Refections on Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères (1969) 1: Fragments from a Lesbian Utopia

Cover of the first English edition 

(Peter Owen, London, 1971) [a]

 

Opening Remarks

 

I wouldn't go as far as Larry David and call myself a friend o' lesbians [b], but I certainly have no animosity against them and still find the murderous hatred expressed by Oliver Mellors one of the most shocking aspects of Lawrence's final novel [c].   

 

Further, I have read quite a lot of lesbian fiction and queer theory - from Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness (1928) to Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (2015), via Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto (1967) and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990). 

 

However, one of the books I have only very recently finished reading is Monique Wittig's novel Les Guérillères (1969) [d], and it's this work I wish to reflect on (and summarise) here. That is to say, offer a vaguely philosophical consideration of a work that I admire for its poetic feel and fragmentary structure [e], rather than write a straightforward commentary or review. 

 

I have to confess that I found the book difficult to follow at times due to its rejection of a standard chronological plot in favour of looping and shifting back and forth in time. That said, it's conveniently divided in three parts (like this post): part one appears to explore the lesbian utopia that follows victory in the war against men detailed in part three. The middle part deals with myth and memory.  

 

The fact that the novel has no single protagonist and instead relies on a collective voice - Wittig uses the feminine plural pronoun elles ('they') - is also something one has to get used to (even in an age in which pronoun use has become a regular topic of discussion) [f].   

 

 

Fragments from a Lesbian Utopia

 

(i) 

 

The novel opens in a lesbian utopia: a golden space of pissing in public, laughter, and lacunae in which fragrant females frolic amidst the foliage. Some of the women swim in the sea, but this doesn't sound much fun as it induces vomiting. Some of the women hunt. Some like to play hide and seek.

 

There are gardens and fields and a market with stalls selling all kinds of fruit that attract the wasps. No one seems bothered if the insects land on their bare arms, partly because they are too busy thinking about their own genitalia: the women seem to navigate through daily life thanks to their vulva and they like to expose their sex to the sun, capturing its brilliance.  

 

In this way they feel themselves illuminated. Were D. H. Lawrence telling their story, he would doubtless write of cunt awareness.

 

(ii) 

 

Interestingly, the women carry small books which they call feminaries [g]. 

 

These essentially consist of a few pages printed with fragments of myth, capitalised words, and biology lessons on the size, shape, and function of the clitoris. There are also a number of blank pages in which to write and experiment with (non-patriarchal) language - only don't call this écriture féminine [h].     

 

(iii) 

 

Each morning, after the sun has risen, they anoint their flesh with aromatic oils until their limbs are glistening and their naked bodies gleam. Sometimes they massage one another. 

 

If it's raining the women prefer to stay indoors. On particularly overcast days they shed warm tears.   

 

(iv)

 

The only thing that smells worse than the sea are the vapours given off by the peat bogs above the hills. And perhaps the mummified body kept by the gipsy women which they carry outside and expose to the sun. 

 

Sometimes the river floods - and that too stinks of putrescence, but that doesn't stop the women swimming in it and making the flying-fish leap into the air before falling back with a splash. 

 

(v)

 

The little girls are particularly fond of birds and search in the bushes and trees for goldfinches and green canaries, which they can catch and cover with kisses and cherish until they accidently hold the little birds too tightly and they die. 

 

(vi)

 

Of course, even in paradise, there is still work to be done: though this mostly seems to consist in gathering fruit from the trees. And construction work on a dam which may or may not have been sited in the wrong location (too far upstream). 

 

Cherry picking is so much easier than engineering!    

 

(vii)

 

In the evening, when the full moon has risen, a drum is sounded in the main square and the women drink until they fall dead-drunk or lose self-control. So not that different from a Friday night out on the Toon, no matter how lyrically described.      

 

(viii)

 

Are there any readers out there who know what glenuri are? I have to confess, I didn't. 

 

They seem to be imaginary creatures that the women like to keep as pets and take for walks: 

 

"Their long filiform bodies are supported on thousands of feet. [...] Their innumerable eyes are grouped round an enormous orifice that serves them as a mouth as well as taking the place of a head. It is filled by a soft extensile membrane that can become taut or relaxed, each of its movements producing a different sound. The harmony of the glenuri may be compared to [...] the croaking of toads the miaowing of rutting cats the sharp sound of a flute." (12) 

 

Unfortunately, the excursions with the glenuri on their leashes are not without difficulty, because they "constantly endeavour to move away to some place other than where they are" (12) and often get trapped in openings that afford passage to their bodies but not their large heads. 

 

When this happens, "they begin to utter frightful shrieks" (14) and have to be freed. 

 

Surely it would be easier to get a dog - though I can see why the descriptor man's best friend might be problematic in a feminist utopia.    

 

(ix)

 

As well as a sun-goddess who illuminates the sky, the women also worship a pin-headed goddess with yellow eyes and an ancient Greek name - Eristikos [ἐριστικός] - she who is argumentative and fond of discord [i].  

 

They also have a machine used to record divergences or disagreements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is in constant use 

 

(x)

 

Little birds and glenuri are not the only animals dear to les Guérillères - they also like to breast-feed baboons. 

 

Once they have finished suckling, the women throw the dog-faced monkeys to the ground and chase them back into the forest "until they have disappeared in the trees" (17). 

 

I guess this striking and surreal idea is intended to be a subversion of the so-called natural order which all too often reinforces and reflects the patriarchal order. By choosing to breastfeed baboons rather than human babies, Wittig's warrior women decouple the lactating female body from its role within the traditional family. 

 

In other words, it transforms an act traditionally associated with domesticity and passive motherhood into an act of radical autonomy. 

 

(xi)

 

Apart from breast-feeding baboons, the women share several tales involving animals: frogs, cats, and wolves, for example. They seem to suggest that women should stop interpreting themselves in terms of a mythical (and allegorical) model of nature that has been written by men. 

 

Such a model not only denigrates the animal, but it has nothing to do with the reality of lesbian identity existing not merely beyond the phallocratic (and heteronormative) order, but womanhood which, for Wittig, only exists in binary opposition to manhood - i.e., is a political and linguistic category, not a natural fact [j].

(xii)

 

It seems that in a lesbian utopia you have to make your own shampoo, using walnut oil, poppy seeds, and the crushed petals of macerated flowers. 

 

When they have enough of this home-made concoction, the women let down their hair and soak it in aromatic baths: "Their hands and arms glisten, their breasts are bare." (22)

 

(xiii)

 

Some of the women like to look at coloured engravings of women in royal blue uniforms marching.  

 

They also enjoy looking at photographs from the old times: particularly pictures of women taking industrial action - there's nothing sexier than striking textile workers on a picket line, or leading a street demo: "The faces are remarkable for their beauty." (24)   

(xiv)

 

Some of the women remember an old joke that had a punchline about the bird of Venus taking flight towards evening. Unfortunately, they can't quite remember the rest of it - only that it had something to do with the lips of the vulva (labia apparently resembling the wings of a dove).    

