Hypertrichosis: Notes on the Cases of Fedor Jeftichew and Petrus Gonsalvus

Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy and Petrus Gonsalvus

 

 

I.

 

Reading about the life of St. Christopher - the dog-headed bearer of Christ - made me wonder what had happened to Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy; for despite having secured his place within the cultural imagination, it's ages since I last heard reference to him ... 

 

Fedor Jeftichew, better known by his professional name of Jo-Jo, was born in St. Petersburg in 1868, and was already a famous Russian sideshow performer before he was taken to the United States in 1884 by P. T. Barnum. 

 

Jo-Jo, like his father before him, suffered from hypertrichosis - a medical condition that results in an abnormal amount of hairgrowth either all over the body, or in localised areas. Although often a congenital condition, it can also be acquired later in life (so keep the clippers handy, 'cos you never know). 

 

Whilst, obviously, it can have negative consequences for the person afflicted, hypertrichosis does at least open up a career in showbiz; provided one is willing to accept being labelled a freak, like Jo-Jo, who was happy to tour extensively with the circus and play up to public expectations by barking and growling like a dog. (In reality, Jeftichew was a well-read individual who spoke several languages.)  

 

Sadly, Jo-Jo died from pneumonia, aged 36, in January 1904, whilst on tour in Greece. 

 

 

II.

 

Of course, not everyone born with a rare medical condition wishes to be considered a freak and accept life as a sideshow attraction. And the case of Petrus Gonsalvus (1537-1618) - aka the wild man of the woods - provides us with an example of someone who, despite their hypertrichosis, forged a highly successful (and relatively normal) life, even if never considered fully human by many of his contemporaries. 

 

For not only did Gonsalvus serve as a popular royal courtier in France (where he was raised from childhood by King Henry II and educated in the ways of a gentleman) and Italy (where he eventually settled), but he was also a happily married family man (despite four of his seven children being born on the excessively hairy side and thus subject to extensive medical inquiry and artistic interest). 

 

It is thought by some commentators that the story of Gonsalvus and his young French wife, Lady Catherine, may have partially inspired the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. Whilst I'm not convinced of this, what I can believe is that the Church refused to give Gonsalvus a decent Christian burial on the grounds that he was part-animal (just something else for Jesus and the angels to weep about).       

St. Christopher: the Dog-Headed Saint

Ágios Christóforos

Kynokephalos

Until I read the 'Sinister Writings of Abel Tiffauges' [1], I had no idea that St. Christopher - the Christ-bearer - was widely believed in Byzantium to belong to the savage race of dog-headed people known as the cynocephali ... 

 

Obviously, the Orthodox Church didn't like to acknowledge this and disapproved of depictions of the saint that showed him as semi-human; it was only from the 17th-century on that artists began to paint Christopher in his full therianthropic glory (though these images were prescribed in 18th-century Russia during the reign of Peter the Great).        

 

The ancient Greeks, of course, were long familiar with canine-headed Egyptian dieties, such as Duamutef (son of Horus) and Anubis (ruler of all things associated with death) and believed that there was a race of dog-headed people living in the mountains of India who wore the skins of animals and communicated by barking.     

The cynocephali afford such a marvellous combination of magic and animality, that they have become archetypal figures within the human imagination, as we can see, for example, in medieval art and literature. Early Christian scholars wrestled with the question of their origin; how could they be descendants of Adam? And, if they weren't descendants of Adam, then how could they be considered human?     

It really is a fascinating topic; one which certainly makes me more interested in the life of St. Christopher, who was not only canine of feature, but described by some as a giant. I do wish he'd dropped the accursed Christ-child in the river, however, and left him there to drown. For if he had, then perhaps the latter's moral legacy would not continue to weigh so heavily upon us all ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Part I of Michel Tournier's brilliant novel The Erl-King, trans. Barbara Bray, (Atlantic Books, 2014). See pp. 35-37. The account given here of the life of St. Christopher is adapted from Jacapo da Varazze's Golden Legend - a collection of hagiographies originally compiled c. 1259-66 and widely read in late-Medieval Europe.      

Tu vuò fà l'americano

Sophia Loren in 

It Started in Naples (1960)

 

 

I. 

 

Even if I wasn't familiar with Elaine's low opinion of it, I can't imagine ever sitting down and watching The English Patient (1996). Like Miss Benes, given the choice, I'd opt for the (sure-to-be) hilarious comedy Sack Lunch every time [1].

Similarly, until last night I had scrupulously avoided another film written and directed by Anthony Minghella; The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) - an all-star psychological thriller based on Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel of the same title. To my surprise, however - and despite the presence of Jude Law (for whom I have an entirely groundless dislike) - I quite enjoyed it. 

 

I mean, it's not great - and was certainly overrated by the critics at the time (much like The English Patient, I suspect) - but it has some nice scenes and performances, not to mention Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood looking lovely in a 1950s-style wardrobe, including an azure blue nautical print two-piece swimsuit.   

 

I think my favourite scene, however, is in the small jazz club that Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) takes Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) to visit and where they (somewhat ironically) sing what is, without doubt, one of the catchiest songs of all time - Tu vuò fà l'americano - accompanied by Fiorello, the multi-talented Italian performer, in the role of Fausto: Nice! [2]

 

 

II. 

 

Written by Renato Carosone, in collaboration with lyricist Nicola Salerno, and combining elements of swing and jazz, Tu vuò fà l'americano quickly became one of his best-known (and most-loved) compositions - even amongst those of us who don't speak a word of Neapolitan. 

 

The song tells the tale of an Italian who affects an American lifestyle; drinking whisky and soda, dancing to rock 'n' roll, playing baseball, etc. - even though he still depends on his parents for money.

 

Carosone performed the song in the film Totò, Peppino e le fanatiche, (1958), but, of course, moviegoers in the English-speaking world are more likely to be familiar with it from It Started in Naples (1960), where it is performed with real gusto by Sophia Loren as the caberet singer Lucia Curcio: no wonder that old dog Clark Gable still had a sparkle in his eye! [3]    

Notes

[1] See Seinfeld, 'The English Patient' [S8/E17], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by Steve Koren,  (March 13, 1997). The quality of this clip on YouTube is pretty poor, but, if interested, click here. 

