Becoming-Insect 2: The Case of Seth Brundle

Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle / Brundlefly

in The Fly (dir. David Cronenberg, 1986)

There is more than a grain of truth in the following statement by Richard Mabey:

"I think we may be lucky that insects are too small and remote ever to have entered our understanding in the way that birds and flowers have. If we saw their lives for what they really are I think it might be too much for us to bear."

- The Unofficial Countryside (1973)

And yet, sometimes, one can't help looking at the bees, bugs and beetles with a mixture of admiration and envy and thoughts of becoming-insect; i.e., of entering an alien life free from all compassion and compromise, but with its own inhuman beauty. Not that this ever ends well, as the cases of Gregor Samsa and Seth Brundle demonstrate ...

2: The Case of Seth Brundle

If frustrated salesman Gregor Samsa remains concerned about the welfare of others following his metamorphosis, the same cannot be said of eccentric scientist Seth Brundle who, following an experiment, slowly mutates into a human-insect hybrid - the so-called Brundlefly - a creature monstrous of face, monstrous of soul.

That is to say, a devil harbouring within himself all the vices and base appetites of one whose very ugliness is the expression of a development that has been thwarted by crossing (as Nietzsche says of Socrates).

In short, the Brundlefly is a creature of instinctual malice, cf. the Samsabeetle who was one of kindness and sensitivity despite his appearance. On the plus side, in the early stages of his transformation before he sheds his humanity and all the trappings of such (including teeth, hair and skin), Brundle does enjoy increased strength, stamina, and sexual potency.

Later, he's able to climb the walls and crawl across the ceiling - something that Gregor also enjoys doing. And if no longer able to eat solid food, Brundle gains the astonishing - if repulsive - ability to dissolve his meals by vomiting digestive enzymes onto them (an ability which, as we see later in the film, can also serve as a corrosive form of self-defence).         

Ultimately, if the case of Gregor Samsa makes us sympathetic and sorrowful at his demise, the case of Seth Brundle only makes us afraid. Very afraid.  But what is it exactly we fear? The answer, says Cronenberg, is the disease and old age that threaten all of us with a becoming-monstrous; the mortal corruption within rapidly deforming the flesh and destroying our reason. 

Just thinking about it is enough to make one weep ninety-six tears ...


Notes

To read part one of this post on becoming-insect, the case of Gregor Samsa, click here. 

To listen to a uniquely brilliant take on this question by The Cramps, click here.   

Becoming-Insect 1: The Case of Gregor Samsa

There's more than a grain of truth in the following statement by Richard Mabey:

"I think we may be lucky that insects are too small and remote ever to have entered our understanding in the way that birds and flowers have. If we saw their lives for what they really are I think it might be too much for us to bear."

And yet, sometimes, one can't help looking at the bees, bugs and beetles with a mixture of admiration and envy and thoughts of becoming-insect; i.e., of entering an alien life free from all compassion and compromise, but with its own inhuman beauty. Not that this ever ends well, as the cases of Gregor Samsa and Seth Brundle demonstrate ...


1: The Case of Gregor Samsa

One might argue that Gregor Samsa doesn't in fact become-insect in the very special sense that Deleuze and Guattari mean by the term. For his is primarily a change at the molar level of form - a metamorphosis - whereas becoming-animal is a demonic event played out at the molecular level of forces that enables one to: "stake out the path of escape in all its positivity ... to find a world of pure intensities where all forms come undone ..."

However, as Deleuze and Guattari refer in their own work to this case as an example of becoming-animal - albeit one that fails due to Gregor's refusal to take his deterritorialization all the way - I'm not going to press the issue here. Let's just agree that Kafka's tale doesn't simply concern an imaginary identification with an insect taking place in Gregor's mind; it's neither a mad fantasy, nor a terrible dream.

His, rather, is an essential transformation of the kind that troubles Freudians and theologians alike and one misses the point of the story if one fails to appreciate this. The six-legged critter that Gregor becomes isn't archetypal nor mythological; nor is it in need of any dreary psychoanalytic interpretation (it doesn't merely signify oedipal anxiety, for example).

On the other hand, as Walter Benjamin points out, neither is it particularly rewarding to read the story too naturalistically and become obsessed with classifying what kind of animal Gregor becomes. English translations sometimes indicate a giant cockroach, but the German terms used by Kafka - ungeheuer Ungeziefer - are non-specific and suggestive of many types of unclean animal or vermin, not just those that belong to the class of creatures we usually think of as the worst sort of creepy-crawly.         

It's doubtless because he wanted to keep things vague that Kafka also prohibited illustrations for his book. In a letter to his publisher he insisted that images of Gregor post-transformation were not to be included, even if depicted from a distance or in shadow. But it's clear from his own descriptions that Gregor was some kind of large insect scuttling about and Kafka uses the terms Insekt and Wanze [bug] in his correspondence when discussing the story.  

Interestingly - and I think rather amusingly - despite Kafka's wish for indeterminacy and Benjamin's dismissal of readings that attempt to root themselves in taxonomy, Nabokov - who was not only a great novelist, but also a great entomologist - claimed he knew exactly what species of insect Gregor turned into; basically, a big beetle just over 3 feet long.

What's more, in his heavily annotated copy of Kafka's novella that he used for teaching purposes, Nabokov even provided an illustration: 

Whatever type of pest he became, sadly, Gregor the Mensch-Insekt, is allowed and encouraged to die a lonely, sordid death by his family, raising the question of where true horror and monstrosity begins.


Notes

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan, (University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

Josh Jones, 'Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway', essay on openculture.com (Oct 21 2015): to read, click here.
 
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories, trans. Michael Hofmann, (Penguin Books, 2007)  
 
Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside, (Collins, 1973). 

Readers interested in a related post to this one, which also refers to the case of Gregor Samsa, should click here. 

To read part two of this post on becoming-insect: the case of Seth Brundle, click here.  