 

(xv)

 

According to Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece is the magical wool of a winged, golden-haired ram (named Chrysomallos) that became a supreme symbol of authority and kingship. 

 

But Wittig's warrior women claim to know nothing about this patriarchal myth and use the term to refer to their pubic hair (suggesting that they are all natural blondes - or perhaps I'm being overly literal in my reading here). 

  

(xvi)

 

The feminaries give pride of place "to the symbols of the circle, the circumference, the ring, the O, the zero" (27). The women seem to relate this to the Holy Grail (i.e., the sacred chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper). 

 

For Nick Land, however, zero marks the ultimate thermodynamic and ontological destination of human history - but perhaps that's just saying the same thing?   

 

(xvii)

 

If I'm not mistaken, Prometheus hid the stolen fire inside the hollow stalk of a giant fennel plant (with their dry, slow-burning, pithy interiors, fennel stalks are ideal for this).

 

But les Guérillères seem to believe that it was a woman who stole fire from the gods - and hid it inside her vagina (which, I would imagine, is just about one of the least suitable places, being lined with extremely sensitive - and naturally moist - mucous membrane). 

(xviii)

 

The warrior women scorn Sleeping Beauty and regard her comatose condition as ugly passivity. 

 

Snow-White they have a slightly more favourable opinion of, but only after having reframed her story so that she becomes an active agent of female rebellion (rather more like her energetic and outgoing sister Rose-Red).

 

What they don't see - rather surprisingly - is that to value aggressive activity over gentle passivity is to fall back into a classical form of patriarchal thinking. 

 

One assumes that Wittig was aware of the problem here: that she is merely flipping terms in a binary, whilst still leaving the structure in place (i.e., only fulfilling the first - but absolutely necessary - step in a more radical deconstruction).     

 

(xix)

 

As a rule, I'm not in favour of book burning as the words of the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine still resonate in my imagination: 'Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.' [k]

 

So, this passage towards the end of part one of Les Guérillères rather surprised me: 

 

"The women say that it may be that the feminaries have fulfilled their function. [...] They say that thoroughly indoctrinated as they are with ancient texts no longer to hand, these seem to them outdated. All they can do to avoid being encumbered with useless knowledge is to heap them up in the squares and set fire to them. That would be an excuse for celebrations." (30)

 

I know that defenders of the novel and of revolutionary utopias will tell me that while, yes, books are being burnt this is not advocating such a practice in the real world - that it must be understood as a symbolic act contained in a work of fiction, blah, blah, blah. 

 

But, even so, it troubles me and I'm not convinced that in order to create a genuinely free society or a brand-new world one must destroy the old ways of thinking and knowing and speaking - the myth of Year Zero only ever ends in tears and genocide, does it not?   

 

(xx) 

 

The name of where the women live is never mentioned. 

 

But we do know they live on a series of islands situated in the equatorial region, so it's hot and wet and not great for the lungs. 

 

And we know that there are sharks swimming in the tropical blue seas that surround the islands.   

 

And we know that sometimes the women like to leap about in the manner of kangaroos and sleep in the trees.    

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Considered a pivotal text by feminist and lesbian thinkers, Les Guérillères, by Monique Wittig, was originally published by Les Editions de Minuit (1969). David Le Vey's 1971 English translation has been used in numerous editions, including the Beacon Press edition (1985) and the University of Illinois Press edition (2007). 

      Here, I am using the /ubu Editions e-book (2007). This free digital publishing project - created as part of UbuWeb - is an online archive for avante-garde writing founded by the American poet and cultural provocateur Kenneth Goldsmith. For those who are interested, see the guest post by Simon Solomon on Goldsmith (14 Dec 2016), titled 'Magical Realism Without the Magic'  - the first part of a three-part series of posts by Solomon on the (displaced) task of the translator. 

 

[b] Curb Your Enthusiasm [S5/E2]: 'The Bowtie' (dir. Larry Charles, 2005). To watch the scene in which Larry explains to Jeff why lesbians love him and he has been completely embraced by the lesbian community, click the link provided. 

 

[c] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 205. I discuss Mellors's hatred of lesbians in the post titled 'Lesbophobia' (30 June 2013). 

 

[d] I was inspired to do so after discussing Nick Land's reading of this work in his essay 'Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest: A Polemical Introduction to the Configuration of Philosophy and Modernity' (1988), which can be found in Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987 - 2007, ed. Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier (Urbanomic / Sequence Press, 2011), pp. 55-80. 

      Wittig clearly had an important influence on Land - particularly the idea of Amazonian women leading a violent revolution. Also, for Land, heteronormative lifestyles are one of the major brakes on capital and so Wittig's lesbianism is valued in and of itself. See my post on this titled 'Fanged Noumena: On Nick Land and the New Amazons' (1 June 2026).

 

[e] Les Guérillères is divided into three parts consisting of seven sections (I'm not quite sure we can call them chapters). Each part is opened by a thick black circle printed in the centre of a blank page: a symbol which - like all true symbols - suggests many different things at once - a full moon, eternal recurrence, the female sex, or the mathematical value of zero. It might also make some readers think of Pauline Réage's Histoire d'O (1954). 

 

[f] In Les Guérillères, Wittig uses the collective feminine pronoun elles as the absolute universal subject. In other words, she used it to represent all of humanity - including men - thereby stripping the masculine pronoun of its claim to the universal.

 

[g] Wittig invented the literary concept of un féminaire to mean a small book or journal carried by women. In Les Guérillères, it is carried by warrior women in their lesbian utopia and contains a mix of historical fragments, private symbols, and entirely blank pages where the women can periodically write and record their own lives, thereby reclaiming language and narrative outside of patriarchal structures. 

      The term became so influential that a real-world second-wave radical feminist publication in the United States officially renamed itself Feminary: A Feminist Journal in 1974 to pay homage to Wittig’s novel. 

 

[h] Wittig rejected the concept of écriture féminine because she viewed it as rooted in a form of biological essentialism that trapped women within the very patriarchal categories (and binary system) they sought to escape. Instead, Wittig seeks to construct a post-patriarchal language instead that did away with grammatical structures that enforce gender and heterosexuality.

 

[i] Having said that, Wittig's warrior women also claim that, ultimately, they have no need for deities, myths, or religious symbols. It could be that they initially utilise goddess myths as a necessary fiction and tool for liberation, but abandon such once the war against men has been won. 

      However, I'm more than a little sceptical about their atheism: their whole way of life has a quasi-spiritual feel to it, even if what they choose to worship is their own genitalia - the cunt "regarded as the emblem of fecundity and the reproductive force in nature" (19) - and even if they reject the hierarchical structures that most religiously-minded people like to erect. 

 

[j] Although Wittig still holds to a socio-political (but non-essential) concept of woman in Les Guérillères, in her later theoretical writings she will insist that lesbians are not women. 

