Gerontophilia: Notes on Elder Rights and Ageivism

Maggie Kuhn (1905-1995)

Founder of the Grey Panthers

I recently expressed support for elder rights in a post on gerontophilia and the beauty of old age. Now someone has emailed to ask if I would expand upon this, explaining the reason for my personal interest in this subject ...

Just to be clear: I don't myself have any involvement with any elder rights political movement or activist organisation. I admire her, but I'm no Maggie Kuhn.

However, in my capacity as a full-time carer for a woman in her nineties during the past thirty months, I've gained an insight into some of the issues faced by senior citizens; including vulnerability to abuse and the way in which cultural and social perceptions of age, disability and dementia, can impact negatively on the lives of those deemed to be over the hill at best, or useless eaters at worst.
    
And I've witnessed how even those who genuinely seem to care and should know better - medical health professionals and social workers - still behave in an outrageously patronising manner towards their elderly patients and clients.

It must be terrible to be marginalised due to the presence of a few grey hairs and wrinkles. But to also be infantilised and talked down to as if one were a child - or talked about as if no longer even present - must greatly intensify one's sense of disempowerment and humiliation. 

Diminished physical or mental capacity and an inability to use the latest technology, doesn't make someone an idiot or any less deserving of respect and a little kindness. Nor, on the other hand, does old age necessarily make any wiser, sweeter, or more innocent. The elderly have all the same vices (and virtues) as everyone else and should be accorded all the same rights.        

I'm sympathetic, therefore, to the concept of activist ageing and interested in the thinking that is said to underpin it - ageivism - even though, philosophically, I obviously have problems with any ideology that refers to principles of identity and social justice.

As I said, I'm no Maggie Kuhn: and I'm certainly no Issi Doron either. I just want us all to be able to see something beautiful in old age (even if that something is death).           

Note: readers interested in Israel Doron's ageivism project can visit his website by clicking here.

Gerontophilia: Notes on Beautiful Old Age

Carmen Dell'Orefice

Beautiful young women are freaks of nature; beautful old women are works of art.

Although I wouldn't identify as a gerontophile, I can certainly see the attraction of the older person - or even the much older person (especially if that older person happens to look like Carmen Dell'Orefice).   

D. H. Lawrence writes of men and women who have ripened like apples, "full of the peace that comes of experience / and wrinkled ripe fulfilment". That's the secret of their loveliness, he says.

However, I think we might challenge this vision of what constitutes the beauty of old age. For it's a vision that perpetuates myths of passivity and sexlessness: old people are soothing, says Lawrence, "and dim with the soft / stillness and satisfaction of autumn".

One only seeks out an elderly partner, he suggests, "when one is tired of love".

Lawrence seems to find it inconceivable that people of mature years may possibly want more and offer more than slippers and cocoa; that there are, in fact, many sexually active and sexually desirable individuals in their sixties, seventies and beyond.           

To be honest, it's a little surprising to find Lawrence peddling this line of thought. For not only was he himself married to an older woman with an insatiable libido, but in an article written around the same time as his poem 'Beautiful Old Age', Lawrence insists:

"We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. [...] In youth it flickers and shines; in age it glows softer and still, but there it is."   

His position on this question - as on so many others - is therefore fluid and ambiguous.

My own position is that anything that counters our culture's marginalisation and infantalisation of senior citizens and not only protects but promotes and advances elder rights is a good thing.     

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Beautiful Old Age', The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Vol. I, p. 437.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 143-48. 

I might have chosen to say more about gerontophilia, but, unfortunately, the reserach data is almost non-existent - even Kinsey can't help us here. I'm not sure why this is so, but perhaps it's related to the fact that unlike some other forms of paraphilia - such as paedophilia, for example - gerontophilia has never been regarded as a problematic mental disorder. Indeed, as one commentator points out, gerontophiles find themselves in a category of deviancy that usually lends itself to mockery rather than moral panic. See: Jesse Bering, Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us, (Scientific American / Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013).

Those intrigued by this topic might be interested in the romantic comedy-drama Gerontophilia, (dir. Bruce LaBruce, 2013), which tells the story of a young man who takes a job in a nursing home and develops an attraction to an elderly resident in the facility. Click here, to watch the trailer. 

For a related post to this one on elder rights and ageivism, click here.

Why I Write Such Excellent Posts

Friedrich Nietzsche: Little Thinker - 

Übertoy by The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild

I am one thing: this blog is another ...

Before I speak of the posts themselves, let me address the question of their being understood or not understood. I shall do so in a cursory manner; for the time hasn't arrived for this question. My time hasn't come yet either: some of us are born posthumously.

One day, perhaps, scholars will critically assess Torpedo the Ark. But I'd be queerly mistaken if I expected to find a large number of readers for my posts today. The fact that I presently have so few followers and that no one quite knows how to comment actually makes perfect sense.      

Not that I should like to underestimate the pleasure I have derived from the innocence with which some of the posts have been read. Often, those who think they have understood something in my work - not only about the subject being discussed, but about me as the author of the text - have merely adapted something in it so as to best reflect their own image or ideal.

Others, who seem to understand absolutely nothing about the blog or the spirit in which it's written, deny there is anything in it worth considering at all; they dismiss the posts as merely clever exercises in style.

Of course, I do have some exceptionally smart readers. But I must confess that I rejoice more in the thought of those who do not read me and faithfully follow those intellectual stars of social media who are very much of this time. Torpedo the Ark is for the few and it is read at a certain cost. For be warned, other blogs - particularly philosophical blogs - may lose their attraction after reading this one.

In other words, regular reading of Torpedo the Ark refines (some might say spoils) one's taste and restricts one's ability to enjoy other writers. For there are no finer posts than mine; they occasionally attain to the high point of intellectual endeavour: cynicism.

To capture their meaning one must possess the most delicate sense of irony and the lightest of touches. Any kind of moral seriousness or sincerity excludes one from the space in which they unfold; one needs quick wits and nimble fingers.

