Punk Moth (Or How the Cambridge Rapist Motif Haunts the Natural World)

Fig. 1: Pretty little moth in my front garden / Fig. 2: A colour enhanced detail from the wing

Fig. 3: Jamie Reid God Save the Cambridge Rapist (poster design for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, 1980)

There are, apparently, around 2,500 species of moth in the UK and I'm no lepidopterist, so don't expect me to identify the very pretty little moth in the photo above which seems to like living in (or on) my front garden privet. 

 

Perhaps its most striking feature, to me at least, is the marking on the wing which reminds me of the Cambridge Rapist [1] mask that so fascinated Malcolm McLaren and which he and Vivienne Westwood incorporated as an image on shirt designs sold at 430 Kings Road [2]; an image which Jamie Reid later used in one of his God Save ... series of posters produced for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) [3]. 

 

Does this serve to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art? [4] Or does it prove that even an insect can be a sex pistol? 

 

 

Notes

[1] Peter Samuel Cook - known in the press as the Cambridge Rapist - attacked several women in their homes between October 1974 and April 1975. He quickly entered the public imagination due to the distinctive leather mask with the word rapist painted in white letters across the forehead that he liked to wear whilst carrying out his crimes. 

      The 46-year old delivery driver was arrested following one of Britain's largest police manhunts. He was convicted at his trial in 1976 of six counts of rape, as well as assault and gross indecency. Cook was given two life sentences with the recommendation made that he never be released. He died, in jail, in January 2004 (aed 75).   

 

[2] A long-sleeved muslin shirt by McLaren and Westwood with the Cambridge Rapist motif is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum: click here.  

 

[3] A version of this work (produced in 1978) by Jamie Reid can also be found at the V&A: click here.

 

[4] See Wilde's essay 'The Decay of Lying', Intentions (1891). Note that an earlier version of the essay was published in the literary magazine The Nineteenth Century, in January 1889. 

 

For a related post on cultural entomology entitled 'Insectopunk', click here.    

The Silence of the Moth

Figs. 1 and 2: details from the poster for The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Fig. 3: In Voluptas Mors (1951) by Salvador Dalí (in collaboration with Philippe Halsman)

 

Caterpillar into chrysalis and thence into beauty and death ...

 

 

If there's one thing film buffs and lepidoperists can agree on, it's that the poster design for The Silence of the Lambs (dir. Jonathan Demme, 1991), is a work of genius. 

 

It features the face of Jodie Foster as the young FBI trainee Clarice Starling, with a death's-head hawkmoth positioned over her mouth. This large nocturnal moth with brown and yellow colouring is famous for the sinister skull-like pattern on its thorax and it has long been associated with malevolent forces.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, many artists have been fascinated by the creature, including the great Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. 

 

In fact, if you look close enough at the movie poster you realise that the markings on the moth are actually composed of seven nude female figures arranged to resemble a human skull; in other words, the poster incorporates a provocative image conceived by Dalí and photographed by Philippe Halsman forty years earlier in 1951.   

 

 

Musical bonus: Howard Shore, 'The Moth', from The Silence of the Lambs soundtrack, (MCA Records, 1991): click here.

 

 

We Old Ones, We Are Still Here!

Meine Mutter celebrating her 96th birthday  

 

The old ones say to themselves: We are not going to make way, we are not going to die,

we are going to stay on and on and on and on and make the young look after us 

till they are old. - DHL [1]

 

 

I. 

 

This Sunday, my mother will reach 96 years of age. 

 

Some people say this is a real achievement, though I'm not sure about that; surely the achievement is dying an authentic death - something that requires courage and skill - not simply celebrating birthday after birthday and endlessly adding candles to a cake ...? 

Having said that, surviving to a very old age and becoming a monster of stamina in the process does seem to suggest a powerful expression of will. 

 

For even today, when - thanks to improved living standards and advancements in health care - life expectancy has significantly increased since the year my mother was born (1926), not many women in the UK will make it past 95 [2].

 

II.

