Screen Grab

Image from the award winning web series Perfect Girl by BananaMana Films (2014):

http://bananamanafilms.com/category/perfect-girl-series

The frozen image of a loved one at the termination of a video call, just before they vanish back into the void and the screen returns to the comforting neutrality of a homepage, is, for me at least, a moment of great digital poignancy. 

Hanging up a telephone was one thing; a quick goodbye and the simple click of a receiver. But there's something far-more heart-rending about disconnecting from a person one cannot only hear, but see, smiling and looking beautiful on a bed that one has perhaps shared with them (or dreamed of sharing). 

One cannot help putting fingers to the screen and trying to touch their face; to hold onto them for just a short while longer ...   

On Doing (and Not Doing) the White Thing

Having earlier this year evicted lesbians from their store in Brighton for kissing in the aisles and taken the decision to exploit the tragedy of the Great War for a Christmas ad in order to flog a few extra bars of chocolate, Sainsbury's seem eager to now demonstrate their racial insensitivity with a new poster campaign designed to promote its company values. Paying a marginally fairer price to British dairy farmers for their milk than some others in the retail sector, is just one way in which Sainsbury's are, apparently, doing the white thing.

Obviously, I get it: it's a pun that even has something of a history to it. One recalls, for example, a popular campaign launched several years ago by the National Dairy Council in which various celebrities encouraged us to drink more of the white stuff. However, speaking as a black man, I have to say I do find the Sainsbury's ad to be contentious at the very least - if not overtly offensive.

For unlike the Dairy Council slogan, the Sainsbury's one crosses a fine line and passes onto extremely unpleasant territory. One can't help thinking of skin colour and normative Aryan values, rather than a pint of semi-skimmed; can't help recalling a long and depressing history of racism in which all of the ancient virtues were associated with fairness of complexion. Nietzsche writes of this in the Genealogy (I. 5).

And so Sainsbury's should stop using this slogan and they should apologise to their non-white staff and customers. They should, in other words, do the right thing by all of us who reject entirely the false and pernicious equivalence made between skin colour, purity of blood, and nobility of spirit - all of us who have no wish to play the white man. 

Torpedo the Ark Means: I Hate Everything

 I Hate Everything bangle by Me and Zena

See website for full details: meandzena.com

I am often asked what the phrase torpedo the ark signifies, despite the fact that I have explicitly stated in several posts that, for me, it primarily means having done with the judgement of God; i.e. rejecting any notion of indebtedness to a deity and refusing to face a celestial tribunal where one will eternally be found guilty and sentenced to death and damnation.  

In taking up this critical project - one that Kant failed so miserably to accomplish - one hopes to continue and possibly develop or send spiraling off in a new direction, the work of the truly great artists and thinkers, including Spinoza, Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, and Deleuze.

For those, however, who like things expressed in less philosophical terms, then torpedo the ark might be said to simply mean this: I hate everything.

The concept of hate, of course, mustn't be understood in a purely reactive manner; hate is more than simply love on the recoil (as if love were the great primary term or essential prerequisite). And it's crucial not to simply fall back into metaphysical dualism, where love and hate are two fixed terms of opposition.

That said, I suppose we can provisionally agree that love is ultimately a will to merger and the dream of blissful union with all mankind, the heavenly host, and, ultimately, God himself, whilst hate is the desire to be separate and the ability to discriminate and distinguish between things. Thus whilst love makes us open up our arms and embrace the universe, hate teaches us to kick with our legs and stand on our own two feet as sovereign individuals, proud of our own singular nature and keen to discover and create new worlds. 

When Zarathustra encourages his listeners to become hard like diamonds, he means they should abandon love when it has become a morbid moral ideal exclusively tied to values born of sickness; he means they should become a little more independent and a little more hateful; that they should shatter the old law tables, tear down the Cross, and torpedo the ark.

This might seem to be an evil teaching, but, as Blake pointed out, evil is only the active or most vital power that flows into us from behind and below. And it is this power - or more precisely the feeling of this power - that causes delight and helps us give birth to what is best in us and to the future.     

We can conclude, therefore, that whilst kindness, kisses, and cuddles all have their place within a general economy of the heart, so to does cruelty, combat, and the determination to kick against the pricks and all that is rotten. As Lawrence writes, we must learn to accept all the subtle promptings of the incalculable soul; from the most passionate love, to the fiercest hate. Only this will keep us sane and beyond judgement.

At the Tail End of German Idealism

Nico Metten: Libertarian

Nico Metten is a young German sound designer with a ponytail. He is also someone with interesting views on the question of immigration and national border controls. In a nutshell, he wants to encourage and massively extend the former as a good thing per se, whilst completely dissolving the latter as a matter of principle.

For Nico is a libertarian. He also openly admits to being an idealist which, in his case, means he is someone who believes that everyone is just like him; namely, an abstract labour unit. Or, at least, they should be. Otherwise he's fully prepared to subject them to the law, thereby equating radical difference or any form of otherness that can't be subsumed within a universal humanism, with criminality and terrorism.  

Nico doesn't conceive of those who care nothing for freedom - understood primarily as the freedom of the market place - or bourgeois individualism. That some men and women might value fulfilment over freedom and find such collectively as members of a people, is not something he even stops to consider. 

Besides, a global economy will put an end to such social primitivism in favour of the systematic anarchy and triumphant philistinism which he, Nico, favours, but which, as Nietzsche points out, allows someone only as much culture as it is in the interest of commerce that they should possess. If old ways of being persist, they may do so only as lifestyles; i.e. as commodities that afford men and women the chance to dress-up and indulge in colourful games of nostalgic make-believe, but not to opt-out of the New World Order. 

Of course, Nico is right to argue that many people have been granted human rights within the above and we should not simply dismiss this fact. But, on the other hand, as Deleuze and Guattari argue, human rights ultimately fail to address or compensate for the "meanness and vulgarity of existence that haunts democracies ... The ignominy of the possibilities of life that we are offered."

