Becoming-Other (Part 2): Alien Sympathy and the Poetic Imagination (With Reference to the Work of D. H. Lawrence)

Marc-Édouard Nabe: Lawrence sauvage (2009)

marcedouardnabe.com

In an essay entitled 'On Being a Man', Lawrence argues that it's very easy to know and to understand the other person as a person, but not so easy to know and to understand them as an impersonal Other who exists as a force of pure alterity and as an actual being in the world, independently of one's self.

For this requires what he calls a thought-adventure - an instinctive-intuitive process that starts in the blood and not in the mind and involves the taking of a double risk: "First, [one] must go forth and meet life in the body. Then [one] must face the result in [one's] mind."

To illustrate what he means, Lawrence asks us to imagine him sitting on a train. A stranger enters the compartment and is instantly recognizable as a white, middle-class, middle-aged, Englishman. With just a quick glance, says Lawrence, he can tell a great deal. The strangeness of the stranger - and thus the adventure of knowing him - is therefore strictly limited.

But what if the stranger is none of the above; what if, for example, they belong to a different race? Then, says Lawrence, he is unable to proceed quite so confidently with his characterization of the stranger:

"It is not enough for me to glance at a black face and say: He is a negro. As he sits next to me, there is a faint uneasy movement in my blood. A strange vibration comes from him, which causes a slight disturbance in my own vibration. There is a slight odour in my nostrils. And above all, even if I shut my eyes, there is a strange presence in contact with me.

      I now can no longer proceed from what I am and what I know I am, to what I know him to be. I am not a nigger and so I can't quite know a nigger, and I can never fully 'understand' him. 

      What then? It's an impasse.
      Then, I have three courses open. I can just plank down the word Nigger, and having labelled him, finished with him! Or I can try to track him down in terms of my own knowledge. That is, understand him as I understand any other individual. 

      Or I can do a third thing. I can admit that my blood is disturbed, that something comes from him and interferes with my normal vibration. Admitting so much, I can either put up a resistance, and insulate myself. Or I can allow the disturbance to continue, because, after all, there is some peculiar alien sympathy between us."

When it comes to the question of race relations, this, I think, is an absolutely crucial passage. If we wish to overcome common prejudice and the urge to stereotype, then, like Lawrence, we must allow our sense of self to be disrupted by the otherness of the Other and admit the peculiar alien sympathy between us.

This doesn't mean cultural appropriation, wearing black face, and pretending we are all one and the same under the skin, as idealists such as Boglarka Balogh pretend when they posit an ahistorical model of Humanity. It means, rather, exercising our poetic sensibility - as Lawrence exercises in an extraordinary verse found in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), in which he effects a becoming-negroid beneath the radiation of a dark, tropical sun:


Behold my hair twisting and going black.
Behold my eyes turn tawny yellow
Negroid;
See the milk of northern spume
Coagulating in my veins
Aromatic as frankincense.


The mistake that Balogh makes is that instead of peculiar alien sympathy, she substitutes an ideal form of moral sympathy that is rooted in her own ego. In other words, whilst she genuinely feels very sorry for people who are less privileged than herself, she lacks the ability to feel with them or be radically altered by the otherness of others. She can only see her own smiling face reflected in everyone and everything.

Ultimately, black people don't want white people to love them; for it's not a question of eros. And they don't care if white people fail to understand them; for neither is it a question of logos. They simply want a little respect and to be accorded what's proper to them as men and women; in other words, racial ethics is a question of thymos. 

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'On Being a Man', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 214-15. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Tropic', Birds, Beasts and Flowers, (1923). This poem can be read in full online by clicking here.

Those interested in Lawrence's important concept of sympathy might like to see the essay on Walt Whitman in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), in which he critiques the idea of merging into One Identity and exposes the danger of confusing sympathy with the Christian ideals of love and charity. The passage concerning the right conduct of a white poet with regard to a negro slave, obviously has particular relevance to our discussion above. Click here to read online.

To read part one of this post on the case of Boglarka Balogh, click here.

Becoming-Other (Part 1): The Case of Boglarka Balogh

Seven types of digital blackface produced by Boglarka Balogh 

(with the assistance of graphic artist Csaba Szábó)

boredpanda.com

I'm sure that some readers will recall the amusing case of Boglarka Balogh, the blonde, blue-eyed Hungarian idealist, who naively published a series of self-portraits in which she had digitally transposed her own facial features on to those of seven African tribal women, instantly provoking a furious online reaction. 

The project was intended to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by such women and to celebrate their unique beauty and cultural diversity. But Balogh, a human rights lawyer and journalist, was swiftly - often brutally - informed that, despite her good intentions, the images were offensive, degrading, and narcissistic.

It seems no matter how woke you may be - and no matter how skilled you are with the latest photo editing software - blackface is never acceptable and white people should stay in their own lane.

Not wanting to add insult to injury, Balogh made no reply to her critics and removed her work from the Bored Panda blog on which she'd posted it (though not before it had already received over 130,000 views), advising everyone to keep calm and love all humanity.

Obviously, such advice is inadequate as well as nauseating. But how then should one respond to this case and the issues raised? The answer, I think, has to do with a queer form of alien sympathy and the poetic imagination. And we can discover why by turning to the work of D. H. Lawrence ...

Click here to read part 2 of this post.

Jews of the Wrong Sort: Notes on D. H. Lawrence and Anti-Semitism

Honor Blackman as Mrs Fawcett in The Virgin and the Gypsy 
dir. Christopher Miles (1970)

An angry email arrives in my inbox (not for the first time):

"Dear Stephen Alexander,

I was extremely disappointed to find the expression 'Jews of the wrong sort' appearing in one of your recent posts (Orophobia, 16 Nov 2017), without any word of commentary or any condemnation of this racist phrase borrowed from D. H. Lawrence, a well-known antisemite. This kind of indiscretion brings shame on you and what is, in many respects, an excellent blog."*    

There are several things I'd like to say in response to this ...

Firstly, like Sylvia Plath, I'm someone who writes and identifies as a bit of a Jew, as I make clear in an early post where I reveal that key influences on my thinking include Jacques Derrida, Malcolm McLaren, and Larry David: click here. I'm certain that, for some, these three figures would also represent Jews of the wrong sort, i.e. provocateurs who gaily deconstruct the metaphysical illusions and sentimental ideals by which the majority choose to live.

Secondly, Lawrence - if it is in fact Lawrence speaking in The Captain's Doll and not an anonymous narrator offering either an indirect rendering of the thoughts of the protagonist or their own (ironic) commentary - is, like me, clearly in favour of sardonic individuals who seek to curb the enthusiasm of Bergheil romantics, such as Hannele, and encourage the difficult descent into the what Heidegger terms the nearness of the nearest (even if this risks a fall into gross materialism).

Thus Lawrence's attitude with reference to this question, as to many others concerning race, is ultimately complex and ambiguous (sometimes outrageously inconsistent) and The Captain's Doll is a text that remains highly resistant to any final interpretation.

