Whatever It Is, I'm Against It!

 Groucho was a punk rocker

 

I.

 

I have given several attempts to explain what the polysemic phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen - means to me, including:

 

(a) to have done with the judgement of God ... [click here]

 

(b) to hate everything ... [click here]

 

(c) to find everything funny ... [click here]

 

But, every now and then, I get emails from readers asking me to further elucidate. And so, I thought I'd offer a new definition - this time one inspired by Groucho Marx, rather than (a) Gilles Deleuze, (b) the Sex Pistols, or (c) Larry David: 

 

Torpedo the ark means ... Whatever it is, I'm against it!    

 

 

II.

 

This amusing line is sung by Groucho playing the role of Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Head of Huxley College) in the 1932 Mark Brothers film Horse Feathers (dir. Norman Z. McLeod).

 

The original song - 'I'm Against It' - was one of several musical numbers in the movie written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. 

 

Verses include:

  

I don't know what they have to say 

It makes no difference anyway 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

No matter what it is 

Or who commenced it 

I'm against it!

 

Your proposition may be good 

But let's have one thing understood: 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

And even when you've changed it 

Or condensed it 

I'm against it! [1]

Such wonderful comic nihilism nicely supplements the earlier interpretations of the phrase torpedo the ark and builds upon my own natural impulse to say no, nein, and non merci to everything - including those kind offers and opportunities that it might make more sense to accept and take advantage of [2].    

 

This obviously shows a perverse streak in my character, but there you go; if someone opens a door for me, I turn and walk away. Similary, if someone invites me to join their literary society, political party, social network, or private members club, I again remember the famous words of Groucho Marx [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] To watch Groucho perform this song - the opening number of Horse Feathers (1932) - click here. 

 

[2] See the post 'Just Say No' (1 Aug 2014): click here. 

 

[3] Groucho Marx is believed to have said: "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of it's members." Or something very similar to this; no one knows the exact wording or the precise circumstances of its employment. This amusing line was first reported by the Hollywood gossip columnist Erskine Johnson in October 1949 and it has been repeated ever since.

 

 

Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for suggesting this post and reminding me also that the Ramones have a track entitled 'I'm Against It' which can be found on their album Road to Ruin (Sire Records, 1978): click here to play a 2018 remastered version on YouTube.  

 

André Masson and the Sex Pistols

The Surrealist and the Sex Pistol:

 André Masson and Malcolm McLaren

Photos by Man Ray (c. 1930) and Joe Stevens (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

When asked shortly before his death: Which living artist do you most admire? 

 

Malcolm McLaren answered: 

 

"When I was 18, I studied for three months under the automatist painter André Masson in France. Every day I would buy him tomatoes, a baguette and a bottle of côtes du rhône, but he never spoke. On my last day he bought me a drink and wished me well. He's dead now, but I remain haunted by him." [1]

 

I don't know how true that is, but it's an amusing story [2] and forms an interesting connection with an artist whose relation to surrealism is much discussed, but whose influence on punk is - as far as I know - rarely mentioned. 

 

 

II.

 

My knowledge of Masson is mostly limited to the period when he worked on the journal founded by Georges Bataille - Acéphale (1936-39). 

 

His cover design for the first issue featuring an iconic headless figure with stars for nipples and a skull where his sexual organ should be, has resonated with me ever since I first saw it in the mid-1990s and I'm disappointed that Malcolm didn't ask Jamie or Vivienne to adapt this pagan image on a design for the Sex Pistols.

 

To identify as an anti-Christ is an important start. But equally important is to declare oneself in opposition to the ideal figure of the Vitruvian Man embodying all that is Good, True, and Beautiful - and to repeat after Bataille: "Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être." [3]

 

Wouldn't that have made a great punk slogan? 

 

I think so.

And I think also that the sacred conspiracy involving Bataille, Masson, Klossowski and others, anticipates McLaren's idea for SEX as a place which might bring together those sovereign individuals who didn't belong to mainstream society or wish to conform to the dictates of fashion, but wanted to violently affirm their singular being above all else.

 

And so, again, I think it a pity that the dark surrealism of Bataille and Masson - which not only set itself in opposition to all forms of fascism but also all forms of humanism, including André Breton's surrealism - wasn't explored (and exploited) by McLaren; especially as, in Sid Vicious, punk rock had discovered its very own Dionysian superstar [4]; someone who, as Malcolm liked to say, never saw a red light and enacted the primordial powers of instinct and irrationality.  