The beautiful souls - false from top to bottom - do not know in the least what to make of my posts - consequently, they regard the blog as beneath them. But I no more write for beautiful souls than I do for those who are made ugly with resentment.

When I try to imagine the character of a torpedophile I always picture a monster of courage and curiosity - in short, a thought adventurer who is happy to wander outside the gate into that realm of dangerous knowledge of which Zarathustra speaks ...  

Notes

This post is part pastiche, part homage, and part new (mis)translation of the chapter 'Warum ich so gute Bücher schreibe' in Nietzsche's Ecce Homo: Wie man wird, was man ist, (written in 1888 and first published in 1908). 

Click here to access the full text (in German), part of the Digital Critical Edition of Nietzsche's Works and Letters (eKGWB), ed. Paolo D'Iorio and published by Nietzsche Source: click here for further details of this edition.    

English translations of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo have been made by (amongst others) R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1986) and Duncan Large, (Oxford University Press, 2007).  

Notes on the Brodie Set

The Brodie Set: the crème de la crème of 
Marcia Blaine School 

Although reduced in number in Ronald Neame's film adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel, the composite characters who make up the cinematic version of the Brodie Set remain the crème de la crème ...

I. Jenny: the Sexy One

Jenny - played by Diane Grayson - is the natural beauty of the group; a Rose by any other name. She possesses instinct, but no insight and is, according to Miss Brodie, like a heroine in a novel by Mr. D. H. Lawrence, with a profile of deceptive purity and a willingness to cartwheel on command, primitive and free.

Thus it is that Jenny will one day be famous for sex; destined - in Miss Brodie's mind - to become Teddy Lloyd's lover and not merely his model. But Jenny is of no real interest to the randy art master and Miss Brodie's fantasy of her erotic value and Nietzschean potential to rise above the common moral code is woefully mistaken.

Jenny is, in fact, just an ordinary girl; more a pint of semi-skimmed milk than crème de la crème. She wants to be happy, like her parents; people who have sexual intercourse in the marital bed, lights off but nightclothes on, and don't have primes like Miss Brodie.    


II. Monica: the Plain One

Monica - played by Shirley Steedman - was good at maths and quick of temper. And although a rather histrionic child, easily moved to tears by poetry and tales of lost love, Miss Brodie ultimately thought her to possess very little soul. It is also Monica whom she initially suspects of betraying her.

Personally, however, I like Monica very much: she seems to me the sort of girl one might have a lot of fun with; always happy to go places and to do things. 


III. Mary McGregor: that Silly, Stupid Girl

Ah, Mary McGregor - played by Jane Carr - is the most malleable of the four girls, thus her attraction for Miss Brodie. Slow-witted and stuttering, she is bullied by one and all, meekly bearing the blame for everything that goes wrong. Sadly, as Sandy rather cruelly says: She died a fool.


IV. Sandy: the Clever Little Cat 

Sandy - played by Pamela Franklin (with such brilliance that she won a BAFTA for her performance) - is Miss Brodie's confidante. And thus, of course, best able to put a stop to her ... 

Miss Brodie thinks Sandy dependable, but far from her prime: it's a fatal misjudgement. For by the age of seventeen, Sandy has developed into a young woman of great insight and sexual precocity; something that Teddy Lloyd is quick to recognise and exploit, happily taking her as his mistress.

Miss Brodie also thinks Sandy would make a great spy. But Sandy is ultimately an assassin who regards her former mentor as a ridiculous woman. She also comes to understand the Brodie Set as an essentially micro-fascist formation; faithful to their leader and expected to serve, suffer and sacrifice.

Sandy clearly loves Miss Brodie and was closer to her than any of the other girls. But that's why she has to one day go too far and betray her; for we reward our great teachers not with loyalty, but by losing them so that we can at last become ourselves.

Judas was the greatest of disciples. And Sandy was the greatest member of the Brodie Set: the clever little cat that got the cream and learned how to kill without concern.   

Read: Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, (Macmillan, 1961).

Watch: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), dir. Ronald Neame, written by Jay Presson Allen, starring Maggie Smith in her Academy Award winning prime.

To view the original trailer for the above film, click here.

Please Sir!

There are numerous British films set in schools, many of which I strongly dislike - particularly those that are issue-based and offer viewers a grim and sanctimonious lesson on class, race, or teen delinquency. Sentimental bullshit masquerading as social realism always gets my goat. 

Ironically, however, one of my favourite school films - Please Sir! (1971) - is said to have been inspired by just such a movie; James Clavell's To Sir, With Love (1967). Well, technically, it was the ITV sitcom of that title, created by the scriptwriting duo Esmonde and Larbey, that ran for over fifty episodes between 1968 and 1972, which took its inspiration from the latter.

Although it's difficult to see much of a resemblance between John Alderton's Mr. Hedges and Sidney Poitier's Mr. Thackeray, it might be noted that both young teachers manage to win the affection of their often unruly pupils by treating them with fairness and respect. 

Like many successful sitcoms of the period, a big screen version was released to cash in on its popularity. Unlike most of these, however, this film works as a film and isn't merely an extended episode.

Indeed, Please Sir! has much to recommend it, not least of all the presence of Joan Sanderson as the formidable deputy headmistress Miss Ewel and the very lovely Jill Kerman as Penny Wheeler. Richard Davies' performance as the Welsh science teacher, Mr. Price, is also a joy to watch.  
 
And if La La La Lu (I Love You), featured on the film's soundtrack and sung by Cilla Black, isn't the greatest pop song ever written, I prefer it to Lulu's To Sir With Love. Readers can decide on the merits of each track for themselves by clicking on the links provided.

And to watch the UK trailer for Please Sir! (dir. Mark Stuart, 1971), click here.