On Faciality and Becoming-Imperceptible with Reference to the Work of Heide Hatry

Scarlett Johansson as Lucy (2014)

I've been told that my post on Heide Hatry's Icons in Ash was unkind and unfair. And, further, that my refusal or inability to recognise their philosophical interest and aesthetic power either perverse or shameful:

"Do you not see how the very materials from which they are composed deconstruct the life and death binary? If only you'd drop your anti-humanistic posturing for a moment, you might learn to appreciate their uncanny, bitter-sweet beauty and significance."

Let me, then, offer a few further remarks on Hatry's ash portraits, attempting to make clear the basis for my criticisms and concerns ...


I: On Faciality

I have written elsewhere on this blog about my Deleuzean dislike of the face: click here and here, for example.

In sum: the face has long held a privileged and determining place within Western metaphysics that I think we need to challenge. For whilst we might fool ourselves that each face is individual and unique, it isn’t. Rather, it’s a type of social machine that overcodes not just the head, but the entire body, ensuring that any asignifying or non-subjective forces and flows arising from the libidinal chaos of the latter are neutralized in advance. The smile and all our other familiar facial expressions are thus merely types of conformity with the dominant reality.

And so, when Heide Hatry insists on the primacy of the face and reconstructs it in all its complexity and vulgarity from ash, I have a problem. Asked if it was necessary to create facial images rather than do something else with the cremains, she replies:

"It's absolutely necessary; and it's necessary that the portrait is as realistic as possible because ... the face is where we understand communication is happening ... for capturing all the subtleties that make us human."

Hatry thus openly subscribes to the ideal moral function of the face; as that which reveals the soul and allows us to comprehend the individual: "Other ways of reading a person are incidental or filtered through this", she says - not incorrectly, but in a manner that suggests she's entirely untroubled by this. 


II: Becoming-Imperceptible

For me - again as someone who writes in the shadow of Deleuze - it's crucial to (i) rethink the subject outside of the moral-rational framework provided by classical humanism and (ii) escape the face and find a way of becoming-imperceptible. Thus, rather than drawing faces in the dust and displaying a sentimental attachment to personal identity, artists should be helping us experiment with different modes of constituting the self and new ways of inhabiting the body.   

Further, they should be helping us form an understanding of death that is entirely inhuman and faceless and which opens up a radically impersonal way of being linked to cosmic forces: a return to material actuality, as Nietzsche says; i.e. merging with a universe that is supremely indifferent to life. To think death in terms of becoming-imperceptible is ultimately to privilege ashes over the epiphenomenal phoenix that arises from them (despite the beauty of its feathers).

It doesn't mean "returning indistinguishable ashes to the particular" and vainly attempting to keep alive what was "in danger of being lost or forgotten". The idea that art exists in order to secure "the sense of a person, of her or his individuality, to lovingly preserve that quality even in death, in memory, and with it the integrity of the human lineage through generations", is anathema to me.

I think, at heart, most of us - like Sade - desire to be completely forgotten when we die, leaving no visible traces behind of our existence. As Rosi Braidotti puts it, central to posthumanist ethics lies evanescence (not transcendence) and the following paradox: "that while at the conscious level all of us struggle for survival, at some deeper level of our unconscious structures, all we long for is to lie silently and let time wash over us in the perfect stillness of not-life".

To be everywhere and nowhere; everything and nothing; to vanish like Lucy or the Incredible Shrinking Man into the eternal flux of becoming  - that's better than ending up ashen-faced, is it not?       

Notes

Rosi Braidotti, 'The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible', in Deleuze and Philosophy, ed. Constantin Boundas, (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 133-59. To read this essay online click here.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The University of Minnesota Press, 1987); see chapters 7: 'Year Zero: Faciality' and 10: 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible ...'

Mark Pachter, 'A Conversation with Heide Hatry', in Heide Hatry, Icons in Ash, ed. Gavin Keeney, (Station Hill in association with Ubu Gallery, New York, 2017), pp. 76-91. 

Re: Luc Bresson's film, Lucy (2014), of course it's shot through with crackpot science, Hollywood hokum and idealism of the worst kind - what Nietzsche would think of as Platonism for the people. But it at least hints at the form of becoming towards which all other becomings aim - the becoming-imperceptible. It's just unfortunate it ends with an idiotic text message - I am everywhere - which implies omnipresence in terms of personal consciousness, rather than impersonal materiality.    

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In Memory of Roger Moore and Adam West

    

Roger Moore as 007 and Adam West as Batman

In the same way that many of us subscribe to the view that Roger Moore is the best Bond, so too is it unarguably the case that Adam West is by far the greatest Batman - the camp coolness of his Caped Crusader in the sixties TV show, superior to the brooding menace of more recent cinematic versions: Dark Knight, my arse!  

So it was sad to learn that Adam West has died, aged 88, from leukaemia - just as it was sad to hear the news last month of Moore's passing, aged 89, also from cancer. Both actors were very much part of my childhood and are fully deserving of the place that each has secured within the cultural imagination, as well as the hearts of millions of fans around the world.  

Heide Hatry: Icons in Ash

Two portraits by Heide Hatry (2009): Paul Schmid and Stefan Huber from the Icons in Ash series

(Loose ash particles, pulverized birch coal and white marble dust on beeswax)

New York based artist Heide Hatry is, despite her thanatological obsessions, all too human at heart. It's not surprising, therefore, that she aims to transform objects into subjects and to provide the impersonal dead with new, posthumous identities that are literally fixed in ash.

Regarding death as a terrible abdication of self or a humiliating loss of face, Hatry has determined that the dead be memorialised by providing a smiling likeness one more time: a sort of selfie from beyond the grave that she describes in iconic and shamanic terms; potent images that allow communion with the ethereal presence of lost loved ones.

She summarizes her project of facial reconstruction in the following vitalist terms:

"I want to reintegrate life and death: to touch death, work with death, to be an artist of and for death, to let it speak in its mundanity, its grandeur, its familiarity and its mystery, its uniqueness and its universality, to redeem it from oblivion, to give it its own life again."