 

[2] To watch this scene from The Talented Mr. Ripley (dir. Anthony Minghella, 1999), click here. 

[3] To watch this scene from It Started in Naples (dir. Melville Shavelson, 1960), click here.   

 

 

On the Sex Life of the Incredible Shrinking Man 3: Agalmatophilia

You're looking swell, Dolly ... 

 

 

I. Hello, Dolly!

 

One of my favourite - because one of the most touching - scenes in Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man [a], is in chapter fourteen, when Scott Carey moves into the doll's house and briefly strikes up a relationship with a toy woman even smaller in size than Clarice, the sideshow dwarf with whom he has an equally brief, but arguably more intense and meaningful affair - if we consider the latter in amorously conventional and all too human terms - earlier in the novel.

Readers of this blog - or those familiar with my work beyond the confines of Torpedo the Ark - will know that I have written fairly extensively on the subject of agalmatophilia; i.e., the sexual attraction to statues, dolls, mannequins, or other similar figurative objects (what some aficianados refer to as the Pygmalion syndrome). 

 

As erotic fantasy practices go, this one - with its roots in Classical mythology - seems fairly harmless and rather charming. I can't think of any legitimate grounds upon which one might base a serious objection to the love of an artificial being. Those who protest that a doll, for example, isn't a living, breathing actual woman are not wrong - but they've missed the point. The idea that there is an authentic or more natural form of love - one rooted in truth and tied exclusively to personhood or human being - is something that we should always interrogate. 

 

Anyway, let's now take a look at Scott Carey's life in the dollhouse - we can return to this discussion afterwards ...

 

 

II. Chapter Fourteen

 

One day, when Scott has shrunk to under a foot in size, his wife Louise comes home with a large and luxurious doll's house, thinking that he might like to move in - for safety and convenience - away from the cat, who might decide to eat him, and away from Beth, his young daughter, who might accidently step on him. 

 

"He walked over to it  and went up on the porch. It gave him an odd feeling to stand there, his hand on the tiny wrought-iron railing; the feeling he'd had the night he'd stood on the steps of Clarice's trailer. 

      Pushing open the front door, he went into the house and closed the door behind him. He was standing in the large living room. Except for fluffy white curtains, it was unfurnished. There was a fireplace of false bricks, hardwood floors and a window seat, candle brackets. It was an attractive room, except for one thing: One of its walls was missing." [163-64]

 

Once it's fully furnished, it's a real palace; fit for a king! Well, sort of ... In truth, "doll furniture was not designed for comfort" [164] and life in the doll's house was basically a charade, without plumbing or electric fittings:

 

"He might have felt inclined to fiddle on the keyboard of the glossy grand piano, but the keys were painted on and the insides were hollow. He might wander into the kitchen and yank at the refrigerator door in search of a snack, but the refrigerator was all in one piece. The knobs on the stove moved, but that was all. It would take eternity to heat a pot of water on it. He could twist the tiny sink faucets until his hands fell off, but not the smallest drop of water would ever appear. He could put clothes in the little washer, but they would remain dirty and dry. He could put wood scraps in the fireplace, but if he lit them, he'd only smoke himself out of the house because there was no chimney." [164-65]

 

That doesn't sound great, but at least Lou had pushed the house up against the wall "so he could have the privacy as well as the protection of four walls" [164] and one day daughter Beth kindly left him a doll for company: 

 

"She'd put it on his porch and left it there. He'd ignored it all day; but now, on an impulse, he went downstairs and got the doll, which was sitting on the top step in a blue sun suit. 

      'Cold?' he asked her as he picked her up. She had nothing to say. 

      He carried her upstairs and put her down on the bed. Her eyes fell shut. 

      'No, don't go to sleep,' he said. He sat her up by bending her at the joining of her body and her long, hard, inflexible legs. 'There,' he said. She sat looking at him with stark, jewel-like eyes that never blinked. 

      'That's a nice sun suit,' he said. He reached out and brushed back her flaxen hair. 'Who does your hair?' he asked. She sat there stiffly, legs spread apart, arms half raised, as though she contemplated a possible embrace. 

      He poked her in her hard little chest. Her halter fell off. 'What do you wear a halter for? he asked, justifiably. She stared at him glassily, withdrawn. 'Your eyelashes are celluloid,' he said tactlessly. 'You have no ears,' he said. She stared. 'You're flat chested,' he told her. 

      Then he apologized to her for being so rude, and he followed that by telling her the story of his life. She sat patiently in the half-lit bedroom, staring at him with blue, crystalline eyes that did not blink and a little red cupid's bow mouth that stayed perpetually half-puckered, as if anticipating a kiss that never came. 

      Later on, he laid her down on the bed and stretched out beside her. She was asleep instantly. He turned her on her side and her blue eyes clicked open and stared at him. He turned her on her back again and they clicked shut. 

      'Go to sleep,' he said. He put his arm around her and snuggled close to her cool plaster leg. Her hip stuck into him. He turned her on her other side, so she was looking away from him. Then he pressed close to her and slipped his arm around her body. 

      In the middle of the night, he woke up with a start and stared dazedly at the smooth, naked back beside him, the yellow hair tied with a red ribbon. His heartbeats thundered. 

      'Who are you?' he whispered. 

      Then he touched her hard, cool flesh and remembered. A sob broke in his chest. 'Why aren't you real?' he asked her, but she wouldn't tell him. He pressed his face into her soft flaxen hair and held her tight, and after a while he went to sleep again." [165-66] 

 

 

III.  Analysis / Commentary

 

I have to say, the ending of this scene disappoints: Scott's desperate desire for a real woman with ears and large breasts, rather than an earless, flat-chested doll tells us that his major concern is reciprocation; i.e., more than wanting something to love, he wants someone to return his affection and whisper the words I love you into his shell-like.