And, like Masson's acéphalic figure, Vicious even had a penchant for carrying a (sacrificial) knife ... [5]

 

Notes

 

[1] Amy Fleming, 'Portrait of the artist: Malcolm McLaren, musician', in The Guardian (10 Aug 2009): click here. 

      This is an interesting short question and answer piece, which also reveals McLaren's favourite film to be David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). However, I don't think the description of McLaren in the title as a musician is one he would recognise. Sadly, McLaren died eight months after the piece was published (on 8 April 2010). 

 

[2] McLaren's biographer, Paul Gorman, tells us that prior to beginning life as a student at Harrow Technical College & School of Art, Malcolm was "sent by his mother to a summer school in the south of France" and that this (apparently) involved an internship with André Masson and not just enjoying life on the beach at Cannes. 

      See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 45.

 

[3] I would translate this into English as: "Secretly or not, it is necessary to become wholly other, or cease to be." Often the original French phrase tout autres is translated as 'completely different'.

      The line is from Bataille's essay 'The Sacred Conspiracy', which can be found in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 179. Masson's Acéphale can also be found in this book, illustrating the essay on p. 180.       

 

[4] See ' Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified' (3 Feb 2024) where I develop this idea: click here.

 

[5] See 'I'll Put a Knife Right in You: Notes on the Case of Sid and Nancy' (30 Dec 2020): click here. 

 

 

This post is dedicated to the Danish art historian and curator Marie Arleth Skov, author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023). Her paper at the Torn Edges symposium held at the London College of Communication (20 March 2024) - 'Berlin Calling: The Dark, Dramatic, and Dazzling Punk Art Praxes of a Divided City' - was inspirational.

On the Nature of the Ridiculous (and the Ridiculous Nature of the Sex Pistols)

Sex Pistols

Photo by Richard Young (1976)

 

"We have passed beyond the absurd: our position is absolutely ridiculous." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Gavin Butt is a professor at Northumbria University and someone who knows more than most - certainly more than me - about the connections between visual art, popular music, queer culture, and performance [2].

So when he privileges the term ridiculous in his work I'm confident he has very good reasons for doing so. 

 

However, that doesn't mean I can't briefly reflect upon this concept myself in contradistinction to what some regard as the more profound (and serious-sounding) philosophy of absurdism and then say something about the Sex Pistols. 

 

 

II. 

 

The crucial aspect of the ridiculous is that it solicits, incites, or provokes laughter; often of a mocking or cruel nature, but not always. If you're someone like Georges Bataille, then you'll probably find everything ridiculous - one recalls the following short poem:

 

Laugh and laugh 

at the sun 

at the nettles 

at the stones 

at the ducks 

 

at the rain 

at the pee-pee of the pope 

at mummy 

at a coffin full of shit [3]  

 

For Bataille, this laughter is liberating; by viewing the entire universe as ridiculous - including death and the excremental nature of the decomposing corpse - he feels able to escape from what Zarathustra terms the Spirit of Gravity.

 

This may seem synonymous with the sublime philosophical idea of absurdism, but, actually, it's not the same thing at all. Finding existence laughable is very different from finding it meaningless; one is expected - as a creature of reason - to be angst-ridden by the latter idea, not gaily indifferent to the fact or able to smile when standing before the nihilistic void [4].

Being ridiculous makes one in the eyes of those who insist upon moral seriousness at all times an inferior being; shallow and lacking dignity. But I would counter this by saying it makes us Greek in the sense understood by Nietzsche: i.e., superficial - out of profundity! [5].

 

 

III.

 

One might also view punk - in its more playfully anarchic manifestation as given us by Malcolm McLaren - as an attempt not merely to challenge authority, but to escape from enforced seriousness. 

 

The Sex Pistols - and those closely associated with them, such as members of the Bromley Contingent - were ridiculous because they advocated for a Lawrentian revolution:

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,

don't make it in ghastly seriousness,

don't do it in deadly earnest,

do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people

do it just to spit in their eye. [6]

Po-faced punks concerned about social justice might recoil from this, but, for me, the idea of tipping over the apple cart simply to see which way the apples will roll, is crucial. McLaren encouraged the youngsters under his spell to be childish and irresponsible - to be everything this society hates - to make themselves ugly and grotesque: in a word, ridiculous [7]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm slightly misquoting the American actor, director, and writer Ronald Tavel, who coined the phrase Theatre of the Ridiculous in 1965 initially to describe his own work. Tavel himself ends this sentence with the word 'preposterous'. 