Clearly, she has absolutely no intention of letting the dead bury the dead or even letting the poor cunts rest in peace; rather, she's going to insist that they look her in the face and fulfil their personal obligations. And so she resurrected her father, to whom she felt connected at the very core, followed by close friend Stefan Huber, who, without any consideration of how it might make her feel, topped himself.

And, having raised them from the dead, she then proceeded to give 'em what for - crying and screaming at them, in a vain attempt to ensure they understood the unresolved pain, anger and grief that their mortal departures had caused her. 

 

Since then, having calmed down and apparently found some degree of solace, Hatry has produced several portraits out of cremains for others suffering in the same manner (and for the same reasons) she had suffered; people in need, not of closure, but of a chance to have the last word.

Ultimately, despite what the many admirers of her work believe, Hatry's portraits are not profound meditations upon death; they are, rather, one final opportunity for recrimination: How could you leave me, you bastard!

See: Heide Hatry, Icons in Ash, ed. Gavin Keeney, (Station Hill in association with Ubu Gallery, New York). Lines quoted and phrases echoed are from the artist's preface: 'Icons in Ash: From Art Object to Art Subject'. 

Readers interested in Heide Hatry's work should visit her website: heidehatry.com

See also the follow-up post to this one in which I outline my philosophical concerns with Hatry's ash portraits in greater detail: On Faciality and Becoming-Imperceptible ...

PC Plod Wants You to Think Nice Thoughts

It seems that in the wake of the recent Islamist terror attacks in Manchester and London, several police forces up and down the UK - at the bidding of their political puppet-masters - are issuing warnings to users of social media to think carefully about what they're posting. 

The force in Cheshire, for example, have a notice (dated June 6th) on their Facebook page that reads: 

"Although you may believe your message is acceptable, other people may take offence, and you could face a large fine or up to two years in prison if your message is deemed to have broken the law."

This, I must say, is pretty outrageous and has rightly attracted the scornful attention of those who know how the often spurious charge of hate crime is frequently used to justify the closing down of free speech and serious debate.

One person responded, for example, by pointing out the ludicrous nature of a situation in which there are insufficient resources to fully monitor the thousands of suspected extremists residing in the UK - including the 650 jihadis known to have returned after fighting for IS - but money and manpower is made available to keep an eye on Facebook, just in case someone somewhere says something that might possibly hurt someone else's feelings.

As several other people angrily informed Cheshire police, it's this abject pandering to political correctness whilst victims of recent atrocities are still being mourned, which causes the greatest offence.

However, as Breitbart journalist Jack Montgomery reminds us, the Cheshire Constabulary are by no means the first British force to be criticised for an apparent obsession with policing social media: Greater Glasgow Police, for example, was roundly mocked after warning Twitter users to think carefully before posting and to always use the internet safely following the Brussels bombings in March 2016.

In this case, the police even provided members of the public with a convenient list of questions (see above) that should always be asked before venturing an opinion - a list which must have George Orwell spinning in his grave ...

On the Charging Bull-Fearless Girl-Pissing Pug Controversy 3: The Pissing Pug

Alex Gardega, Fearless Girl and Pissing Pug

Photo: Gabriella Bass / New York Post 

Added text by Perez Hilton

It's not often that one finds oneself in agreement with Perez Hilton, but, with reference to the case of Alex Gardega and his Pissing Pug (aka Sketchy Dog), I pretty much share his view that being an artist doesn't always prevent one from behaving like an ass.

For if Arturo Di Modica has some right to irritation with the Fearless Girl deflecting attention from his Charging Bull and playfully seducing its potency, he's nevertheless an old man who subscribes to a long-dead tradition of aesthetic idealism and doesn't understand how times have changed, art moved on, and determining public narrative and perception no longer the preserve of a few privileged males. 

Gardega, however, has no excuse for his asinine, misogynistic and self-publicising stunt. In the end, Pissing Dog doesn't degrade or bring shame upon the Fearless Girl, but upon its owner. He didn't even have the courage or decency to leave the dog in place - worried, apparently, that some passer-by might walk off with it, or that it would be impounded by the authorities. So, after just a few hours and a few photos - and after some people gave it a kick up the arse - he removed the pooch and took it home with its tail between its legs.

The whole thing stinks of male entitlement and resentment, as Perez says: "And to have a dog pissing on a little girl that has become such a symbol of strength and poise is especially heinous. It's like Alex Gardega is essentially taking a piss on women. Stay classy, guy!"

See: Perez Hilton, 'Fragile Man-Baby Places Pissing Dog Sculpture Next To The Empowering Fearless Girl Statue in Manhattan', posted on perezhilton.com (May 30, 2017) - click here.

Click here to read part one of this post: The Charging Bull. 

Click here to read part two of this post: The Fearless Girl.

On the Charging Bull-Fearless Girl-Pissing Pug Controversy 2: The Fearless Girl

If you imagine a 50-inch, 250-pound bronze statue of a pretty young girl in a dress couldn't possibly cause offence or controversy within the art world and amongst feminist critics, then think again ... For Fearless Girl (2017), by Kristen Visbal, has done both. And it has particularly irritated the artist Alex Gardega, as we will discuss in the third part of this post.

Commissioned by the New York investment firm State Street Global Advisors, it was installed on March 7, 2017, at Bowling Green in the Financial District of Manhattan, directly facing Arturo Di Modica's famous Charging Bull. If it was intended primarily to promote an index fund made up of companies that have a higher percentage of women in senior leadership roles than is the norm, it was also meant to mark International Women's Day.

Instructed to ensure the statue depicted a girl looking courageous and proud - with her chin up and hands on hips - Visbal nevertheless carefully avoided any hint of wilful belligerence by keeping the facial features full of the soft-loveliness of a Latina child.