      Wittig first publicly asserted this in 1978 at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference in New York, during her delivery of the paper 'The Straight Mind', which can be found in her 1992 essay collection The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Beacon Press, 1992). 

 

[k] Heine wrote the line in his tragic play Almansor (1823). The original German line (in full) reads: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." 

      Heine was prophetically referring to the burning of the Quran during the Spanish Inquisition, though the line tragically foreshadowed the Nazi book burnings in Germany over a century later. 

 

 

If You're Going to Protest, Do It With Panache (Sans Balaclava)

Patrick Macnee as John Steed showing Englishmen 

everywhere how it should be done (sans balaclava)

 

  

I. 

 

When I was a young child in the late 1960s, my mother always wanted me to wear a maroon-coloured balaclava on bitterly cold mornings when walking to school.  

 

Obviously, I hated the idea and fiercely resisted her request to stand still as she attempted to pull on this face-concealing item of knitted headwear named after a town in Crimea, where poorly equipped British troops fought a famous battle in 1854. 

 

It was, after all, only a five-minute walk to school and I lived in Essex, not Siberia. I wasn't going to freeze to death.    

 

So, although there were occasions on which my mother succeeded in pulling the thing on, I invariably removed it as soon as I was out the house.   

 

 

II.  

 

I thought of this at the weekend when watching hundreds of black-clad anti-immigration protesters blockading roads at the Port of Dover and, the following night, kicking off against the police in Portsmouth. 

 

Not all, but a significant number, were wearing balaclavas, and it appears that activists on both political extremes agree on at least one thing: namely, the balaclava is an essential element in the outfit of choice for today's fashion-conscious militant (be they members of Pussy Riot, Antifa, or the Patriot Platform).    

 

III.

 

The British far-right, however, make a tactical error copying the uniform of the far-left. 

 

For a movement ostensibly obsessed with defending national culture, the choice of a utilitarian, paramilitary aesthetic is a profoundly dumb move. In a bid to feel strong and appear intimidating, they merely look ugly and thuggish.  

 

I don't necessarily wish to act as an unofficial style advisor to neo-fascists, but I would remind them that history shows that fashion can be a devastatingly effective political weapon, but only when it lends the wearer a certain fascination [1] - by which we mean a seductive charm or allure.   

 

Some of the most successful activist movements of the twentieth century deliberately turned away from standard protest garb and instead chose to revolt into style. By adopting sharp tailoring or high-fashion outfits, these movements used immaculate dressing to command respect, disrupt societal expectations, and control their own media narratives.  

 

 

IV.

 

By way of example, we might consider how activists involved with the American Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and '60s deliberately wore their Sunday best - smart suits, neat dresses, beautifully polished shoes, etc.  

 

By presenting an attractive visual image, they cleverly obliged TV viewers at home and around the world to acknowledge their dignity and respectability and thus to sympathise with their cause. 

 

At the same time, they made the baton-wielding police acting on behalf of Southern politicians and raging white counter-protestors hurling abuse and projectiles look hateful and unjustified in their use of violence. 

 

This tactic was revived in June 2020, when - inspired by the sartorial excellence of the 1960s protestors - over a thousand sharply dressed men walked through Harlem in bespoke suits and vibrant prints for a demonstration in memory of George Floyd. 

 

 

V. 

 

An equally interesting example is provided by the sapeurs of the Congo, working-class men who transformed high fashion into an act of profound cultural resistance, using impeccable tailoring and vibrant elegance to defy colonial degradation and economic hardship [2].

 

Sapeurs regard dressing up as more than an excuse to mess up. For them, it's a fine art, an ascetic practice, a competitive performance, and a political statement. Their dandyism is an enduring form of anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian protest [3] and, in more recent years during violent civil conflicts, sapeurs have acted as models of calm and dignified restraint. 

 

Their code of conduct strictly dictates not only that they should never wear more than three colours in a single outfit (so as to avoid clashing), but that a true sapeur must be a man of peace and impeccable manners. Strutting through war-torn streets, they chose to wield colour and beauty as a direct counter-narrative to the ugliness and violence around them. 

 

 

VI. 

 

If British anti-immigration groups such as Patriot Platform truly wish to affirm a distinct cultural identity, they would be better advised to learn from these sartorial models. In other words, they should abandon the thuggish anonymity of the balaclava [4] and instead adopt a classic English look.

 

Imagine the strategic disorientation if the blockades at Dover were manned by men styled after John Steed, for example. A battalion of dandies in impeccable tailoring, crisp bowler hats, and carrying tightly furled umbrellas would do far more to assert a traditional Englishness than any cheap face-covering. 

 

Exchanging paramilitary ugliness for eccentric politeness and sartorial elegance would leave the Old Bill to line up against a crowd of dapper gentlemen, rather than faceless thugs, and they just might be persuaded to lower their riot shields and stand aside.  

 

Notes

 

[1] I am referencing and part-paraphrasing Susan Sontag's 1975 essay 'Fascinating Fascism', which was first published in The New York Review of Books and later appeared in her collection Under the Sign of Saturn (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980). 

      As Sontag reminds us, the SS uniform - "stylish, well-cut, with a touch (but not too much) of eccentricity" - was designed by Hugo Boss and was a look designed not only to make the wearer feel superior, but look supremely beautiful. See my post on this topic titled Fascism May Be Fascinating, But Do Not Become Enamoured of Power  (20 March 2014). 

 

[2] Sapeurs belong to a movement known as La Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes - a name that forms the acronym SAPE and thus conveniently plays on the French slang verb se saper (to dress up) and the noun sape (clothes). This sartorial subculture is centred in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo). Members are known as sapeurs.

 

[3] During French and Belgian colonial rule, African house servants were often given second-hand European clothes in lieu of wages. Early pioneers of La Sape took these garments and effectively weaponised them. By adopting and exaggerating the style of the white coloniser, they stripped away the latter's illusion of superiority. They proved they could look more dignified, more civilised, and far more elegant than the oppressors who claimed racial supremacy.

      Following independence, DRC dictator Mobutu Sese Seko launched his Authenticité campaign, banning Western suits and ties in an effort to enforce cultural uniformity. In direct defiance of Mobutu, Congolese youth rebelled by wearing elite Western tailoring and La Sape became an explicit refusal to let a corrupt regime dictate personal identity, freedom, and expression.

[4] Having said that, I am aware why these men wear face coverings and want to protect their anonymity. We live in an age of mobile phones, CCTV, and highly sophisticated facial recognition technology allowing individuals to be photographed, identified, and tracked - not only by the police, but by political opponents. 

      The threat posed by doxing - the act of publicly revealing private or identifying information about someone online without their permission, usually in order to cause harm or harassment - is very real and provides justification for masking. However, I would still advise against balaclavas and paramilitary dress for the reasons outlined above.    

Never Mind the Swankers, Here's ...