And so, sorry Nico, but I'm unconvinced by your attempts to politically theorize; one respectfully suggests that you don't give up the day job. And maybe think about a haircut.

                                                                                  
Note: Lines quoted from Deleuze and Guattari are in What is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson, (Verso, 1996), pp. 107-08.   

   

Falling in Love Again

 Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt

First we fall in love, then we fall into language, says Roland Barthes, referring us to the fact that even the most personal or private of emotions is inevitably articulated within a shared code and culture.

For some people, however, this raises a real concern; for if the language of love is entirely secondhand, then does it not lack authenticity and is the lover not, at some level, always insincere?

Perhaps: but I'm not convinced we should let this worry us too much (if at all). 

Besides, it would be absurd to expect individual lovers to be able to create unique ways of expressing how they feel. Even if it were possible, what would be the point? For we would no more be able to understand their sweet nothings whispered into our ears, than we could comprehend Wittgenstein's speaking lion. A private language - be it of love or anything else - would be essentially meaningless (i.e. a non-language). 

Ultimately, the words I love you delight and reassure us precisely because of their familiarity and the fact that we understand them as the repetition of an ancient litany; they invite us to participate in a game wherein we all have a vague idea of the rules, even if we cannot all expect to be winners. 

In the World of Addison Lee

addisonlee.com

The ad campaign I presently love to hate the most is for business-class car service Addison Lee (i.e. the world's most pretentious mini-cab operator).

Targeted towards executives and premium leisure users, the six-figure campaign entitled 'Cool, Calm and Collected' is meant to embody the Addison Lee vision of an unrivaled and super-efficient service that enables customers to move smoothly and conveniently around the capital in comfort and style. That's certainly the line being peddled by chief commercial officer Peter Boucher.

For me, however, it suggests something very different. When I look at the above picture or one of the related images from the campaign, I see a couple in a virtual bubble of money, smugness and false security being transported through the chaotic yet strangely empty and sanitized streets of London. Such elitism and fascist utopianism is offensive enough, but one can also detect the whiff of casual sexism and racism.

The woman, for example, with dark curly hair and wearing a red dress that shows off her dusky skin colour, has obviously been chosen to add a little spice; a vague hint of exotic otherness and wild sensuality. She smiles, but she's clearly not entirely happy to be trapped in the bubble alongside her white, male, fully-covered companion. She sits a little uncomfortably and somewhat nervously with her bare legs pressed together and turned as far away from him as possible, her bare arms crossed. She might reluctantly give him a blow job, but she really doesn't want to fuck him.

He could, of course, be her colleague, but probably he's her good-looking young boss; she's obliged, therefore, not only to look across at him, but up to him with a mixture of love and respect. He, on the other hand, can look at her any way he chooses; or, indeed, as here, he can choose not to look at her at all - to keep his eyes on the road, on the future, and doubtless on his own reflection like the narcissist he is.

Suited and booted, he nevertheless keeps it casual; no tie, open-neck shirt, designer stubble ... Only the expensive haircut and neatly-folded pocket handkerchief tells us he's still very much in control and obsessed with order and detail; still holding on to the power and the privilege of his class, his race, and his sex.


Note: The Addison Lee ad campaign was created by Albion; written by George Morgan and shot by Doug Fisher. Unique Digital handled the media strategy and buying.

Skinny Mannequin Sparks Outrage

The curious and often heated debate over the size and shape of shop-window dummies is raging once again, following the appearance of a new model in Topshop (second from left in the above image) and a tweet from outraged customer Betty Hopper.

Now, whilst I understand the issue here and can see how display units might (somewhat naively) be thought of as plastic versions of real women and thus, like fashion models, be caught up in the discussion around body image and eating disorders, are stores really promoting anorexia as an aspirational lifestyle by using skinny mannequins? I don't think so. 

In fact, I have more than a little sympathy with those who argue that solid fibreglass mannequins are not meant to be viewed as ideal role models and have more in common with clothes hangers than they do with flesh-and-blood women. Usually, any realistic elements are outweighed by the abstract and frequently headless nature of the design.

In a statement issued by Topshop with reference to the mannequin in question, it's calmly pointed out that "the form is a stylized one designed to have greater impact in store and create a visual focus". The statement continues by saying that the mannequin primarily exists to display clothes and its dimensions simply enable faster dressing and undressing; "it is therefore not meant to be a representation of the average female body".

That's a little disingenuous perhaps, but it's by no means false or an outright lie and I think those who get overexcited on social media and start speaking about 'impressionable teens', or body-shaming those girls who are happily waif-like with their offensive assertion that real women have curves, need to keep things in perspective and be careful what they say.

Not that it's just possibly envious members of the twitterati who make nasty remarks about those girls judged to be underweight; I was surprised and disappointed to read Pascal Bruckner's negative characterization of fashion models as "flat-chested beanpoles". Is the woman with a "fuller-figure" he appears to lust after really a taboo in our society? Again, I don't think so.

Finally, if "emaciated mannequins" (another of Bruckner's pet peeves) cause anorexia and represent the triumph of ascetic idealism's dream of disembodiment, then mightn't plus-size dummies promote obesity?

The Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, certainly thinks so and recently warned that the increasing use of larger mannequins (along with size inflation of labelling) were starting to normalize overweight. This might be a slightly absurd and simplistic claim, but no more so than the one made about the Topshop mannequin. 

Philosophy For Everyone and No One (Not For All)

Owl logo of Philosophy for All:  

pfalondon.org

Philosophy for All: a phrase and a London-based, non-profit organization designed to dismay or make laugh those perverts who value the fatal love of wisdom, just as it flatters those who subscribe to the moral ideal of equality and the notion that all souls might know Plato.

From the PFA Secretary I receive news of a masterclass [!] that teachers and would-be teachers of philosophy are strongly encouraged to attend; a class that promises to show how philosophy can be made accessible, inclusive and relevant to people of all ages and from all backgrounds.

Prospective students on the day-long course are also assured they will be taught how to deal with the tricky questions that often arise within philosophy and which can cause some students a great deal of difficulty. 