 

Although he does eventually snuggle up to her in the bed and press her body close to his, one suspects that Scott, like D. H. Lawrence, finds a doll's nudity uninteresting and cut off from erotic allure [b]. One wonders if his (albeit mild) pediophobia is symptomatic of a much wider philosohical contempt for objects as things that are external to us and to human access. 

 

For me, it would have been interesting if Matheson had developed the relationship with the nameless doll towards a wonderfully perverse object-oriented materialism; allowing Scott to learn to love the doll as a doll and not merely as a substitute woman. Rae Langton and other Kantian-inspired humanists might dismiss such love as sexual solipsism [c] and think it morally problematic, but I don't.     

 

And even if loving a doll is solipsistic, mightn't that be a more fulfilling or, at the very least, happier experience than an authentic relationship with a human being? 

 

Langton would give a categorical No! in reply to this question and insist that human beings deserve to be treated in a manner that is essentially different to how we might treat objects, including life-like sex dolls and intelligent machines. Why? Because, she asserts, people can experience pain and this creates a unique obligation to treat them with a level of care.

 

This is, I suppose, true at a certain banal level. But as Nietzsche pointed out, pain is not an argument  [d] and recognising that others exist and experience pain doesn't necessarily make us love them; it might, indeed, serve as an enticement to sadism. Ultimately, Langton simply can't bring herself to admit that some men - extremely small in number - prefer to love dolls and that there's nothing reactive, immoral, or even solipsistic about this.

 

But, as we saw, Scott Carey is not one such man; he'd still rather hold a flesh and blood lover in his arms than a plastic doll. Which is fair enough - that's his preference. But I still maintain that an artificial lover (or an animal companion) can allow us to unlock the prison of the self (as Langton puts it) and nourish our virtues, etc. Either that, or perhaps Proust is right to scorn the idea that love - whatever form it takes - magically allows for communication and an escape from the self [e]. 

 

  

Notes

 

[a] Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man, (Gold Medal Books, 1956). The edition I'm using here was first published by Gollancz, in 2014, in their SF Masterworks series and page numbers refer to this text. 

[b] See D. H. Lawrence's essay '...... Love Was Once a Little Boy', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 329-346. According to Lawrence: "In or out of her chemise, however, doesn't make much of a difference to the modern woman. She's a finished-off ego, an assertive conscious entity, cut off like a doll from any mystery. And her nudity is about as interesting as a doll's." [346] 

[c] See Rae Langton, Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification, (Oxford University Press, 2009). 

[d] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book IV, 318. 

 

[e] For Proust, we are always and forever isolate and courage exists not in pretending to care and share, but in daring to admit that those who choose to kiss people instead of dolls are no less alone. Reciprocity is an illusion and the objects of our affection, whatever their ontological status, simply allow for the projection of our own ideas, fantasies and feelings. In other words, love is an experience that, like all other experiences, comes from within. It might require some external object, but it hasn’t the slightest connection with it. Thus, we don't need someone to help us realise ourselves, merely something to provide us with sensation, whatever size we are and however we identify sexually.

 

 

To read part one of this post on The Shrinking Man and pictophilia, click here. 

To read part two of this post on The Shrinking Man and paedophilia, click here. 

On the Sex Life of the Incredible Shrinking Man 2: Paedophilia

 The Incredible Shrinking Man 10: The Babysitter (2012)

By DrCreep on deviantart.com 

I. Size Matters

 

Predators come in all shapes and sizes: from deadly spiders lurking in the basement, to opportunistic paedophiles searching for young flesh ... And so to the case of Scott Carey once more, protagonist of Richard Matheson's disturbing 1956 novel The Shrinking Man [1] ...

The critical consensus seems to be that the novel is primarily concerned with issues surrounding masculinity in white middle-class suburban America in the early Atomic Age. I'm quite happy to accept that reading as, clearly, Scott is anxious about his status as a man in society - as a husband and father, for example - once he begins to radically shrink in size:

 

"He thought of them [...] the woman and the little girl. His wife and daughter. Were they still that to him? Or had the element of size removed him from their sphere? Could he still be considered a part of their world when he was the size of a bug to them, when even Beth could crush him underfoot and never know it?" [Ch. 2]  

 

Even when he's only slightly smaller, he feels belittled, emasculated, and infantalised. Scott realised that whilst poets and philosophers "could talk all they wanted about a man's being more than fleshly form, about his essential worth, about the immeasurable stature of his soul" this was nonsense - as they'd soon discover if they ever tried to "hold a woman with arms that couldn't reach around her" or stand up to another man and find themselves staring at his belt buckle. [Ch. 5]

 

One day, having showered and shaved, his wife comments on how clean and smooth he looks: "Was it just ego-flattened imagination, or was she actually talking to him as if he were a boy?" [Ch. 5]  

 

It's precisely this boyishness that lands Scott in a potentially sticky situation later in the book, in a controversial scene (not included in the film adaptation) involving a paedophile with whom he accepts a ride, unconcered about stranger danger when, in his mind, he's still an adult male. 

 

 

II. Chapter Seven

 

Driving home one day, Scott has a blowout and is forced to trudge along the roadside in his little-boy clothes. After a while, a car cruises passes and pulls up. Then a queer figure sticks his head out of the open door and asks: "'You alone, my boy?'" Somewhat reluctanty, Scott naively decides to ask for a lift from the cigar-smoking stranger: "Maybe it was all right; the man thought he was a boy."

The stranger eagerly agrees - "'Certainly, my boy, certainly'" - and Scott decides to keep up the pretence of being a child. Jumping in to the passenger seat, he finds himself sitting on the stranger's hand which has been accidently on purpose left there. "The man drew it away, held it before his eyes. 'You have injured the member, my boy,' he said, and chuckled."

 

Obviously, Scott should have realised there and then that the man with bushy eyebrows over darkly glittering eyes and a thick-lipped mouth was a nonce, and quickly got out of the car whilst he still had the chance. But he didn't. Instead, he just smiled nervously as the stale smelling vehicle pulled away. He noticed the man was drunk and rather wished he was as well (I suppose if you're about to be touched up or sodomised, then alcohol always helps). 