 

Back in July 1926, D. H. Lawrence travelled north from Italy to Germany with his wife Frieda, in order to celebrate his mother-in-law's 75th birthday. In a letter to Edward McDonald, an American professor who was preparing a bibilography of his writings, Lawrence is scathing about the old who cling on to life and refuse to die: 

 

"'Wir alten, wir sind noch hier!' she says. And here they mean to stay, having, through long and uninterrupted experience, become adepts at hanging on to their own lives, and letting anybody else who is fool enough cast bread upon the waters. Baden-Baden is a sort of Holbein Totentanz: old people tottering their cautious dance of triumph: 'wir sind noch hier: hupf! hupf! hupf!" [3] 

 

 

III. 

 

Three years later, in July 1929, and Lawrence is again in Baden-Baden for the Baroness's birthday, despite his previous determination not to go. As John Worthen notes, this was a bad move [4]. For whereas his previous visits had mostly been happy ones, and he had always been rather fond of his Schweigermutter, now he found her unbearable. 

In a letter to his sister Ada, Lawrence writes:

 

"[...] Frieda's mother really rather awful now. She's 78, and suddenly is in an awful state, thinking her time to die may be coming on. So she fights in the ugliest fashion, greedy and horrible, to get everything that will keep her alive [...] nothing exists but just for the purpose of giving her a horrible strength to hang on a few more years." [5]

 

Later, in the same letter, he complains how his mother-in-law will not be left alone, even for a short period: 

 

"No, she must have Frieda or me there. It's the most ghastly state of almost insane selfishness I ever saw - and all comes of her hideous terror of having to die. At the age of seventy-eight! May god preserve me from ever sinking so low." [6]

 

 

IV.

 

Now, to be fair to my mother, she doesn't gulp down the air in greedy gulps like the Baroness - doesn't actively fight to stay alive. She just sits quietly in her chair all day, like a black hole at the centre of the universe [7]. 

 

But I understand - and share - Lawrence's sense of horror and humiliation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The grudge of the old', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 436.

 

[2] Readers interested in the national statistics estimating the number of people (mostly women) in the UK population aged 90 and over, between the years 2002 and 2020, can click here. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward McDonald (16 July 1926), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 495-496. Lines quoted are on p. 496.   

 

[4] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 400.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Ada Clarke (2 August 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 397-398. 

[6] Ibid., p. 398. 

[7] See my poem 'Black Holes' in The Circle of Fragments and Other Verses, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010) - or click here to read it on Torpedo the Ark. 

A Brief Comment on Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party

 

Boris Johnson is merely a gigantic jellyfish, wallowing in the shallows before invariably being washed up, exhausted, on the shores of defeat.* 

 

If those within the Conservative Party who continue to lend him their support only knew how disastrous their loyalty will prove to be, they would be appalled. Fortunately, they are too stupid, too reckless, or too corrupt to care.    

 

 

*Note: I am not the first to have noticed the uncanny resemblance between the UK Prime Minister and this gelatinous free-swimming marine animal. In an article in The Spectator written ten years ago, Isabel Hardman expressed her belief that Johnson was, in fact, a "particularly powerful blond jellyfish" capable of delivering a nasty sting to those who get in his way. 

      It's worth noting also that, in 2013, Johnson called opposition members of the London Assembly great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies, which is ironic, if nothing else. 

          

Yes, Jordan, We Remember When Pride Was a Sin

Jordan Peterson on YouTube (1 July 2022)

 

 

I. 

 

The Canadian psychologist, author, and cultural commentator Jordan Peterson has had his Twitter account suspended for a recent tweet which, apparently, violated their rules governing hateful conduct. The tweet, which I don't wish to discuss in full, opened with the question: Remember when pride was a sin? 

 

It's this line - and Peterson's subsequent defence of the line - which I wish to examine here ...   

 

 

II. 

 

Speaking in a 15 minute video posted on YouTube [1], Peterson acts a little faux-surprised by what he continues to call the ban imposed by Twitter (whilst conceding that, technically, it's no such thing). 

 

He claims - again, somewhat disingenuously - to be uncertain why it is he has had his account suspended by the socal media platform: What was it, that I said, that caused such a fuss? And even more importantly, what exactly was it that I said that resulted in the ban? 