Now, as regular readers of this blog will know, as a post-Nietzschean philosopher I'm all for models of thought invested with an ironic, joyful element. But la gaya scienza doesn't mean dumbing-down in the name of democracy, nor attempting to make thinking fun in a manner that robs it of all seriousness, all challenge, all danger.  

When Zarathustra speaks, he speaks to everyone and no one, never simply to all. And he expects his listeners to have first grown new ears ...

Note: Readers might be interested in Anja Steinbauer's position on this question which can be found in an article published in Philosophy Now, issue 22. Click here. Dr Steinbauer is founder and president of Philosophy for All and co-founder of the London School of Philosophy.  

Vade Retro Satana: On the Priestly Nostalgia for Exorcism

Goya's depiction of an exorcism performed by St Francis Borgia 

on a dying impenitent (1788)

According to the Pope, demonic possession is a real and growing threat in the 21st century. In fact, since assuming his position as head of the Church, Pope Francis has repeatedly displayed a multidisciplinary yet fundamentally anti-modern or neo-medieval approach to the theoretical and practical question of Satan.

It was not a great surprise, therefore, to hear that he last month gave his papal blessing to the International Association of Exorcists; an organization formally recognized by the Vatican which argues - somewhat paradoxically one might have thought - that in a secular-material world of reason that deliberately disenchants and deadens faith, the window is thrown wide open to diabolical forces.

During a convention held in Rome, the Holy Father praised those priests who specialize in the difficult work of exorcising demons and stressed how it was important for the Church to offer its love and full support for those unfortunate souls possessed by evil. 

Over three-hundred experts in the field of what might be called sacramental health care, gathered to discuss, among other things, the perils of occultism and how dabbling in the dark arts can lead to eternal damnation. A spokesman for the association - Dr Walter Cascioli, a trained psychiatrist - blamed the recent dramatic rise in demonic activity on popular books, TV shows, and films aimed at impressionable young people. Such works, he explained, not only lead morally astray, but can cause great psychological damage.

Parents, teachers, and social workers thus need to display much greater vigilance and be constantly on guard against the Devil and all his works. Signs of demonic possession vary, but include: loss of appetite, self-mutilation, unnatural body postures, supernatural strength, knowledge of sacred mysteries, and a violent rejection of Jesus and his Gospel of Love.      

Please note: I am actually writing this at the beginning of November, not April, and in 2014 not 1420. I would fully understand if readers of this post feel the need to check the calender or seek evidence for some kind of shift in the space-time continuum. Why is it whenever one reports on the latest pronouncements of the Church one feels as if one has fallen either through a black hole, or, like Alice, down a rabbit hole?    

Les Zazous

Pretty much everyone has heard of the jazz-loving teens in Hitler's Germany known as the Swing Youth, who developed a subversive Anglo-American sensibility and style in diametric opposition to National Socialism. Likewise, those who are interested in this period and in subcultural and counter-cultural forms of resistance to the Third Reich are probably also familiar with the Edelweiss Pirates. But far less well known are the French equivalent of die Swingjugend, called les Zazous.

The Zazous were a group of mostly Parisian based hipsters living under German occupation during World War II who chose to defy their Nazi overlords and display their nonconformity by wearing outlandish clothes, carrying umbrellas, growing their hair long, and dancing to jazz, swing, and bebop.

Whilst boys favoured wearing oversized, often knee-length box jackets, peg leg trousers, and suede brothel creepers, the girls wore short pleated skirts, striped stockings and shoes with thick wooden soles. Often the girls would bleach their hair, worn in long curls, and paint their lips bright red. Both sexes also had a penchant for sunglasses, whatever the weather.

When not hanging about on the terrace of the Pam Pam café drinking cocktails, the Zazous often frequented vegetarian restaurants and ordered grated carrot salads. If there's a subtle political gesture in this choice of lunch, I have to confess it escapes me. But their decision to voluntarily wear the yellow star of David, in solidarity with French Jews, was certainly an overt and courageous sign of dissident behaviour in a country where anti-Semitism was widespread and silent complicity with the Nazis (if not active collaboration) was shamefully often the norm.  

And for this, one cannot help affording them great affection and respect. Perhaps they didn't risk their lives in the same manner as their German counterparts, but they were nevertheless detested and targeted by the Nazis and members of the Vichy government who saw them as a threat to the moral well-being of the nation.

Articles published by the authorities at the time, branded them as decadent, work-shy, anti-patriotic egoists and, after 1942, les Zazous were often attacked and beaten on the streets by pro-fascist groups, or arrested and sent to labour in the fields and farms of the French countryside. 

Disappointingly - though not surprisingly - members of the official French Resistance movement had little time for the Zazous either and afforded them no support or protection. In fact, the communists and other ultra-leftists dismissed the Zazous in much the same terms and for many of the same reasons as the fascists.

But, despite such hostility from both ends of the political spectrum, they still continued to dance, to dress-up, and make their daring and dandyish revolt into style.

I Care - But I'm Not Mother Teresa

I care - but I'm not Mother Teresa.

What do I mean by this? 

I mean that, for me, there is nothing remotely uplifting about looking after someone who is in need of care and I'm not about to sacrifice myself entirely to this tiring and depressing task in the mistaken belief that by so doing I demonstrate Christian virtue.

For unlike Mother T - a woman once described by Christopher Hitchens as a corrupt Albanian dwarf who exploited the poor and dying as extras in her own obscene morality play - I don't confuse or conflate excremental reality with transcendental fantasy. 

Indeed, I agree with Hitchens that it's deeply offensive to fetishize pain and poverty and develop a voracious appetite for human wretchedness; to literally feed off shit and gain personal salvation via the suffering of others.

We have to demoralize our idea of sympathy; i.e. free it from ideal notions of pity and charity which transport us to the foot of the Cross.

And, ultimately, all it takes to do the right thing is a little politeness of the heart or what Nietzsche terms benevolence; kindness, kisses and kuddlz have played a far greater role in building a libidinal culture of compassion or phallic tenderness, than those more celebrated values preached by the Good.  