Originally given just a one-week City Hall permit, the sculpture is now due to remain in place until the end of February 2018. A petition asking for the work to be granted a permanent spot gathered over 2,500 signatures in its first 48 hours. However, despite capturing many hearts, the work is by no means universally loved ...   

Some, for example, have criticized it as an example of corporate feminism that violates the very principles of the latter as movement concerned with social justice and radical political change. Others have said that the work reinforces the idea that empowerment requires women to remain cute and girly; they can act strong, but mustn't have real muscles.  

As for Signore Di Modica, he has demanded that the Fearless Girl be removed, arguing that it exploits his work for purely commercial purposes whilst also changing public perceptions of his Charging Bull. Dismissing Visbal's piece as an advertising gimmick lacking artistic integrity, Di Modica has apparently instructed his lawyers to take action against the city officials who allowed it to be installed.

This, I have to say, is a bit rich: it's worth recalling that Di Modica himself placed his work in a public space, uninvited and without permission, thereby altering the environment in which it stood. So he can hardly complain when someone else does the same.

More, are we really expected to swallow all his bullshit about the purity and integrity of his work - the product of individual male genius - in contrast to the compromised corporate commercialism of Fearless Girl that resulted from the collaborative effort of women working in different professional areas? I think not ...

To his credit, the Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, has tweeted his support for Visbal's statue, saying: "Men who don't like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl." Such men, it seems, include Alex Gardega, who provided an unpleasant twist to this tale of two sculptures by placing a small work of his own entitled Pissing Pug besides the leg of the Fearless Girl ...

Click here to read part one of this post: The Charging Bull.

Click here to read part three of this post: The Pissing Pug.

On the Charging Bull-Fearless Girl-Pissing Pug Controversy 1: The Charging Bull

Arturo Di Modica's Charging Bull (1989) - also known as the Wall Street Bull - is a three-and-a-half ton bronze sculpture located in the Financial District of Manhattan. Originally a piece of guerrilla art (i.e., one installed without official permission), its huge popularity with New Yorkers and tourists alike led to it becoming a permanent feature. 

The larger-than-life piece - standing 11 ft in height and 16 ft in length - is said by the artist to affirm the optimism and can-do spirit of America. But I think it fair to say that its muscular dynamism has roots in a fascist aesthetic; the hard, dark-looking metal from which the sculpture is made only reinforcing its aggressive character. As do the prominently displayed testicles, that have been shined to gleaming perfection by visitors who rub them for luck.        

Unsurprisingly, the Charging Bull has often been subject to criticism from anti-capitalist protesters and various women's groups; the former see it as a symbol of corporate greed, the latter argue that it publicly endorses a threatening model of hypermasculinity. The work has also been condemned by interfaith religious leaders who regard it as a piece of neo-pagan idolatry (comparing it to the golden calf worshipped by the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt).  

Despite such criticisms, the Wall St. Bull has stood its ground and secured its place in the popular cultural imagination, successfully seeing off all challenges to its presence and its power. But then along came a Fearless Girl ...

Click here to read part two of this post: The Fearless Girl.
 

Click here to read part three of this post: The Pissing Pug.

In Memory of My Father

John S. Hall (1912-2000) 

On June 6th my thoughts turn to my father, who died on this date seventeen years ago.

Here he is looking quite dapper at the end of the War, in October 1945, still a relatively young man in his early-thirties, though doubtless this was regarded as mature middle-age back then.

Fuck knows what he's thinking about - if anything.

Perhaps my mother, who would have been nineteen when this picture was taken; a picture he signed on the back and gave to her, so he must have been relatively pleased with the likeness. Possibly it was taken on his birthday, though I don't know that any more than I know where the photo was taken or by whom.       

One presumes it was taken in Newcastle, his hometown. For he and my mother only moved south, to London, after they were married in 1948. But, again, I can't say for sure. As far as I'm aware, my family history isn't full of dark secrets. But it lacks transparency and documentation and my father hardly ever spoke about his past - which is a shame, as, by the time I was born, that was the greater part of his life.

Having said that, I've always been grateful not to be overburdened with memories and free from extended family ties; to feel neither love nor loyalty to any relatives or ancestors. I think never having met any of my grandparents, for example, helped me as a philosopher to feel untimely and experience something of the joy of orphans who gain through loss.

But still, it's nice to recall my father at least once a year and thereby allow a little sentimentality to creep into this blog as a counter-theoretical form of discourse which, as Barthes says, is a necessary transgression that serves to prevent writing from becoming too puritanical (i.e. lacking in the warmth and softness of feeling that is often responsible for the pleasure of the text).  

Notes on Vaginal Vespatherapy

I think even Gwyneth Paltrow - a passionate advocate of apitherapy and steam-cleaned sex organs - might possibly raise an eyebrow at the idea of inserting ground wasp nest into her cunt. Indeed, even my friend Hotaru, who has a real fascination with formicophilia, said she found the practice troubling (and this is a girl who literally likes to have ants in her pants).

But this is the latest all-natural treatment being marketed at women looking to rejuvenate (i.e. tighten and freshen up) their vaginas. Of course, there's no scientfic evidence to back up the claims for the miraculous properties of manjankani. But, even as I write, some poor woman somewhere is doubtless applying crushed oak apple to her intimate regions in the mistaken belief it will pep up her sex life and eliminate embarrassing odours, when, in fact, it's more likely to have serious health implications. 

Thus it is that Canadian gynaecologist and blogger, Dr Jen Gunter, has raised concerns - warning women that it can result in a dry - not merely tight - vagina which can make penetration painful and increase the risk of tissue damage. This supposedly ancient and traditional method of pussy enhancement can also destroy the natural bacteria that help keep the vagina healthy.

She concludes her piece with a professional tip that is surely worth passing on: if it hurts, burns, or irritates when you apply something to the lining of your vagina, then it's probably best not to do it. Care for your mucosa girls! Don't insert random objects or astringent pastes into your body without at least checking with your local pharmacist or GP first.

And if anyone tries to persuade you otherwise, send 'em away with a flea in their ear ...