 

Now, Jordan Peterson is a highly intelligent and erudite individual, who chooses his words extremely carefully. So one can be sure that he didn't just post the tweet in a fit of irritation and without thinking; i.e., one can be sure that he knew precisely what he was saying and what the likely response would be. 

 

Peterson claims that his opening statement merely refers us to a time when, as a matter of fact, pride was regarded as a sin. And, yes, okay, there was such a time - a long drawn out period which we might refer to as the Christian era [2] - when pride, along with six other capital vices or deadly sins [3], was contrasted with heavenly virtue. 

 

Indeed, it's even true that pride was thought to be the root cause of all sins, as it's human pride which turns the soul of man away from God. And pride, Peterson reminds us, often comes before a fall into hubris, narcissism, and folly. 

 

Having said that, pride is - like other human emotions - a complex matter (as I'm sure Peterson would be the first to acknowledge). And just as there are those who regard it as a sin, there are others - including Aristotle - who view it positively and as a virtue; i.e., as a justifiable and healthy feeling of self-worth. 

 

Is it not preferable that individuals and groups take pride in themselves, rather than feel shame? I think so [4]. And clearly those within the LGBTQ+ community primarily use the term pride as an antonym for the latter. 

 

Again, I'm sure Peterson is perfectly aware of this, although he openly admits that he does not regard pride as a virtue - which is fine, that's up to him, and, as a Christian devotee of Jung, I wouldn't expect otherwise (the latter insisted that it was through pride that we forever deceive ourselves). 

 

But does Peterson really need to mock what he calls the alphabet acronym used by the above, when it's simply a convenient means of self-referral amongst a diverse group of people?

 

Personally, I don't feel that's necessary - although Peterson doesn't seem to care about hurting anyone's feelings. And besides, he has a moral and professional duty, he says, to warn those who have excessive pride - as well as those who, like me, have read too much degenerate postmodern theory - that we are heading for the Abyss; that the path we are on, in other words, leads rapidly to disaster.  

 

I don't see that sexual orientation, or sexual desire of any sort is something to celebrate or take pride in, says Peterson. Again, that's fair enough and he's entitled to his view. But, as a straight cis male, his sexual orientation and desire hasn't been subject to the same kind of stigma and persecution - hasn't had to overcome centuries of prejudice - so he would say that ...

 

The heteronormative ideal of love that Peterson subscribes to (and practices) - monogamous union between a man and a woman - has always been celebrated and taken to be both that which is natural and that which is blessed by God. He might not take pride in this fact, but he almost certainly draws some sense of identity - and a good deal of moral conceit - from it.     

 

Notes

 

[1] To watch this video on YouTube in which Jordan Peterson discusses his Twitter ban, click here. It's the first five minutes or so that are most relevant to what I discuss here (i.e., the issue of pride).

[2] Strangely, in the video above Peterson seems to suggest that the era in which pride was regarded as a sin only ended a decade ago: see 3.50.  

 

[3] As with the names of the seven dwarves in Snow White, it's often tricky to remember all the sins, so here's a reminder: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. Although not listed in the Bible as such, it's clear that God was not a fan of these things (or the behaviours that result).  

[4] Not that I would wish for people to lose all sense of shame, for shameless people are as irritating as the excessively proud and, interestingly, are often one and the same.

 

 

On Masculinity, Matriarchy, and the Mark Steyn Show

Mark Steyn presenting the Mark Steyn Show 

GB News (30 June 2022)

 

 

I. 

 

The other evening, on the always excellent Mark Steyn Show (Mon-Thurs at 8pm on GB News), the eponymous host was decrying the state of contemporary manhood in conversation with the lovely Leilani Dowding [1]. 

 

What ever happened to men? he asked. Have they all been killed off by Wuflu ginger growlers? 

 

Steyn quoted statistics showing that women now dominate - in terms of numbers at least - university places and many professions, whilst men retreat to sad, pitiful so-called man caves in the basement, to watch sports, drink beer, and masturbate to online pornography.   

 

What's needed, Steyn suggested, is a little more confidence in the face of risk amongst modern men; a definition of manliness proposed by the American political philosopher Harvey Mansfield, rooted in the Greek notion of thumos [θυμός], which I have written about here and here.  