The Nylon Riots

Nylon is a generic term for a group of synthetic polymers known as aliphatic polyamides, first produced in 1935 by Wallace Carothers whilst working at the Du Pont research facility in Delaware, USA. Although it was initially manufactured as a type of hard plastic and used commercially in nylon-bristled toothbrushes, its most famous application came after it was produced in the form of an artificial silk fabric at the New York World's Fair in 1939. After this date, silk stockings gave way to nylons and female legs would never be the same again.

Immediately popular and in extremely high demand, women in the US and elsewhere went mad for nylons and many millions of pairs were sold and worn with delight. Unfortunately, however, after America finally entered World War II, Du Pont were obliged by government order to cease production of stockings and use the new wonder material for parachutes and other such items required by the military. 

Thus, during the war, women had to make do with old or second-hand stockings; or, if push really came to shove, they resorted to a clever use of cosmetics and painted seams on bare legs in order to create the illusion that they were wearing nylons. 

Not surprisingly, stockings became increasingly sought after and (often stolen) pairs could sell for up to $20 on the black market. American women were desperate for the fighting to end, so that they they could have their menfolk back home and - just as vitally - nylons would be easily available once more. So desperate were they in fact to own new stockings, that when Du Pont shifted its production back to stockings post-war, it resulted in what have become known as the Nylon Riots.

One of the largest disturbances was in Pittsburgh, where 40,000 women queued for 13,000 pairs of stockings, inevitably leading to disappointment, hair-pulling, and eye-scratching. Following similar trouble in Augusta, Georgia, a local newspaper ran with the headline: 'Women Risk Life and Limb in Bitter Battle for Nylons' and reported how crowds forced their way into stores and knocked over display counters as well as each other.

Du Pont, who had promised that all women would be able to have new nylons by Christmas, were obliged to revise their forecast. Indeed, it took several months to finally bring production in line with the frenzy of demand, thereby bringing the mass cat-fights to an end. 

The point is this: it's not just men who love nylons; women too know that bare legs lack magic and that one ultimately gets the greatest joy of all out of a pair of really lovely stockings. 

On the Nose

Idealist philosophers, such as Kant, hate the nose: they only care about the eyes and the production of visual images and mental concepts; scents and smells, be they base or beautiful, mean nothing to them and might almost entirely be ignored.

But for those philosophers who seek to develop a form of libidinal materialism that is firmly rooted in the body and wider sensual experience - who don't wish merely to picture the world, but also to sniff it at close quarters - the nose is the most crucial of organs.

Thus it is that Nietzsche boasts that his whole genius resides in his nostrils and praises the nose as "the most delicate tool we have at our command"; a subtle scientific instrument which can detect minimal changes of condition, including symptoms of moral decay. As such, the nose deserves to be shown respect and gratitude by philosophers.

    

Lovers too know that the nose knows best, which is why they like to literally breathe in the odour of the beloved other; not merely for sensual intoxication and pleasure, but in order to make an accurate physiological assessment of their partner's health and breeding potential.

For it is believed that an individual's body odour - or what is sometimes termed their olfactive signature - is linked with an area of the genome that has crucial import for the immune system. Thus it might well be that knicker-sniffing, for example, is a form of biological imperative; one is seeking out histocompatibility and not just being a bit pervy.  

In Praise of Nivea: The Snow-White Miracle Cream

Although the ingredients for Nivea Creme are openly available on the Beiersdorf website and are little different from other commercial hand and body lotions - Aqua, Paraffinum Liquidum, Cera Microcristallina, Glycerin, Lanolin Alcohol (Eucerit®), Paraffin, Panthenol, Decyl Oleate, Octyldodecanol, Aluminum Stearates, Citric Acid, Magnesium Sulfate, Magnesium Stearate, Parfum, Limonene, Geraniol, Hydroxycitronellal, Linalool, Citronellol, Benzyl Benzoate, Cinnamyl Alcohol - the precise formulation (i.e. how these things are uniquely combined) has remained a company secret for over a hundred years.

I know that such secrecy worries some people and fuels the widespread suspicion (bordering on paranoia) surrounding both the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. I am also aware that those eco-ascetics who favour strictly organic beauty products developed by tribal peoples in the rain forests of Borneo, for example, or simply wish to splash cold water on their faces, insist that many of the above ingredients have damaging environmental and/or health effects.

One such critic, for example, writing in The Ecologist, expressed his dismay with what goes into a jar of Nivea and repeatedly played on the concerns of his readership by stressing the terms irritants and sensitizers (i.e. chemicals that, with repeated exposure, may trigger allergic reactions), and, of course, the C-word: carcinogens (i.e. potentially cancer-causing substances). 

Parafinnum liquidum, for instance, is a cheap and easy to manufacture form of mineral oil that acts as a emollient that penetrates the skin and produces a temporary moisturizing effect. But the above critic argued that it destroys the skin's natural oils and thus results ultimately in dryness. Having used the product for many years, I know the former to be true - but I've no idea whether the latter is true, for the writer provides no evidence to back-up his claim. Nor do I know if the synthetic fragrances used in Nivea, such as limonene, linalool, and citonellol can cause eye-irritation, trigger asthma attacks, produce tumours and reproductive abnormalities. They do smell nice, however.  

The point is this: we may not need to use skin creams or perfumes or expensive shampoos, but these things make happy and allow us to dream and have more importance in our lives than we might imagine; which is why it is, I think, that my mother - who is 88 and who, thanks to dementia, has lost her appetite for food, her memories of the past, and even her desire to step out of the house - still insists on applying a generous amount of Nivea Creme each evening before bedtime, in order to keep her face and hands soft and young-looking, just as she has always done. 

That's the beauty of beauty products and the magic of cosmetics and why, for me, Nivea is a snow-white miracle cream; as much of a gift of the German genius, in its own way, as the poetry of Rilke, the music of Wagner, or the philosophy of Nietzsche. 