5C Class Photo - Fenn Street School

Why I Love Carry On Teacher

Print by artandhue.com 
based on the original film poster

Carry On Teacher (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1959) is the third in the long-running Carry On series of film comedies and one of my favourite movies set in the classroom (as it is one of Morrissey's) ...

It features Ted Ray, who does a sterling job in this, his only Carry On role, alongside the usual suspects. Leslie Philips also puts in another ding-dong performance in what, sadly, will be his final Carry On until the much mistaken last entry in the series, Carry On Columbus (1992), once voted the worst British film ever made.    

Fans of classic seventies sitcom Man About the House, will also note the presence of a young Richard O'Sullivan as one of the Maudlin Street pupils (coincidentally, he's even named Robin).

And finally, since we're discussing the cast, special mention should also be made of the very wonderful Rosalind Knight, as the severe (but sexy) Ministry of Education Inspector, Miss Wheeler: that hair! that face! those clothes! 

But, apart from the actors, what is it that I love about this film so much?

It's the fact that, like all of the early Carry On movies written by Norman Hudis, it has a warmheartedness and a gentle good humour that's hard to resist; a quality that was lost over the years and films that followed as sentiment was increasingly sacrificed for sauciness and character gave way to caricature. 

Of course, there's nothing wrong with bawdiness and some of Talbot Rothwell's scripts have elements of genius. But one increasingly finds the sight of Bab's bursting out of her bikini top less amusing than that of Miss Allcock ripping her shorts. 

Notes

To watch the Carry On Teacher trailer on Vimeo, click here. 

For a sister post to this one - Why I Love Carry On Cruising - click here. 

Clan Mackie (Or How We Can All Play Identity Politics If We Want To)

Elizabeth Jane Hall née Mackie 

(my maternal grandmother)

As a rule, I don't like to play identity politics or think in terms of blood and soil; ethnonationalism and a tedious obsession with ancestral roots always seems to have ugly (often fatal) consequences.

However, it may interest some readers to know that I can trace my own history to a Lowland family who were part of the now armigerous clan Mackie; i.e., a clan presently lacking official status or standing under Scots law, failing as it does to have a chief recognised by the Lord Lyon, King of Arms.

The name - familiar to many as the makers of ice cream - is the Anglicised form of the Gaelic MacAoidh, meaning 'Son of Fire'. One might have assumed that the clan coat of arms would therefore have a flame on it, or perhaps a phoenix rising, but it actually has a couple of dead ravens (shot through with an arrow) and a lion.

I don't mind that, but have to admit to finding the clan motto - labora - rather disappointing. It seems to me that sons of fire are sent to set the world ablaze, not to toil.

Equally disappointing is to discover that the clan Mackie doesn't have its own registered tartan, that they (we) are obliged to borrow one of the tartans belonging to the Mackays (of whom the Mackies are but a sept).

Still, it doesn't really matter ... I feel as if I belong more to the punk clan McLaren than to the Mackies, to be honest.

And that's the point: it's our cultural affiliations, our ideas and tastes, that make us who we are and friends and strangers ultimately mean far more to me than kith and kin. For whilst blood is thicker than water, I know which I prefer to see flowing ...     

Notes 

For an earlier post which also addresses this question of blood and water, click here. 

For more info on the clan Mackie, click here.

Sid Vicious: My Way

Sleeve art for the 7" single release (Virgin Records, 1978) 

from the album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979)  

For many people, the most memorable scene in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is the one in which Sid Vicious gives his own unique interpretation of that sentimental slice of cheese made famous by Sinatra: My Way.  

Whatever one might think of him, there's no denying that the 20 year-old Sex Pistol gives an astonishing performance and embodies a look and a moment of punk perfection on stage at the Olympia, Paris.

Indeed, even Paul Anka, who wrote the song - adapted from on an earlier release by Claude François and Jacques Revaux - conceded in an interview thirty years later that whilst he had been somewhat destabilized by Sid's version, he nevertheless admired the sincerity of the performance.

And French pop's greatest poet and pervert, Serge Gainsbourg, who witnessed Sid's finest few minutes on stage, was so smitten that - according to Malcolm - he thereafter kept a picture of him on his piano, alongside that of Chopin.

Whether that's true or not, I don't know. And whether Sid ever did anything his way is, of course, highly debatable; philosophically speaking, the very idea of free will determining an individual's actions seems dubious.

One suspects that had it been his decision, Sid would have covered a Ramones track and that the choice of this particular number was therefore McLaren's. Still, it was a good choice - and a fateful choice; for Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, the end really was near ... 


See: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, dir. Julien Temple, 1980: click here to watch Sid's magnificent performance of 'My Way'. 

Note: Sid's firing of a gun blindly into the audience at the end of the song is a nod towards André Breton's idea of what constitutes the simplest act of Surrealism and is evidence of how the artistic and philosophical roots of the Sex Pistols lay in Paris as much as London and New York. 

For a related post to this one on Sid's Parisian adventures in 1978 as a kind of punk flâneur, click here.           

A Sex Pistol in Paris

One of the more amusing scenes in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle features Sid Vicious wandering the streets of Paris in the spring of '78, confronting locals including a policeman, a prostitute, and a young female fan working in a pâtisserie.

One is tempted to describe it as a provocative form of punk dérive - a mode of experimental behavior, theorised by Guy Debord, in which individuals aimlessly stroll through the city and allow themselves to be seduced by the attractions of urban society and random encounters with strangers. 

I'm not saying that Sid gave a shit about psychogeography - or that he needed lessons from anyone on emotional disorientation - but, as a Sex Pistol, he was well-versed by Malcolm in the art of creating situations that challenge the predictable and monotonous character of everyday life and he cuts an undeniably unique figure as a spiky-haired flâneur, beer bottle in hand, and wearing his favourite swastika emblazoned red t-shirt ...

See: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, dir. Julien Temple, 1980: click here to watch the scenes of Sid drifting round Paris as discussed above. 

For a related post to this one on Sid's performance of 'My Way', click here. 