 

[2] I had the pleasure of listening to Butt speak at the Torn Edges symposium held at the London College of Communication on 20 March 2024 - an event exploring the points of contact and crossover between punk, art, design, and history. 

      Although his paper was rather more Pork than punk, that was fine by me and his discussion of Warhol's 1971 play in relation to the Theatre of the Ridiculous - a genre of queer experimental theatre - was fascinating.  

 

[3] The original poem by Bataille, entitled 'Rire' ['Laughter'], can be found in volume 4 of his Oeuvres complètes, (Gallimard, 1971), p. 13. The English translation is from the Preface to Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, (Routledge, 1992), p. xvii.

 

[4] In a sense, I'm following Hobbes here who distinguished between the absurd and the ridiculous, arguing that the former is to do with invalid reasoning, whilst the latter is simply about laughter. For non-philosophers, however, the absurd and the ridiculous are pretty much now regarded as synonymous. 

      As for the sublime - with which the ridiculous is often juxtaposed - it's interesting to note just how quickly one can pass from the former to the latter; one small misstep is all it takes.

 

[5] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Preface to the second edition (4).

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Sane Revolution', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 449. 

 

[7] Not only ugliness, but deformity is considered by some to be essential to the ridiculous; one recalls that Johnny Rotten in part based his hunched over stage persona on that of Richard III and would perform in an exaggerated physically awkward manner.    

Ghost Cats

Ghost Cat (SA/2024)

 

 

You don't need to accept everything that Dusty Rainbolt [1] tells you on the topic to believe it possible that cats possess uncanny powers and haunt the human imagination in a unique manner. 

 

But can they have a posthumous presence; that is to say, should we take the idea of ghost cats seriously? 

 

I would, as a sceptic, instinctively say no to the proposition that a dear departed feline can, as it were, still be heard purring beyond the grave and visit us in the night as a shadowy presence often coming to forewarn of danger.

 

But, having said that, stories of ghostly or demonic shape-shifting cats can be found in a vast number of cultures around the world and, like Foucault [2], I have always been fascinated by the Cheshire Cat who knows how to make himself invisible and thus become a grinning non-presence. 

 

Similarly, I have long been haunted by Dandelo, the white Angora cat who, in The Fly (1958), fails to reintegrate after being disintegrated (at a molecular level) in André Delambre's matter transporter and is lost in atomic space, from where she can still be heard meowing in a pitiful manner [3].   

Finally, there's the photo above to consider ... 

 

It's a picture I took recently of a neighbour's shorthaired ginger cat sitting in my back garden and looking a bit lonely. Apparently, he's pining for his friend who was killed by a car a few months ago and is captured here in spectral form sitting besides him.

 

What are we to make of this: is it just a trick of the light? Is there something wrong with the camera on my phone? Or is this actual photographic evidence of something spooky?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dusty Rainbolt, Ghost Cats: Human Encounters with Feline Spirits (The Lyons Press, 2007). 

 

[2] Foucault uses the Cheshire Cat to illustrate his model of ars erotica in which we are free to experience free-floating pleasures without holding on to an abiding essence or fixed identity (i.e., smiles without the cat).

 

[3] The suggestion is given that poor Dandelo is nowhere and everywhere and alive and dead at the same time, à la Schrödinger's famous cat in a box. 

 

   

What Was I Thinking? (18 March)

Images used for the posts published on this date 

in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023

 

 

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I can't think of anything else to write about -  it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on the same date in years gone by ...

 

 

Onychophilia: Notes on Two Types of Nail Fetish

 

The first thing to note about this post published back in 2019, is that it is - with almost 5000 views - the most viewed post on Torpedo the Ark. 

 

I suspect that's primarily because the post was mentioned by Dr Mark Griffiths on his excellent blog devoted to addictive, obsessive, compulsive and/or extreme behaviours [1], although I like to think the post also warrants attention on its own merit. 

