A Thanatological Fragment

First she decided she no longer wanted to go out. Then she decided she no longer wanted to get up. Finally, in death, decision making was no longer an issue and her house-bound, bed-bound days gave way to a period of violent decomposition during which the religious-minded believe souls to be heaven-bound, when really it's merely a return of hydro-carbon atoms to the material world, having broken free from their imprisonment in a particular life-form. 

Whether we like it or not, matter is always struggling to escape essence and to abandon vital complexity; always seeking to return to a state of inanimate simplicity. Our bodies have no loyalty to their own organization or substance; they continually decay and race towards catastrophe (we call this ageing). 

But we shouldn't reify death, nor confuse the fact of our own individual death with non-being. At most, death might be seen as a temporary pause or refreshment before the inevitable return to what Nick Land describes as the compulsive dissipation of life. This sounds a bit like mysticism, but science will confirm that organisms are so vigorously recycled at death that every atom we possess will have already been part of many millions of earlier living (and non-living) things. 

Thus, whilst there is no personal survival of death - the self is destroyed and not simply transformed or spirited away from the scene of the crime at the last instance - we do house and reincarnate the atomic souls of the dead. This is why death is always our affair and why, ultimately, Nietzsche was right to say that being alive is simply a very rare and unusual way of being dead. 

I thought this in 2006 and I still think it now: I find it helps as I watch my mother, who is 88, and recently diagnosed with dementia, slip away ...

Spicebomb

Since its launch two years ago, the Viktor and Rolf fragrance for men, Spicebomb, has continued to divide opinion and get up certain people's noses; which is not necessarily a bad thing, as nothing can be as deadly-dull as consensus.

Personally, I like it and continue to wear it, for all its rather unrefined characteristics and despite the bottle design by Fabien Baron which - in an age of terror - is somehow not only inappropriate, but also serves to strengthen the depressing link between virility and warfare, masculinity and violence. 

I'm sick to death of incendiary objects - be they grenades, people, or perfumes - which threaten to explode in my face and I really have no wish to be overpowered by brute force. Having said that, when it comes to scents, I do like a touch of vulgarity and a hint of exotic decadence and perfumer Olivier Polge gives us this with his Spicebomb via a clever combination of elements including top notes of bergamot and grapefruit, heart notes of pink pepper, chilli and saffron, and base notes of tobacco, vetiver, and leather accord.

Indeed, the irony of Spicebomb is that for all the macho packaging and posturing of the advertising campaign, it retains a slightly sickly sweetness and a degree of femininity rather than a hard-edged spiciness and it's these qualities that ultimately seduce.

It's not subtle, but it is surprising. And it is subversive; of its own name, its own bottle, and of the gender stereotypes that it initially seems to reinscribe.  
     

Note: Viktor and Rolf's Spicebomb is available from the usual high street and online stores in 50 and 90 ml sizes. Also available as a shower gel, aftershave balm, and deodorant.    

The Case of Alice Gross

Alice Gross isn't the only teenage girl to go missing in the last month. In fact, she's one of many - although, thankfully, most are found or voluntarily return home after a day or two.

But, perhaps because she lives nearby and I've become familiar with her face staring out from the above poster in a Vermeer-like manner, I can't help feeling a particular interest in her case and a genuine concern for her well-being.   

I also think of her family and friends trapped in a chaos of anxiety provoked by her absence and by the solemn wait for news of her whereabouts; fearing the worst, but hoping for the best and shifting between these poles of delirium without any sense of reality or time.

It's pointless to try and busy oneself with daily activities in such a situation. For as Barthes says, there is an entire scenography of waiting in which the one who has been left behind is obliged to constantly replay the loss of the loved object and anticipate what it is to mourn their death.

On the Will to Happiness

Image from the video of young Iranians 

dancing to Happy by Pharrell Williams

A group of young people, arrested in May of this year for making a film of themselves dancing in the streets and on the rooftops of Tehran whilst singing along to the Pharrell Williams huge summer hit, Happy, have been convicted of offending public chastity and encouraging illicit relations.