On Courage and Cowardice (with Reference to the Case of Sir Craig Mackey)

Sir Craig Mackey with the white feather he should receive 

when stripped of his knighthood

Image: Press Association

I. Courage

Courage - be it bravery in the face of physical danger or hardship, or the determination to do the right thing even in the teeth of popular opposition - is one of those ancient virtues that still resonates today. One is even tempted to suggest it's a universal human value.

Certainly in the Western philosophical tradition, courage is right up there; Socrates and his followers may have subjected it to questioning and been unable to ever quite arrive at a satisfactory definition of what it is, but they never doubted its importance. The man who would be master of himself must be able to control his fear and endure suffering. And wisdom alone, as Cicero knew, isn't enough here; it also requires the heart's strength. 

Even Christian thinkers in the medieval period admired courage - often thought of in terms of fortitude - and listed it as one of the cardinal virtues. Indeed, it was also said to be one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. That said, Aquinas and company tend to see courage in purely reactive terms, as a form of perseverance, rather than as something active, such as bravery in battle.

Later, in the modern era, Hobbes thought of courage as a natural virtue belonging to the individual that assists in his survival. Hume also identified courage as a natural virtue and suggested that it was the one of the sources of human pride and wellbeing. For whilst excessive courage can, perhaps, result in recklessness, it brings the individual the admiration of his fellows (and of posterity) and plays a protective role within society - whereas cowardice, on the other hand, lays us open to attack.   

For the existentialists, courage is the affirmation of being in the face of the void and life's absurd cruelty; a way for man to exhibit faith in themselves and grace under pressure, as Hemingway once put it.  

II. Cowardice

Etymologically, the word coward enters into English from the Old French term coart and implies having a tail - as in an individual who turns tail and runs whenever danger threatens, or one who places his tail between his legs like a submissive dog.   

Essentially, cowardice is the opposite of courage; a condition wherein fear and/or excessive self-concern stops one from taking decisive action or speaking up and saying the right thing. It is both a failure of nerve and of character and is looked down on as universally as courage is respected. Indeed, it is often not only stigmatized, but severely punished; particularly within a military context that demands every man do his duty and be brave under fire.  

III. The Case of Sir Craig Mackey

And so to the case of Sir Craig Mackey, Deputy Commissioner of the Met ... A man now condemned and widely mocked by colleagues, journalists, and members of the public as a coward, after it was revealed that during the Westminster terror attack last March, in which PC Keith Palmer was fatally stabbed, he drove off, sharpish, having first locked the windows of his car.

To be fair, he was unarmed and had no protective equipment; he also had the safety of his passengers to consider. So maybe he was simply following police protocol. But, having said that, this story is profoundy dispiriting; one expects more from a British Bobby and a knight of the realm (or indeed any Englishman worth his salt).

Let the People See (Reflections on the Open Casket Controversy)

Dana Schutz: Open Casket (2016) 

Oil on canvas (99 x 135 cm)

I.

There are of course several famous portraits of black boys painted by white artists. One might think, for example, of the mid-19th century picture of a youngster who, having crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway, found himself in Liverpool and an object of aesthetic interest to the Pre-Raphaelite William Windus.  

But perhaps none have been as controversial or caused as much fuss around issues concerning race and representation, as the recent portrait by Dana Schutz of Emmett Till - a black teenager who was brutally murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 ...


II.

Entitled Open Casket, the work was displayed at the 2017 Whitney Biennial in New York. Campaigners, led by the British conceptual artist and author Hannah Black, called for the removal - and, indeed, destruction - of the picture on the grounds that it transmuted black suffering into profit and pleasure (which, in a sense, I suppose it does).

There was also a small-scale protest at the museum, organised by African-American artist and activist Parker Bright, who described the exhibiting of the work as a black death spectacle (which, in  a sense, I suppose it is).  

Ironically, however, Schutz was attempting to signal her own bleeding-heart liberalism. For the work - based in part on a famous photograph of Till's disfigured and mutilated corpse lying in an open casket (this at the request of his mother, so that everyone might view the violent reality of American racism) - was created in response to the media coverage of recent shootings involving young black men and white police officers.  

Schutz responded to the criticisms of her picture by pointing out that whilst she may not know what it's like to be black in America, she does know what it's like to be a mother and to experience pain; that the importance of art, for her, lay in its power to open up a space of empathy and bring people together. Acknowledging otherness and the pathos of distance that exists between individuals, Schutz nevertheless - perhaps naively - insists that we still share a common humanity.

Some of those coming to her defence tried to frame this issue in terms not of racial identity and the imperial white gaze, but freedom of expression. But Hannah Black doesn't have much time for this line of argument: not when, in her view, white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded upon the silencing and constraint of others and the contemporary art scene remains a fundamentally white supremacist institution, despite all the nice people working within it.

Again, this may or may not be true - and I don't really care one way or the other to be honest - but Black's last line, dripping with contempt, is one that made me smile. As Nietzsche said, it's merely Christian to forgive one's enemies; you must also learn how to hate your friends (even when these people are your dealers, curators, or publishers).

On Goya's Red Boy

Goya: Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga (1787-88)

Commonly referred to as Goya's Red Boy

Commissioned by an aristocratic banker to produce a series of family portraits, including one of his youngest son, Manuel, Goya produced one of the most charming - if creepiest - pictures in modern art. 

The whey-faced child is dressed in a rather splendid red outfit. In his right hand, he holds a string attached to his pet magpie; the bird has Goya's calling card in its beak and is watched intently by three wide-eyed cats. On Manuel's left, sits a cage full of finches.

Whilst portraits of children and animals have a long and popular history in Spanish art, Goya seems to pervert this tradition by using the beasts to add an element of menace rather than delight to the work. To suggest, for example, that even the innocent world of childhood contains cruelty and is threatened by the forces of evil: Manuel, sadly, would die a few short years later, aged eight. 