The Present is a Foreign Country

The Bower, Bedford's Park, Collier Row, Essex

© Copyright John Winfield and licensed for reuse under the CCL

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Hartley's famous opening line to his 1953 novel, The Go-Between, remains profoundly true; although, of course, it would be equally true to say the same of the future and it's that recognition which so excites the imagination of writers of science fiction.

Indeed, one might also argue that, thanks to the rapidity of cultural, social, and technological change, even the present can suddenly become unfamiliar and alienating, even threatening. Mass immigration, for example, changes an area completely. The newcomers not only do everyday things differently to the native population (eat different foods, wear different clothes, pray to different gods), but they are themselves different; perhaps not radically other, but distinctly foreign-looking and foreign-sounding.

I have experienced this recently after spending time back in the town (and indeed the house) where I was born and grew up. And, I have to admit, it's disconcerting; not to feel cut off from the past or from my childhood, but from what remains and what has replaced the world and the people I knew.

Further, without wanting to sound like a middle-aged Tory, I also have to confess that it's those bits of the past that have stayed pretty much the same - or at least offered the best illusion of sameness, such as landscapes - that provide most comfort and a reactionary though nevertheless joyful feeling of nostalgia.   

A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell

The Amusement of the Saints in Heaven

by Watson Heston

Proponents of heaven and hell usually have very little to tell us about the former; white clouds and robes, unfading flowers, and choirs of angels singing the praises of a God who sits on a large golden throne ... It's a place most memorably described by Christopher Hitchens as a celestial North Korea.

It's the latter destination, hell, that really excites the pornographic imagination of believers; all kinds of obscene torture, violent punishment and sexual humiliation are said to take place there, to say nothing of those caves and ragged clothing and the heat - my God the heat! - that so terrifies Elaine Benes.

And, to top it all off, above the gates of hell is a sign which, according to Dante, reads: Built in the Name of Eternal Love - words even more chilling than Arbeit macht frei.

Nietzsche, however, disputes this and says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet. There is a sign, but it's placed rather above the entrance to heaven and the inscription reads: Built in the Name of Everlasting Hate.

For what guarantees the bliss of those in paradise is nothing other than the spectacle of suffering provided by those unfortunates - including family members and friends - burning below: Beati in regno colesti videbunt poenas damnatorum ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat, as Thomas Aquinas, the great Christian teacher and saint writes in pious Latin. The English translation reads:

"The blessed in the kingdom of heaven shall view the torment of the damned, so that they may better enjoy their own salvation." [Summa Theologiae]

Christianity did not discover cruelty as one of the great festive joys of mankind, nor did it invent the idea of an underworld, but only the Church sanctified cruelty in this manner and gloried perversely in torture porn as a form of moral righteousness.

On the Question of Care

Image taken from Nolen Gertz's amusing blog:

ethicistforhire.blogspot.co.uk

The idea of tying the concept of care exclusively to duty is fine perhaps within a legal context, but not so fine (inadequate as well as inappropriate) when it comes to a personal-ethical situation. For in the latter, care is not just a question of paying back a debt that is owed or meeting an obligation.

Thus when caring for a loved one, such as an elderly parent for example, then to care is to grieve or to mourn their frailty and the fact of their immanent passing (their mortality); in Lawrentian terms, one might say to care is to assist another in building their ship of death.

Thus Heidegger was not far off the mark when he linked Dasein's being in the world both to Sorge (care) and to Sein-Zum-Tode (being-towards death).  

The Case of Ghoncheh Ghavami

As profoundly ridiculous as the recent case of the seven young people tried in Tehran for singing and dancing to a pop song was (see the post entitled On the Will to Happiness), the case of Ghoncheh Ghavami is even more absurd and depressing.

For here we find a women's rights activist from Shepherd's Bush with a law degree from SOAS, languishing in an Iranian prison for over a hundred days and presently on hunger strike, for the "crime" of attending - or rather attempting to attend - a men's volley ball match at the Azadi stadium. 

In Tehran primarily to visit family and friends and to work with a charity that teaches street urchins to read, 25-year-old Ms Ghavami fell victim to a law passed in 2012 which bans women from attending all major sporting events - not just volleyball - in order to protect them from the lewd behaviour of male spectators caught up in the excitement of the moment. 

Although formally she has been charged with spreading propaganda against the Iranian regime (a charge that potentially carries a jail term of several years), Amnesty International is right to insist that what Ghoncheh is really being punished for is her peaceful attempt to highlight discrimination against women in Iran.

I wish there was something clever I could say here - a way to give the story a neat philosophical twist - but, as is increasingly the case, my heart's not in it. I simply want this young woman freed and allowed to come home as soon as possible. That, and the end of all forms of sexism, misogyny, and violence against women (particularly when institutionalized at state level and justified by religion).

Prisoners of Fashion

A convict uniform 1830-49

Copyright National Library of Australia

(nla.pic-anc6393471)

I don't know if anybody has ever actually been convicted for crimes against fashion, but it might not be a bad idea for certain individuals to spend some time locked behind bars in solitary confinement, so they might better think through their sartorial choices.

For prison has long been an environment that subjects people to discipline and detail exercised via clothing. Well-known examples would include the classic striped-look, seen for example on Charlie Chaplin in The Adventurer, the heavy-denim outfit worn by Elvis in Jailhouse Rock, and the contemporary bright orange jumpsuits popularized by Guantánamo detainees.

Personally, I've always liked the use of broad black arrows stamped onto a heavy woollen outfit consisting of jacket, trousers and pillbox hat. Often worn by British convicts transported to Australia to work on chain gangs, the arrows signified that they remained subjects of the Crown even when Down Under. Uncompromising hob-nail boots completed a look which was still being used as late as 1922.

I suppose the point is that inmates are expected to reflect upon what they've done and where they find themselves and the wearing of distinctive uniforms designed to shame and stigmatize is meant to assist with this process; that clothes maketh the convict just as much as the chains that are sometimes worn as accessories. But, paradoxically, the uniforms can also produce a feeling of pride and outlaw swagger, which is why many young people often adopt and adapt looks that first arise from within Her Majesty's prisons or American penitentiaries (such as sagging).