Starting with those fetish figures made by natives of the Congo region of Central Africa, I swiftly moved from wooden figures with rusty nails banged into them for the purposes of witchcraft on to the sharp, long fingernails of beautiful young women and argued that onychophilia deserves to be considered in its own right and not merely seen as a form of hand partialism. 

 

Somewhat controversially perhaps, I also suggested that those who love nails (like those who love hair) are essentially soft-core necrophiles, secretly aroused by death. 

 

The post finished with a discussion of a related (but distinct) fetish, amychophilia - the desire of a masochistic subject to be cruelly scratched by fingernails. 

 

 

The Bear Necessity: Reflections on the Case of Timothy Treadwell

Not all posts are as popular as the one on two types of nail fetish. 

 

This post, for example, from March 2020, didn't even get a hundred views - which arguably speaks to the fact that there far fewer vorarephiles in the world than there are onychophiles (or amongst my readership, at any rate).

But I found the case of Timothy Treadwell interesting; a failed actor turned gonzo naturalist who ended up being eaten by a brown bear - which, as I punned at the time, is a grisly way to meet your end, but not, I think, the most ignoble way to die. I'd certainly rather be killed by a tiger than run over by a car and I would refute the idea that this makes me a disturbed individual harbouring a bizarre death wish.

 

 

Talaria: On the Secularisation of Winged Footwear from Hermes to Jeremy Scott

This post, from 2021 has so far picked up over a thousand views, so that's not too bad. It opens with the Greek god Hermes and closes with the irreverent American fashion designer Jeremy Scott. 

 

Some might characterise this transition from ancient myth to modern pop culture, as going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but I've never been a great defender of the distinction between high and low culture and I rather like the idea that everyone is entitled to wear winged footwear, not just gods and heroes.

 

 

Arborcide in the U. K.

 

Finally, let me briefly defend the post published on March 18th of last year: I thought it was good then and I still think it's good now.

 

However, the number of views it's had - despite the reworked Jamie Reid artwork - suggests that there are precious few dendrophiles checking out the blog; a fact that suprises and disappoints, as I would say Torpedo the Ark is hugely pro-tree and I have repeatedly expressed my support for those writers who recognise that plants are just as philosophically interesting as animals (perhaps more so). 

 

Reforesting, rewilding, and depopulating the UK is pretty much my position: no more roads; no more houses, no more population increase - just natural regeneration of woodland, scrubland, grassland, and wetland all across the country and serious protection afforded to wildlife. Rupert Birkin was right, there's no nicer thought than that of a posthuman future ...       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dr Mark Griffiths is a Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University. To visit his blog and to read his take on the subject of onychophilia, click here. 

 

 

Reflections on Two Paintings by Malcolm McLaren

 

Two Paintings by Malcolm McLaren (1969):

Fig. 1: 14 Pink Figures On Moving Sea Of Green  

Fig. 2: I Will Be So Bad 

 (Photos: Barry Martin / Malcolm McLaren Estate) [1]

 

"I learnt all my politics and understanding of the world through the history of art."

 

 

I. 

 

Before revolutionising the worlds of fashion and music, a teenaged Malcolm McLaren had ambitions of becoming a painter and he spent many years as an art student in London, attending several different schools, beginning with St Martin's and ending with Goldsmiths, where, in 1969, at the end of his first year, he was required to show some work. 

 

Two of the canvases McLaren produced at this time, then aged 23, I find particularly intriguing ...

 

 

II. 

 

The first consists of fourteen pale pink figures against a chaotic-looking pale green background. The figures standing and holding hands in a circle look like a chain of paper cut-outs, whilst the figures lying on the ground look like corpses and, when questioned on the work, McLaren confirmed the latter's status as such to his tutor Barry Martin [2].

 

If, initially, it might be imagined that McLaren is critiquing bougeois liberalism's fatally mistaken belief that individuals can thrive and prosper when disconnected from wider society, such an interpretation is dramatically overturned when we learn that the standing figures are rejoicing in the death of the others. 

 

The picture, therefore, is more likely intended to illustrate how non-conforming individuals often fall victim to a moral majority who fear their otherness and resent their refusal to join hands.    

III.

 

The second canvas consists of a solitary and anonymous black figure against a background upon which the refrain I will be so bad is repeated (and inverted), as if McLaren is mocking the school teachers who once made him stand in the corner or write I will behave over and over on a blackboard when placed in detention. 