His death is surely coincidental; child mortality was simply a fact of life in 18th century Europe (Goya saw only one of his own children reach adulthood). But there's something uncanny in this work which seems to anticipate such a fate. Little Manuel, despite his finery and the presence of his animal companions, looks like a lost soul.  

Still, he's achieved a level of fame and immortality far beyond that of his siblings who survived him; even Andy Warhol would one day sit at his feet. 

Notes 

Readers interested in viewing the Red Boy can find the work displayed at The Met Fifth Avenue (Gallery 633). 

For a fascinating essay on the painting and its extraordinary popularity, see Reva Wolf, 'Goya's "Red Boy": The Making of a Celebrity': click here to read online. 

See also The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett, (Penguin Books, 2010). In the entry dated Friday, December 31, 1976, Warhol writes about a party at Kitty Miller's apartment: "And after dinner, I sat underneath Goya's 'Red Boy'. Kitty has this most famous painting right there in her house, it's unbelievable."    

The Blue Boy Will Never Die: On Fear, Fashion and Immortality

Gainsborough: The Blue Boy (c.1770)

According to D. H. Lawrence, the northern consciousness is gripped by a fear - almost a horror - of the body, especially in its sexual implications. This naturally has a detrimental effect on the plastic arts which "depend entirely on the representation of substantial bodies, and on the intuitional perception of the reality of substantial bodies". 

Thus, whilst English painters are very good at painting people hidden away inside their clothes, they daren't handle the living flesh that lies beneath; the social persona becomes more important than the actual man or woman.      

This may of course contain an element of truth. But isn't it also possible, as Cioran suggests, that what really terrifies is not the body in its erotico-libidinal aspect, but the body as an object prone to disease, ageing and death; that, ultimately, clothes don't serve to get between us and life in all its naked beauty, but us and nothingness ...    

"Look at your body in a mirror: you will realise you are mortal; run your fingers over your ribs [...] and you will see how close you are to the grave." 

Maybe that's why Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough et al cared so much about painting subjects in all their finery; not simply because they were bourgeois - and not in order to deny the "gleam of the warm procreative body" - but because it's only when he has his glad rags on that man is able to entertain ideas of immortality: how can we die when we wear a pair of blue satin knee-breeches?  

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Paintings', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Lawrence knows that it's not the sexual body so much as the diseased body that scares the pants on people, which is why he spends most of this essay discussing the cultural and psychological consequences of syphilis [click here for a discussion of this elsewhere on this blog]. He also knows the importance of clothes, even if, as here, he likes to think flesh as more important than fashion and imply that human nakedness has greater authenticity than our sartorial splendour.  

E. M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay, trans. Richard Howard, (Penguin Books, 2018). See the section entitled 'Sartorial Philosophy' in chapter 6, 'Abdications'. 

Gainsborough's Blue Boy is quite clearly a costume study as well as a portrait; the shimmering blue satin of the clothes is rendered in a spectrum of cleverly calibrated tints and applied with a complexity of fine brush strokes. It's a picture in which Jonathan Buttall, the son a wealthy merchant, achieves his immortality. The work now hangs in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

  

Wigging Out with Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol: Self-Portrait  
from the Fright Wig series (1986)

I.

A wig is a head covering made from human or animal hair; or, rather less convincingly, synthetic fibres. Whilst concealing baldness is certainly a popular reason for wearing one, there are many others; some people wear them on religious grounds, for example; some do so simply for the pleasure of enhancing, disguising, or transforming their appearance. 

The Case of Andy Warhol is particularly interesting ...


II.

If, initially, Warhol wore a wig as a young man in the 1950s in order to hide prematurely thinning hair, he eventually styled his public persona upon a never anything but artificial looking collection of silver-white wigs. Indeed, Warhol's wig-wearing might even be seen as a wonderful piece of performance art concerned with self-creation and self-promotion.    

Made from hair imported from Italy and sewn by famous New York wig maker Paul Bochicchio, Warhol opted for his trademark silver-white wig in order to look slightly alien and also in the knowledge that if you have always looked old, no one can guess your real age. Allowing his own hair to protrude at the bottom of the wig ensured no one mistook it for anything other than a piece of artifice.

Strangely, however, just as the wig came to be seen by others as Andy's natural look, so too did Warhol grow to feel it was an essential element of his identity - we might almost say that just as some wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he wore his soul upon his head. 

And so it is that when Warhol had his wig snatched off his head by a young woman at a book signing in October 1985, it was as much a violent assault as when Valerie Solanas shot and seriously injured the artist back in the summer of '68. Indeed, Warhol described this shocking and painful later event as the day his greatest nightmare came true. 

Nevertheless, real trooper that he was, Warhol simply pulled up the hood on his Calvin Klein coat, smiled, and continued signing copies of his newly published work America. It might also be noted that although the perpetrator of the assault was held until the police arrived, no charges were pressed.


See: Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett, (Penguin Books, 2010). In the entry covering this wig-grabbing incident at the Rizzoli bookstore in the Soho district of Manhattan, Warhol describes his assailant as very pretty and well-dressed and suggests that this may have been what prevented him from pushing her over the balcony.  

(Un)Common People: Jarvis Cocker and William Shatner

I.

Although it peaked at number two in the UK Singles Chart back in the summer of 1995, pretty much everyone now agrees that Pulp's Common People is the finest - maybe even definitive - Britpop single; one with all the humour, anger, energy and intelligence of punk.

So, hats off to Jarvis Cocker, who came up with the tune on a small Casiotone MT-500 keyboard and wrote the lyrics. For me, Cocker is not only a more interesting frontman, but also an eminently more likable human being than either of the Gallagher brothers or, indeed, Damon Albarn and the rather self-satisfied members of Blur.       

Having said that, I'm tempted to suggest that as brilliant as his interpretation and performance of his own song is, there's one man out there who has given us an even greater version - and that man is William Shatner ...  

II.