 

The stranger tells him of a lost love, Vincent; lost to matrimony and the accursed female sex. Scott is bored. And tired. He longs for his bed and to forget who he is and what's happening to him. The stranger peers at Scott, ironically sizing him up, and trying to guess his age. He plumps for twelve: "An age of pristine possibility [... and] untrammelled hope", and clamps a fat hand on Scott's leg, giving it a little squeeze. 

 

Then, looking directy at him, he asks Scott if likes girls: 

 

"The question caught Scott off guard. He hadn't really been paying attention to the drift of the man's monologue. He looked over at the man. Suddenly the man seemed bigger; as if, with the questions, he had gained measurable bulk." 

 

For the first time, Scott starts to feel a little nervous. His heartbeat quickened as he felt the heat of the man's heavy hand on his leg once more. The stranger offers an invitation back to his place for ice cream, cake, and "a bit of bawdy badinage". The hand now gripped with a certain menace and Scott orders him to remove it: "The man looked startled at the adult anger in Scott's voice, the lowering of pitch, the authority." 

 

Scott repeatedly asks the stranger to stop the car and let him out. Frustrated, the man suddenly drops his lame attempts to be witty and charming and resorts to violence to get his way, smashing his hand hard aganist the side of Scott's head, forcing the latter to realise with a burst of panic, just how vulnerable he was.   

  

Matheson concludes this disturbing scene thusly:

 

"'Dear boy, I apologize [...] Did I hurt you?' 

      'I live down the next road,' Scott said tensely. 'Stop here, please.' The man plucked out his cigar and threw it on the floor. 

      'I offend you, boy,' he said, sounding as if he were about to cry. 'I offend you with distasteful words. Please. Please. Look behind the words, behind the peeling mask of jollity. For there is utter sadness, there is utter loneliness. Can you understand that, dear boy? Can you, in your tender years, know my - ' 

      'Mister, I want to get out,' Scott said. His voice was that of a boy, half angry, half frightened. And the horror of it was that he wasn't sure if there was more of acting or of actuality in his voice. Abruptly the man pulled over to the side of the highway. 

      'Leave me, leave me, then,' he said bitterly. 'You're no different from the rest, no, not at all.' Scott shoved open the door with trembling hands. 

      'Good night, sweet prince,' said the heavy man, fumbling for Scott's hand. 'Good night and dreams of plenteous goodness bless thy repose.' A wheezy hiccup jarred his curtain speech. 'I go on, empty, empty ... empty. Will you kiss me once? For good-bye, for - ' 

      But Scott was already out of the car and running, headlong toward the service station they had just passed. The man turned his heavy head and watched youth racing away from him."

 

 

III. Chapter Eleven (Part 1)

 

Despite this experience, it doesn't stop Scott from later perving on Catherine, the teenager hired by his wife, Louise, to look after their daughter, Beth, whilst she's out at work at the local grocery store; he being incapable of so-doing - "barely reaching the height of Beth's chest" - and, moreover, unwilling to try.

 

At first, he hears only the babysitter's voice, but that's enough to trigger a detailed fantasy of what she might look like as he sits in his cellar hideaway:

 

"He listened to the rise and fall of Catherine's voice, wondering what she was saying and what she looked like. Bemused, he put the indistinct voice to distinct form. She was five feet six, slim waisted and long-legged, with young, up tilted breasts nudging out her blouse. Fresh young face, reddish-blonde hair, white teeth. [...] He sighed and stirred uncomfortably on the chair. The girl stretched to the urging of his fancy, and her breasts, like firm-skinned oranges, forced out their silken sheathing." 

 

He tries to dismiss the image from his mind, but the girl "had half taken off her blouse before he shut the curtain on her forcibly imposed indelicacy" and the bubbling of desire continued no matter what he did to contain or deny it. And so, when the opportunity arises to sneak-a-peek at Catherine in the yard he takes it, peering through a cobwebbed window. Her actual appearance is rather different from his fantasy of her:

 

"Five feet six had become five feet three. The slim waist and legs had become chunky muscle and fat; the young, up-tilted breasts had vanished in the loose folds of a long-sleeved sweat shirt. The fresh young face lurked behind grossness and blemishes, the reddish-blonde hair had been dyed to a lackluster chestnut. [...] The colour of her eyes he couldn't see. 

      He watched Catherine move around the yard, her broad buttocks cased in faded dungarees, her bare feet stuck in loafers."

 

Still, that doesn't stop him wondering how old she is - just as the paedo in chapter seven had wondered how old he was; one wonders if the concern is whether the object of one's desire is under or over the age of consent? Later, he gazes at her as she plays catch with his daughter wearing a pale blue two-piece swimsuit, admiring the round swell of her breasts. 

 

Matheson writes:

 

"Scott crouched on top of the boxes, watching Catherine as she caught the red ball and threw it back to Beth. It wasn't until he'd been there five minutes that he realized he was rigidly tensed, waiting for Catherine to drop the ball and bend over to pick it up. When he realized that, he slid off the boxes with a disturbed clumsiness and went back to the chair. 

      He sat there breathing harshly, trying not to think about it. What in God's name was happening to him? The girl was fourteen, maybe fifteen, short and chubby, and yet he'd been staring at her almost hungrily." 

 

As George Costanza might ask: Is that wrong? Should he not have done that? But what is a man supposed to do when shrinking inch-by-inch and spending most of the day in a cellar worried about a spider? And besides, even if she was only fifteen, "she was an awfully advanced fifteen" ... 

 

Returning to the window so that he may further admire her body in fetishistic detail, Scott is tempted to shout out: "'Come down, down here, pretty girl!'" Resisting the urge to do so, he continues lusting after her in secret, sick vicariousness:

 

"She'd loosened her halter while she'd been lying in the sun, and it hung down almost off her breasts as she leaned over. Even in the dim light, he could see the distinct line of demarcation where tanned flesh became milk-white. No, he heard someone begging in his mind. No, get back. She'll see you. Catherine leaned over a little more, reaching for a ball, and the halter slipped. 'Oops,' said Catherine, putting things to order. Scott's head fell back against the wall. It was damply cool in there, but wings of heat were buffeting his cheeks [...] He stood there feeling as if every joint and muscle were swollen and hot. 'I can't,' he muttered, shaking his head slowly. 'I can't. I can't.' He didn't know what he meant exactly, but he knew it was something important. 