Rather like Jordan Peterson, Steyn seems to long for men who still bristle at those things which they find strange, threatening, or inimical (i.e. Other); men with vigour and vim, who are still in touch with their primitive instincts; the kind of men, perhaps, whom Madeline Kahn wishes for in the film At Long Last Love, (1975) [2].     

Of course, as any sociologist or reader of cultural studies will tell you, this concern about a supposed crisis of masculinity, is nothing new. During the late-Victorian period, for example, masculinity was increasingly problematized and strange new models of manhood were springing up as traditional forms of male identity became untenable; their power and authority severely eroded and compromised by modernity itself. 

 

Fear surrounding queerness and monstrosity was widespread and conservative thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Nordau, and, later, Oswald Spengler, promoted ideas of social and cultural degeneration tied to questions of race, gender and sexuality. 

 

We also see this obsession with decadence in the art and literature of the period; in works such as Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), for example. Homosexuals, drug addicts, vampires ... they all presented a threat to traditional manhood. As did emancipated women, or feminists.        

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, we also find D. H. Lawrence expressing concern about the state of modern manhood in his work (in fact, this is one of the major themes of both his fictional and non-fictional writings). 

 

In the 1928 article entitled 'Matriarchy', for example, Lawrence argues that - whether they know it or not - "the men of today are a little afraid of the women of today; and especially the younger men" [3]. Fast forward almost a hundred years, and I think we can say they are now more than a little afraid - and this fear, sadly, gives rise to resentment and misogyny, poisoning their own masculinity. 

 

Just as Steyn points to the fact that there are now more female graduates than male, Lawrence writes:

 

"They [modern men] not only see themselves in the minority, overwhelmed by numbers, but they feel themselves swamped by the strange unloosed energy of the silk-legged hordes. Women, women, everywhere, and all of them on the war-path! The poor young male keeps up a jaunty front, but his masculine soul quakes. [...] They [modern women] settle like silky locusts on all the jobs, they occupy the offices and the playing fields like immensely active ants, they buzz round the coloured lights of pleasure in amazing bare-armed swarms, and the rather dazed male is, naturally, a bit scared." [4]   

 

Obviously, this is intended to be humorous, but underneath one senses Lawrence is expressing a real concern and a real dislike of female emancipation. However, he seems to accept the fact that this has happened; that Woman has emerged "and you can't put her back again" [5]. Nor has she any wish to return to the home and to her previous roles of wife and mother. 

 

Thus, whether modern men like it or not, we are in, says Lawrence, for some form of matriarchal society. But then Lawrence asks himself if that would really be so terrible; for if you examine those societies where women run things and do most of the work, the men seem to have gained a certain carefree form of freedom (which Lawrence likes to term insouciance).

So, let the women have the jobs and own the property; let them govern the country and have full rights over the children. The men can then devote themselves to collective activity of their own, be it art, war, or philosophy. Real men, says Lawrence, should not care about earning a wage, pushing a pram round the park, or polishing their possessions.  

 

Perhaps matriarchy isn't so bad after all. It might allow a man to find himself once more and "satisfy his deeper social instincts" [6]. For when a man no longer feels king of his own castle, then he looks for something beyond the domestic space and, indeed, beyond Woman. 

 

However, we might keep in mind that this can result in all kinds of curious formations; from all-male clubs and secret societies, to criminal gangs and even fascism. All of these homosocial phenomena are, in part at least, a reaction to female emancipation and the increased visibility of women in the public sphere.

 

 

Notes

[1] I'm referring to the show broadcast on 30 June, 2022, which can be watched in full on YouTube by clicking here. 

[2] At Long Last Love is a musical comedy directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1975). Madeline Kahn plays Kitty O'Kelly and performs a Cole Porter song from 1929 called 'Find Me a Primitive Man': click here. Mark Steyn plays a clip from this song on the June 30 show I'm discussing. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Matriarchy', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 103. 

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p. 104.

[6] Ibid., p. 106.