(dir. Jeppe Rønde, 2004) [1]

 

'A silk necktie reflected in a shard of broken mirror, a picture 

of Elvis taped to a rusty locker ... What working stiff doesn't 

itch to become a peacock on Saturday night?' [2]

 

 

I. 

 

It's interesting how the three words sway, swagger, and swank share a common Proto-Germanic root and all suggest physical movement (a way of walking, for example, with an air of confidence and a certain defiance). 

 

It's the evolution of the latter term, however, that particularly interests me, and how it functions as a verb, adjective, and noun, and took on meanings to do with being stylish, fashionable, or flamboyant. 

 

That is to say, how it semantically shifted from physical swaying to a more figurative swaggering and eventually came to mean being a bit flash or possessing a rather showy form of elegance. [3]   

 

 

II. 

 

There was a time - before they became the Sex Pistols, but after they were known as The Strand - when the group formed by schoolfriends Steve Jones and Paul Cook were briefly known as The Swankers. (I suspect this was a crude joke on their part that quickly grew tiresome - particularly when the laugh was on them.)   

 

Today, in South Africa, working-class Zulu men who display their sharp sense of style and attitude in amateur competitions involving expensive designer clothes and catwalk choreography are known as swenkas - not so much a corruption of the English term as an accented pronunciation.   

 

While it is popular with younger generations today, the practice of swenking actually originated with older, migrant workers in Johannesburg in the 1960s and '70s. They dressed up on a Saturday night not simply to mess up, but to reclaim their dignity, display a sense of comradeship, and preserve something of Zulu culture. 

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"The swenkas favoured a formal dress code inspired by jazz-age refinement. Their tailored suits came with brimmed hats and leather shoes, as well as a variety of accessories, including eyewear, gloves, braces and straw hats ..." [4] 

 

Swenking, then, is a genuine revolt into style. And like earlier (European) forms of dandyism, it also involves a certain asceticism; swenkas pride themselves not only on their sartorial appearance, but on their sobriety, cleanliness, and self-discipline [5]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A 10 min clip from The Swenkas (2004) can be viewed on YouTube by clicking on the link. 

      

[2] Lines quoted from a review of Rønde's film in The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis (9 Sept 2005).

 

[3] The shared history of these three words reflects a fascinating phonetic and semantic kinship and their evolution demonstrates a shift from physical kinetics (movement and posture) to social aesthetics (style and status).     

      Sway enters English around the 1200s (likely from Old Norse), referring entirely to the physical motion of moving from side to side.  

      Swagger emerged in the late 1500s (popularised by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream). It serves as a frequentative form of swag (which meant to sway heavily), morphing the physical, swinging movement of the body into a walk that projects a defiant form of confidence bordering on arrogance. 

      Swank traces its etymological lineage to the Proto-Germanic root meaning to swing one's hips or toss one's head with a heightened degree of expressiveness. It is also closely aligned with the Middle High German swanken (meaning to sway or totter). 

 

[4] I'm quoting from an interesting short piece by Enrica Picarelli titled 'Problematic Black Iconicity: the Swenkas' (13 April, 2026) and posted on her research blog Afrosartorialism. 

 

[5] We need to exercise a degree of caution here. Dr Picarelli is right to remind us that "this universalist reading is accurate but also problematic", as it implies that all experiences of - and sartorial responses to - poverty and exploitation are the same. 

      It's important to keep in mind that the swenkas are real individuals in a real time and place; that their revolt into style is not the same as that of a dozen Lawrentians cruising along Piccadilly wearing tight red trousers, or that of the young punks who assembled at 430 King's Road.

Domestication Lost Overnight: Fun and Games with Killing Joke

Poster advertising the Killing Joke album  

Fire Dances (1983)

 

Get out my way - we go / Take back those ways you know 

Fun and games come out to play / Fun and games for unknown days [1]

 

I.

 

I've said it before and I'll doubtless say it again: Isn't it amazing how certain songs from one's youth continue to resonate in one's imagination? [1] 

 

Thus it was that, while reading for a possible future post discussing The Wild Boys (1971) in relation to Lord of the Flies (1954) [2], I couldn't help recalling the Killing Joke song 'Fun and Games' [3]. 

 

Like the above novels, this track also plays with ideas to do with feral youth and the breakdown of civilisation and I thought it might be amusing to write something about its lyrical content [4] in advance of the forthcoming Burroughs-Golding study as a kind of punk teaser.

 

 

II. 

 

Essentially, the lyrics to 'Fun and Games' - which can be found on genius.com - provide a brief exploration of subcultural atavism. But, interestingly - because the song establishes a moonlit setting - we are encouraged also to consider ideas to do with nocturnal liminality.

 

Atavism is an interesting term whose meaning within biology is fairly straightforward and fixed: the reappearance of an ancestral characteristic (or genetic trait) in an individual organism after several generations of absence; i.e., it's an evolutionary throwback caused by mutation - think of a baby born with a vestigial tail.    

 

But atavism is also used by those working in the social sciences, where it refers to the tendency for a people in times of social upheaval to revert to the ways of thinking and acting of a former (more primitive) age. And that's what excites Jaz Coleman and the other members of Killing Joke; the possibility that a people might discover its ancestral past and wilfully reject modernity.   

 

The album Fire Dances (1983), on which 'Fun and Games' features, is a call for the becoming-pagan of disaffected youth in the UK via a series of fun and games that lead participants from social enslavement and conventional models of maturity to anarchic autonomy and the cruel innocence of childhood. 

 

Killing Joke are not advocating merely for a lifestyle choice: one is being challenged to make a total commitment; to take back those ways long abandoned and step outside the gate. Whether this necessitates fleeing to Iceland or unto the ends of the earth, is debatable. 

 

III. 

 

The opening lines of 'Fun and Games' immediately establish a liminal setting: 

 

Twilight open and you're on your own 

Moon is shining, you want fun and games

 

Twilight represents a threshold state, mirroring the boundary between the rational, white-faced daytime self and the untamed, dark-bodied self that comes out to play at the witching hour and dances round bonfires, etc. 

 

During those hours that do not quite belong to one day or the other - the intermediate time when dreams seem real and reality but a dream - standard routines, social conventions, and normal expectations are all suspended. Bakhtin referred to this suspension or overturning of the established order through song, dance, comedy, and chaos as the carnivalesque. 

 

Now, while that sounds joyous and liberating, one should be aware that the carnivalesque has a dark and violent underbelly. For when you do away with law and order you don't just get harmless fun and games, you also open the way to savage and destructive desires - including the desire for torture and human sacrifice. 

 

Finally, it's interesting that the song indicates that one is very much alone at this time: awake, while the rest of the world sleeps blissfully in its bed. Such isolation enables introspection. And introspection often involves hearing the voice of a demon whispering inside your head that says: Let's play wild - volatile!

   

 

IV. 