Thus, I rather regret the findings of the research conducted during the more liberal periods of the twentieth century which indicated that inmates respond better to the rules governing prison life if they are allowed to wear their own clothes and which led to the phasing out of distinctive prison garb in the UK and elsewhere.

On the other hand, I'm happy to hear that in the United States many wardens are choosing to revive traditional looks, such as the striped-outfit of yesteryear. I'm not sure it will help with rehabilitation, but it will certainly help with giving back to prisoners a distinctive and stylish criminal identity.


Note: the picture shows a lovely magpie style black-and-yellow, hand-stitched convict uniform from Tasmania. The jacket is front-buttoning with a high stand-up collar and long sleeves. The trousers are marked with the famous arrow design mentioned above. It is made from rough woollen Paramatta cloth manufactured in Sydney, Australia. 

A Brief Note on the Case of King Lear (For EF)

Goneril, Regan and Cordelia 

© SingerofIceandFire (2012)

deviantart.com

Is there a more hateful and pathetic figure in Shakespeare than Lear? Self-righteous and self-pitying, he deserves the offspring he begets and the tragedy that befalls him. 

Thankless children might be sharper than serpent's teeth, but vain, selfish parents for whom nothing ever comes of nothing - and nothing their sons and daughters do is ever good enough - leave deeper scars still with their blunt dentures and constant grinding criticism.

More often than not, the young are more sinned against than sinning and blessed is the orphan without the dead weight of family history or filial obligation to pull them down. 

(There's a duty of care, yes, but not at the expense of one's own well-being or sanity ...)

On the Beauty and the Genius of i-Phone 6

Apparently, many buyers of the new i-Phone - the i-Phone 6 - are angry that, due to its slimness, it's easily bent when carried about the person. This has also caused great amusement among Apple's corporate competitors and media detractors. 

But what has been described as a design flaw is actually the beauty and the genius of the i-Phone 6: it has transcended its own base origins in functionality and become a useless object; that is to say, a true work of art. 

Apple have - quite brilliantly and daringly - manufactured the first non-mobile mobile! The idea is not to carry it and use it like lesser though sturdier smart phones, but simply to own it and admire it in its lovely white box. Even, one might adore the i-Phone 6 as a sacred object. For ultimately, Apple wants to create a sense of wonder and reverence amongst its followers; something far beyond mundane customer satisfaction. 

If all you want is a fast, efficient, practical and affordable mobile phone, then buy a Sony or Samsung.

A Thanatological Fragment

First she decided she no longer wanted to go out. Then she decided she no longer wanted to get up. Finally, in death, decision making was no longer an issue and her house-bound, bed-bound days gave way to a period of violent decomposition during which the religious-minded believe souls to be heaven-bound, when really it's merely a return of hydro-carbon atoms to the material world, having broken free from their imprisonment in a particular life-form. 

Whether we like it or not, matter is always struggling to escape essence and to abandon vital complexity; always seeking to return to a state of inanimate simplicity. Our bodies have no loyalty to their own organization or substance; they continually decay and race towards catastrophe (we call this ageing). 

But we shouldn't reify death, nor confuse the fact of our own individual death with non-being. At most, death might be seen as a temporary pause or refreshment before the inevitable return to what Nick Land describes as the compulsive dissipation of life. This sounds a bit like mysticism, but science will confirm that organisms are so vigorously recycled at death that every atom we possess will have already been part of many millions of earlier living (and non-living) things. 

Thus, whilst there is no personal survival of death - the self is destroyed and not simply transformed or spirited away from the scene of the crime at the last instance - we do house and reincarnate the atomic souls of the dead. This is why death is always our affair and why, ultimately, Nietzsche was right to say that being alive is simply a very rare and unusual way of being dead. 

I thought this in 2006 and I still think it now: I find it helps as I watch my mother, who is 88, and recently diagnosed with dementia, slip away ...

Spicebomb

Since its launch two years ago, the Viktor and Rolf fragrance for men, Spicebomb, has continued to divide opinion and get up certain people's noses; which is not necessarily a bad thing, as nothing can be as deadly-dull as consensus.

Personally, I like it and continue to wear it, for all its rather unrefined characteristics and despite the bottle design by Fabien Baron which - in an age of terror - is somehow not only inappropriate, but also serves to strengthen the depressing link between virility and warfare, masculinity and violence. 

I'm sick to death of incendiary objects - be they grenades, people, or perfumes - which threaten to explode in my face and I really have no wish to be overpowered by brute force. Having said that, when it comes to scents, I do like a touch of vulgarity and a hint of exotic decadence and perfumer Olivier Polge gives us this with his Spicebomb via a clever combination of elements including top notes of bergamot and grapefruit, heart notes of pink pepper, chilli and saffron, and base notes of tobacco, vetiver, and leather accord.

Indeed, the irony of Spicebomb is that for all the macho packaging and posturing of the advertising campaign, it retains a slightly sickly sweetness and a degree of femininity rather than a hard-edged spiciness and it's these qualities that ultimately seduce.

It's not subtle, but it is surprising. And it is subversive; of its own name, its own bottle, and of the gender stereotypes that it initially seems to reinscribe.  
     

Note: Viktor and Rolf's Spicebomb is available from the usual high street and online stores in 50 and 90 ml sizes. Also available as a shower gel, aftershave balm, and deodorant.    

The Case of Alice Gross

Alice Gross isn't the only teenage girl to go missing in the last month. In fact, she's one of many - although, thankfully, most are found or voluntarily return home after a day or two.

But, perhaps because she lives nearby and I've become familiar with her face staring out from the above poster in a Vermeer-like manner, I can't help feeling a particular interest in her case and a genuine concern for her well-being.   

I also think of her family and friends trapped in a chaos of anxiety provoked by her absence and by the solemn wait for news of her whereabouts; fearing the worst, but hoping for the best and shifting between these poles of delirium without any sense of reality or time.

