece in The Guardian today by Simon Reynolds [2] which offered a nice defence of blogging as a genre ...

 

Whilst conceding that blogging is an outdated format and that many blog posts often go unread, Reynolds nevertheless celebrates the freedom that this type of text allows, enabling the writer to ramble and discuss any subject that captures their interest. 

 

He writes:

 

"Blogging, for me, is the perfect format. No restrictions when it comes to length or brevity: a post can be a considered and meticulously composed 3,000-word essay, or a spurted splat of speculation or whimsy. No rules about structure or consistency of tone." 

 

Continuing: 

 

"A blogpost can be half-baked and barely proved [...] Purely for my own pleasure, I do often go deep. But it's nearer the truth to say that some posts are outcomes of rambles across the archives of the internet, byproducts of the odd information trawled up and the lateral connections created. [...] When blogging, I can meander, take short cuts and trespass in fields where I don't belong. Because I’m not pitching an idea to a publication or presenting my credentials as an authority, I am able to tackle subjects outside my expertise."     

 

You can also discuss topics that are no longer topical: "An old record or TV programme you've stumbled on, or simply remembered  ..." For in an atemporal culture, past, present and future are collapsed and one can even be nostalgic about the latter. 

 

Reynolds also refers to the compulsive nature of blog writing; analogous to an excoriation disorder, or an itch one has to scratch, as he puts it. There's certainly some truth in that - as there is in the idea that long term bloggers have an obsessive character and the fanatic determination to carry on regardless; "I can’t imagine stopping blogging - even once there are just a few of us still standing."

 

I've been posting work on Torpedo the Ark for over ten years, but Reynolds has been blogging for twice as long [3], so I certainly respect him for that, knowing as I do the amount of time and effort that goes into producing content on a regular basis.

 

I also respect Reynolds for the fact that he (like me) would continue writing and publishing posts even if they had no audience at all. For amassing followers and forming some kind of community isn't what it's about; "connectivity was only ever part of the appeal".     

 

Nor is generating an income from one's work a real concern: 

 

"Freedom and doing it for free go together. I've resisted the idea of going the Substack or newsletter route. If I were to become conscious of having a subscriber base, I'd start trying to please them. And blogging should be the opposite of work." 

 

Precisely ... Well said that man!

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'Post 2000: From Journal to Mémoire' (4 Jan 2023), wherein I explain how I view Torpedo the Ark (it's not a blog) and myself as a writer (I'm not a blogger): click here.   

 

[2] Simon Reynolds, 'I'll never stop blogging: it's an itch I have to scratch - and I don’t care if it's an outdated format', The Guardian (26 Dec 2023): click here. All quotes in the above post are from this article. 

 

[3] Torpedo the Ark began in November 2012. Reynolds began his blogging career in 2002, having  operated a website for about six years prior to that date. He posts work today across several blogs, but his primary outlet is blissblog, the motto of which - My brain thinks blog-like - is one I wish I'd thought of.