 

I don't, therefore, interpret the latter painting as a cry for help or an expression of the artist's alienation. It is, rather, a humorous act of revenge on those who tried to curtail his anarchic and irresponsible desire to cause trouble informed by the belief that it's better to be bad than good, because being good is boring [3].     

  

      

IV.

 

It's a shame that neither of these canvases survived, though I suppose we should be grateful that Barry Martin took and kept photographs of them [4]. 

 

I know a lot of people dislike McLaren and will, for this reason, dismiss or deride the two works shown here. However, whether they like to admit it or not - and as Martin recognised at the time - they're really rather fine ... [5]  

 

Notes

 

[1] Images via Paul Gorman's blog. To read his piece on McLaren's 1969 Goldsmith paintings click here.

 

[2] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 103. 

[3] According to McLaren, this was something his grandmother instilled into him from a very young age. See p. 23 of Gorman's biography, op.cit. 

[4] All McLaren's work from this period was destroyed (by his own hand), after he rejected the limitations imposed by traditional art forms, such as painting. Nevertheless, he maintained a life-long relationship with the visual arts and deserves to be considered a significant British artist.     

[5] Martin is quoted by Paul Gorman as saying "'Malcolm was a troublesome student but a talented painter who could have made a name for himself in the art world.'" See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 104.

 

My Night at the 100 Club (Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Cheated?)

Johnny Rotten expresses how I felt post-screening.

 

 

I.

 

'Come along to the 100 Club,' she said, 'they're screening The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and Julien's going to introduce it and take questions from the audience - it should be good!'

 

 

II.

 

The 100 Club is a legendary live music venue [1] and one of the sacred sites of punk rock, hosting as it did the first punk festival organised by Malcolm McLaren and promoter Ron Watts over two nights in September 1976 [2]. 

 

But of course, that was then and this is now ...

 

And so, I wasn't too suprised that what would have once been a gathering of boisterous spiky-haired teens had been transformed into an assemblage of mostly grey-haired and bald-headed punk pensioners:

 

"It wasn't a rock 'n' roll party. It was more like a dying horse that needed putting out of its misery." [3] 

 

Somethings don't change, however; the decor of the Club, for example, remains pretty much the same. It's essentially a dingy basement with greasy walls and peeling ceilings, stinking of piss. I know for some people that's a sign of its authenticity, but I couldn't help longing for the reassuring smell of bleach or wishing I had a pocket full of posies for protection.

 

 

III. 

 

Before the screening, the film's director Julien Temple took to the stage. Now aged 70, he nevertheless still looked trim and boyishly handsome - or silver foxy, as my friend put it. He wasn't dull exactly, though pretty much on autopilot as he answered the same dreary questions and trotted out the same old anecdotes about how he became involved with the Sex Pistols, etc.

 

An obviously clever and cultured individual, who has pretty much met and worked with everyone in the music industry over the last 45 years, Temple nevertheless lacks McLaren's charisma and I couldn't help suspecting that, at some level, he resents the fact that he is still seen as a Glitterbest flunkie [4] and still obliged to discuss his own career in the shadow of the Sex Pistols.  

 

 

IV.    

 

Probably best we don't mention the actual screening: because the film shown was of such piss poor quality and so savagely cut (I don't know by whom or for what reason) that it was unrecognisable as the movie I have watched obsessively since its release in 1980. 

 

I would think that at least a third of the film was missing, including several important and much loved scenes; no boat trip on the Thames; no Winterland gig with Rotten famously asking an ambiguous but eternally pertinent question: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" [5]

 

I'm sorry to say, but that's exactly how I felt. 

 

Ultimately, the evening was less a celebration of the Swindle than its public disembowelment and shame on all those responsible - not least of all Temple who allowed his own work to be butchered in this manner [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The 100 Club is located at 100 Oxford Street, London. It has been hosting live music since October 1942, although back then it was called the Feldman Swing Club, changing its name to the one with which most of us are familiar today in 1964.

 

[2] The event was headlined by the Sex Pistols, but also featured the Clash, the Damned, and many other up-and-coming young bands, including the Buzzcocks and a debut performance from Siouxsie and the Banshees (with Sid Vicious on drums).    

 

[3] Malcolm Mclaren in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980), with reference to the Winterland gig in San Francisco on 14 January, 1978.