The second verse of 'Fun and Games' is interesting in that it reveals that playmates - a word privileged by Arthur Askey and Hugh Hefner alike - belong to both sexes: All the boys and girls join together in the streets and have the same wild look in their eyes (domestication lost overnight).  

 

And the reason this interests is because it starkly contrasts with The Wild Boys and Lord of the Flies, both of which are concerned only with young males. There are no girls on Golding's unnamed island and, in Burroughs's novel, the Wild Boys are an armed group of militant homosexuals intent on destroying heteronormative civilisation [5]. 

 

As for Killing Joke, well, whilst 'Fun and Games' seems to accord boys and girls an equal right to play, sexual politics remains one of the most underdeveloped areas of their work. Indeed, we have to wait nearly three decades until the song 'Pole Shift' explicitly makes the connection between the overthrow of civilisation and libidinal liberation. 

 

In other words, it is only in 2012 that they finally set out their vision of a future wherein "the taboos of today are tomorrow's delights" and bourgeois sexual morality is swept away in "one great orgasm by the light of day" [6]. 

 

 

V. 

 

The third and final verse of 'Fun and Games' elevates the game from localised juvenile delinquency to an apocalyptic generational coup:  

 

Games get bigger all the time 

Because the playpen's falling - stakes are high 

And the child will conquer - step by step [7]

  

Literally speaking, a playpen is simply a small, portable enclosure with high sides made of mesh, plastic, or wood that keeps a child safe and contained so caregivers can get on with other tasks without constantly having to provide supervision.

 

But, here, it refers metaphorically to the restrictive institutions of childhood - such as the family unit, the nursery, the school ... Its falling thus suggests wider societal collapse. When the architectural boundaries of adult supervision crumble, the games lose their benign, recreational status and transform into existential events (stakes are high).

 

The declaration that the child will conquer subverts the traditional teleology of maturation. Instead of growing up to inherit the adult world, youth take over - step by step - through atavistic force. 

 

This mirrors the tragic climax of Lord of the Flies, where Jack and his followers smash the democratic rules established by Ralph and Piggy. However, whereas Golding introduces an adult authority figure (the naval officer) at the final moment to halt the slaughter, the Killing Joke lyrics offer no such restoration of order. 

 

Thus, in a sense, 'Fun and Games' is closer in spirit to The Wild Boys, which also ends with a dreamlike (or, if you prefer, nightmarish) vision of the traditional world collapsing as untamed youth achieves its global victory and the downfall of adult civilization. 

 

 

VI. 

  

The relentless, almost incantatory repetition of the refrain fun and games come out to play at the conclusion of the song strips these phrases of their innocent connotation. By juxtaposing the terminology of childhood with the vocabulary of political (and psychological) instability, the song is a strangely compelling hymn to youth gone wild.  

 

Killing Joke are, if you like, a punk version of Golding's choir boys - happy to paint their faces and summon their own atavistic demons during nocturnal rituals around the fire. Golding - like Freud [8] - might view this with despair but Jaz Coleman and his fellow discontents think this in terms of liberation. 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from 'Fun and Games', written by Killing Joke (Jaz Coleman, Paul Ferguson, Paul Raven, and Geordie Walker). See note [3] below for more details. 

 

[2] I discuss this phenomenon with reference to another Killing Joke track taken from the album Fire Dances and the concept of a reminiscence bump in a post titled 'Musical Memories' (30 Aug 2023). 

 

[3] 'Fun and Games' is on Fire Dances (E. G. Records, 1983) - the fourth studio album by Killing Joke and first to feature new bass player Paul Raven. It was critically well-received and reached number 29 in the UK Albums Chart.  

 

[4] Although I am not here going to discuss the music, it is certainly the case Paul Ferguson's tribal drum tracks, Raven's bass and Geordie's jagged guitar work provide the perfect sonic landscape for Jaz Coleman's call to come out and play.

 

[5] Golding excluded girls to focus exclusively on what we would now call toxic masculinity in relation to his own lifetime experiences, on the grounds that he simply didn't know enough about girls to feel qualified to write about them. 

      Burroughs, meanwhile, was openly and aggressively misogynistic, excluding female characters as a matter of principle - in his queer utopia, gay male liberation comes only after the complete erasure of any female presence. 

 

[6] Lyrics from the song 'Pole Shift', by Killing Joke (Jaz Coleman, Paul Ferguson, Geordie Walker, and Youth), the opening track on the album MMXII (Spinefarm Records, 2012) - their fourteenth studio album. The only other track I can think of that has a sexual edge (and some heavy breathing), is 'Lust Almighty', on Fire Dances (1983). 

[7] Lyrics from 'Fun and Games', written by Killing Joke. 

 

[8] For Freud, writing in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) there is a permanent antagonism between the demands of instinct and the restrictions of a civilisation that is founded upon a repression of those instincts. 

      He argues that this repression is not only necessary, but a good and vital thing; that humanity is better off domesticated in the name of love. Yes, a loss of instinctive freedom can cause a certain amount of suffering and lead to guilt, but it's a price worth paying in Freud's view. For to give free expression to wild and dangerous desires is to surrender to the 'death drive'.   

 

 

Leaving the Human Circus: Why Joseph Merrick Should Have Become-Elephant

Poster for The Elephant Man 

(dir. David Lynch, 1980)

 

 

I. 

 

Not everybody who saw David Lynch's mawkish and moralising movie The Elephant Man (1980) will remember that the suggestion is given that Joseph Merrick's severe physical deformities may have been caused by his mother having been frightened by a rampaging elephant during her pregnancy [1].  

 

But most people seem to recall Merrick making the anguished cry when surrounded by a hostile crowd at a train station: I am not an animal! I am a human being! [2]

 

And it's this line - one which causes my compassion for his suffering to curdle into irritation at his philosophical capitulation - that I wish to critically examine here. But readers might care to note in advance that this is not merely a defence of animality; it is an intervention in the politics of human disability also. 

 

II.

 

The phrase I am not an animal is resonant, say the psychologists, because it speaks to our deep fear of losing basic human dignity and being treated like a helpless, unthinking beast. 

 

It's not only an instinctive appeal for compassion, but a demand that we recognise the right of all men to be accorded an exceptional degree of respect and not subject to cruelty, neglect, or marginalisation.  

 

Merrick wants acknowledgement of the fact that he thinks and feels just like other men - including, somewhat ironically, those who mock and torment him - and that he is neither monstrous nor lacking a rational soul and therefore doesn't deserve to be taunted, victimised, or kept in a cage.  

 

 

III. 

 

So, what's wrong with that, you might ask. 

 

Well, for one thing, it's a negative proposition; one that wholly relies on denigrating animality in order to assert human worth - and I don't like that. 

 

By defining human being strictly by what it is not, the phrase reinforces an artificial boundary between humans and the rest of the living world and for it to be meaningful the concept of the animal must be understood not only as something other, but something vastly inferior; something that can be hunted, farmed, exterminated, eaten and experimented on. 