Whilst primarily known as an actor, William Shatner is actually a man of many talents - although, arguably, singing isn't one of them. Not that this has stopped him from recording a number of albums, beginning with The Transformed Man (1968), in which he delivered his uniquely exaggerated (cod-Shakespearean) take on songs including 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' and 'Mr Tambourine Man'.

During the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards, Shatner gave a memorable reading of the Elton John song 'Rocket Man'. It's a performance beyond parody that still leaves many viewers who watch it on YouTube in a state of utter astonishment: click here.

Shatner's greatest musical moment, however, was to come in 2004, on the album Has Been, produced and arranged by Ben Folds; an indie rock version of 'Common People', featuring Joe Jackson as a guest co-vocalist.

Critics and fans alike - including Jarvis Cocker himself - were shocked at just how amazing the result was. Shatner does an excellent job, paying due respect to the original whilst, at the same time, putting his absurdly over-dramatic spin on the song. So, hats off also to Capt. Kirk! 

Notes

Pulp, 'Common People', released 22 May 1995, from the album Different Class (Island Records, 1995): click here to watch the official video, featuring Sadie Frost, on YouTube. 

William Shatner, 'Common People', from the album Has Been, (Shout! Factory, 2004): click here.

  

On Philosophy and Prostitution (Reflections on An Illicit Lover's Discourse)

Everything I know I learned in the School of Vice!

I.

Reading a fragment by Cioran in which he advises the philosopher who is "disappointed with systems and superstitions" to imitate the street savvy scepticism of that "least dogmatic of creatures: the prostitute", reminded me of my own musings from long ago on this topic, collected as An Illicit Lover's Discourse ...    

II.

The aim of this short work, written many years ago and privately published (with a revised title) by Blind Cupid Press in 2010, was not to describe in detail the world of the Prostitute, but to examine the nature of the love affair that exists between her and her clients; for in this relation we discover much of the violence, obscenity, and poignancy of modern life.

The necessity for the book lay in the following consideration: the discourse of the Prostitute and her Illicit Lover was at that time openly displayed in every other central London phone box. This discourse, spoken and shared by thousands of amorous subjects, had received very little attention, scorned as it is by the languages of authority which, nevertheless, often share in its image-repertoire and sustain its stereotypes.

Essentially, I was hoping to indicate the manner in which some of the more frequently occurring myths upon which the pornographic imagination is founded are circulated by and within wider culture and reveal how legitimate discourses - of literature, fashion, and advertising, for example - frequently feed off and into the writings and images of the Prostitute.

The short fragments were written in relation to a large number of cards collected casually over a two-year period from phone boxes mostly in the Paddington and Soho areas of London, where they'd been conveniently placed by the Prostitute. To my mind, these cards constituted a populist and promiscuous medium and could be thought of as an obscene form of folk-art. Mushrooming in the fetid, urine-soaked environment of the phone box, they represented the public face of prostitution and were an affirmation of the Prostitute’s right to self-expression and self-promotion.

I made no attempt to establish any unity or development between the fragments. In fact, the only link between them was one of insistence and repetition; qualities which are of course inherent to pornography as a genre. Thus, as in the cards upon which they were based, the same words would appear over and over in the text, constructing the Prostitute not as a woman like any other, but as a symptomal subject of the pornographic imagination.

Some fragments broke off short; others contradicted something that had already been said elsewhere in the text. Ultimately, however, this was unimportant: the fragments were not meant to be taken too seriously and the success or otherwise of each depended on whether the reader was able to relate it to some aspect of their own experience and in this way be able to declare its truth.

If there was anything central to my assemblage of fragments, then, I suppose, it was the body of the Prostitute - although whether we can actually locate and reveal such is debatable. For the body of the Prostitute must not be thought of as a natural object just waiting to be discovered, but rather as a cultural construction in which is encoded a whole set of values: the shape, size, colour, age and all the ornamental attributes of the Prostitute’s body signify what we imagine illicit sexual desire and femininity to be. Thus the body of the Prostitute exposes our own fantasies.

Wishing neither to celebrate nor condemn the Prostitute, my affection for the figure as a woman who denies nothing and no one and lives beyond judgement, was fairly obvious throughout the text. Found in all places, all cultures, and all ages, the Prostitute is, paradoxically, someone who is forever at the margins of society and has abolished all history in her person. She is, in this manner, untimely.

And if this makes her philosophically interesting, then the manner in which she silently accepts the abuse of those who speak against her and call for her punishment makes her lovable in my eyes.

Notes

E. Cioran, A Short History of Decay, trans. Richard Howard, (Penguin Books, 2018). See the section 'Philosophy and Prostitution' in chapter 1: 'Directions for Decomposition', pp. 81-82.

If I'd known of this text at the time of writing, I almost certainly would have referred to it. For what Cioran writes here is very close to my own position. I agree, for example, that the prostitute offers us a mode of behaviour which philosophers would do well to consider; detached and yet open to everything; lacking moral convictions and prejudices; quick to change position, etc. And, crucially, whores don't fuck between the bed-sheets ...   

Stephen Alexander, Whores Don't Fuck between the Bed-Sheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

In Memory of Tara Fares (Notes on Fanaticism)

Tara Fares on Instagram / Photo by Omar Moner

Tara Fares, the Iraqi beauty queen and outspoken social media star, has been shot dead in Baghdad by unknown assailants, after receiving a series of vile threats on her life. She was 22. A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior promises an investigation - but we all know why she was murdered and by whom.  

Her death comes just days after the murder of Suad al-Ali, an Iraqi human rights activist who was shot and killed in the southern city of Basra. Again, whilst the gunman has so far been unidentified, one doesn't have to be Columbo to crack this case.  

When men enthusiastically put their most cherished ideals and beliefs into action, the result is all too often bloody; history is nothing but this violent trajectory. As Cioran says: "Once a man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable."    