Personally, I would argue that, for Lawrence, Jews of the wrong sort are people very much of the right sort. That is to say, very much his sort (just as they are my sort). And this is so because his status as an outsider obliged him to identify with groups and individuals whom society often holds in contempt; not just Jews, but also Gypsies, for example.

Thus, in The Virgin and the Gipsy (1930), it's clear where Lawrence's sympathies lie; with a 36-year-old Jewish woman, Mrs Fawcett, who has abandoned her husband and two young children in order to be with a much younger man; and a good-looking traveller, called Joe Boswell, who takes a shine to the 19-year-old daughter of an Anglican vicar.

It's the narrow domesticity and mean-spirited authority of the familial regime that imposes moral restrictions on life in the name of propriety, which Lawrence despises and mercilessly lampoons throughout the novel. He instinctively sides with all those who are, due to their marginalization and difference, implicitly opposed to such. This makes him a far more radical figure than many of his critics wish to concede ...            

See:

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Captain's Doll', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Virgin and the Gipsy', in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones, and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Ronald Granofsky, '"Jews of the Wrong Sort": D. H. Lawrence and Race', Journal of Modern Literature (Indiana University Press), Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter, 1999-2000), pp. 209-23. 

Judith Ruderman, Race and Identity in D. H. Lawrence: Indians, Gypsies, and Jews (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
 
*Note: The author kindly gave me permission to quote from her email, but asked that she remain anonymous.

Peter Sloterdijk and the Question of Anthropotechnics

Polity Press (2013)

Anthropotechnics is a term widely used today across numerous fields of study and with many different meanings. For some, it simply concerns the close interaction of man and machine. For others, however, with more of a background in Nietzschean philosophy, it refers to the manner in which bios (i.e. the raw material of the flesh) is given shape by a combination of culture and cruelty, or what Peter Sloterdijk likes to think of as existential acrobatics.

That is to say, learning how best not only to live, but to achieve a level of physical and mental agility via extensive training techniques that enable one to perform extraordinary feats as a human being (to dance, to tumble, and to walk on tiptoe). 

If this poetics of being can be furthered via a little genetic tinkering here and there or some form of selective breeding, then Sloterdijk seems fairly relaxed about this. In Rules for the Human Zoo, for example, he suggests that in a transhuman era in which traditional methods of enhancing the self - such as reading the right books - are losing their power, then biomedical engineering might be embraced as an exciting new opportunity: Vorsprung durch Technik ...

Unfortunately, Sloterdijk's eugenic speculation was regarded by some - including the grand old man of German critical theory Jürgen Habermas - as politically and philosophically pernicious and Sloterdijk was accused of wilful provocation and crypto-fascism (the fact that the above text was written in response to Heidegger didn't help matters).

To his credit, however, Sloterdijk stuck to his anthropotechnical guns and a decade later published a book translated into English as You Must Change Your Life - a work in which he again takes up the idea of human being not as something one is born, or as a fixed essence, but as something one becomes; an ever-changing work-in-progress subject to individual and collective techniques of transformation.    

Ultimately, says Sloterdijk, human beings are self-creating, self-disciplining animals and the history of human evolution is a vertical history of anthropotechnics. Again, it's impossible not to hear echoes of Nietzsche and those who have written in his shadow, such as Michel Foucault, in all of this; indeed, one might ask why read Sloterdijk when one can read Nietzsche and Foucault, both of whom write more beautifully in my view. 

Perhaps Keith Ansell-Pearson provides an answer to this in the effusive opening paragraph of his review of Sloterdijk's work:

"Peter Sloterdijk must be the most erudite man currently dwelling on the planet. He has fresh and novel insights into whatever he’s discussing at any particular moment. His recently translated book You Must Change Your Life is a tour de force that engages the history of philosophy, religion, and thought, both Western and Eastern, in ways that make you think deeply about the evolution of the human being these past few thousand years. As if this weren’t already enough, Sloterdijk is also concerned with the future, and on a planetary scale. [...] Sloterdijk thinks there is a new global ecological and economic imperative facing us today, and to this we need to respond with a new sublime."

And so, if you want an ambitious, complex, rather sprawling but at times amusing 21st-century spin on the care of the self in terms of aesthetics, asceticism and athleticism, inspired by Nietzsche, but which also takes in the work of Rilke, Kafka, Wittgenstein, and L. Ron Hubbard along the way, then this may very well be the book for you.    

Personally, however, I continue to have reservations; not least with the text's grandness of narrative and Sloterdijk's authorial grandiosity. For me, a little modesty would have been nice - and, for the record, I really don't like to see the word mußt in a book title (even if it is a borrowing from a poet).   

See:

Peter Sloterdijk, 'Rules for the Human Zoo: a response to the Letter on Humanism', trans. Mary Varney Rorty, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 27 (2009), pp. 12-28. Click here to read as a pdf online.

Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics, trans. Wieland Hoban (Polity Press, 2013).

Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Philosophy of the Acrobat: On Peter Sloterdijk', Los Angeles Review of Books, (July 8, 2013): click here to read the online version from which I quote. 

Orophobia (With Reference to the Case of Alexander Hepburn)

Casper David Friedrich: 

Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1818)

[Oder typischer romantischer Bullshit]

I don't like mountains and can never decide whether it's more depressing to be stuck at the foot of one, or atop the highest peak; the crushing claustrophobia of steep rock looming naked and inhuman, contra the radiant spiritual uplift of ice and snow - which is worse?

Either way, I suffer from a form of acute mountain sickness which has more to do with a philo-pathological disposition than with a lack of oxygen or trouble adjusting to altitude. I don't like being made to feel small and insignificant before what is ultimately just an elevation of the earth's surface, pushed up by tectonic activity (i.e., a large bump when all's said and done); but neither do I like submitting to Alpine ecstasy and being whooshed away into another world and another (higher) life and the promise of icy immortality.   

This is why I'm very sympathetic to the sceptical - some would say orophobic - reaction of Alexander Hepburn when he is taken by his German mistress, Hannele, to the popular Tyrolean resort of Kaprun, in order to experience the majesty of God's mountains.

Despite her strident insistence that the latter are wonderful and empowering, Hepburn soon expresses his disillusion and distaste. For, in his heart of hearts, he loathed the mountains, which seemed to him almost obscene in their unimaginably huge weight and size. As he tells Hannele, he is no mountain-topper or snow-bird, preferring to live as close as possible to sea-level at all times.

Lawrence writes:

"A dark flame suddenly went over his face.
     'Yes,' he said, 'I hate them, I hate them. I hate their snow and their affectation.'
     'Affectation!' she laughed. 'Oh! Even the mountains are affected for you, are they?'

     'Yes,' he said. 'Their loftiness and their uplift. I hate their uplift. I hate people prancing on mountain-tops and feeling exalted. I’d like to make them all stop up there, on their mountain-tops, and chew ice to fill their stomachs. I wouldn't let them down again, I wouldn't. I hate it all, I tell you; I hate it.'"