      'How old's that girl?' he asked [his wife] that evening, not even glancing up from his book, as though the question had just, idly and unimportantly, occurred to him. 

      'Sixteen, I think,' Lou answered. 

      'Oh,' he said, as if he had already forgotten why he asked. Sixteen. Age of pristine possibility. Where had he heard that phrase?" 

 

Does this mean that victims of sexual assault or abuse are themselves likely to commit such? Or does it show that no one is innocent and that, given the chance, we are all capable of perverse acts, or, at the very least, thinking obscene thoughts? I don't know. What it does demonstrate for certain is that the novel is a far more troubling proposition than the film. 

  

IV. Chapter Eleven (Part 2)

 

For those who might be worried, Scott never does attempt to actually assault Catherine, even if he obsessively continues his open-mouthed voyeurism - one day peeping on her, for example, as she comes out of the shower holding a yellow bath towel in front of her naked body:

 

"His gaze moved slowly down the smooth concavity of her back, the indentation of her spine a thin shadow that ran down and was lost between the muscular half-moons of her white buttocks. He couldn't take his eyes from her. His hands shook at his sides." 

 

Conviently for him, Catherine drops the towel: 

 

"She put her hands behind her head and drank in a heavy breath. Scott saw her left breast swing up and stand out tautly, the nipple like a dark spear point. Her arms moved out. She stretched and writhed. When she turned he was still in the same tense, muscle quivering pose. [...] He saw her bend over and pick up the towel, her breasts hanging down, white and heavy. She stood up and walked out of the room. He sank down on his heels and had to clutch at the railing to keep his legs from going limp beneath him."

 

Soon, it is almost impossible for him to think of anything else but the girl; he might be able to read a book for an hour or two, "but ultimately the vision of Catherine would flit across his mind" and he would have to go spy on her, jerk off, or down a bottle of whisky: "Life had become one unending morbid adventure." Even sleep brought him no respite, turgid as it was with dreams of Catherine "in which she grew progressively more alluring". 

 

Still, all things - good, bad, or indecent - come to an end sooner or later ... And in this case the end came with shocking suddenness, when Catherine became aware of him spying on her as she did the ironing in a state of semi-undress. Scared stiff at having given himself away, Scott runs back to hide in the cellar. He felt sick at the thought of what his wife would say when she found out. 

 

It seems, then, that not only intelligence but also guilt exists on an infinite scale or continuum; that just because a man shrinks in size - even if it be to a molecular level where he becomes-imperceptible - he can still feel ashamed ... 

   

 

Notes

 

[1] Again, as in the first post in this series [click here], it's important to note that I'm discussing the book and not the film based on the book, The Incredible Shrinking Man (dir. Jack Arnold, 1957), which, brilliant as it was, mostly ignored the sexually troubling aspects of the novel, including the paedophilia, or, technically speaking, one instance of (pseudo or mistaken) hebephilia in which Scott Carey is the victim, and one case of voyeuristic ephebophilia in which he is the offender (see chapters seven and eleven respectively, as discussed in the post). I'm aware that some people refuse to make such distinctions and think them clinically irrelevant. It seems to me, however, that there is a significant difference between desiring adolescents and having an erotic fixation with pre-pubescent children. The latter may very well be pathological, but experiencing attraction to a teen who has passed puberty is, from a biological perspective, a perfectly valid form of reproductive behaviour. Of course, that doesn't excuse abuse and readers are reminded that sexual activity with a minor is illegal in all instances.  

 

To read part three of this series - on the Incredible Shrinking Man and agalmatophilia, click here.

 

 

On the Sex Life of the Incredible Shrinking Man 1: Pictophilia

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

 

 

I.

Pictophilia - i.e., a love of images regarded by the viewer as sexually arousing - is surely amongst the most universal and ancient of all paraphilias. Who doesn't enjoy responding to the erotic appeal of such pictures (be they openly pornographic in nature, or works that convey a sense of beauty with a greater degree of artistic sutblety); it stimulates us like sunshine on a grey day, as D. H. Lawrence would say [1]. 

 

Indeed, the only people who are genuinely repelled by such images and the natural stirring of sexual feeling are puritans and perverts who have fallen into hatred. And a certain type of feminist who deplores the fetishistic practice of pictophilia on the grounds that it's a form of what Rae Langton terms sexual solipsism and leads to treating real women as less interesting and less desirable than mere representations [2]. 

 

For Langton, and those who share her philosophical position, it is morally wrong to treat people as if they were objects; but it is also illicit to animate objects (including images) and treat them as sexual partners within the world of masturbatory fantasy. For when men begin to rely upon objects and images to gain sexual satisfaction, they invariably begin seeing and treating real women as objects and images.

 

Melinda Vadas takes this line of argument to its logical conclusion. She argues that if something can be used as a female sex object - even if it's just a photo in a magazine - then for all intents and purposes it is a female sex object and not merely a representation or substitute and that the way it is used (and abused) should therefore concern us. 

 

Probably best, then, that neither of the above read Richard Matheson's astonishing 1956 novel The Shrinking Man, which contains one of literature's finest scenes of pictophilia (with added elements of macrophilia) ...

 

 

II. 

 

Whilst fighting for his survival in the basement - threatened by starvation and a black widow spider - the now tiny figure of Scott Carey comes across an old magazine hidden behind some paint cans: 

 

"On the cover was the photograph of a woman. She was tall, passably beautiful, leaning over a rock, a look of pleasure on her young face. She was wearing a tight red long-sleeved sweater and a pair of clinging black shorts cut just below the hips. He stared at the enormous figure of the woman. She was looking at him, smiling. It was strange, he thought as he sat there, bare feet dangling in space. He hadn't been conscious of sex for a long time. His body had been something to keep alive, no more - something to feed and clothe and keep warm. His existence in the cellar [...] had been devoted to one thing, survival. All subtler gradations of desire had been lost to him. Now he had [...] seen the huge photograph of the woman. 