Notes

Oak apples (or oak galls) are abnormal growths commonly found on many species of oak tree that form when gall wasps lay single eggs in leaf buds. Reacting to chemicals released by the developing wasp larva, the trees produce hard, protective balls of bark, 2-4 cm in size, which the larva then feeds off until ready to emerge as a fully-formed insect.  

Dr Jen Gunter's post - 'Don't put ground up wasp nest in your vagina' (May 16, 2017) - can be found on her blog by clicking here.

Necro-Ornithology (Study of a Dead Baby Bird)

Dead Baby Bird 
(on chrome yellow background with daisy) 
Stephen Alexander 2017

You know what it is to die alone,
Baby bird!

To have fallen from the nest, unfledged,
Dragon-faced and flipper-winged.

Once your tiny beak-mouth chirruped
With bold reptile defiance, indomitable.

Now maggots rend your unfeathered flesh.

Cabaret: Divine Decadence and Fascinating Fascism

Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles 

Cabaret (1972) 

For many people Cabaret (1972) is a near-perfect film musical: one that appears to starkly contrast the divine decadence of Berlin during the Weimar Republic with the fascinating fascism of Hitler's Third Reich, but which actually demonstrates how the two share the same cultural foundations and possess similar aesthetico-sexual concerns to do with questions of gender, style and performativity. For ultimately, if life is a cabaret old chum, then politics is just another form of show business and - as Jean Genet once wrote - even fascism can be considered theatre ...      

Brilliantly directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, Cabaret stars the magnificent Liza Minnelli as international singing sensation Fraulein Sally Bowles and Michael York as Englishman abroad, Brian Roberts, a somewhat reserved bisexual academic and writer. It opened to rave reviews, was an immediate box office smash and won eight Academy Awards. And yet, without doubt, it's the darkest and queerest of musicals - one that even Nazis can enjoy. Indeed, it provides an anthem that is today sung without any trace of irony by neo-Nazi groups.

Written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' is certainly a catchy number. And when sung by a good-looking Hitler Youth in a bright, sunlit Biergarten (cf. the dark and seedy Kit Kat Klub), it's not surprising as, one by one, nearly all those watching add their voices and raise their arms in salute. But it's not just that the tune happens to be diabolically rousing; more important, as Susan Sontag points out, is the seductive idealism of the Nazi aesthetic itself:

"It is generally thought that National Socialism stands only for brutishness and terror. But this is not true. National Socialism ... also stands for an ideal, and one that is also persistent today, under other banners: the ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community ..."

In other words, it's insufficient and a little dishonest to pretend audiences are powerfully moved by 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' simply because of the songwriting genius of Kander and Ebb. The song is so compelling because, among other things, the Nazi fantasy of a future utopia is one which many people continue to share.    

Some individuals - les fleurs du mal - cynically reject the comfortable trappings of bourgeois life and like to indulge their taste for illicit pleasures and nihilism; they choose to be Jewish and queer rather than Aryan and straight as a die. Like Sally Bowles, they abort the chance of a stable family life, preferring a headless, homeless and childfree lifestyle. But most people do not; most prefer Kinder, Küche, Kirche and like to see men in black uniforms patrolling the streets rather than girls with emerald green nail varnish and black stockings. 

But this is not to say that the masses lack a libidinal economy; Sontag is right to remind us that National Socialism doesn't only offer an aesthetic, it also places sex under the sign of a swastika too. And Cabaret crucially hints at how a sexually repressive and puritanical regime on the one hand is profoundly kinky and perverse on the other; the leather boots and gloves providing us with a clue as to the likely predilections of SS officers who continue to figure prominently within the pornographic imagination.

And so, if at one level the film can be read simply as the tale of a failed love affair between Sally and Brian, the violent rise to power of the Nazis and how this influences every aspect of life for all characters - be they German, Jewish, or foreign nationals who just happen to be in Berlin at the time - is the real story. Cabaret demonstrates that fascism compels us to speech and obliges us all to take sides; of how totalitarianism leaves no space for neutrality or political indifference. 

Thus it is that, by the end of the movie, even the Kit Kat Klub is putting on anti-Semitic skits for an audience dominated by uniformed Nazis and their supporters and we are obliged to admit that there's a disturbing (almost symbiotic) relationship between the world of the cabaret and that of the concentration camp; the seduction is beauty ... the aim is ecstasy ... the fantasy is death.


See: Susan Sontag, 'Fascinating Fascism', The New York Review of Books, (Feb 6, 1975): click here to read online. 

To watch Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles singing 'Life is a Cabaret', click here. 

Paint Your Wagon: Civilization and Its Discontents

Paint Your Wagon (1969) is a 22-carat, rip-roaring musical comedy set in a mining community - No Name City - during the period of the California Gold Rush (1848-1855). Directed by Joshua Logan, the film was adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from the 1951 stage show by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and starred Lee Marvin as Ben Rumson, Clint Eastwood as Pardner and Jean Seberg as Elizabeth.

Despite its faults - and it's more ponderous and overblown than it is riotous if I'm being completely honest (which helps explain its failure at the box office) - it's a movie that I love very much.

And what makes me love it is the anarchic, amoral, hobo-punk spirit that the film romanticises and which is embodied in Marvin's character Ben Rumson; a spirit that Pardner - a farmer at heart, looking to settle on a little patch of land rather than a genuine prospector and pioneer always prepared to take a risk and move on - in collusion with Elizabeth - a woman who wants nothing more than the security of a log cabin that she can call home and a loyal, hard-working husband to provide for her - are determined to exorcise in the name of clean living and respectable society.      