 

[4] See the post of 26 November 2023 marking Temple's 70th birthday, which includes a badge from the Jamie Reid archive at the V&A designed especially for Julien: click here. 

 

[5] Johnny Rotten on stage with the Sex Pistols at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, 14 Jan 1978.

 

[6] To be fair to the organisers of the event - Rebel Reel Cine Club - they did immediately refund my money upon request and the main man, Chris McGill, seems like a genuinely good egg. 

 

Supernature: Notes on the Worms of Chernobyl

Nematodes collected from the CEZ

(as seen under a microscope)
Image: Sophia Tintori / NYU 

 

 

I.

 

First it was the mutant wolves [1], then the black-skinned tree frogs [2], now it's the nematode worms living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) that are making the headlines; apparently they have developed a new superpower - immunity to radiation [3]. 

 

I have to admit, that's a bit disappointing. For when I first heard of this story I couldn't help imagining that the tiny creatures were now able to move faster than a speeding bullet, or leap tall buildings in a single bound. 

 

Alas, that's not the case, and one rather wishes that scientists (and/or journalists who report on scientific research) would moderate their language. Still, it's an exciting discovery nevertheless and only makes these resilient worms even more astonishing than they already were.

 

 

II.   

 

Commonly known as roundworms or eelworms, nematodes are an extraordinarily diverse group of genetically non-complex animals that have been inhabiting a wide range of environments for at least 400 million years (and perhaps more than twice that long).

 

In fact, nematodes have successfully adapted to almost every ecosystem; from the polar regions to the tropics. Wherever you look - from mountain tops to deep beneath the surface of the sea - you'll find these tiny worms living and reproducing quite happily.   

 

Most species are free-living and feed on micro-organisms, but many are parasitic and some of these can cause disease in plants and animals (including human beings).

 

It's uncertain how many species of nematode there are; guesstimates range from the tens of thousands to over a million and there are so many of them that they account for around 80% of all individual animals on Earth. And we think the planet belongs to us ...

 

When taken into space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, a group of nematodes did just fine, even surviving a virtually unprotected re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. In the same year, an individual roundworm was revived after surviving for approximately 46,000 years in Siberian permafrost [4].    

 

In sum: nematodes even outside the CEZ might be said to possess superpowers and it makes me happy to know that, long after we are no more, they will still be. 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'Cara Love and the Mutant Wolves of Chernobyl' (14 Feb 2024): click here. 

 

[2] See 'Reflections on the Black Tree Frogs of Chernobyl' (22 Feb 2024): click here.

 

[3] Readers who wish to know more about the research carried out by Sophia Tintori and her colleagues from NYU should click here.

 

[4] In a research project published in 2012, it was found that Antarctic nematodes were able to withstand intracellular freezing providing they were well nourished.

 

On Creeps and Creepiness, etc.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in 

Hitchcock's creepy horror Psycho (1960)  

 

 

I. 

 

We have been using the term creepy in English for quite some time. 

 

But it's only in our present century that the word has really come into its own. And today, almost any form of behaviour that seems to stray one micro-aggression beyond the narrow bounds of what is regarded as normal and appropriate - even if entirely non-threatening - is stigmatised as creepy and the individual who commits such behaviour branded a creep.  

 

What's going on? Why do so many people get the creeps around others and feel so creeped out around strangers they find unattractive or simply a little different? 

 

The fact that the concept of creepiness has increasingly become the subject of psychological research and philosophical interest - in the way that the uncanny was once the fashionable topic of investigation - demonstrates that something is going on within the contemporary cultural sensibility. 

 

Ironically, it seems that the more safe spaces we create the greater the general unease in society - particularly amongst the young, who apparently regard every glance, every smile, every greeting, every compliment, and every other positive social act as offensive, or intrusive, or creepy, simply because it's unsolicited.        

 

Again, why is that and what's going on? Why do so many people feel so vulnerable and uncomfortable? Why do they think they have had their personal space violated when someone simply sits close to them on the bus or sends them a love letter in the post? [1]     

 

II. 