In Memory of the One and Only Adolf Brand

Portrait of Adolf Brand (1874 - 1945) 

based on an engraving by Arnold Siegfried 

Der Eigene, Vol. 7 (1924)

 

 

Adolf Brand was a German writer, anarcho-egoist, and a pioneering queer campaigner. He is perhaps best known today for publishing the first openly homosexual periodical in the world - Der Eigene - which ran from 1896 until the early 1930s, when the Nazis eventually put a stop to it [1]. 

The title - usually translated into English as The Unique - betrays the influence of the philosopher Max Stirner upon Brand's thinking and refers to Stirner's concept of radical individuality [2]. The small number of subscribers to the magazine were treated to essays of a scholarly nature on various cultural and political themes, as well as nude photographs of young men. The threat of censorship was, of course, a constant concern.

 

Brand contributed a significant number of his own poems and articles alongside those from a range of contributors, that included many German and Jewish intellectuals of the time. Der Eigene wished to see modern homosexual culture develop as a model inspired by ancient Greek pederasty and the heroic warrior ideal of Sparta. 

 

For Brand and his fellow members of a group formed in 1903 known as the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, the love of an older man for a youth was seen as a perfectly natural expression of male sexuality. They vehemently rejected medical theories of homosexuality put forward by those who promoted the idea of an intermediate sex, for example, or saw gay men as essentially feminine in nature.  

 

Eventually, the GdE evolved into a kind outdoors society, involving camping, trekking, and nudism (or Nacktkultur as it was known) - all good clean (manly) fun. Perhaps rather less attractive was their misogny, elitism, and ideas of beauty rooted in race. 

 

Some might also question their militant strategy of outing well-known men as homosexuals. If this caused some of these men and their families great suffering - and even pushed a few towards suicide - Brand and company insisted that was a price worth paying; the way into the future, they said, followed a path over corpses [Weg über Leichen]. 

 

It's perhaps not surprising to discover that Brand was imprisoned multiple times for his activities. But whilst even in court he refused to apologise for his promotion of homosexuality, in his later life he gave up his activism, married a nice girl, and settled down (only to be killed by an Allied bomb in February 1945).        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] When Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, Brand's house was searched and all the materials needed to produce the magazine were either seized or destroyed.  

 

[2] Der Eigene clearly refers to Max Stirner's classic anarchist text Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844). 

      Stirner, for readers unfamiliar with the name, was a 19th-century German philosopher associated with a highly individualistic form of anarchism known as egoism (his key text above is usually translated into English as The Ego and Its Own). 

      For Stirner, no state, party, or social institution, should have any power or authority over the individual, who must be free to live out their own lives in their own way, in a loose non-systematic association with other egoists. His thinking has influenced many within the anarcho-communist and libertarian circles.    

At the Well with Martin Heidegger, D. H. Lawrence and Onyofi the Chimp

Photo: Digne Meller-Marcovicz

 

Water is H₂O; hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,

but there is also a third thing, that makes it water. 

And nobody knows what that is. [1] 

 

 

I.

 

There's a famous photo that circulates within philosophical circles of Heidegger carrying a bucket of water drawn from the star-topped well outside of his small, three-room cabin in the Black Forest Mountains of southern Germany. 

 

Heidegger loved this location and he worked on some of his key texts whilst staying at die Hutte. It was, for him, an authentic dwelling place with which he claimed an intellectual and emotional intimacy [2].

 

It's a nice photo. And it suggests that, for Heidegger, a well is more than simply a hole in the ground that allows you to access water; there's something magical about a well and - along with natural springs - they have an important place within the cultural and religious imagination.   

 

So, the question is: Does water drawn by hand from a well possess qualities that water from a tap does not? 

 

D. H. Lawrence certainly thought so. He regarded indoor plumbing as something which fatally intervened between himself and the naked forces of life: "Every time we turn on a tap to have water [...] we deny ourselves and annul our being." [3] 

For Lawrence, when we draw water directly from its underground source, or kindle a fire with some sticks and dry grass, we partake of the Mysteries. Like Heidegger, he believed that we lose far more with all our labour-saving appliances than we gain [4].

 

It sounds, of course, like nonsense to those whose thinking about the natural elements is (knowingly or unknowingly) shaped by scientific understanding; to those for whom water, for example, is merely H₂O. 