This ongoing tension between civilization and its discontents is the essentially Freudian theme at the heart of the movie. As Ben Rumson points out, those who desire the taming of Man take every opportunity to coordinate the natural world and control freedom of movement:

"They civilize what's pretty by puttin' up a city / Where nothin' that's pretty can grow
They muddy up the winter and civilize it into / A place too uncivilized even for snow
The first thing you know ...
They civilize left, they civilize right / Till nothing is left, till nothing is right
They civilize freedom till no one is free / No one except, by coincidence me"

- 'The First Thing You Know' (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner)

Writing in his seminal text - first published in German as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930) - Freud discusses how conflict arises whenever the individual's quest for naked liberty bangs up against the walls and institutions erected by a civilization that demands social conformity, even if it involves a violent repression of the instincts (the latter are always thought of negatively by Freud; as desires derived from and representative of the death drive which threaten the greater good of the community).

Thus, for Freud, as for Pardner and Elizabeth, the unrestricted happiness of men like Ben Rumson - drinking, gambling, fighting, whoring - cannot be allowed to continue; it has to be subject to a system of law and order and enforced with the threat of severe punishment. In other words, if you want to have all the benefits of living in society - education, healthcare, honest work, indoor plumbing, home-cooking etc. - then you just have to accept that certain forms of pleasure are no longer permissible.

And if you don't want these things and refuse to accept any restrictions on your freedom and happiness, then, well, you'll just have to paint your wagon and get out of town - not knowing where you're going, uncertain when you'll arrive, but careless of consequences and pleased simply to be on the way, following your dreams with a song in your heart ...


Click here to play Wand'rin Star, the number one UK single taken from the soundtrack of the film, sung in his own unique manner by Lee Marvin. 

See: Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Joan Riviere, ed. James Strachey, (The Hogarth Press / Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1969). 

Why I Love the Seated Ballerina

Jeff Koons: Seated Ballerina (NYC May 2017)

I've long been an admirer of Jeff Koons, one of three American artists I remember Malcolm telling me about in the mid-1980s (the other two being Julian Schnabel and Keith Haring). And his giant new inflatable figure - Seated Ballerina - temporarily installed in the heart of NYC's Rockefeller Center, doesn't disappoint.

In fact, it's such a joyous piece - a young dancer adjusting her blue ballet shoes and quietly preparing for the performance of a lifetime - that one feels the city of Manchester would benefit enormously were it to be installed in St. Ann's Square as a permanent memorial for the lives lost in the recent atrocity, affirming as it does all the purpose, promise and potential embodied in youth.      

Art isn't, of course, the solution to terror or religious fundamentalism. But, in the face of Islamofascism, we certainly need the gaiety of artistic creation; the inoculation into the body politic of playful serenity (to paraphrase Simon Solomon, if I may). 


Note: the 45ft inflatable discussed here is a version of smaller, mirror-polished stainless steel piece with transparent colour coating, which featured as part of the Antiquity series of works (2010-15): click here for more details. It was inspired by a previously little-known porcelain figure by the Ukrainian artist Oksana Zhnikrup, entitled Ballerina Lenochka.

A Brief Note on the Conceptual Penis Hoax

Andy Warhol: Penis (1977)   

Peter Boghossian is a professor of philosophy at Portland State University; James Lindsay, a prolific author with a Ph. D. in mathematics. Both are prominent figures on the so-called New Atheism scene.

It's surprising, therefore, that they don't have better things to do than publish a fake paper in a little known journal, making the mock-argument that the penis should not be viewed primarily as a male sex organ but as a social construct, in order to expose how gender studies is, in their view, founded upon the almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil.     

Unfortunately, as Ruth Graham points out, what Boghossian and Lindsay’s limp hoax really exposed was their own obsessions and phallic anxiety; "a perusal of their writing online reveals a persistent discontent with the supposed uselessness and hypocrisy of women’s studies and gender studies departments, and feminism more broadly".

This sniggering, sneering, disrespectful and dismissive approach to disciplines outside their knowledge is shameful I think. For as Graham says, anyone who has concerns with the sometimes bonkers but more often brilliant work being carried out by theorists working within the above areas is free to critically engage with it; whilst those who are convinced that such work is completely worthless can simply look away.

There's no need to be such a massive dick about it ...


Notes 

Ruth Graham, 'Phallic Anxiety (Probably!) Drives Male Academics to Execute Lame Hoax About Gender Studies', Slate, (25 May, 2017): click here to read.

Readers interested in Boghossian and Lindsay's spoof paper - 'The conceptual penis as a social construct' - published in Cogent Social Sciences (May, 2017) under the pseudonyms Jamie Lindsay and Peter Boyle, can click here (taken down by the journal, it has nevertheless been web archived). 

Interestingly - and somewhat ironically - whilst the above paper is indeed nonsense, it's central proposition is perfectly valid and worthy of analysis; the penis isn't merely a biological organ; it has a wide range of cultural, political, and philosophical significance (particularly when conceived in terms of the phallus). 

Stupid Is As Stupid Does (Notes on the Dunning-Kruger Effect)

I noticed long ago that one of the classic hallmarks or tell-tale signs of stupidity is the failure of a subject to recognise or own up to their own intellectual limitations and to arrogantly believe that they are in fact well-informed and of above average intelligence.  

But what I didn't know, until recently, is that this mix of cognitive misconception and conceit has been closely studied by psychologists and described in detail: the Dunning-Kruger effect refers precisely to the phenomenon wherein idiots cannot accurately evaluate their own capacities or knowledge and suffer from illusions of superiority due to their inability to see what is patently obvious to everyone else; i.e., that they're dimwits.   

Interestingly, the corollary to the D-K effect indicates that gifted people of high ability tend to underestimate or downplay their own competence and mistakenly presume that others can do what they do just as well and just as easily. In other words, intelligent people are often self-effacing and overly generous in their expectations.   

Of course, the fact that fools are often smug and superior in their foolishness had been observed long before Dunning and Kruger formulated their theory in 1999. Poets, philosophers, playwrights and even naturalists such as Darwin have commented on the fact that ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.  

But it's Bertrand Russell's remark that has particular resonance today for secularism in the face of religious fundamentalism: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision."

See: Kruger, Justin and Dunning, David; 'Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments', in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 77, No. 6, (Dec 1999), pp. 1121-1134. Click here to read.