 

I say people, but we know that it's mostly women who are creeped out and that the vast majority of those thought to be creepy are male: usually slightly older men who happen to be a bit odd-looking or unfashionably dressed; men with strange hobbies and poor personal hygiene; men who are involuntary celibates and still living with their mothers; men who are maybe just shy and awkward in company; men that society dismisses as loners and losers ... etc. [2]        

 

Now, I understand that men are usually more responsible for acts of violence - including sexual violence - than women. And I appreciate how female intuition may have evolved as a protective measure in response to potentially dangerous situations and that being able to detect a creepy guy might literally be a matter of life or death (albeit on extremely rare occasions).  

 

But there's a point when being naturally suspicious and cautious around strangers tips over into cultural paranoia and the way in which masculinity is now often characterised as toxic in and of itself - and male sexuality as pervy - seems to me problematic. Not all men are rapists and not all men are creeps.

 

Personally, I think we should value (maybe even learn to love) those ambiguous and rather unpredictable individuals who display a little quirkiness and queerness - or even out-and-out creepiness; isn't that what The Addams Family taught us? [3]       

 

They're creepy and they're kooky ...

John Astin & Carolyn Jones as Gomez & Morticia Addams

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It does seem to me that, in our hypersensitive and easily offended age, even the most innocent gesture or innocuous remark can have serious consequences. Having said that, I'm aware that a lot of appalling behaviour and inappropriate conduct is carried on under the guise of having a laugh or just being friendly. I'm not denying there are real creeps in the world and that some of these are also real psychos or perverts, but most are simply neurotic. 

 

[2] Rightly or wrongly, if you're young, good-looking, talented, rich and successful, you can certainly get away with far more than if you're none of the above. Once you pass a certain point, however - when, for example, you hit fifty - what was once seen as charisma or charm or genius becomes creepiness or even abusive behaviour. 

 

[3] Having said that, if Norman Bates invites you to supper, it's advisable to say no. And if you get the willies when staying in a strange house, it's probably best to skedaddle (as my mother would say). 

      Finally, I'd quite like to ask those unhappy individuals considered creepy, but who desperately want the world to accept them: Did you ever just consider acting normal?

 

 

Musical bonus 1: 'Creep' (1992), the debut single by Radiohead, which can also be found on the album Pablo Honey (Parlophone, 1993): click here. 

 

Musical Bonus 2: I actually much prefer this track by Danish singer Camille Jones entitled 'The Creeps'. Originally released on Tommy Boy Music in 2005, it was brilliantly remixed by Fedde Le Grand in 2007. However, I'm a little concerned that my liking the video by Marcus Adams might make me seem a little creepy to female readers ...   

 

 

This post is for Síomón Solomon.  

Notes on 'Night of the Big Heat' (1967)

Patrick Allen, Sarah Lawson and Jane Merrow 

in Night of the Big Heat (1967)

 

"If this heat goes on like this, it could very well drive us all insane."

 

 

I.

 

Night of the Big Heat (dir. by Terence Fisher, 1967) [1] is not the greatest sci-fi horror movie ever made, but it does contain what, in my view, is one of the hottest on-screen love affairs between Jeff Callum (played by Patrick Allen, who, for many of my generation, was the voice of reliable male authority in the 1960s and '70s) [2] and Angela Roberts (played by Jane Merrow, who, for many of my generation, was an embodiment of feminine allure in the same period) [3]. 

 

In fact, the two nominal male stars of the film - Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing - and their battle against frankly ludicrous-looking alien invaders, hardly excites any interest at all and one wonders if Fisher ever considered requesting that Messrs. Lee and Cushing step aside, so that he might rework the entire film as a steamy romance starring Allen, Roberts, and Sarah Lawson; the latter playing Jeff's slightly dowdy and sightly dim wife Frankie (and who, amusingly, also happened to be Allen's wife in real life) [4].      

 

At any rate, it's the love triangle formed between Callum, his mistress, and his Mrs. that interests me here ...

 

 

II. 

 

Jeff and Frankie Callum run a pub called The Swan, on the tiny remote island of Fara, off the British coast [5]. When not pulling pints, Callum is a professional novelist in search of a reliable secretary. Unfortunately, the attractive young woman who arrives to take up the post wishes to do more than take a letter or type up his latest manuscript.

 

It turns out, in fact, that Angela Roberts is Jeff's former mistress and she has come to the island hoping to lure him away from his wife, or at least cause as much trouble as possible for a man who fled the mainland in order to escape her amorous clutches.  