 Perhaps not surprisingly, Hannele is a little taken aback by this outburst:

"'You must be a little mad' she said superbly 'to talk like that about the mountains. They are so much bigger than you.'
     'No', he said. 'No! They are not.'

   'What!' she laughed aloud. 'The mountains are not bigger than you? But you are extraordinary.'

     'They are not bigger than me' he cried. 'Any more than you are bigger than me if you stand on a ladder. They are not bigger than me. They are less than me.'
      'Oh! Oh!' she cried in wonder and ridicule. 'The mountains are less than you.' 
      'Yes,' he cried, 'they are less.'"

Hannele mistakes this for megalomania, but, actually, it isn't that. It is, rather, a noble refusal to be intimidated by grandeur, be it divine or natural in origin, and a rejection of romantic idealism founded upon notions of transcendence and the sublime. In other words, Hepburn is attempting to curb his - and Hannele's - enthusiasm; something which I think a (pretty) good thing.

Indeed, for me, Lawrence is at his best not when indulging his penchant for theo-poetic speculation (sorry Catherine), but, rather, being sardonic and stubbornly down-to-earth; like one of those Jews of the wrong sort whom Hepburn encounters at his hotel; imparting a "wholesome breath of sanity, disillusion, unsentimentality to the excited Bergheil atmosphere".

Ultimately, as much as Lawrence wishes to make life seem glamorous and rich with cosmic significance, he doesn't want men and women to sprout wings of the spirit too often; nor pose as solitary superhuman beings on mountain summits, as if belonging to a glacial world sufficient unto itself and devoid of cabbages.

His great teaching, rather, is to climb down Pisgah and for man to affirm the horizontal limitations of his own flesh and mortality.  

Notes

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Captain's Doll' in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, edited by Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 2002), chapters XIV-XVIII. 

Note: The Captain's Doll (1923) can be read online as an eBook thanks to Project Gutenberg of Australia: click here.

See also the fascinating article by Catherine Brown, 'Climbing Down the Alpine Pisgah: Lawrence and the Alps', which explores Lawrence's relationship to the mountains in much more detail: click here. 

Torpedo the Ark Means: Everything's Funny (5th Anniversary Reflections on the Death of a Parakeet)

Sorry about your bird ...

The phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Ibsen - is polysemic. That is to say, it has multiple meanings within a semantic field and thus invites fluid interpretation, rather than fixed definition.

Having said that, when originally conceiving the blog, I wanted a title that would first and foremost sloganise the idea of having done with the judgement of God. This, for me at least, remains the core meaning of the phrase that underlies all others. Understand this, and you understand that torpedo the ark is opposed to all forms of coordinating authority and does not mean destroy all species of life.

Those who like to read it in the latter sense are welcome to do so, but it's mistaken to describe this blog as ecocidal, even if it is often anti-vitalist in its nihilism and ultimately regards the epiphenomenal occurrence of life as a very rare and unusual way of being dead. What's being negated here isn't bios in all its evolutionary variety, but the lie of salvation.

Crucially, torpedo the ark also means having the freedom to criticise everything under the sun - even if this risks offending others. Nothing is sacrosanct or off limits; everything can be targeted and everything can be ridiculed, mocked, or scorned because, as Larry David rightly informs his friend Richard Lewis, everything's funny - even the death of a beloved parakeet ...  

Note: I am referring to a scene in the first episode of the ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'Foisted!', dir. Jeff Schaffer, written by Larry David and Jeff Schaffer (2017): click here to watch on YouTube.  

Anger is an Energy: On the Politics of Thymos

Thymos 2 (from a series of 50 mixed media images) 

Alejandro Tarantino

Most people are familiar with the ancient Greek terms for love (eros) and for reason (logos).

But many are unfamiliar with another crucial component of the psyche that the Greeks termed thymos and by which they referred to the desire of the male subject not merely to be found sexually attractive and in full possession of his senses, but acknowledged as one who is worthy of respect.

It is this need to be shown due regard that often leads to anger and violent confrontation within patriarchal and phallocratic society. For example, one might recall the powerful scene from A Few Good Men (dir. Rob Reiner, 1992), in which Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessep addresses Tom Cruise as US Navy lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee:

"You see, Danny, I can deal with the bullets and the bombs and the blood. I don't want money and I don't want medals. What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform and with your Harvard mouth extend me some fucking courtesy!"

Staying in the cinematic universe if I may, I would suggest that it's this same (irrational) aspect of the male soul we are obliged to consider in Joel Schumacher's 1993 thriller Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas as alt-right poster boy William Foster (D-FENS).

The movie suggests that, ultimately, even an average man can be pushed too far and that nobody likes to feel they've been lied to, or made a fool of. And nobody likes to feel they're invisible and thus able to be totally ignored. It makes the blood boil. One seeks justice; or some form of revenge.

Deleuzeans might dream of becoming-imperceptible. But they are a very rare and very unusual type. Most people - particularly most men - want to be seen and want to be listened to; want the world to recognise that they too have rights, including the right to freely express their views and affirm their values, whether these coincide with the views and values of a gender-neutral liberal elite or not.      

Idealists who subscribe to a philosophical fantasy of universal love and reason, will never really grasp what motivates men like Jessep and Bill Foster. If this makes them poor film critics on the one hand, so too does it make them poor political commentators on the other; people, we might say, who can't handle the truth.

And so, whilst they might write for The Guardian or appear on Dateline London, not one of them seems able or willing to conceive of why it is that reactionary and/or fascist ideas to do with cultural identity and national greatness that tap into white male rage not only persist, but have renewed appeal amongst sections of even the most prosperous and peaceful democratic societies.  


To watch the scene referred to above between Nicholson and Cruise in A Few Good Men, click here. 

To watch the official trailer to Falling Down, click here.

All Dolled Up with Lulu Hashimoto

Lulu Hashimoto: tumblr.com

Japanese beauty, Lulu Hashimoto, is a girl who has really taken the expression all dolled up to heart.

Or, more precisely, Lulu Hashimoto is a doll-like character performed by an anonymous model who has really taken the idea of self-objectification to an uncanny level.  

In other words, Lulu is actually a full-body doll suit, consisting of a wig, a mask and stockings patterned with doll-like joints, created by Hitomi Komaki, a 23-year-old fashion designer who has a thing for dolls and their unique attraction (a disturbing combination of cuteness and creepiness).

Despite Komaki's rather puzzling and somewhat disingenuous denials, there's obviously something fetishistic about this game of dress up and disguise born of the world of BDSM; of becoming-object through a process of dollification - a process of physically and mentally transforming oneself into a living doll and seeking out an Owner to whom one must be subservient at all times.  

Lulu has not only turned heads on the streets of Tokyo, but has built up a substantial following on social media, with fans all over the world. She is, in addition, among the finalists of the annual Miss iD (alternative) beauty pageant this year; a contest open to all kinds of beings, human and non-human, actual and virtual, including holographic characters generated by artificial intelligence.