See also Bertrand Russell; 'The Triumph of Stupidity', in the second volume of Mortals and Others: American Essays, 1931-1935 (Routledge, 1998), where he argues that the essential cause of trouble in the modern world is that "the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." Click here to read. 

This post was suggested by Dr Andy Greenfield to whom I am grateful.

Intelligent Atheists Contra Instinctive Religious Breeders

According to the latest research, religious worshippers are more instinctive but less intelligent than atheists. For whilst the faith of the former is rooted in innate, typically fixed patterns of behavioural response, the cleverness of the latter signifies an overcoming of such biological automatism and increased reliance upon the cerebral cortex and social learning.

This is not to say that atheists have a more complex neural system than believers - and it doesn't explain why they tend to be better-looking and make superior lovers - but it does suggest that they use their grey matter more.        

The theory put forward by Edward Dutton and Dimitri Van der Linden - the so-called Intelligence-Mismatch Association Model - attempts to explain why numerous studies over recent decades have consistently found a significant negative relation between intelligence and religiosity. It would make sense, say the authors, if faith is considered an evolved domain and intelligence the ability to transcend primitive instincts and to think in a rational manner that allows us to problem solve and freely develop our curiosity without falling to our knees and calling upon deities.  

However, although advantageous in many ways, evolution in no way ensures the survival of intelligence. Indeed, whereas smart individuals have successfully curtailed their fertility, peoples who still instinctively believe in a god have maintained high rates of reproduction. Thus, whilst atheists have plenty of ideas, true believers have lots of children.   

Partly, this is because the latter reject contraception on theo-superstitious grounds. But it's also because a people who still believe in a god ultimately still believe in themselves and in their right both to sacrifice and to breed. One might say they venerate their deities and express their will to power by exercising their loins, rather than their minds (and are often encouraged to do so as a religious duty).

This being the case, as a godless and childless Nietzschean one also has legitimate concerns for the future ...


See: Dutton, E. and Van der Linden, D.; 'Why is Intelligence Negatively Associated with Religiousness?', in Evolutionary Psychological Science (2017).

See also: Michael Blume; 'The Reproductive Advantage of Religiosity', a lecture given at the Explaining Religion Conference, Bristol University (2010): click here to read a published version.

Towards a Queer Ethology 3: When You Feel A Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin

 Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae)

When constructing a queer ethology concerned primarily with aberrant sexual behaviour, one has to mention the Adélie penguin. For not only are they among the most southerly distributed of all seabirds - found along the entire Antarctic coast - but they are also one of the most depraved. 

Just how pervy they are became quickly apparent to George Murray Levick, a scientist with the famous Scott Antarctic Expedition (1910-13). An experienced naturalist, Levick nevertheless found the sight of young male penguins engaging in auto-eroticism, fucking with other males, sexually coercing and abusing young chicks, and attempting to mate with the corpses of dead females, profoundly disturbing.

To be fair, when he'd signed on for the trip he was simply hoping to learn something about breeding habits; he wasn't expecting to witness acts of avian masturbation, homosexuality, gang-rape, and necrophilia and couldn't understand them except in anthro-moral terms (today, observers interpret them as responses by immature and inexperienced birds to false cues).

Struggling to describe what he saw, Levick recorded his original observations in Ancient Greek so that only gentleman scholars, such as himself, would be able to read them. Back in Blighty, however, he produced a short paper in English on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin that was privately circulated amongst a select number of experts thought likely to be interested in tales of hooligan birds causing havoc in the colony via constant acts of depravity.

This paper, based on material deemed to be so shocking that Levick was asked by his publishers to remove it from his original, more comprehensive study in order to preserve public decency, was eventually lost and forgotten about for many decades.

In fact, it wasn't until 2012 when a copy was unearthed by a researcher at the Natural History Museum that the work finally entered into the public arena; a much-needed corrective to all the idealistic penguin propaganda churned out by those who find them not only cute 'n' cuddly, but virtuous ...


Note: readers interested in this material should see Douglas G. D. Russell, William J. L. Sladen and David G. Ainley; 'Dr. George Murray Levick (1876-1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin', in Polar Record, (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Click here to read on penguinscience.com. 

To read part one of this post - Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer) - click here. 

To read part two - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here. 
           

Towards a Queer Ethology 2: Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey)

 Photograph: Alexandre Bonnefoy/AFP/Getty Images 

"Beasts of the earth ... they gambolled in the glade" 

Our second ethological study also involves a gentle pretty thing doing something that those who like to idealise animal behaviour and use Nature as a metaphysical reference point for their own moral values, would probably prefer not to know about; in this case, a female sika deer contentedly having sex with a male Japanese macaque (or snow monkey) on the island of Yakushima.

Such full-on fucking between two such distinct species of animal is extremely rare. In fact, this is believed to be only the second scientifically recorded example of such behaviour. For despite macaques and sika deer having a close and playful symbiotic relationship in which, in return for fruit dropped from the trees and grooming services, the deer allow the monkeys to occasionally ride on their backs, they don't usually get it on.

In a paper published in the journal Primates, scientists describe how a low-ranking, but horny young male monkey was observed repeatedly engaging in acts of coition with a couple of does. Whilst one of the deer didn't seem to particulary enjoy the attention she received from the macaque and soon ran off, the other appeared to have no objections and even licked off her lover's ejaculate from her back.  

As the lead author of the above paper writes, no ambiguity is possible here; both animals physically consented to and enjoyed the shared sexual experience.

She also suggests that mate deprivation is the most likely explanation for this non-coercive interspecies romance; a theory which argues that males who don't have access to females of their own kind are more likely to display such aberrant behaviour - though why the macaque didn't simply choose to masturbate or engage in homosexual activity with other monkeys, isn't quite clear.

Ultimately, the above case is interesting not only for what it tells us about the creatures in question, but wider issues to do with interspecies relations - including human-animal relations which, in the light of this new research, can no longer be described by opponents as completely unnatural.