      His eyes ran lingeringly over the giant contours of her body, the high, swelling arches of her breasts, the gentle hill of her stomach, the long, curving taper of her legs. 

      He couldn't take his eyes off the woman. The sunlight was glinting on her dark auburn hair. He could almost sense the feeling of it, soft and silk like. He could almost feel the perfumed warmth of her flesh, almost feel the curved smoothness of her legs as mentally he ran his hands along them. He could almost feel the gelatinous give of her breasts, the sweet taste of her lips, her breath like warm wine trickling in his throat. 

      He shuddered helplessly [...] "Oh, God," he whispered. "Oh, God, God, God." There were so many hungers." [3] 

 

It seems, then, that not only intelligence but also desire exists on an infinite scale or continuum; that just because a man shrinks in size - even if it be to a molecular level where he becomes-imperceptible - he can still get a hard on.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 239. It should be noted, however, that Lawrence himself still objects to those images he regards as indecent and obscene; images that, in his view, do dirt on human sexuality and insult the body.

[2] Rae Langton. Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification, (Oxford University Press, 2009). 

 

For Langton, the production and consumption of pornographic images is an activity almost exclusively associated with heterosexual males which enables the subordination and silencing of women. She says very little about female produced porn aimed at women, or gay male porn. For an interesting critique of her work, see Andrew M. Koppelman, 'Another Solipsism: Rae Langton on Sexual Fantasy', Washington University Jurisprudence Review, Volume 5 Issue 2 (2013): click here to access as a pdf.  

[3] Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man, (Gold Medal Books, 1956), Ch. 5. 

 

Matheson's novel was adapted for the screen in 1957 as The Incredible Shrinking Man, dir. Jack Arnold, starring Grant Williams as Scott and Randy Stuart as his wife, Louise (as seen in the publicity photo above). The film, whilst a classic work of cinematic sci-fi, ignored many of the pervy aspects of the book which interest me here in this series of posts. 

 

 

For part two of this series (on paedophilia), click here. 

 

And for part three (on agalmatophilia), click here.  

Build Back Better

Zen fascists will control you ...

  

I. 

 

In an episode of The Inbetweeners, an increasingly frustrated Will ends up describing French exchange student Patrice as a 'fucking baguette eating dickhead frog'. When Simon points out the racist nature of the remark, Will replies: 'He's made me racist' [1], which is not merely an amusing but also a thought-provoking idea. 

 

Similarly, one can't help observing that the seemingly irrational actions of governments here and elsewhere in response to Covid-19 - such as massively curtailing freedom and deliberately wrecking the economy - have significantly contributed to public paranoia; that they have, if you like, made conspiracists of us all.       

Thus it is that previously reasonable individuals who once would have laughed at ideas of the Great Reset and the New World Order, are now beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth in them as they (desperately) try to make sense of what's going on. 

 

They want to know why it is, for example, that politicians the world over - across the political spectrum and including Boris Johnson and Joe Biden - have adopted the mantra Build Back Better and promise us a fairer, greener future with electric cars, social justice, and a universal basic income, whilst insisting we all wear masks and live online.   

II.

This holistic - or, if you prefer, totalitarian - concept of Building Back Better was first discussed at the UN in relation to the issue of disaster management and adopted by the General Assembly as an official programme in 2015. The main principle is to regard crises - including pandemics - as opportunities to create more resilient social structures and economic models than before.     

Prior to this, the phrase had been floating around for several years, used not only by politicians, economists, and members of think tanks, but by the sort of people involved in aid agencies and various NGOs who dream of a safer tomorrow for all the world's children - oh, and a global government run by a technocratic liberal elite who know what's best for everyone at all times.   

Today, key personnel at the IMF, WHO, WEF, and EU, seem to have miraculously arrived at some kind of ideological consensus re the need to Build Back Better. 

 

Of course, it's hardly a conspiracy - more like an open secret - when individuals like Klaus Schwab are unashamedly setting out their visions of a post-Covid utopia and declaring: "The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine and reset our world." [2] 

 

They call this the new normal. And they laugh at those who naively believe we'll soon return to the old ways once there's a vaccine ...

 

Notes

[1] See: The Inbetweeners, S2/E3, 'Will's Birthday', dir. Ben Palmer, written by Damon Beesley and Ian Morris, (original air date 16 April 2009).  

[2] Klaus Schwab (Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum), 'Now is the time for a "great reset"',  article on the WEF website (3 June 2020): click here.  

Deleuze and the Philosophy of Slander

La philosophie est une introduction 

à un monde scandaleux

 

 

I. 

 

In his late work, Deleuze famously defines philosophy as the invention of concepts. But in a very early text from 1946, he suggests that philosophy is that which teaches us "to strip things and beings of their pejorative meaning" [276] and thus presumably defend them from defamation.

 

That's interesting: but isn't all meaning pejorative; i.e., doesn't all meaning essentially slander or disparage the object to which it is applied like a thick coat of doxa? We might even ask if, at some level, all language lies (and, if so, should that concern us) ...? 

 

 

II. 

 

Defined as the oral communication of a false statement in order to inflict damage, slander is a scandalous form of bad-mouthing - even hate speech - but it is not quite lying. It is, rather, a method of "designating beyond the facts" [280], albeit with malicious intent. 

 

Statements that have verifiable evidence to support them can still be hurtful, of course. But slander, in its pure form, is completely different and for Deleuze takes on metaphysical grandeur, becoming "a sort of supreme and spiritual insult" which seeks to "determine the essence" [285] of the one it causes to suffer and reveal a possible world unreliant upon accurate description (what we might term today the world of fake news).   

 

See: Gilles Deleuze, 'Words and Profiles', in Letters and Other Texts, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext(e), 2020). Page numbers given in the post refer to this work. 

 

Readers interested in other posts that discuss the youthful writings of Deleuze can click here and here.   

Notes on the Youthful Writings of Gilles Deleuze 2: From Christ to the Bourgeoisie

 A young Deleuze pretending to read for the camera

 

 

I.