To broaden our understanding of the real in this manner - and to redefine notions not only of aesthetics, but humanity - is, I think, a good thing; it's certainly an interesting project from a queer philosophical perspective.    

And the possibility of donning a doll-suit, whatever one's age, race, or gender and (if only momentarily and imaginatively) becoming a beautiful young Japanese girl like Lulu, certainly has its appeal ...  

Notes 

Those interested in seeing more photos of Lulu and becoming one of her 31.3k followers on Instagram, click here.

Those interested in dollification as practiced within the kinky community might like to visit dollification.com

Chinese Beauty Tips with Reference to the Case of Kina Shen

Kina Shen / Instagram (16 Dec 2016) 

The Chinese still like to think they are a people apart, with their own unique aesthetic ideals - including ideals of what constitutes female beauty. But, actually, when one examines these ideals, be they Taoist or Confucian in origin, one finds they don't greatly differ from those that have been cherished amongst other peoples, in other times and other parts of the world.

For example, they think that girls with large eyes are very beautiful; particularly if the eyes have a double-fold lid (often achieved by cosmetic surgery), similar to the eyes of Westerners. The Chinese also value porcelain white skin and fine, delicate features, believing as they do that these physical traits reflect an inner moral dimension or natural nobility. Finally, when it comes to hair, the Chinese like it to be long, shiny, dark, and soft.

Those big-bodied blondes, with their fake tans and fake tits that so many Western men seem attracted to, are regarded as ugly and vulgar within the erotico-aesthetic that determines the Sino-pornographic imagination. And so it's not surprising to find that one of the most popular models in China today is 25-year-old Kina Shen, who prides herself on her hyperreal doll-like appearance, with eyes that are bigger-than-big, skin that is paler-than-pale, a body that is slimmer-than-slim, and hair that is sleeker-than-sleek.

Even though I don't view the world through Chinese eyes, she's certainly extraordinary looking and clearly a very talented make-up artist which, I suppose, makes her fully deserving of her huge following on social media, including 634k followers on Instagram [click here if interested in becoming one of them].

And even though I'm not a smoking fetishist, I admire the fact that Kina Shen often poses with a cigarette - something that now seems exotic and transgressive here in the West, where people have become so obsessed about their health that they've sacrificed style and forgotten the importance of living dangerously. I also like her attempts at philosophizing about the gothic nature of her being, as in this astonishing remark posted online:

"All this time I thought I was dark, but maybe I was wrong. I cannot stay away from darkness, because it needs me. Because I am the light it craves ... So maybe I am not cursed, but blessed with a dark kind of light."


To watch Kina Shen giving a YouTube make-up tutorial on how to achieve her big eye look, click here. 

Dollification: The Cases of Bastian Schweinsteiger and Alexander Hepburn

Cover of the first US edition (1923) 

by Knud Merrild 

I: The Case of Bastian Schweinsteiger

There was an amusing story in the press a couple of years ago concerning the German footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger and his lawsuit against a Chinese toy company that had manufactured an action figure that bore an uncanny resemblance to him.

The fact that the doll also came dressed as a Nazi soldier and was named Bastian, pretty much obliged the midfielder to take legal action, even though a spokesman for the company brazenly attempted to deny the undeniable by insisting that any likeness was purely coincidental. He further explained that, to Chinese eyes, all Germans look alike ...!

I've no idea if the case went ahead, or if there was some kind of out-of-court settlement; one assumes the doll has been withdrawn from sale, but even that I don't know for certain. At the time, most people simply smiled at the story and then quickly forgot about it. But it always stuck with me. And that's because, as a reader of Lawrence, it reminds me of the case of Alexander Hepburn ... 


II: The Case of Alexander Hepburn

Written in 1921 and published two years later, The Captain's Doll is a short novel by D. H. Lawrence that tells the tale of an illicit love affair between an aristocratic German woman, Johanna zu Rassentlow (known as Hannele), and a Scottish army officer, Capt. Hepburn.

Thanks to the War, she has fallen on hard times and so has to work for a living making puppets and beautiful cushions of embroidered coloured wool. He, arguably, has been damaged in other ways by the years of bloody conflict and evolved his own idiosyncratic philosophy based on his love of the moon that he's keen to enact in his own life, without any further compromise and at whatever cost.

If the existence of a wife, Evangeline, is problematic to his future happiness and his relationship with Hannele, so too is the existence of a doll that the latter makes of him, complete with tight-fitting tartan trews. A doll which not only accurately captures his physical likeness, but seems to insult the integrity of his being; objectifying him and belittling him at the same time:

"It was a perfect portrait of an officer of a Scottish regiment, slender, delicately made, with a slight, elegant stoop of the shoulders and close-fitting tartan trousers. The face was beautifully modelled, and a wonderful portrait, dark-skinned, with a little, close-cut, dark moustache, and wide-open dark eyes, and that air of aloofness and perfect diffidence which marks an officer and a gentleman."

Personally, I'd love to be dollified and wouldn't find it in any way unseemly or humiliating, whoever made it and however it was costumed. But Hepburn reacts very differently, when he one day sees the toy version of himself standing in a shop window. He stood and stared at it, as if spellbound; so disgusted that he wouldn't enter the little art shop:

"Then, every day for a week did he walk down that little street and look at himself in the shop window. Yes, there he stood, with one hand in his pocket. And the figure had one hand in its pocket. There he stood, with his cap pulled rather low over his brow. And the figure had its cap pulled low over its brow. But, thank goodness, his own cap now was a civilian tweed. But there he stood, his head rather forward, gazing with fixed dark eyes. And himself in little, that wretched figure, stood there with its head rather forward, staring with fixed dark eyes. It was such a real little man that it fairly staggered him. The oftener he saw it, the more it staggered him. And the more he hated it. Yet it fascinated him, and he came again to look.
      And it was always there. A lonely little individual lounging there with one hand in its pocket, and nothing to do, among the bric-à-brac and the bibelots. Poor devil, stuck so incongruously in the world. And yet losing none of his masculinity.
      A male little devil, for all his forlornness. But such an air of isolation, or not-belonging. Yet taut and male, in his tartan trews. And what a situation to be in! - lounging with his back against a little Japanese lacquer cabinet, with a few old pots on his right hand and a tiresome brass ink-tray on his left, while pieces of not-very-nice filet lace hung their length up and down the background. Poor little devil: it was like a deliberate satire."

One wonders if Schweinsteiger also felt this way when seeing his doll for sale: disgusted, but fascinated; staggered, but spellbound ...? If so, then, as one commentator has noted, we can hardly begrudge him taking legal action.