 

But it's surely worth remembering just how miraculous clean, fresh water is and it surely wouldn't hurt if we explored the ontological status of water and started to think it as a thing, rather than simply as a resource (or standing reserve) to be exploited and consumed [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Here's another question: Can non-human creatures - such as apes - also partake of the mysteries of the sacred well?

 

Lawrence would probably be okay with this idea, but Heidegger might start mumbling about the animal being poor in world and lacking hands, etc. 

 

However, rather amazingly, researchers have just discovered that Ugandan rainforest chimpanzees are digging wells of their very own in order to access and/or filter drinking water and that the practice is spreading. This behaviour is relatively rare in the animal kingdom and it's the first time it's been observed in rainforest chimps. 

 

It's believed that an immigrant female chimpanzee, called Onyofi, introduced the new skill into the community, after she arrived in 2015. Her well-digging activity immediately attracted attention and soon other young chimps and adult females were copying her (not so the adult males, although they happily drink the fresh water once all the hard work's been done) [6].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The third thing', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 447. 

 

[2] See Adam Sharr, Heidegger's Hut, (The MIT Press, 2006).  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's Two Years Before the Mast', in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 117. 

[4] This does not mean that we must do away with all technology and indoor plumbing. As Heidegger writes: 

      "We can use technical devices, and yet with proper use also keep ourselves so free of them, that we may let go of them any time. We can use technical devices as they ought to be used, and also let them alone as something which does not affect our inner and real core. We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices and, also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature." 

      See Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, (Harper Torchbooks,1966), p. 54.

 

[5] This idea is developed at length by Kalpita Bhar Paul in his essay 'A Heideggerian Perspective on Thinking about Water: Revisiting the Transition from Hydrology to Hydrosocial Nexus', Environmental Philosophy (2019). This work is available to read online (or to download as a free pdf) on academia.edu: click here.

[6] See Hella Péter, Klaus Zuberbühler, and Catherine Hobaiter, 'Well-digging in a community of forest-living wild East African chimpanzees', in Primates (2022). It can be accessed on SpringerLink by clicking here. Or, for a digested read, see Olivia Miller's article 'Rainforest chimpanzees dig wells for cleaner water' (28 June 2022) on the University of Kent website: click here.  

 

 

A Brief Note on Beatniks

 

Nedward and Agnes Flanders

Ned's freaky beatnik parents in The Simpsons [1]

 

 

Did anyone ever actually describe themselves as a beatnik? 

 

Or was the term purely a media invention [2]: a way of reducing members of the Beat Generation to a cool but cartoonish stereotype? Black turtleneck sweater ☑ Black beret ☑ Dark glasses ☑ Sandals ☑ Striped top ☑ Jazz album, bongo drums, or a book of poetry under the arm ☑

 

Amusingly, Allen Ginsberg wrote to The New York Times in 1959, deploring the use of the word beatnik [3]. And his pal Jack Kerouac wasn't pleased either to see their philosophy become just another fad. Both authors feared that a generation of illuminated hipsters, would be replaced by brainwashed fashionistas interested only in looking the part. 

 

Indeed, so exasperated was Kerouac by the popularity of the term that he declared to a reporter in 1969 (shortly before his death in October of that year): I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic [4].

 

Personally, however, I'm more interested in the way the stereotype of the beatnik became part of popular culture, changing the latter and being changed by it, rather than Kerouac's spiritual convictions, or his quest for religious salvation.

 

And if, eventually, the term beatnik was used by all kinds of people in all kinds of ways and some of those people were frauds and some of those ways were false, well, it doesn't really matter and one gets tired of puritans demanding authenticity. 

 

I mean, is there anything squarer than wanting to keep things real? [5]                          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See The Simpsons episode entitled 'Hurricane Neddy' [S8/E8] (1996), written by Steve Young and directed by Bob Anderson, in which it was revealed that religiously uptight Ned Flanders is the son of anti-disciplinarian, freaky beatnik parents (Nedward and Agnes). Click here for a short (but hilarious) clip on YouTube.    

 

[2] The term beatnik is usually credited to Herb Caen, writing in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle, in April 1958.