 

In other words, the phrase posits animality as a baseline of low value against which to measure human exceptionalism [3]. 

 

Now, of course, defenders of Merrick will say that when he uses this phrase he is not consciously making a philosophical statement - just asking to be treated with kindness or left alone. However, by making his defensive appeal in this manner he is reinforcing a way of thinking that devalues animals and accords him protected status purely on the grounds that he shares humanity with his tormentors.   

 

There is, I suppose, a kind of irony in this - the Elephant Man is a speciesist [4] ...  

 

 

IV.

 

For me, it would have been a far more radical film if Lynch's Merrick had embraced his animality and affirmed his otherness, rather than pleading for acceptance and the right to assimilate into human society. 

 

Instead of desperately begging to be admitted to humanity, Merrick should have put down his Bible, picked up a sticky bun and said: I am not a man! I am an elephant! And you still have no right to abuse me! 

 

That would have been fantastic: Merrick could have subverted the entire logic of oppression by declaring that all life has inherent value, regardless of whether it matches human standards of beauty, speech, or reason.

 

But, alas, 'twas not to be.

 

For whatever reason, The Elephant Man is a morally conventional (and boring) movie that reinforces a traditional Hollywood-humanist structure largely based on true events rather than the director's surreal imagination [5]. 

 

Thus, the cinematic version of Merrick is all-too-close to the real-life Merrick and we are denied the pleasure of witnessing his becoming-elephant and thereby locating a unique, untamed power in his own body [6].    

 

 

V.   

 

Some readers will, I know, be asking what becoming-elephant means exactly. 

 

Well, it does not involve Merrick charging round on all fours or constantly foraging for food; it involves, rather, creating a zone of intensity that disrupts the binary of man and beast. To become-elephant is to refuse to play the game of a system built on division and exclusion.

 

By forgetting about human rights and operating instead on the plane of the animal, Merrick would escape the trap of assimilation. He would no longer be a deformed and disabled human begging for entry into the world of his more shapely, able-bodied oppressors; he would become a radical, untameable force that exposes Man as a constructed, tyrannical fiction. 

 

 

VI.  

 

In sum: as long as human beings think animals inferior, then human societies will always find a way to label certain marginalised humans as animals in order to justify treating them as inferiors too.

 

When Merrick cries: I am not an animal! I am a human being! he isn't just capitulating to speciesism; he is validating the neurotypical, able-bodied framework of what constitutes an all-too-human human being.

 

Liberation for the disabled doesn't come from desperately trying to fit into an oppressive, idealised human standard. Instead, it comes from shattering the standard itself - embracing the radical alterity of the non-conforming body as a site of resistance.

 

Merrick should not have apologised for his elephantism: he should have packed his trunk and said goodbye to the human circus with a trump, trump, trump!

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I discuss this cinematic fantasy and the myth of maternal impression upon which it rests in a post dated 25 January 2018 - click here - and again in a later post (4 March 2021) with reference to D. H. Lawrence and his Leda poems: click here. 

 

[2] This scene can be watched on YouTube - click here. 

 

[3] There are several posts on Torpedo the Ark in which I oppose the idea of human exceptionalism, i.e., the vile, stupid, and conceited belief that human beings are fundamentally superior to other living creatures and possess a unique moral status or set of capacities (that we are made in God's image). 

 

[4] Speciesism was a term coined in 1970 by psychologist Richard D. Ryder and later popularised by philosopher Peter Singer. As a concept, it describes a human bias or prejudice in favour of their own species against the interests of other species. 

 

[5] Because the tale of Joseph Merrick (played by John Hurt) and his relationship with Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) relies on documented history, Lynch stays closer to a factual narrative than he usually does in his films. This will have pleased the studio bosses who made clear to him that they expected a Victorian melodrama that was accessible to mainstream audiences and made clear the moral divide between compassionate medical professionals and cruel, exploitative sideshow owners. 

      To be fair to Lynch, he was still regarded as a relatively young and inexperienced filmmaker in 1980, having directed his first feature-length movie only three years before - and Eraserhead was a low-budget, independently financed project produced entirely outside the traditional Hollywood studio system. Thus, he needed to prove (perhaps to himself as much as anyone else) that he could handle a large crew, a traditional script, and a commercial (multi-million dollar) budget. 

      Afterwards, with nothing to prove - Lynch was Oscar-nominated for his directorial work on The Elephant Man - he felt free to make movies like Blue Velvet (1986), which were perhaps a little more avant-garde shall we say (although it should be noted that Lynch refused to rank his films and was always immensely proud of The Elephant Man).  

 

[6] In Deleuze-Guattarian philosophy, becoming-animal is not about a human literally (or even metaphorically) turning into a beast, nor mimicking an animal. It is, rather, a process of deterritorialisation - i.e., escaping the rigid, violent categories of majoritarian human identity imposed by society and discovering new intensities, etc. 

      See their jointly written text Mille Plateau (1980), trans. into English by Brian Massumi as A Thousand Plateaus (University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 

 

Dancing in the Rain: Notes on The Wild Boys

Simon, John, Andy, Nick, and Roger - 

the (not so) Wild Boys of Duran Duran 

Photo by Mike Owen (1984)

 

I.

 

Just to be clear: I don't much like - and have never much cared for - Duran Duran [1].

 

Having said that, their single 'The Wild Boys', released in October 1984 [2], intrigues because of its controversial point of literary reference: namely, the novel of that title by cult American author William S. Burroughs.

  

 

II. 

 

The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (Grove Press, 1971) tells the story of a group of youths who, in a dystopian near-future, revolt against civilisation and embrace a life of savage violence, drug-fuelled hedonism, and sadistic homosexuality. 

 

As a piece of fiction, it isn't really my cup of tea: too experimental for my tastes [3].

 

Nevertheless, if one reads it as a work of radical (anti-assimilationist) queer theory akin to Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères (1969) [4], then it certainly has philosophical interest and it remains a favourite book among those who align themselves to the counterculture and wish to challenge heteronormative ideas and values.

 

 

III.

 

Apparently, the idea for the song came from the Australian director Russell Mulcahy, who wanted to make a full-length feature film based on Burroughs's surreal and sexually explicit novel. 

 

Mulcahy asked the band to produce a soundtrack and, excited by the proposal, Simon Le Bon immediately began writing some lyrics for a title track based on Mulcahy's brief synopsis of the book [5].  

 

Meanwhile, the rest of the group set about writing the music, taking inspiration less from Burroughs and more from Frankie Goes to Hollywood who had hit the number one spot in the UK charts earlier that year with their phenomenal debut single 'Relax' [6].    

 

'The Wild Boys' became one of the band's highest-charting singles, peaking at number two in the charts in both the UK and US. Naturally, Mulcahy directed the accompanying video which was filmed on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios and cost an outrageous sum for the time (over a million pounds).  

 

 

IV.  