 

From Christ to the Bourgeoisie [a] was another very early text by Deleuze, first published in 1946, when he was twenty-one. It's central argument and conclusion is: "The relationship that connects Christianity and the Bourgeisie is not contingent." [275] Which is true, I suppose, though hardly an original insight.

 

Deleuze opens the essay by discussing the decline of spirit in our modern world, which critics and opponents of modernity and materialism often decry: "What they mean is that today, many people no longer believe in internal life, it doesn't pay." [266] 

 

Deleuze continues:

 

"To be sure, there are different reasons why the internal is disdained today. My first thoughts go to the revolutionary consciousness in an industrial and technological world. The greater the power of this technological world, the more it seems to empty people of all internal life like a chicken and reduce them to total exteriority." [266]

My first thought is that this seems rather unfair on chickens, which remain sacred birds within some cultures. One wonders how Deleuze might know anything about their internal life, or lack thereof? For whilst I'm sure this young French philosopher enjoyed many a dish of coq-au-vin, had he ever tried to form a relationship with a living bird? 

 

I'm doubtful: for despite what he might believe, they are intelligent and sensitive creatures, who display some degree of self-awareness (i.e., have a fairly complex inner life) [b].   

 

Personally, I'm with Lawrence on this point: I like to imagine that even a common brown hen is a goddess in her own rights and blossoms into splendid being, just as we do, within the fourth dimension and that we might form a vital (non-anthropocentric) relationship with her [c].     

 

But I digress ... And, to be fair, there's an ambiguity in what Deleuze writes here; he could be saying that chickens too are emptied of internal life (i.e. have their being negated) within techno-industrial society thanks to factory farming (Heidegger controversially suggests that there is a metaphysical equivalence between mechanised food production and the Nazi extermination camps).      

 

Anyway, let's move on ... And let's do so by immediately pointing out that Deleuze isn't necessarily complaining about this loss of soul - because, like Sartre, he hates moist interiority and regards the issue as a far more complex one than it is often characterised. For one thing, Deleuze suggests the possibility of a spiritual life outside of (and without reference to) any interiority and he believes in a revolution that takes place as a form of action and as an event in the world, rather than in us:

 

"The revolution is not supposed to take place inside us, it is external - and if we do it in ourselves, it is only a way to avoid doing it outside." [267]

 

Again, like Sartre whom he quotes, Deleuze suggests that ultimately everything is outside - including the self (l'existence précède l'essence, and all that jazz):

"'Outside, in the world, among others. It is not in some hiding-place that we will discover ourselves; it is on the road, in the town, in the midst of the crowd, a thing among things, a human among humans.'" [268]

 

Interestingly, Deleuze finds this existentialism in the Gospel: Christ, he says, shows us a new possibility of life that is not lived posthumously in some kind of heaven, but in the external world. Only this, paradoxically, "is not a social, historical, localized world: it is our own internal life" [268].

 

Unfortunately, it's not this aspect of the Gospel that has triumphed and ultimately Christianity has been more bad news than good and brought about the disastrous "dissociation of Nature and Spirit" [268]. Deleuze continues:

 

"Some might say that the union did not exist at the time of the Greeks either. No matter. The identity of Nature and Spirit exists as nostalgia in the modern consciousness; whether it is defined in reference to Greece, to a state preceding original sin, or, if you prefer psychoanalysis, to a state prior to the trauma of birth, it matters little. Once upon a time there was a union between Nature and Spirit and this union formed an external world. Nature was mind and mind, nature; the subject was not involved except as an error coefficient." [268-69]  

 

Christianity subjectified both nature and spirit and ended up with a torn consciousness unable to grasp in itself "the relationship of natural life to spiritual life" [269]. Jesus as mediator came to fix this via the Gospel which is "the exteriority of an interiority" [269]. 

To be honest, I'm not sure I understand this. But let's see how Deleuze now relates this material to the bourgeois opposition between private life and the state ...

 

II.

At first glance, says Deleuze, this latter opposition seems "very different from the Christian opposition between Nature and Spirit" [269]. But - surprise, surprise - it isn't:

 

"The bourgeois has been able to internalize internal life as mediation of nature and spirit. By becoming private life, Nature was spiritualized in the form of family [...] and Spirit was naturalized in the form of homeland [...] What is important is that the bourgeoisie is defined first by the internal life and the primacy of the subject. [...] There is bourgeoisie as soon as there is submission of the exterior to an internal order [...]" [269]

 

Deleuze expands:

 

"The bourgeoisie is essentially internalized internal life, in other words the mediation of private life and state. Yet it fears the two extremes equally. [...] Its domain is the golden mean. It hates the excess of an overly individualistic private life of a romantic nature [...] Yet it is no less fearful of the state [...] The domain of the bourgeoisie is the domain of the apparently calm humanism of human rights. The bourgeois Person is substantialized mediation; it is defined formally by equality [...] and materially by internal life. If formal equality is materially refuted, there is no contradiction in the eyes of the bourgeois nor is there a reason for revolution. The bourgeois remains coherent." [270]

Ultimately, they have no interest in the question of to be or not to be; they wish to have (to own, to possess); property rights are their concern - not ontological unfolding. But money - as an abstract flow - is problematic; it is not substantialized, "on the contrary, it is fluctuating [...] Whence the threat and danger" [271]. Anticipating his work with Félix Guattari written twenty-five years later, Deleuze notes: "Money negates its own essence [...]" [271] and capitalism inexorably moves towards its own external limit [d].

So, in sum: the fraudulent and secretive bourgeoisie internalise interior life in the form of property, money, and possession: "everything that Christ abhorred and that he came to fight, to substitute being for it" [273] - coming, in effect, not to save the world, but to save man from the world (in all its manifest evil). 

 

Having said that, I rather like the world in all its demirugal and external beauty and resent the idea of salvation, however you present it ...      

 

Notes 

 

[a] Gilles Deleuze, 'From Christ to the Bourgeoisie', Letters and Other Texts, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext(e), 2020). All page numbers given in the above post refer to this work.