 

[3] See The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, ed. Bill Morgan, (Da Capo Press, 2008), p. 221. Commenting upon and quoting from this letter, James Campbell writes:

      "The Beats dislikes the appropriation of 'beat', and its melding into 'beatnik'. 'The foul word is used several times', wrote Ginsberg in a letter to the New York Times Book Review [...] in response to an uncomplimentary article about Kerouac:

 

'But the 'beatnik' of mad critics is a piece of their own ignoble poetry. And if 'beatniks', and not illuminated Beat poets, overrun the country they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash Man ...'"

      In other words, Beat was a state of being or an identity; beatnik was just posing and dressing up. See 'The Birth of the Beatnik', in This is the Beat Generation, by James Campbell, (University of California Press, 1999), chapter 10, pp. 245-271. Lines quoted are from pp. 245-46.

      Amusingly, I remember a similar discussion around the term punk in the 1970s, with Johnny Rotten rejecting the term as just another lazy label and form of media shorthand: click here to see what he says in a 1976 TV interview (go to 3.04). Punk was an attitude and not a fixed way of looking and thinking and real punks - who, like Rotten, often refused the term - were scornful and contemptuous of so-called plastic (or part-time) punks hanging around Kings Road trying to look trendy and pogoing in their bedrooms in front of the mirror (but only when their mothers had gone out). 

      For a fascinating discussion of the etymology and history of the word punk, see the essay by J. P. Robinson on medium.com: click here. 

 

[4] This interview with Kerouac by Jack McClintock from 1969 was republished in the Tampa Bay Times (20 March 2013) and can be read online by clicking here. 

 

[5] Amazingly, there are still some cats who get het up about the manner in which Beat became absorbed into the culture industry and commodified as a lifestyle or look. Denise Enck, for example, founder and editor of the arts and literature site Empty Mirror, published an article in July 2013 entitled 'The Beat Generation vs. "Beatniks"', in which she accuses the latter of being shallow and writes: 

      "The Beats were looking for real meaning, authenticity and a deeply personal self-expression in their lives and work, not conformity in a black turtleneck and a cheesy beret. [...]  The truth of it is that certain details associated with the Beat Generation writers were picked up, twisted, and amplified, almost beyond recognition and wildly embellished by the media and the marketing departments, into the 'beatnik' stereotype".

      To read the article in full, click here. Readers interested in this topic might also like to see a piece by Matthew Wills on JSTOR Daily entitled 'How the Beat Generation Became "Beatniks"' (5 May 2019): click here. This is a reading of the longer essay by Stephen Petrus, 'Rumblings of Discontent: American Popular Culture and its Response to the Beat Generation, 1957-1960', in Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1997), pp. 1-17, which, conveniently, can also be found on JSTOR: click here. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Beat-Nik' by Jimmy Van Eaton (Rita Records, 1960): click here Daddy-O!

Jeff Koons: Apollo (The Golden Boy of American Art Meets the Golden God of the Greeks)

Jeff Koons: Apollo Kithara (2019-22) [1]  

Jeff Koons on Instagram

I. 

 

Apollo is the golden boy of ancient Greek mythology: the god of sunlight, music, poetry, and healing; the perfect embodiment of the Hellenic ideal of καλοκαγαθίᾱ [kalokagathia], that is to say, of reason, beauty, and virtue. 

 

Almost too good to be true, it's no wonder Nietzsche seemed to hate him and to privilege the more mysterious (and more troubling) son of Zeus, Dionysus; the god of wine and dance, irrationality and chaos, representing the emotional-instinctive forces. 

 

Only, of course, that's not quite true and the Apollonian/Dionsyian distinction is not so black and white, even in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), where Nietzsche develops (but does not invent) these philosophical and literary concepts [2]. 

 

Placing the two gods in dialectical opposition, Nietzsche advances the argument that tragic art is the result of a fusion (or synthesis) of the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses. But he does not wish for one to be valued more than the other (although in his later writings he will proudly declare himself as a disciple of the latter).

 

For Nietzsche, the tragic hero or thinker is one who struggles (ultimately in vain) to impose order and meaning upon a chaotic world of fate. Without the Apollonian, the Dionysian lacks form and structure, and without the Dionysian, the Apollonian lacks the necessary vitality and passion. And thus, for Nietzsche, the attempt to make art and philosophy an optimistic affair of moral reason, i.e., exclusively Apollonian in nature, was profoundly mistaken [3].