 

Mulcahy originally intended his award-winning music video to act as a teaser for his proposed cinematic adaptation of Burroughs's novel. Unfortunately, however, this ambitious film project never came to fruition [7]. 

 

Well, I say unfortunately, but perhaps it's just as well ... 

 

For I worry, having seen how the Duran Duran video gives Burroughs's deliriously homoerotic vision a boring, hetero-masculine, Mad Max-style makeover, what else Mulcahy - despite being gay - would have done to straightwash [8] and tame the story of The Wild Boys.

 

Ultimately, despite his vulgar auteur tag, Mulcahy is very much a mainstream commercial director rather than an underground filmmaker and should probably be prevented from even considering certain projects. 

 

Any adaptation of The Wild Boys that stays even halfway true to the book is never going to be given the greenlight by a major studio, open in cinemas across the land, or find a wide audience - not even among Durannies and members of the MTV generation.      

Notes 

 

[1] When my girlfriend Gillian bought a copy of the Duran Duran single 'Save a Prayer' in August 1982 (taken from the album Rio) it caused a huge row. I regarded it as both a betrayal of everything punk stood for and a compromise with everything punk had sought to destroy. The fact that she was defended in her actions by my friend Kirk Field at the time - as he also liked this new wave ballad - is something I still haven't forgotten or quite forgiven to this day. 

 

[2] 'The Wild Boys' was the only studio track on the Duran Duran live album Arena (Parlophone, 1984), and was produced by Nile Rodgers, who gave it the same kind of energy as he had given 'The Reflex' - the number one single released by Duran Duran in April 1984, from the album Seven and the Ragged Tiger (EMI, 1984).   

 

[3] This is not to deny the writer's genius or the book's greatness. For an insightful (and appreciative) review of The Wild Boys by Alfred Kazin in The New York Times (12 Dec 1971), please click here. 

 

[4] For a discussion of Wittig's novel (and its influence on the thinking of Nick Land), see my post titled 'Fanged Noumena: On Nick Land and the New Amazons' (1 June 2026). 

      I'm aware that Burroughs wrote from a very different perspective to Wittig, but I think there's a similar political logic and an aesthetics of negation at play in their writings. For example, both authors reject notions of reform, explicitly calling for total revolution and the destruction of bourgeois institutions such as the family. They also both believe that this revolution against the straight mindset is something that must be fought at all levels - including (and not least of all) the level of language. 

 

[5] It might be noted at this point that Russell Mulcahy and the boys from Duran Duran weren't the first to be inspired by Burroughs's novel. Malcolm McLaren, for example, was a huge William Burroughs fan and before settling on the name Bow Wow Wow for the band he assembled and managed after the Sex Pistols, he considered calling them the Sex Gang Children - a phrase he coined based upon his reading of The Wild Boys. 

      And - predictably - David Bowie also credited The Wild Boys with aesthetically influencing the creation of his Ziggy Stardust persona, for which he thanked Burroughs when they met in person at an event in November 1973. This successful encounter, which was featured in Rolling Stone in February 1974, is recalled by Jon Savage in 'When Bowie met Burroughs', The Guardian (9 Mar 2013). 

 

[6] 'Relax', by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, was produced by Trevor Horn and released on ZTT Records in October 1983. It reached number one in the charts at the end of January 1984 and was one of the decade's most controversial records - far more so than Duran Duran's 'Wild Boys' - it was even subject to a BBC ban owing to the sexually explicit nature of the lyrics (and Mike Read's distaste for such). A different version of the song features on the Frankie Goes to Hollywood debut album Welcome to the Pleasuredome (ZTT, 1984). 

      The band were marketed by ZTT co-founder Paul Morley in direct opposition to their pop rivals; a quarter-page ad for the single appeared in the music press declaring that Frankie Goes to Hollywood were going to make Duran Duran 'lick the shit off their shoes'. 

      The original video for the song, directed by Bernard Rose, was set in an S&M themed gay nightclub and featured the band members interacting with several characters of the kind that one might expect to encounter in such a venue. Not surprisingly, this too was banned by both the BBC and MTV. I provide a link to it so that readers can compare and contrast it with the Wild Boys video made by Mulcahy (I think I know which Burroughs would have preferred). 

 

[7] Speaking of projects that never came to fruition ... Burroughs himself had, in fact, written a screenplay based on his novel, which he hoped to have produced as a low-budget, hardcore gay porn film. However, after negotiations with the notorious Fred Halsted came to nothing, Burroughs abandoned the idea. 

      On a happier note, in 2017 The Wild Boys was finally adapted into a full-length feature film titled Les garçons sauvages, directed by Bertrand Mandico. It's not what one would call a faithful adaptation - more a clever reimagining. Thus, while it adopts certain ideas and carries over a transgressive spirit from the novel, the film replaces Burroughs's fragmented, non-linear narrative with a continuous plot and introduces supernatural elements to do with gender metamorphosis that are entirely absent from the original work. However, while moving away from the sadistic cisgender male homosexual experience, it remains defiantly a queer, anti-heteronormative movie - just all a bit more dreamlike. Click on the link provided to watch the trailer.  

 

[8] Straightwashing refers to the manner in which fictional gay and queer characters are portrayed as straight in order to make their representation comply with heteronormativity. A common justification for such queer erasure includes a concern with mainstream audience reaction. 

 

 

A Little Slice of Post-Punk Music History: How Lieutenant Lush Became Boy George

Annabella Lwin and George O'Dowd (Lt. Lush)

Photo by Kevin Cummins (1981)

 

Sex gang children gang up on you, jump on top, on top of you 

Make love, make love, make love to you, one two three four five miles high

 

 

I.

 

Not a lot of people know - even among those who might possibly care to know - that before finding pop stardom as Boy George with the band Culture Club [1], 19-year-old George O'Dowd was briefly an associate member of Bow Wow Wow. He even twice performed on stage with them under the name Lieutenant Lush. 

 

To understand how that came about - and to uncover the origin of this rather odd-sounding alias - we must travel back to Paris in 1980. There we find former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren trying to engineer his next move.  

 

Keen to discover a fresh sound, McLaren chances upon the Burundi beat. In his mind, this connects him to the primal origin of rock 'n' roll, just as images of Geronimo and Black Beard suggest the possibility of a new, more romantic look to go with the music - part Apache, part pirate, and - crucially - post-punk.  

 

At the same time, McLaren was also hoping to find financial backing for his own film company - Tour D'Eiffel Productions [2] - which would specialise in porn projects aimed at a pre-teen audience. Paul Gorman writes (disapprovingly) that McLaren's thinking in this area was shaped by his "radical political grounding" and the "countercultural conceit" [3] that children should be accorded full agency. 

 

These projects included 'The Mile High Club', for which he had written a speculative script "revolving around an orgy on an inflight plane" [4], featuring such colourful characters as Jimmy the Hoover and ... Lieutenant Lush [5].        