 

Angela is the sort of sultry young woman for whom many men would give up red meat if that allowed them to catch a glimpse of her in a bra. Fortunately, despite it being the middle of winter, Fara is experiencing a mysterious and intense heat wave [6] and so Angela regularly has her blouse unbuttoned. She's also the kind of girl who knows how to make sweating sexy and raise male temperatures whatever the weather outside.    

 

That, of course, does not excuse the attempt to rape her by car mechanic Tinker Mason (played by Kenneth Cope) [7], but it does explain why Callum finds it so hard to resist Angela's charms; there are at least two occasions in the movie when he passionately kisses her - once on the beach and once in the study - despite insisting that he doesn't want to experience her special brand of madness again and threatening at one point to break her neck should his wife ever find out about their affair. 

Young, beautiful, and sexually attractive she may be, but Angela is not a very nice kettle of fish; in one particularly nasty scene she cruelly toys with Frankie's feelings, confessing she's Jeff's mistress (thus confirming the older woman's fears and suspicions), only then to snigger and retract the statement which she passes off as merely an expression of ill-temper [8].

 

Whether Frankie believes the woman she later describes as a selfish bitch isn't quite clear. But, having accepted Angela's explanation, she then witnesses the younger woman held tight in her husband's arms and enjoying what British people call a snog (see image below). Confronting her husband about his infidelity later on, Callum denies he loves Angela, insisting he was driven purely by lust and that the latter is nothing but a common slut.   

 

Anyway, for those who care, the film ends with a heavy downpour of rain and that finishes off the aliens: hurrah! for the Great British weather. 

 

Callum, Frankie, and Angela, however, all survived the night of the Big Heat and, once things cooled down, they presumably looked for a way to resolve their relationship issues. Who knows, perhaps Miss Roberts decided to stay on the island and Callum somehow managed to convince his wife that a ménage à trois just might work ...

 

 

A moment of shared passion for the illicit lovers and one 

of extreme awkwardness, to say the least, for a loyal wife.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The film was based on a 1959 novel of the same name by John Lymington. It was released in the United States in 1971 as Island of the Burning Damned. To watch the trailer to Night of the Big Heat, click here. To watch the film in full: click here. 

 

[2] Patrick Allen (1927-2006) made regular appearances in many of the ITC shows that I loved as a child and still like to watch now, including The Baron, The Avengers, and UFO. Even many who would be unfamiliar with his name might recognise his face - and would almost certainly know his distinctive voice, if only because he narrated the UK Government's Protect and Survive public information campaign, as sampled by Frankie Goes to Hollywood in their 1984 anti-war song 'Two Tribes' (ZTT Records). Allen also narrated the first series of Blackadder (1983) and voiced numerous TV commercials.     

      

[3] Jane Merrow (born Jane Josephine Meirowsky, in 1941, to an English mother and German-Jewish father) also had roles in many of the great British TV series, including Danger Man, The Saint, and The Prisoner. She was also considered as a possible replacement for Diana Rigg in The Avengers,  although the role eventually went to Linda Thorson. After moving to the US in the early 1970s, she went on to guest star in many hit American shows too, including Mission:Impossible, Police Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Hart to Hart, and The Incredible Hulk. One can find out much more via her website: click here. 

    

[4] Happily, the fictional affair in Night of the Big Heat had no effect on their marriage and they stayed together until Patrick's death in 2006. Sarah Lawson is perhaps best known for her role as Marie Eaton in The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968), also starring Christopher Lee (and it might also be noted that the actor Leon Greene (playing Rex Van Ryn) had his voice dubbed by Patrick Allen). 

 

[5] Fara is a small island in Orkney, Scotland. It has been uninhabited since the 1960s. I'm not sure if this is the island on which the story is meant to be set, or if the filmmakers simply borrowed the name. 

[6] According to the scientist played by Christopher Lee (Prof. Godfrey Hanson), the heat is of extraterrestrial origin; for Fara is the site of an alien invasion and these jellyfish-like beings seem to emit outrageously high levels of body heat - enough to cause anyone getting too close to spontaneously combust (if the head-splitting noise they also make doesn't prove fatal first).

[7] Fortunately, Angela is able to fight him off (hitting him over the head with a metal ashtray) and he is vapourised when fleeing from the scene of the sexual assault straight into the path of an alien. 

 

[8] This powerful scene between Frankie and Angela begins at 31 mins into the film and ends at 33:10.