Towards the end of the novella, Hepburn confronts Hannele on the issue of the doll when hiking in the mountains (which she loves, but which he hates for their snow and affectations). He suggests that she might marry him - but he doesn't want her love, for it was love from which the doll was born. She is understandably full of perplexed rage at the things he says to her; including his claim that the handcrafted effigy does him the greatest possible damage - even if he can't quite explain why:

"'I don't know. But there it is. It wasn't malicious. It was flattering, if you like. But it just sticks in me like a thorn: like a thorn. ... And you can say what you like, but any woman, today, no matter how much she loves her man - she could start any minute and make a doll of him. And the doll would be her hero: and her hero would be no more than her doll. ... If a woman loves you, she'll make a doll out of you. She'll never be satisfied till she's made your doll. And when she's got your doll, that's all she wants. And that's what love means. And so, I won't be loved. And I won't love. I won't have anybody loving me. It is an insult. I feel I've been insulted for forty years: by love, and the women who've loved me. I won't be loved. And I won't love. I'll be honoured and I'll be obeyed: or nothing.'"

Appalled by this line of thinking, Hannele dismisses Hepburn as a madman of conceit and impudence. Nevertheless, she agrees to accompany him to Africa, where he plans to help establish a farm and, when he's made a few more observations and established all the necessary facts, write a book on the moon. 

And so Hepburn promises to call for her in the morning, before pulling back quickly into the darkness ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Captain's Doll' in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, edited by Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 2002). 

Note: The Captain's Doll (1923) can be read online as an eBook thanks to Project Gutenberg of Australia: click here. 

  

On Nietzsche's Epicureanism

Edvard Munch: Friedrich Nietzsche 

(oil on canvas, 1906)

Whenever there's a lovely day like today - sunny and frost-bright, with blue skies and trees aflame with autumnal reds and golds - I think of Nietzsche in his cheerful mid-period writings gaily affirming the world and its eternal recurrence exactly as is.

That is to say, the Nietzsche who attempts to construct an ethos in the heroic-idyllic manner of Epicurus, delighting in modest pleasures and the cultivation of philosophical serenity [ἀταραξία].

As Keith Ansell-Pearson points out, Nietzsche's interest in Epicurus is, on the face of it, rather curious considering the plebeian aspects of the latter's thinking. And Nietzsche's relation to Epicurus is certainly ambiguous - increasingly so in his later work.

However, it's undeniably the case that during the late-1870s and early-1880s, Nietzsche was full of praise for this pleasure-loving ancient Greek and this is something that should be remembered by those who would portray Nietzsche as an austere philosopher who scorns all forms of hedonism as self-indulgence, or decadence. 

Ultimately, I agree with Ansell-Pearson that the essential thing is that, for Nietzsche, Epicurus's teaching demonstrates how best "to quieten our being and so help temper a human mind that is prone to neurosis". He helps us, as Larry David would say, curb our enthusiasm and not to care so much about great events, focusing instead on the little things that matter most (such as flowers, fresh figs, and friendship, for example).

There is an asceticism involved here. But it's an insouciant asceticism, or what one commentator describes as a eudaemonic asceticism, which is antithetical to those later Christian-moral practices of self-denial and world-negation.

When you add this together with the fact that Epicurus was one of the first Greek philosophers to reject superstitious worship of the gods based on fear, affirm the fact of life's mortality, and deny "any cosmic exceptionalism on the part of the human", and you begin to see why Nietzsche found him so attractive (and why, in turn, I find Nietzsche so congenial).


See: Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing: Nietzsche and the Epicurean Tradition', Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Vol. 74, (July 2014), pp. 237-63. This essay can be read online via The Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP): click here.

Note: Ansell-Pearson's new book, Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy - which aims to provide a novel and thought-provoking examination of the mid-period writings - is published by Bloomsbury on 22 Feb 2018 and is available for pre-order on Amazon now: click here.

On the Question of Rewilding the UK (with Reference to the Case of Lilleth the Lynx)

An escaped Eurasian lynx called Lilleth - on the run from a zoo near Aberystwyth after leaping over an electrified fence - has been evading recapture and making news headlines for more than a week now.

Her shadowy feline presence amongst the Welsh hills, silently outwitting dozens of dozy policemen and scaring nervy local sheep farmers, has rekindled the debate about a possible rewilding of the British Isles; i.e., the large-scale restoration of ecosystems and, more controversially, the reintroduction of extinct native species, including large predators such as the lynx.

It's a project I fully endorse; it makes the heart happy to know that there are already small populations of beavers and wild boar at large and seemingly thriving. However, I can't seriously envision wolves and brown bears being able to roam freely once more without (i) a radical revaluation of values - something with which all rewilders agree - and (ii) a significant reduction of human numbers - something which many rewilders refuse to consider, or flatly deny the need for. 

The truth, however, is that large animals require lots of space and plenty of prey. Foxes may have adapted to an urban environment - and we may have become used to their presence in the city streets - but it's hard to imagine a family of wolves living under the garden shed and making do with some leftover chicken found in a bin bag.   

And it's also true that thanks to net migration and recorded births continuing to outnumber deaths, the population of the UK is growing at an accelerated rate. According to the latest report by the Office of National Statistics (July 2017), it presently stands at an all-time high of 65.6 million, having increased annually by an average of 482,000 for the last decade. By 2039, this same government body projects it will have risen to over 74 million.

That's a lot of people on a small island all needing to be fed and housed and all demanding the right to breed and to consume ever-more of the remaining natural resources. Eco-idealists who dream of man and nature living in perfect harmony are, frankly, fooling no one but themselves.

Sadly, if people want a world rich in flora and fauna - a world in which Lilleth's cubs can be wild and free - then the answer still remains what I said it was in a post published on 12 October 2013: voluntary human extinction [click here]. Only this will ensure that life's evolution continues to unfold in all its marvellous non-human diversity.        

Live long and die out people ... for how easily we might spare a million or two humans and never miss them. Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white frost face of a slim, golden-bodied lynx. 


Notes

Readers interested in knowing more about rewilding can visit the Rewilding Britain website: click here.

Readers interested in the latest report on the UK population by the ONS can click here.

Readers interested in knowing more about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement can click here. 

The closing italicised lines are taken (in a slightly modified form) from the D. H. Lawrence poem 'Mountain Lion', Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923).

Update: 11 Nov 2017: The authorities have "humanely" killed the escaped cat, having been unable to recapture her; justifying the action in the name of "public safety", which, they say, must be paramount at all times. And so we expose the murderous nature of our anthropic idealism once more. Men! The only animal in the world to fear!

Going Gaga for Go-Go Boots

Young woman in white go-go boots 
and red hot pants: it's a good look

I've been told - and I don't know if it stands up to serious etymological scrutiny - that the term go-go is not simply what linguists term a reduplication.

That it derives, rather, from the French expression à gogo (in joyful abundance); an expression which is in turn derived from the ancient French word for happiness, la gogue. This sounds plausible to me, and I love the idea that go-go boots are a form of footwear born of gaiety and plenitude; just as go-go dancers embody the Dionysian spirit of ecstasy and excess. 