 

 

II.  

 

After agreeing in the winter of 1979 to act as a mentor and creative consultant to Adam Ant for a four-week period and receiving a fixed fee of £1000, McLaren worked closely with the Ants - guitarist Matthew Ashman, drummer Dave Barbarossa, and new bassist Leigh Gorman - soon bonding with them. 

 

In fact, McLaren grew so close to the three musicians and recognised their puppet potential that he decided they should "provide the backdrop for a younger and more easily manipulated performer" [6] than 25-year-old Adam. And so he persuaded the band "to announce to Ant that they no longer wanted to work with him" [7].

 

The band then embarked on a lengthy but fruitless and frustrating audition process in an attempt to find a suitable lead singer. Fortunately, fate lent a hand when talent scout Dave Fishel encountered 13-year-old Annabella Lwin singing along to the radio at a West Hampstead dry cleaners where she worked. 

 

Impressed by her vocal ability and her youthful good looks - her warm skin tone the result of her bi-racial heritage (Anglo-Burmese) - Fishel persuaded McLaren to audition her. 

 

Shortly after, despite the fact she was completely untutored "and was largely unaware of pop music beyond a liking for Stevie Wonder" [8], Annabella joined the group and suddenly - magically - everything seemed to fall into place. They had the sound, they had the look, and now they had the teenage singer that McLaren desperately wanted (his Eliza Doolittle). 

 

However, that old showbiz maxim about never working with children (and their interfering mothers) soon came back to bite McLaren and the older members of the band and it wasn't long before they began thinking of a possible replacement for Annabella ... Enter George O'Dowd ...  

 

 

III.  

George was always going to be a star. But it's also indisputable that meeting McLaren and briefly working with Bow Wow Wow in 1980-81 was an important stepping-stone for his career. For although his association with the band only lasted a few months, it catalysed the formation of Culture Club.

 

Apart from growing impatient with Annabella, McLaren hoped that by recruiting George to the band's lineup he could inject something extra into the mix; perhaps a little more visual drama and queer romanticism (McLaren was obsessed at this time with homosexuality as a challenge to heteronormative values). 

 

McLaren gave George the stage name Lieutenant Lush. His role was to provide a soulful, vocal presence that would contrast to the band's signature Burundi beat and punk energy. He only performed live at two of the band's shows, but immediately stole the spotlight - which didn't go down well with Annabella and the boys and it was immediately obvious to McLaren that either she had to go or George had to go.

 

Whether he tossed a coin to decide who should stay and who should leave, I don't know. But it was George who was shown the door in the spring of 1981. However, as in the case of Adam Ant, this dismissal was ultimately a blessing in disguise. 

 

Confident that he could hold a tune and command a stage - and keen to have his revenge on Malcolm and show him what a mistake he'd made in sacking him - George decided to form his own group. And this group - whom he considered at one point naming the Sex Gang Children [9] - would find global fame as Culture Club - once they found their own identity and stopped trying to sound like Bow Wow Wow [10].        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Culture Club had their first big hit with the release of the single 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me', which got to number one in the UK and number two in the US. The track was taken from their debut album Kissing to Be Clever (Virgin Records, 1982). It's not my cup of tea at all - but George looks good in the video directed by Julien Temple.   

 

[2] French speakers will point out that this is a misspelling (whether deliberate or otherwise) on McLaren's part; that the company's name should technically be 'Tour Eiffel', and not 'Tour D'Eiffel'. I reproduce an image of the company letterhead in a post titled 'From the Office of Malcolm McLaren' (26 Oct 2022).   

 

[3] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 437. For Gorman, these and related projects to do with underage sexual activity "represented the development of the most tiresome, not to say misguided and divisive, aspect of McLaren's creative outpourings" (437).  

 

[4] Ibid., p. 436. Another of McLaren's proposed film projects mentioned by Gorman was 'The Adventures of Melody, Lyric & Tune' - "a musical about the three titular fifteen-year-old girls featuring songs written by McLaren" (437), including a track that Bow Wow Wow would later record, 'Sexy Eiffel Towers' (it's included on their debut mini-album Your Casstte Pet, (EMI, 1980) and features on various compilation albums). 

 

[5] As this is a post about Lt. Lush and not Jimmy the Hoover, I don't want to say too much about the latter here. Not that there is much to say and details are vague. Originally conceived by McLaren as a kids' comic character (and an expert in the art of oral sex), there was no person as such. 

      Later, McLaren would put together a band of this name intended as a support act for Bow Wow Wow. They joined the ranks of one-hit wonders thanks to the single 'Tantalise (Wo Wo Ee Yeh Yeh)', released in June 1983 (Innervision Records). Again, it's really not my cup of tea - and I'm not particularly taken with the band's look in this video directed by Derek Jarman.     

 

[6-7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 448. The only thing more creatively daring (if commercially reckless) than pushing Adam out of his own band, was making Rotten walk the plank in January 1978 at the end of the Sex Pistols American tour. 

      To his great credit, Ant licked his wounds, assembled a new band with the brilliant guitarist Marco Pirroni, and, putting all the ideas that Malcolm had given him into practice, he went on to find global success. His first big hit single in the UK - 'Dog Eat Dog' (the opening track on the Adam and the Ants' album Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980) - featured the Burundi beat and significantly outsold the debut single by Bow Wow Wow - 'C·30 C·60 C·90 Go!' (although, of course, selling records and becoming a successful pop group really wasn't the point as far as McLaren was concerned). Both are fantastic songs, though it's the latter - with lyrics by McLaren encouraging home taping - that has the more subversive political edge. Readers can decide for themselves which they prefer by clicking on the links provided.      

 

[8] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 451.  

 

[9] This provocative phrase - sex gang children - was a favourite of McLaren's; one that he coined after reading The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971), a novel by William S. Burroughs. He incorporated it into the lyrics for the Bow Wow Wow track 'The Mile High Club', which can be found on several compilation albums, including I Want Candy (EMI, 1982).  

      Whilst I think we can all agree that George wisely chose not to go with this as the name of his new band - drummer Jon Moss was having none of it - it was picked up by his friend Andi for his own gothic punk outfit (at that time known as Panic Button). 

      The Sex Gang Children would not achieve the level of commercial success achieved by Culture Club, but they did establish themselves as Batcave favourites and influenced the later dark cabaret scene. Their only studio album - Song and Legend (Illuminated Records, 1983) - reached the top of the UK Indie Chart and produced the brilliant single 'Sebastiane' which is ten times better than anything Culture Club came up with - Eat your children baked in a pie! 

 

[10] As Paul Gorman says, Culture Club soon transcended their influences and we have to acknowledge that Boy George, like Adam Ant, showed huge strength of character (as well considerable skills as a songwriter and performer). McLaren later dismissed him as "strictly a commercial enterprise" lacking any subversive edge, which may be true, but it sounds a wee bit like sour grapes. See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 476.