 

[b] See Lori Marino, 'Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken', Animal Cognition 20, (Jan 2017), pp. 127-147. Click here to read online. 

 

[c] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Him With His Tail in His Mouth', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 307-317. Lawrence discusses forming a relationship with his Rhode Island Red on pp. 313-316.  

[d] In Anti-Oedipus, for example, Deleuze and Guattari describe money as that which has been substituted by capitalism for the very notion of a social code and which has created "an axiomatic of abstract quantities that keeps moving further and further in the direction of the deterritorialization of the socius". See Anti-Oeipus, trans. Robert Hurley et al, (The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 33. 

 

Part 1 of this series on Deleuze's youthful writings - Description of Women - can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

Notes on the Youthful Writings of Gilles Deleuze 1: Description of Women

 Young man, there's no need to feel down

 

 

I.

 

The first text that French philosopher Gilles Deleuze ever published, in the autumn of 1945, when still a 20-year old student, was a contribution towards a gendered philosophy of the other entitled 'Description of Women'.

 

Although he later renounced the piece - as he did other writings prior to 1953 - it has now been re-published with the agreement of his wife and daughter, in order to counter the unauthorised (and sometimes error-strewn) versions already in circulation. An English translation, by Ames Hodges, can be found in Letters and Other Texts, the third and final volume of posthumous pieces, edited by David Lapoujade, (Semiotext(e), 2020). Page numbers given below refer to this edition.            

 

 

II.

 

This amusing (sometimes confusing) work opens in agreement with Sartre that Heidegger was mistaken to conceive of Dasein in asexual terms; a philosophical insufficiency that makes the youthful Deleuze uneasy. Why that should be, I don't know. But one imagines that Deleuze, like many young Frenchmen, found it difficult not to view everything through the prism of sex, including human reality or being, and would naturally, therefore, think it utterly monstrous to conceive of an asexual world. 

 

Deleuze wants gender to be marked in both the lover and the beloved and for it to be essentially distinct in each; not for the sexual identity of the latter to merely be a pale reflection of that of the former: "Phenomenology must be of the loved one" [254], which I think means that the loved one should not be thought of as merely another type of subject, but philosophically acknowledged in their otherness as those who express the possibility of an entirely different and external world.         

 

And how does this relate to the question of women? Well, according to Deleuze, "the description of women cannot be made without reference to the male-Other" [255]. But this male-Other is absolutely not to be confused with that seductive being who wears makeup and torments tender young men, such as himself: 

 

"You could search in vain for the expression of an absent external world on the face of this woman. In her, all is presence. The woman expresses no possible world; or rather the possible that she expresses is not an external world, it is herself." [255]

 

At best, this self-expressive woman acts as an intermediary beween "the pure object that expresses nothing and the male-Other, who expresses something other than himself, an external world" [255].     

 

I'm not sure if I entirely understand what Deleuze is saying here - and, to be honest, I kind of like the sound of the woman with her enormous presence who possibilizes herself in the "overflowing triumph of flesh" [256]. I think she secretly thrills Deleuze as well; why else would he quote from Jean Giono's Le Chant du monde about the blood-tingling appeal of a female body? 

 

Deleuze might pretend that what really turns him on is the paradoxical fact that "the more she plunges into materiality" [256], the more this woman becomes immaterial and is returned to the being she is and its possibility of expression, but I suspect he's still thinking of her softness of belly and what Giono describes as her two big headlights when lying in bed at night. Such a woman may have no external world to offer, but she's desirable and provides a "compressed internalized world" [257] to find pleasure within. 

 

Unlike the young Deleuze, I don't see it as particularly dangerous or unspeakably painful for a woman to lose her being and become "no more than a belly, an overflowing materiality" [257]. For if, on the one hand, becoming-object allows for the "prodigious sexual success of women" [257], on the other, it allows them to gain their revenge upon the male subject (with whom friendship remains impossible).  

 

 

III.

 

So far, then, Deleuze has establised an opposition between woman and the male-Other. Only the latter  expresses a possible external world; to try and force the former into such a role compromises her internal life, with the latter understood as a union of contraries  - material and immaterial aspects - that combine together mysteriously to give woman her essential identity. 

 

Only a sadist would take pleasure in threatening this living interiority; the sort of man who imposes a mask of suffering on the woman, or who tells her: "Sit down and crease your forehead" [259].* 

 

Or the sort of man, perhaps, who would deny a girl her makeup kit (Deleuze is adamant that the supernatural art of cosmetics is crucial in the formation of a woman's essence); or her expensive shoes (Deleuze describes the ankles as an important site of womanly consciousness and so naturally favours high-heels).   

 

At this point, I'm sure there will be readers who will think I'm making this up - but I'm not; I'm doing my best to stick closely to the text. Deleuze really does, for example, write of eyeliner, lipstick, and nail varnish; he also discusses the problem of eyebrows (to pluck or not to pluck), beauty spots (of which we should be wary), and his penchant for freckles (a symbol of the interior): 

 

"I do not understand at all why women are ashamed of [...] freckles and combat them with makeup [...] It can only be explained by women being mistaken as to their own essence." [261]

 

This last line is, I would imagine, for many women - not just those who identify as feminists - particularly galling, coming as it does from a precocious young philosopher who concludes that secretive, lying women - whose place "is not outside, it is in the house" [259] - basically need a man to reveal their truth - and a lover to caress them:

 

"And if the lover can approach the essence of woman through the caress as act, it is because the woman herself is being as caress [...] The woman therefore needs a lover. A lover who caresses her, and that is all. [...] Her being only exists in the form of an act performed by another." [264-65]  

 

One wonders what Simone made of this if she read it ...?   

 

 

Notes

 

*I feel that some explanation is needed for this otherwise cryptic line: according to Deleuze, a wrinkle on the forehead of the male-Other is a good thing. For the forehead of the male-Other is made for long, well-defined lines, signifying the attempt to see and understand better. But a wrinkle on a woman's forehead - "Oh! [...] one could cry, it is ridiculous and touching" [259]. 

 

Part 2 of this series on Deleuze's youthful writings - From Christ to the Bourgeoisie - can be read by clicking here.