Cries of religious ecstasy and shouts of devotion are echoed in the moans of victims. And blood always flows when epileptics and ideologues - primed with explosive conviction - insist their way is the way; "firm resolve draws the dagger; fiery eyes presage slaughter".

To live peacefully and happily requires learning how to curb enthusiasm and counter all certitudes, absolutes and convictions with irony and a smiling insouciance. For if the former ideals are allowed to contaminate the soul, the result is fanaticism: that fundamental human defect which instills in us the desire for truth and terror.

To quote Cioran once more:

"Only the skeptics (or idlers or aesthetes) escape, because they propose nothing, because they [...] undermine fanaticism's purpose, analyse its frenzy. I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a Saint Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity. [...] What Diogenes was looking for with his lantern was an indifferent man ..."

He concludes:

"The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster."

And that's why I prefer Instagram over Islam, fashion over faith ...

See: E. M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay, trans. Richard Howard, (Penguin Books, 2018). Lines quoted are from the section entitled 'Genealogy of Fanaticism' in chapter 1, 'Directions for Decomposition'.

On Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 EV) 

Although a white European male, mature in years, I'm not a statesman or ruler of any kind, so it surprised me to discover just how much affinity I felt with Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher described by Matthew Arnold as the most beautiful figure in history.  

His Meditations constitute such a remarkably modern series of philosophical reflections on ethics, rationality, and the nature of the self, that it's hard not to love both book and man. And it's difficult also not to look at those moral and intellectual pygmies in positions of power today, exercising their authority over millions of lives, and feel a growing sense of despair.

I can't, for example, imagine Donald Trump tweeting something as lovely - or as profound - as this passage taken from Book 3, in which Aurelius stresses the importance of attending to little things in life, including small imperfections, and of affirming elements of baseness and corruption on the grounds that these too possess their own charm and belong to what Nietzsche will later term an economy of the whole:

"Take the baking of bread: the loaf splits open here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker's profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite. Figs likewise burst open at full maturity: and in olives ripened on the tree the very proximity of decay lends a special beauty to the fruit. Similarly the ears of corn nodding down to the ground, the lion's puckered brow, the foam gushing from the boar's mouth, and much else besides - looked at in isolation these things are far from lovely, but their consequences on the processes of Nature enhances them and gives them attraction. So any man with a feeling and deeper insight for the workings of the Whole will find some pleasure in almost every aspect of their disposition, including the incidental consequences. Such a man will take no less delight in the living snarl of wild animals than in all the imitative representations of painters and sculptors; he will see a kind of bloom and fresh beauty in an old woman or an old man; and he will be able to look with sober eyes on the seductive charm of his own slave boys." [3.2]           

As Diskin Clay, Professor of Classical Studies at Duke University indicates, this passage not only has real philosophical interest, but an almost poetic quality.

In conclusion, we might say that whilst it's true the Ancient world cannot directly provide us with answers to the problems facing us today, there are nevertheless a number of texts containing a treasury of devices, techniques, ideas, and procedures, that may help us, as Foucault argues, form a perspective upon the present and serve as tools for analysing what's happening today. Meditations is surely one such text.         

See: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. with notes by Martin Hammond, introduction by Diskin Clay, (Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 16-17. 

Melt: On the Transubstantiation of Love

Cover art for the single 'Melt!' by

Siouxsie and the Banshees 

(Polydor, 1982) 

"Are you familiar with the frightening sensation of melting", asks Cioran; "the feeling of dissolving into a flowing river, in which the self is annulled by organic liquidization?" 

Well, as a matter of fact, thanks to the British post-punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees, I am ... 

The lovely song 'Melt!', released as a single from their fifth studio album, A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, gave an interesting - some might say psychedelic - insight into the phenomenon way back in 1982.

The lyrics betray a decadent and delirious fascination with sex and death and some of the images have fetishistic overtones; the melting lover is handcuffed in lace, blood and sperm, before eventually being beheaded.        

Whilst it's tempting and certainly wouldn't be mistaken to discuss the song in relation to Baudelaire and Masoch - or the sleeve art with reference to Klimt - I think it just as legitimate (and in some ways more interesting) to refer to Cioran's astonishing first book, On the Heights of Despair (1934).

(Don't get me wrong: I love Flowers of Evil and Venus in Furs as much as the next man, but so much has already been written about these texts, that it's hard to offer any further insight. Cioran's work, on the other hand, is shamefully underdiscussed and undervalued. Indeed, much of it is hardly known in the English-speaking world, even by people who thrill to similar authors, such as Bataille and Blanchot, for example.)    

Like the Banshees, Cioran eroticises the notion of melting, or what Barthes would describe as the body's liquid expansion and include crying as well as ejaculating. For love, writes Cioran, "is a form of intimate communion and nothing expresses it better than the subjective impression of melting, the falling away of all barriers of individuation".   

Although he seems to regard sex as marginal to the irrationality of love, Cioran concedes that you cannot conceive of the latter without the former and insists that there's no spiritual love between the sexes; "only a transfiguration of the flesh" via which lovers identify themselves so intensely with one another that they create an illusion of spirituality.

Only at this point does the sensation of melting occur: "the flesh trembles in a supreme spasm, ceases resistance, burning with inner fires, melting and flowing, unstoppable lava". In other words, it's a form of suicide in sex, as Siouxsie sings.

Notes

See: E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, (The University of Chicago Press, 1992). I'm quoting from sections entitled 'Weariness and Agony' and 'On the Transubstantiation of Love', pp. 16-17 and 84. 

Play: Siouxsie and the Banshees, 'Melt!', from the album A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (Polydor, 1982): click here.

This post is in (mostly) fond memory of Gillian Hall.

D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Cioran on Sex Appeal and the Beauty of Flames

Image: Desktop Nexus

I. Sex on Fire 

Just as for Lawrence sex and beauty are one and the same thing, so too is being something he always conceives in terms of fire, or what he calls the god-flame, burning in all things. Indeed, Lawrence ultimately conflates terms so that his erotico-aesthetic and ontological speculations form a unified metaphysics.