Introduced into the world of women's fashion in the mid-1960s, go-go boots as originally conceived by French designer André Courrèges, were mid-calf in length, low-heeled, and distinctively white in colour. Since then, the term has also come to include knee-high boots with block heels in a multitude of colours.

Purists might moan about this development, but, personally, I think it a good thing. Indeed, if I'm honest, I prefer the later designs that come higher up the leg and have chunkier heels. I also prefer the boots to be made of PVC, rather than leather, thus giving them a younger, poppier, more futuristic feel (as intended by Courrèges) than footwear made from more traditional materials.

Ultimately, despite Nancy Sinatra's insistence to the contrary, these boots are made for dancing and for space travel, not walking - and certainly not walking all over another person as if one were wearing a pair of black jackboots! Sinatra may have helped popularise the go-go boot, but in also establishing it as an aggressive symbol of empowerment, she robs it of its seductive appeal which is based on the subversion of phallocratic forms through playfulness (understanding seduction as a differential concept in the manner of Baudrillard, not as a sexual term).              


Notes

To see an original boot design by Courrèges, click here. 

The song, These Boots Are Made for Walkin' (1966), written by Lee Hazlewood, recorded and performed by Nancy Sinatra, can be found on YouTube by clicking here. 

To read posts related to this one on futuristic 60s and 70s fashion, click here (mini-skirts) and here (hot pants). 

Fragments from a Dark History of Black Fashion (V-VII)

V.

The colour is black ... the seduction is beauty ... the aim is ecstasy ... the fantasy is death - or how fascism exerted its sartorial fascination ...

Initially, Mussolini seemed to have a better eye for fashion than Hitler; for clearly black shirts look so much better than brown! But the paramilitary thugs of the Sturmabteilung only wore brown shirts because a large number were available on the cheap following the end of the First World War and the fledgling Nazi Party had to watch the pfennigs. However, once in government and receiving the backing of big business - and once Röhm had been dealt with and the SA superseded by the SS - the Führer ensured that his Nazi elite were dressed to kill in a close-fitting, all-black uniform designed to make its wearer not only feel superior, but look supremely stylish.

Manufactured by Hugo Boss, the uniform was tailored to project malevolent authority and perpetuate the fascist aesthetization and eroticization of power. If many people felt sick with fear when they saw it, a significant number felt sexually aroused and the SS uniform has secured its place not only within the annals of terror, but the pornographic imagination.


VI.

In the post-War world of 50s youth culture, however, black - particularly the black leather jacket - became a symbol of individuality and rebellion; the colour of beatniks and bikers who didn't accept the established norms and values of society. In Paris, meanwhile, it was worn by Left-Bank intellectuals; painters, philosophers, writers, and über-cool performers such as Juliette Gréco, muse to Jean-Paul Sartre and lover of genius jazz musician Miles Davis.

The hippies who followed in the 1960s, with their love of psychedelic colours, tie-dyed clothing, paisley prints and floral patterns, subscribed to an almost anti-black rainbow aesthetic - one of the reasons that Malcolm McLaren despised them. But those within the punk movement of the mid-late 70s, shaped by McLaren in his own image, would again make black an emblematic colour. Finally, mention must be made of the post-punk goths and devotees of kink within the world of fetish fashion taking black outfits to a whole new level of perverse dark beauty.

VII.

According to Coco Chanel, a woman only needs three things to look elegant - and one of these three things is what has become known as the little black dress, a vision of which she published in Vogue in October 1926, radically changing women's fashion forever. After this date, a full-length gown might still be required for formal occasions, but, apart from these ceremonial social events, the LBD could be worn anywhere, anytime with the assurance that one would not be committing a faux pas and never not looking anything but chic, stylish, and sophisticated.

As Karl Lagerfeld has explained, black is the colour that goes with everything; if you're wearing black, you can't go wrong. Ultimately, black is fashion and fashion is black. And all those designers who suggest other colours upon which to build a wardrobe by declaring them to be the new black are basically fraudsters looking to push the latest trend and sell a few more frocks while they can. Hemlines rise and fall, accessories come and go, but the LBD is the essential must have item.           


Notes 

The image of the good-looking SS officer is by CainIsNotMyEnemy and can be found on Deviant Art by clicking here.

The photo of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly is a publicity shot for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); she is wearing a sheath little black dress, designed by Givenchy in Italian satin. 

Those interested in reading fragments I-IV of this dark history of black fashion should click here. 

Fragments from a Dark History of Black Fashion (I-IV)

Portrait of a Lady in Black (c.1580)

I.

In much the same way that black absorbs all forms of visible light, thereby collapsing any distinctions of colour, so too does it seem to enchant all sorts of people and wrap them equally in its dark splendour. Paradoxically sexy and subversive at the same time as it is austere and authoritarian, black appeals to priests, puritans and policemen, as well as poets, punks and perverts; aristocrats and anarchists; fascists and fashionistas ...     


II.

By the Christian Middle Ages, black was commonly associated with the three great D-words: death, darkness and the devil. It's a little odd, therefore, that members of the clergy then as now had such a penchant for wearing black. Some argued that it was a sign of humility. But other priests knew that black robes and gowns symbolised their authority, as it did that of magistrates, government officials, and wealthy bankers and merchants. It's almost as if the Church secretly wished to acknowledge that their power too was rooted in the world, in fashion and in evil. 

III.

Eventually, members of the European nobility - such as the stylish Duke of Milan - also began to be seduced by the simple (yet sophisicated) elegance of black. From Italy, the look spread to France, then England, followed by Spain. By the end of the 16th century, black was worn in all the courts of Europe, whatever their religious persuasion. Indeed, even the best-dressed Puritans, for whom dress codes were very important, had a thing for black. It was red - as worn by the Pope and the Whore of Babylon - that they regarded with horror, even though, as a matter of fact, black clothing was very expensive due to the dyes used and a sign not of sober moderation, but privilege and status. For ordinary folk, it would have been socially unacceptable to be seen wearing the latest black fashions, even if they were able to afford them. They were thus obliged to stick with their workaday blues and browns, etc.   

IV.

For a while, during the 18th century, black lost some of its lustre as the fashion colour of choice, as members of the French nobility rediscovered their gaiety. However, 1789 soon put an end to that. As the Jacobins asserted their power, black again became the dominant colour and there was a moral revolt not only against the aristocracy, but against the extravagance of haute couture. Further, with the invention of new, inexpensive dyes and the industrialization of the textile industry, good quality black clothing became widely available for the first time. By the end of the Victorian era, it was the accepted colour of business dress, evening wear, and mourning in Britain, Europe and the United States - as well, ironically, the colour of choice for Romantic poets and anarchists alike.

Note: those interested in reading fragments V-VII of this dark history of black fashion should click here.  

Back to Black: Reflections on the Darkness of Being

Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)

I.

Black isn't merely the darkest colour. It's also the sexiest colour; the most dangerous colour.