 

 

II.

 

But I digress: this post was simply intended to notify readers to the fact that Jeff Koons has a new exhibition on the Greek island of Hydra, honouring Apollo, including the animatronic sculpture shown above, in which the god not only holds a kithara (the seven-stringed version of a lyre), but has to contend with a massive snake flicking its forked-tongue out [4].

 

For those - like me - who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing we like; whereas, on the other hand, for those - like Byung-Chul Han - who hate everything Koons does and represents, then this piece of Apollonian kitsch will just be another reason to damn him. But I think that's a shame. 

 

The fact that Koons has returned to antiquity is no real surprise; all artists, writers, and philosophers look back to the Greeks and Romans at some point. The trick is to find a way to recontextualise ideas and put a contemporary spin on the myths and images from the ancient world, thereby liberating us in a certain sense from the disadvantages identified by Nietzsche in both antiquarian and monumental models of history [5].

 

In a recent interview Koons spoke of trying to play metaphysically with time and in his new show I think we can see what he means by this. Koons gives us a vision of Apollo that is an amusing mix of pagan and postmodern, then, now, never was and might be tomorrow.

 

Inspired by a sculpture from the Hellenistic period that Koons viewed in the British Museum, Apollo Kithara has precisely the smooth, digital look that Byung-Chul Han objects to, though one might have thought he would at least acknowledge the amount of time and care that Koons puts into each of his works. 

         

At any rate, that's what I admire: Koons may, like Keats [6], appear to be a blank idiot when wearing Apollo's famous laurel wreath, but he isn't. 

 

As for all his talk of universal humanity and shared meanings - his insistence that we and the peoples of the past feel the same things and have similar thoughts and values - well, that's the sort of regrettable idealism that many artists like to believe and why, ultimately, as Herbert Grönemeyer, once said: Trust art, but never trust an artist ...

 

Jeff Koons 

Apollo Windspinner (2020-22)     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Koons's Apollo Kithara is an animatronic sculpture featured within the exhibition Jeff Koons: Apollo, at the Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece, in association with the DESTE Foundation  (21 June - 31 Oct 2022). For more details, click here. 

 

[2] In his Preface to the 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche makes it clear that he finds the book questionable to say the least; a Romantic work born of an overheated sensibility; "badly written, clumsy and embarrassing, its images frenzied and confused [...] lacking in any desire for logical purity, and even suspicious of the propriety of proof, a book for initates [...] an arrogant and fanatical book that [...] has a strange knack of seeking out its fellow-revellers and enticing them on to new and secret paths and dancing-places." 

      In other words, too much Dionysian frenzy and not enough Apollonian calm. It is, by some margin, my least favourite of Nietzsche's books, although, it is perhaps his best known and most widely read text outside of philosophical circles, with the exception of Zarathustra. 

      See 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism', Preface to The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, (Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 5-6. 

 

[3] Interestingly, someone who advocates for the Apollonian is the American feminist writer Camille Paglia. Whilst she broadly accepts Nietzsche's definition of the Apollonian and Dionysian, she attributes all human progress to the former (associated with masculinity, reason, celibacy and/or homosexuality) in revolt against the Chthonic forces of nature (including womanhood and procreation): "Everything great in western civilization comes from the struggle against our origins."

      See Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, (Vintage Books, 1991). The line quoted is on p. 40.  

 

[4] Those familiar with Greek mythology will recall that Apollo killed a huge serpent, called Python, who, it is said, not only persecuted Apollo's mother during her pregnancy, but wished to prevent Apollo from establishing his own temple and oracle at Delphi.   

 

[5] See Nietzsche's essay 'On the Use and Abuse of History for Life' (1874), in Untimely Meditations. 

 

[6] I'm referring to the poem by Keats entitled 'Hymn to Apollo' (not to be confused with his 'Ode to Apollo', though both works were probably written in 1815). Click here to read on allpoetry.com

 

 

This post is for MLG Maria Thanassa.