Thus it is, for example, that Mellors characterises his illicit relationship with Connie in terms of a little forked flame that they fucked into being.

And thus it is that Lawrence asserts in a late article that whilst he doesn't quite know what sex is, he's certain that it must be some sort of fire: "For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when the glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty."

This communicating of warmth and beauty is what Lawrence understands by the term sex appeal, something which he believes to be a universal human quality and not just something belonging to the young and conventionally attractive. In a typically Lawrentian passage, he writes:

"We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. Or, if it dies, we become one of those ghastly living corpses which are unfortunately becoming more numerous in the world.

      Nothing is more ugly than a human being in whom the fire of sex had gone out. You get a nasty clayey creature whom everybody wants to avoid.

      But while we are fully alive, the fire of sex smoulders or burns in us. In youth it flickers and shines; in age it glows softer and stiller, but there it is." 

I quite like this (re)definition of a golem as a human being in whom the fire of sex has been extinguished and who communicates only a cold, ugly deadness (unfair and as meaningless as it may be). 

And I like the idea of fire calling to fire and of sex appeal kindling a sense of joyful warmth and optimism. Lawrence is right, the loveliness of a really lovely woman in whom the sex fire burns pure and fine not only lights up her whole being, but transforms the entire universe. Such a woman - extremely rare even in a world of numerous good-looking girls and cosmetic enhancement - is an experience.  

Lawrence concludes:

"If only our civilization had taught us how to let sex appeal flow properly and subtly, how to keep the fire of sex clear and alive, flickering or flowing or blazing in all its varying degrees of strength and communication, we might, all of us, have lived all our lives in love, which means we should be kindled and full of zest in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of things …

      Whereas, what a lot of dead ash there is in life now."

II. Light My Fire

I don't know if Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran read Lawrence when young - his obsessions led him towards German and French thinkers, rather than English novelists - but there are certainly quasi-Lawrentian resonances in his early work for those of us familiar with the writings of Lawrence.

Thus, like Lawrence, Cioran was interested in love in all its forms, particularly the concrete and monogamous love between man and woman which he took to be the quintessential form; not only in its sexual aspect, but as a "rich network of affective states". Love, born not of suffering, but of sincere generosity, is what Cioran most cherishes.

And, like Lawrence, Cioran ties his idea of love to beauty, being, and to fire. Man's sensitivity to beauty, he writes, intensifies as he approaches the joy that love brings. And in beauty "all things find their justification, their raison d'être".

Further, beauty allows us to conceive of things as things and to accept existence as is: "To place the world under the sign of beauty is to assert that it is as it should be [...] even the negative aspects of existence do nothing but increase its glory and its charm." This, of course, is a profoundly Nietzschean as well as a Lawrentian idea.

Beauty, concludes Cioran, may not bring salvation, "but it will bring us closer to happiness" and to the point where we can make a total affirmation of life. And what is more beautiful than the nakedness of flames, dancing in darkness:

"Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. [...] The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn."

It's not only moths, it appears, that are transfixed by candlelight and dream of a fiery climax to their lives ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). See the famous letter from Mellors to Connie with which Lawrence closes the novel.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Often known as 'Sex Versus Loveliness', this article can be read online by clicking here. 

E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, (the University of Chicago Press, 1992). See: 'Enthusiasm as a Form of Love' (75), 'The Beauty of Flames' (88), and 'Beauty's Magic Tricks' (119). All lines quoted above from Cioran are taken from these three sections.

Readers interested in earlier posts that compare and contrast Lawrence's work with that of Cioran on questions to do with becoming-animal and becoming-ash, can click here and here.

Musical bonus #1: click here. Musical bonus #2: click here. I must admit that I don't much care for either of these (hugely overrated) songs, but readers of a more hippie-persuasion will doubtless enjoy listening to them once more.    

D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Cioran on the Bath of Fire and Becoming-Ash

Phoenix design by Stephen Russ for the cover of Penguin's 

unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1960) 

According to D. H. Lawrence, unless the individual is willing to be dipped into oblivion and made nothing, then they will never really change. For like the phoenix, we renew our youth only when we are burnt down to hot and flocculent ash.

Interestingly, the Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran thinks along similar lines when it comes to the question of how best to achieve one's immortality - with the latter conceived in terms of immaterial purity (a synonym for nothingness).

In his astonishing first work - written whilst still only 22 years of age - Cioran speaks of the bath of fire which "purifies so radically that it does away with existence". Its scorching flames set one's very being ablaze, until, finally, one has become-ash.

In a moving final passage, he asks: "when the inner conflagration has scorched the ground of your being, when all is ashes, what else is there left to experience?" There is, he confesses, "both mad delight and infinite irony in the thought of my ashes scattered to the four winds, sown frenetically in space, an eternal reproach to the world".

Thus, unlike the vitalist Lawrence, the nihilist Cioran feels no need to imagine himself rising from the ashes like some mythical bird, with bright new feathers. For him, the passing into death isn't any kind of triumph, nor a preliminary to a new and better life.

Having said that, even Cioran allows himself to occasionally dream of a world that is transfigured by the bath of fire, rather than simply reduced to ruin:     

"If I could [...] I would set a fire burning insidiously at the roots of life, not to destroy them but to give them a new and different sap, a new heat. [...] In this way life would adjust to higher temperatures and would cease to be an environment propitious to mediocrity. And maybe in this dream, death too would cease to be imminent in life." 

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Phoenix', in The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013). 

E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, (The University of Chicago Press, 1992), see the sections entitled 'The Bath of Fire' and 'The World and I'. 

This post is dedicated to my beautiful friend, the artist Heide Hatry, who knows more than most about becoming-ash. 

Readers interested in a sister post to this one on DHL and EMC and the question of becoming-animal, should click here.