In fact, it's more a state of mind or way of being than just an achromatic shade, as understood by artists, fashionistas, fascists and by all those for whom sensible blues and browns just don't cut it on the canvas or on the catwalk, anymore than they excite on the battlefield or in the bedroom.

The only other colour that comes close to having the erotic and evil allure of black is red and the two are often used in powerful combination. The ancient Greeks, for example, made their famous black-figure pottery by using an ingenious technique in which the figures, painted with a glossy clay slip, were set against a vivid red background.
 
However, whilst not wishing to denigrate erythrophiles for whom red is the king of colours, personally, like Amy - and as a thanatologist and nihilist - when the odds are stacked, I always go back to black ...

II.

The sculptor Anish Kapoor, who often works with ideas of negative space and the void of non-being, has said that black is the most emotive colour - particularly that darkest form of black that is carried within each of us; not as original sin, but as what we might think of as a black hole of the self, sitting at the centre of the soul and into which we might fall and disappear at any moment.

I think this is the disconcerting truth that Kurtz discovers, to his horror, in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). And, arguably, it's what Heidegger is referring to when he suggests that Dasein can only grasp its own wholeness by facing up to its emptiness - i.e., to the fact that being floats upon a sea of oblivion and the ever-present possibility of no-longer-being-there [sein Nicht-mehr-dasein].

Perhaps because of this - because we are creatures not merely threatened by but born of the darkness - black is crucial within the cave paintings of early man and has remained the fundamental reality upon which so much great art continues to build, making all other colours seem dirty and inferior.   

Note: 

As most readers will know, the title to this post, Back to Black, is taken from the fantastic song written and performed by Amy Winehouse, produced by Mark Ronson (Island Records, 2007). The accompanying video, dir. Phil Griffin, can be watched on YouTube by clicking here.

Vantablack: Notes on the Science of an Uncanny Colour and a Skirmish in the Art World

A technician holds up a sample of Vantablack against 
a silver foil background - et voilà! an instant black hole

Image: Surrey Nanosystems

I: Manufacturing the Void: On the Science of an Uncanny Colour

Despite Spanish songsters Los Bravos tautologically insisting that black is black, actually there are degrees of darkness to be considered. In other words, there's black, there's super black, and then there's Vantablack ... 

Vantablack is an uncanny substance composed of a forest of vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays which are grown on a substrate using a modified chemical vapour deposition. It is the darkest material ever made, absorbing almost 100% of radiation in the visible spectrum and creating the illusion of a black hole whenever it's applied to the surface of an object.

When light strikes an object covered in Vantablack, instead of reflecting as it normally would, thereby allowing the eye to see the object, it becomes trapped and continually deflected among the tubes, flattening out all appearance of depth. Eventually the light is absorbed and dissipated as heat.

There have, of course, been similar substances developed in the past; NASA, for example, had previously developed their own super black. But Vantablack is the baddest and the blackest of them all - the veritable prince of darkness.

Indeed, had I been the one naming it, I'd have called it Satanic black, rather than Vantablack (VANTA being an acronym derived from vertically aligned nanotube arrays); a name given by the British company Surrey NanoSystems who invented it, and who have identified a wide range of potential applications for the substance thanks to its emissivity and scalability. These include improving the performance of telescopes and materials used in solar power technology.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the military are also interested in how Vantablack might be used as thermal camouflage and increase the invisibility and all-round stealthiness of stealth aircraft.       


II: Brushes at Dawn: On a Skirmish in the Art World

Artists too have expressed an interest in this new (anti-)colour, which offers so many fascinating opportunities for deception and design. Unfortunately, however, they're not going to get the chance to use it after the sculptor Anish Kapoor proved to be (a) quick off the mark and (b) something of an arsehole; obtaining as he did an exclusive license for artistic use of Vantablack, causing outrage amongst others in the art world, including Jason Chase, Christian Furr, and Stuart Semple.

The latter, for example, retaliated by developing a strong shade of ultra-fluorescent pink - as well as a cherry-scented deep black colour - to which he attached (non-binding) clauses to the effect that Kapoor was not allowed to purchase them. The sculptor responded in December 2016 by posting a picture on Instagram of his raised middle finger dipped in Semple's pink paint.     

Jason Chase, meanwhile, teamed up with a company called NanoLab to create his own super dark colour which he named Singularity Black. Unlike Kapoor, he made his new black fully available to others artists should they wish to experiment with it in their work.
   

There are several ways to view this tiff between artists; one might see it as an example of the petty stupidity and rivalry that is, unfortunately, all too common in the creative industries. On the other hand, one could argue that it demonstrates the supreme importance of black within the art world, described by Renoir as la reine des couleurs and by Matisse as more than a mere colour - Black, he said, is a force that simplifies everything.   

Indeed, as Kapoor himself recognised, much of the fuss over his exclusive rights to Vantablack is due to the profoundly emotive nature of the colour: "I don’t think the same response would occur if it was white".

Notes

To find out more about Vantablack, visit the Surrey Nanosystems website by clicking here. 

For more details of the colourful skirmish between Kapoor and Semple, see the article by Adam Rogers, 'Art Fight! The Pinkest Pink Versus the Blackest Black' in Wired (22 June, 2017): click here. 

The line quoted from Kapoor at the end of this post is from an article by Brigid Delaney, '"You could disappear into it": Anish Kapoor on his exclusive rights to the 'blackest black', The Guardian (26 Sept., 2016): click here.  

Paint It Black: Notes on a Song

Pure Evil: Anita Pallenberg's Nightmare - 
Paint It Black (2016) 

Stencil spray paint on canvas (100 cm x 100 cm)

Whilst in 1977 there was no Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones - or, more precisely, no positive assessment of these performers and their work was allowed within punk circles, I think it's safe to now admit that, actually, all three recorded some fantastic tracks, including the song that I wish to speak of here written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: Paint It Black ...

Released as a single in May 1966, Paint It Black is a classic piece of psychedelic pop nihilism that has remained on that great playlist of the cultural imagination ever since, charting in the UK on several occasions and inspiring multiple cover versions. If it's not number one in my all-time top forty, it's certainly in there somewhere and is a steady climber. 

Although musically it sounds great - with Keith's brilliant opening guitar riff, Bill Wyman's heavy duty bass, Charlie Watts's double-time drums, and its raga elements (i.e. Brian Jones on sitar) adding interesting complexity to what is otherwise a fairly standard and ironically upbeat arrangement - what amuses and interests me the most, however, is the violent, unrelenting bleakness of the lyrics.

It's often claimed that Jagger took inspiration from Joyce's Ulysses. I don't know if that's true, although he does paraphrase a line from the book and there are certainly common themes, such as desperation, death and a sense of rage in the face not only of life's absurd cruelty, but also its cruel absurdity - and, indeed, its equally empty pleasures; from pretty colours, to pretty girls dressed in their summer clothes.

Crucially, however, both song and novel also share something else; an affirmative joy and dark humour that is born from the blackness itself. The former may describe a psychotic episode of depression brought on by the loss of a loved one, a bad acid trip, or a tour of duty in Vietnam (who knows?), but there's nothing depressing about it.