It's pointless to try and busy oneself with daily activities in such a situation. For as Barthes says, there is an entire scenography of waiting in which the one who has been left behind is obliged to constantly replay the loss of the loved object and anticipate what it is to mourn their death.

On the Will to Happiness

Image from the video of young Iranians 

dancing to Happy by Pharrell Williams

A group of young people, arrested in May of this year for making a film of themselves dancing in the streets and on the rooftops of Tehran whilst singing along to the Pharrell Williams huge summer hit, Happy, have been convicted of offending public chastity and encouraging illicit relations.

Six of those involved - including the director of the video, Sassan Soleimani - were sentenced by a court to six months in prison and a public flogging. The seventh participant, Reyhaneh Taravati, received an additional six months jail-time for possessing alcohol and posting the video on YouTube.

The sentences have been suspended for three years, but, really, the arrest, the charges, the trial, and the conviction are all so unnecessary and unjust. Not only was there a predictable international outcry, but even the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, was moved to defend the seven on Twitter where he wrote: 'We shouldn't be too hard on behaviours caused by joy.'

Obviously, I agree with this. But, I'm somewhat troubled by another tweeted remark made by Rouhani to the effect that happiness is a human right. This worries me, as it seems to feed into the universal cult of what Pascal Bruckner terms perpetual euphoria and by which he refers to a situation in which happiness is no longer just a pleasant but transient emotion that often arrives unbidden, but an ideal state that one is required to seek out and experience as a kind of duty. 

Thanks to the californication of the world, we're obliged to wear a happy smiling face all day, every day and to clap along with modern pop hymns - such as the one written by Pharrell Williams - which encourage us to believe that happiness is a form of truth to which we must devote (and possibly even sacrifice) ourselves; that there ain't nothing gonna bring us down baby!

So, whilst I don't like restrictions on freedom of expression - and certainly don't wish to be thought of as a puritanical opponent of music, dance, and laughter -  I do think we would all be better off if we accepted that there's more to life than happiness. 

Indeed, even sorrow and suffering must surely be accepted and affirmed, if our lives are to be as rich, varied, and fulfilling as human lives have the potential to be. 

Calimocho: On the Politics of Wine and Cola

 Andy Warhol: Coca-Cola (3), 1962

Probably the most powerful argument for choosing a cool can of Coke over a fine glass of wine remains that made by Andy Warhol and it's primarily a cultural-political argument tied to American consumerism, rather than one concerning taste (in either sense of the word) or sobriety:

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."   

- The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, (Harcourt, 1975)

This is undeniably true and one senses something of this same patriotism and ironic egalitarianism of the market place - one might almost call it Coca-Cola communism - born of a New World dislike for Old World snobbery, in George Costanza's equally robust defence of Pepsi.

Reminded by Elaine that it's customary for guests to bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party, George informs her that he doesn't even drink wine - he drinks Pepsi. When Elaine scornfully tells him that he can't bring Pepsi to a gathering of grown-ups, George snorts: "You telling me that wine is better than Pepsi? Huh, no way wine is better than Pepsi."

Even Jerry's attempt to intervene by telling his outraged friend that the fabric of society is very complex and that one has to conform to all manner of customs and conventions, fails to placate George on this point. Later, in the car driving to the party, George asks: "What are we Europeans with the Beaujolais and the Chardonnay ...?" 

Still, none of this serves to explain Jeremy's discomfort at ordering a bottle of Barolo when on a date in an episode of Peep Show. He's obviously put off by the price (£45), but does he really think that wine is less delicious than hot chocolate or Coke? If so, this simply makes him juvenile rather than American does it not?    

Notes:

See Seinfeld, 'The Dinner Party', episode 13, season 5 (1994) and Peep Show, 'Burgling', episode 1, series 5 (2008). 

The Handmaid's Tale

Cover to first hardback edition
(McCelland and Stewart, 1985)

I read The Handmaid's Tale full of high hopes and great expectations, aware of the critical status of this novel and sympathetic to any literary attempt to warn against authoritarian states - particularly ones underpinned by religious fundamentalism. But, I have to say, I found it disappointing.

Atwood rather cleverly combines some of the queer gothic elements of The Scarlet Letter with those twentieth century classics of dystopian fiction Brave New World and 1984. But whereas the latter, for example, challenges us to imagine a future in which a boot stamps on a human face forever, The Handmaid's Tale asks us to believe in a time when power nakedly manifests itself over an illicit game of Scrabble.

This might be making a point about the often banal and domestic character of evil, but, I must confess, I found it ludicrous. And, unfortunately, there were other things which served only to undermine the seriousness and the horror of the story. One should wince at the publicly displayed bodies of executed prisoners, but not at the clunkiness of dialogue exchanged between characters - even when spoken in the Latin that both Luke and the Commander for some peculiar reason had a penchant for.

I also think we could have done without the puns and without Nick, the chauffeur-lover, playing an almost Lawrentian role in the book. As for the 'Historical Notes' which Atwood attaches as an afterword, these too only serve to weaken the power of the novel which ends with an otherwise very memorable and moving last line: "And so I step, into the darkness within; or else the light."

Again, Atwood might be trying to make a (feminist) point about the manner in which an authentic female voice speaking its own experiences and memories is eventually transcribed, edited, and absorbed into an academic world (i.e. a system of power and privilege) still controlled by pricks such as Professor Pieixoto. But I agree entirely with Joyce Carol Oates who comments on the deflating effect of this heavily ironic coda:

"The appendix makes of the novel an astute, provocative social commentary, where its absence would have made the novel an abiding work of art ending with Offred's hopeful voice ..."     

Sometimes, as a writer, you just gotta know when to shut-up. And, ultimately, literature's not about scoring easy points or making lame jokes.  


Note: Joyce Carol Oates was writing in a piece entitled 'Margaret Atwood's Tale', in The New York Review of Books (Nov 2, 2006). Those interested in reading her article in full should click here.