Note: readers who are interested in knowing the full details of this case should see Pelé, M., Bonnefoy, A., Shimada, M. et al; 'Interspecies sexual behaviour between a male Japanese macaque and female sika deer', in Primates, Vol. 58, Issue 2 (April 2017), pp. 275-78. 

To read part one of this post - Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer) - click here.  

To read part three - When You Feel a Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin - click here.

Towards a Queer Ethology 1: Bambi's Revenge (The Case of the Carrion Deer)

Mmm ... the sweet taste of ribs and revenge

Many of us having read Felix Salten's 1923 novel (first translated into English from German in 1928), or having seen Disney's animated adaptation (dir. David Hand, 1942), are familiar with the story of Bambi and his life in the woods; particularly his first terrifying encounter with Man the hunter, who later claims the life of his mother, much to the young fawn's distress.

The film, predictably, downplays the more violent and sombre, naturalistic elements of Salten's text, which was written for adults and intended not only as an ecologically concerned pro-animal tract, but also an anti-fascist political allegory (the book was subsequently banned by the Nazis and many early copies destroyed).

Thus, for example, the movie omits the scene wherein Bambi is shown by his father (and Great Prince of the Forest) a decaying human corpse, in order to demonstrate that Man too is mortal, despite his posssession of guns.   

I thought of this scene when reading a recently published report by forensic scientists of a white-tailed deer in Texas filmed scavenging human remains. Typically herbivores, deer have been known to occasionally enjoy birds' eggs, fish, and dead rabbits. But this is believed to be the first recorded incident of Bambi enjoying the sweet taste of Man and revenge.    

 

Note: readers who are interested in knowing the full details of this case should see Meckel, L. A., McDaneld, C. P. and Wescott, D. J.; 'White-tailed Deer as a Taphonomic Agent: Photographic Evidence of White-tailed Deer Gnawing on Human Bone', in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, (May, 2017).

To read part two of this post - Who Fucked Bambi? (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) - click here. 

To read part three - When You Feel a Little P-Pervish, P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin - click here.  

On the Female Nipple

School of Fontainebleau: Presumed Portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrées 

and Her Sister the Duchess of Villars (c. 1594) 

Oil on canvas (96 x 125 cm)

The female nipple is a small, anatomical structure designed primarily to secrete breast milk into the mouths of babes and sucklings. But it is also considered an erogenous zone; i.e., a part of the body highly sensitive to sexual stimulation.

It wasn't surprising, therefore, when a 2006 survey discovered that a large majority of young women said their level of arousal was significantly enhanced by having their nipples fondled, kissed, licked, sucked, bitten, or clamped. Indeed, some respondents claimed to experience orgasm directly from nipple play alone.

Female nipples are thus subject to both fetishistic fascination and rules governing modesty and so-called indecent exposure. On social media sites such as Instagram, for example, they remain taboo and subject to strict censorship, whatever the context in which they appear and regardless of whether they're erect or not.

Amusingly, a gender-equality campaign called Free the Nipple was launched in 2012, inspired by feminist filmmaker Lina Esco, to challenge this policing of and discrimination against female bodies. However, I regret to report that the latest predicted trend in cosmetic surgery is to do away with rather than liberate the poor nipple. At any rate, more and more women are apparently requesting ever smaller, Smartie-sized nipples.

For in this world today, where a shrinking number of modern women choose to breed and where, amongst those who do, there's an increasing reluctance to breastfeed, there's really no bio-functional point in having embarrassingly large or ugly-looking nipples - even if there remains a lingering, rather nostalgic, erotic justification for holding on to them for just a little while longer ...                 


Notes

To watch the official trailer to Lina Esco's film, Free the Nipple (2014), on IMDb, click here. 

For a related post to this one in which I develop the above ideas, click here.

Spare the Wasps

Generally speaking, people don't think of wasps with the same degree of affection as they do bees, even though both can sting. It might simply be a public relations issue, but I suspect there's something more to our collective spheksophobia on the one hand and our melissophilia on the other. 

Trying to explain her fear of wasps and fondness for bees, my friend Deborah insisted the latter were kind and hardworking: "They never wilfully hurt anyone, they pollinate the flowers and they make honey - what's not to love?" 

In contrast, she said, wasps were vicious and unproductive: "They sting you for no reason and they don't do anything except make a pest of themselves whenever you're sitting outside having something to eat."  

And thus: "If you came across a bee in distress, you would instinctively want to help. But a normal person only ever wants to swat a wasp!" 

It's undoubtedly this kind of attitude that sanctifies the wanton destruction of wasp nests whenever people find them in their gardens or houses. One recalls, for example, the widely reported case from 2014 of a giant nest housing some 5000 creatures, built atop a bed in a Winchester woman's rarely used spare room, the wasps having entered through an open window and chewed through the mattress and pillows.

Even the pest controller who was called in, couldn't help but admire the amazingly beautiful nest that the insects had taken at least three months to construct. But this didn't, alas, deter him from destroying it and exterminating the entire colony with his poison spray, at the woman's request.

One also recalls the cruelty of George Orwell, who confessed to once cutting a wasp in half as it enjoyed some jam on the side of his breakfast plate; watching with gleeful fascination as a tiny stream of jam trickled out of its severed oesophagus and laughing when the insect tried to fly away and at that point realising the dreadful thing that had befallen it.

Whilst the exterminator was simply doing his job - not that this morally excuses his actions - I can't see any justification for Orwell's juvenile sadism. His intellectual point about modern man's obliviousness to having had his soul cut away, doesn't make one forget the heartless brutality that gave rise to the analogy.        

Thankfully, there are those in the world, such as Thom Bonneville, Director of the Animal Interfaith Alliance (AIA), who call upon us to spare the wasps and show care, concern and compassion for all living creatures, regardless of their size or whether they benefit us in any way.


Note: readers who wish to know more about the AIA can visit their website by clicking here.