In fact, it makes you want to sing and dance. And, ultimately, it makes you want to destroy those things that cause sorrow and weigh us down; that is to say, it encourages an active negation of the negative and is thus as Nietzschean in its nihilism as anything released by the Sex Pistols.


Click here to play Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones (with lyrics) on YouTube.

In Praise of The Persuaders!

Tony Curtis and Roger Moore 

as Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair: a fine bromance

I'm very grateful to True Entertainment for currently re-running all 24 episodes of The Persuaders! that were originally broadcast on ITV between September 1971 and February '72.

For in so doing, they afford viewers such as myself the opportunity not only to enjoy once more the unique acting abilities of Mssrs. Curtis and Moore and the fascinating on-screen chemistry between them, but also to relish the fabulous fashions of the period, the sensational theme tune by John Barry, and take nostalgic delight in memories of childhood and this golden age of British television, which is tarnished only by the politically correct retro-analysis of critics keen to suck the fun out of everything and denigrate the past (such as those insufferable bores on Channel 4's It Was Alright in the 70s).       

Played mostly for laughs, The Persuaders! is an action-adventure series starring a post-Boston Strangler Tony Curtis and a post-Saint but pre-Bond Roger Moore, as two rich, good-looking, but ever-so-slightly over the hill playboys - Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair - who have a taste for danger and a talent for solving crime, as well as a penchant for living the high life in the company of a succession of beautiful women.  

The series, devised and produced by Robert S. Baker, was filmed on the Continent, as well as in the UK, at a time when Europe was still regarded as a sophisticated, glamorous, rather exotic location and not as - well, how do we see Europe today in the age of Easy Jet, the migrant crisis, and Brexit ...?

Perhaps because of its French and Italian locations and Ferrero Rocher aspects, the show was extremely popular in these countries, as well as in Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Indeed, The Persuaders! persists to this day in the cultural imagination of film-makers and audiences across Europe. Only the Americans seemed unimpressed, even though it was made with the profitable US market in mind. ABC, who aired the show on Saturday nights against Mission: Impossible over on CBS, were so disappointed with its ratings that they pulled the series before it completed its 24 episode run. 

The relationship between the two characters is meant to be in the odd-couple vein; Wilde is the brash New Yorker who escaped the violence and deprivation of his upbringing to become a self-made millionaire; Sinclair the polished Englishman, well-educated and from a privileged background. This is made clear in the opening title sequence, which consists of a visual biography using a clever split-screen technique that was designed so that neither actor would appear to have top billing; something that both men stipulated when they agreed to co-star.

Despite instantly disliking one another when they first meet, Danny and Brett soon develop an affectionate - if highly competitive - relationship that borders on being what we today like to term a bromance. Thus, although red-blooded heterosexuals, they seem only to have eyes for one another (unless there's a mirror around) and are often in close and playful physical contact.

Sadly, according to Lew Grade and other insiders on the show, Curtis and Moore didn't get along so gaily as their characters, either on or off set - although it should be noted that both actors denied there was any animosity between them and each maintained that, whilst very different people, they had an amicable working relationship.     

Thankfully, a big-screen remake announced in 2007, starring George Clooney and Hugh Grant in the roles of Wilde and Sinclair, seems to have come to nothing.   


Click here to enjoy the opening credits and theme to The Persuaders!

Shit Bow: Larry David and Roland Barthes on the Art of Japanese Etiquette

Larry David and a Japanese restaurant manager discuss 

bow techniques in Curb Your Enthusiasm [S8/E7]

When is a bow not a bow? Or, more precisely, when is a bow a disguised insult, rather than a sincere form of apology? The answer, according to Curb Your Enthusiasm, is when it's a shit bow ...

Having had his takeaway order messed up by his favourite Japanese restaurant due to insecure packaging, Larry seeks an apology from the manager (brilliantly played by Andrew Pang) - something which he duly receives, along with an accompanying bow much to his great delight: "We could learn a lot of things from Japan."  

However, although initially excited by the bow and expressly stating that it was not something with which he could possibly quibble, he later starts to worry that it was perfunctory, rather than invested with genuine feeling. Seeking to confirm his suspicions, Larry accosts a group of Japanese tourists in the park and asks to be enlightened on the finer points of bowing.

He is told that a sincere apology requires a deep bow and that the bow he received - which was not much more than an exaggerated nod in his direction - not only fails to express sorrow or regret, but is insulting and dismissive. In fact, Larry is told he has been given a shit bow and that no bow would be better than that bow. 

Armed with this new information, Larry returns to the restaurant in order to confront the manager. The latter, however, is uninterested in either apologising further, or discussing Japanese etiquette. Hoping that he might be able to quickly resolve the issue and get on with his job, he repeatedly tells Larry that a bow is a bow.

Of course, Larry being Larry, he's not going to let it go: "Is it possible", he asks, "you don't know the bow rules?" This naturally irritates the manager, who insists that he understands the bow rules perfectly and has done so since a young age: "I was raised by bow rules.'"

He's understandably not too pleased either to hear his bow described as a shit bow. But, if only to get Mr David to go away, he finally gives him the deep bow that the latter felt entitled to. A satisfied Larry finally leaves, but not without declaring his intention to research the matter further online.

It's a great series of scenes and one can't help wondering what it is that Larry thinks we might learn from Japan - or, rather, what he calls Japan. For like Barthes's Japan in Empire of Signs, Larry's Japan is essentially an imaginative space; somewhere faraway providing a reserve of features whose manipulation and invented interplay affords amusement and allows for the fantasy of a symbolic system that is entirely alien to that found in the West.

Indeed, as with most other things, people and places, Larry is essentially indifferent to the real Japan, living, as he does, almost exclusively in a comedic world of his own invention. What excites him is not so much "another metaphysics, another wisdom (though the latter might appear thoroughly desirable); it is the possibility of a difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of symbolic systems".

In other words, Larry is excited by the possibility of previously unheard of rules and new forms of social minutiae. Unlike most Westerners, Larry doesn't regard formal displays of politeness, for example, as suspicious or as signs of hypocrisy. He genuinely loves the bow as he does all forms of coded behaviour - it's modern informality and inconsiderate behaviour (such as wearing shorts on an airplane, or pig-parking) that drive him nuts.

Larry doesn't buy into what Barthes terms the Occidental mythology of the person that allows for - and encourages - the free expression of one's natural feelings or authentic inner self. For this ultimately results in impolite and selfish behaviour. Larry wants society with all its complexity and artifice; for it's these things that provide him with his comic material. And, indeed, his ethics ...

See: 

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 8, Episode 7: 'The Bi-Sexual', dir. David Mandel, written by Larry David, Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer (2011). Click here to watch a clip on YouTube of the scene in the park; or here to watch the later scene in the restaurant.     

Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard, (Hill and Wang / Noonday Press, 1989), pp. 3-4.