From the Barbary Wars to the War on Terror

Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat (1804), by Dennis Malone Carter  Source: Naval Historical Center, Dept. of the Navy, Washington Many people seem to believe that the violent struggle between America and the Islamic world began on that fateful day in September, 2001. But, as a matter of fact, there's a crucial historical context to the present conflict which predates 9/11.

Indeed, whilst some commentators argue that the US inadvertently helped to create IS due to its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, it's actually more accurate to say that the Arab-Muslim world has determined (and provoked) US armed foreign policy from the very beginning. To understand why this is so, it's necessary to look back to the time of the so-called Barbary Wars at the beginning of the 19th century ...  Deprived of Royal Navy protection following victory in the War of Independence, American merchant shipping became increasingly vulnerable to the attentions of those powers and pirates who controlled the seas along the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Not only were cargoes looted, but crews and passengers were kidnapped and either held for ransom, or sold into slavery. Thus, as early as the 1780s, America was obliged either to take military action, or submit to Arab aggression and the payment of ever-increasing sums of protection money, or 'tribute' as it was known.  Rightly, I believe, under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the US decided it had to fight. For not only is it mistaken and shameful to give into extortion, but there were also terrible reports at the time concerning the mistreatment of captured American citizens. And so a fleet was constructed and a new, permanent force of marines assembled.  Of course, Jefferson was primarily keen to secure American access to free trade routes and was not particularly interested in fighting a holy war or crusade against the Muslim states per se. However, as Christopher Hitchens points out, he must surely have remembered what he was told in 1785 when he and John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador to London, Abd Al-Rahman: demanding to know by what right the Barbary states behaved as they did towards a newly born secular republic which had no quarrel with the Arab-Muslim world, they were informed that God gave them this authority and that it was written in the Quran that they were free to enslave or murder infidels.           Faced with such religious mania and intransigence, conflict was unavoidable. And so, between 1801 and 1805, was fought the first Barbary War. This was followed by a second skirmish over the same issues, directed by James Madison, in 1815. American victory not only meant the US no longer had to pay a percentage of its GNP to rogue states, it also helped bring about an end to piracy in the region which obviously benefited many other nations, including the UK. We should be grateful, therefore, for the courage of US marines on the shores of Tripoli two centuries ago. And we should be grateful that America is still prepared to step up when needs be and send its servicemen and women into battle.

Put on a Little Makeup ...

One of the things that I find a joy to watch is a young woman putting on her makeup in the morning whilst on the tube and, presumably, on her way to work; particularly when she does so with real concern and concentration and completely oblivious to the presence of her fellow passengers. 

For me, there's always something moving and magical about seeing a woman perform an otherwise private function in public; creating a little space and time for herself and about herself in a busy world with nothing more than foundation, blusher, mascara, and lipstick.

One invariably thinks of what Baudelaire wrote on the female use of cosmetics:

"Woman is quite within her rights, indeed she is even accompanying a kind of duty, when she devotes herself to appearing magical and supernatural; she has to astonish and charm us; as an idol, she is obliged to adorn herself in order to be adored. It matters but little that the artifice and trickery are known to all, so long as their success is assured and their effect always irresistible."

                                                                                                                   
- Charles Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life', in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne, (Phaidon Press Ltd., 1995), p. 33. 

Happy to Live in a Soulless World

 Cover art for Jean Baudrillard's Carnival and Cannibal 

(Seagull Books, 2010)

According to Roger Sandall, Disneyfication is the fourth and final stage of what he terms designer tribalism; the way in which a primitive, often savage but nonetheless authentic culture is finally reduced to the level of puerility within the Romantic imagination.

I have no arguments with this, but what Sandall doesn't seem to recognise is that the West has ruthlessly subjected its own culture and history to a similar process - something that Baudrillard was at pains to point out in a late essay entitled Carnival and Cannibal. 

Thus, whilst it's true that the West has obliged non-Western peoples the world over to accept modernity and wear a smiley white face, so too do we figure in this grotesque masquerade, effectively having carnivalized and cannibalized ourselves long before exporting such practices globally. 

The fact is, modernity spares no one: it's a great collective spectacle and swindle wherein "multiracial civilization is merely a trompe-l'oeil universe in which all particularities of race, sex and culture can be said to have been falsified to the point of being parodies of themselves". 

In other words, Western civilization has not triumphed - or, if it has, it has triumphed at the cost of its own soul. Still, this may not be a bad thing ... a soulless future and a disenchanted world may yet be the most beautiful (in its indifference, its irony, and its seductive emptiness). 

And if you think you might prefer to live instead in a world of fundamental values and absolute certainty, of sincerity and sovereignty, authenticity and enthusiasm, then I suggest you pledge allegiance to the Islamic State.

Notes

Roger Sandall writes about Disneyfication and the other three stages of Noble Savagery in an Appendix to The Culture Cult, (Westview Press, 2001), pp. 179-81.

Baudrillard's essay, Carnival and Cannibal, is translated by Chris Turner, (Seagull Books, 2010). The line quoted from is on p. 9.  

These are a Few of My Favourite Things: Sitcoms

Image via http://www.middlechildmade.com/shop/i-love-sitcoms/

I have spoken elsewhere on the political and philosophical importance of lists, but we should not overlook the pleasure aspect: quite simply, lists make happy; they are fun to write and fun to read.

So, here's a list of my thirteen favourite sitcoms - assembled not in order of preference nor following a critical assessment of humourous value, but alphabetically by series title. For compiling lists should not be simply another excuse to exercise judgement and construct hierarchies. I love all of these shows, not equally, but in any order that one might care to watch them and the only logic that links them is the fact that they have continually given joy (perhaps more joy than anything else).

I am not of the view that comedy serves some kind of radical function; I certainly don't think we can simply laugh all our worries or problems away. But I do think it's a higher form than tragedy.

Note that I have decided to exclude any animated shows - otherwise The Simpsons would certainly be on this list. 

Bilko (The Phil Silvers Show)

Cheers

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Hancock's Half-Hour

Extras
Father Ted
I'm Alan Partridge

Man About the House

Peep Show

Rhoda

Rising Damp

Seinfeld

Thirty Rock