Six of those involved - including the director of the video, Sassan Soleimani - were sentenced by a court to six months in prison and a public flogging. The seventh participant, Reyhaneh Taravati, received an additional six months jail-time for possessing alcohol and posting the video on YouTube.

The sentences have been suspended for three years, but, really, the arrest, the charges, the trial, and the conviction are all so unnecessary and unjust. Not only was there a predictable international outcry, but even the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, was moved to defend the seven on Twitter where he wrote: 'We shouldn't be too hard on behaviours caused by joy.'

Obviously, I agree with this. But, I'm somewhat troubled by another tweeted remark made by Rouhani to the effect that happiness is a human right. This worries me, as it seems to feed into the universal cult of what Pascal Bruckner terms perpetual euphoria and by which he refers to a situation in which happiness is no longer just a pleasant but transient emotion that often arrives unbidden, but an ideal state that one is required to seek out and experience as a kind of duty. 

Thanks to the californication of the world, we're obliged to wear a happy smiling face all day, every day and to clap along with modern pop hymns - such as the one written by Pharrell Williams - which encourage us to believe that happiness is a form of truth to which we must devote (and possibly even sacrifice) ourselves; that there ain't nothing gonna bring us down baby!

So, whilst I don't like restrictions on freedom of expression - and certainly don't wish to be thought of as a puritanical opponent of music, dance, and laughter -  I do think we would all be better off if we accepted that there's more to life than happiness. 

Indeed, even sorrow and suffering must surely be accepted and affirmed, if our lives are to be as rich, varied, and fulfilling as human lives have the potential to be. 

Calimocho: On the Politics of Wine and Cola

 Andy Warhol: Coca-Cola (3), 1962

Probably the most powerful argument for choosing a cool can of Coke over a fine glass of wine remains that made by Andy Warhol and it's primarily a cultural-political argument tied to American consumerism, rather than one concerning taste (in either sense of the word) or sobriety:

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."   

- The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, (Harcourt, 1975)

This is undeniably true and one senses something of this same patriotism and ironic egalitarianism of the market place - one might almost call it Coca-Cola communism - born of a New World dislike for Old World snobbery, in George Costanza's equally robust defence of Pepsi.

Reminded by Elaine that it's customary for guests to bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party, George informs her that he doesn't even drink wine - he drinks Pepsi. When Elaine scornfully tells him that he can't bring Pepsi to a gathering of grown-ups, George snorts: "You telling me that wine is better than Pepsi? Huh, no way wine is better than Pepsi."

Even Jerry's attempt to intervene by telling his outraged friend that the fabric of society is very complex and that one has to conform to all manner of customs and conventions, fails to placate George on this point. Later, in the car driving to the party, George asks: "What are we Europeans with the Beaujolais and the Chardonnay ...?" 

Still, none of this serves to explain Jeremy's discomfort at ordering a bottle of Barolo when on a date in an episode of Peep Show. He's obviously put off by the price (£45), but does he really think that wine is less delicious than hot chocolate or Coke? If so, this simply makes him juvenile rather than American does it not?    

Notes:

See Seinfeld, 'The Dinner Party', episode 13, season 5 (1994) and Peep Show, 'Burgling', episode 1, series 5 (2008). 

The Handmaid's Tale

Cover to first hardback edition
(McCelland and Stewart, 1985)

I read The Handmaid's Tale full of high hopes and great expectations, aware of the critical status of this novel and sympathetic to any literary attempt to warn against authoritarian states - particularly ones underpinned by religious fundamentalism. But, I have to say, I found it disappointing.

Atwood rather cleverly combines some of the queer gothic elements of The Scarlet Letter with those twentieth century classics of dystopian fiction Brave New World and 1984. But whereas the latter, for example, challenges us to imagine a future in which a boot stamps on a human face forever, The Handmaid's Tale asks us to believe in a time when power nakedly manifests itself over an illicit game of Scrabble.

This might be making a point about the often banal and domestic character of evil, but, I must confess, I found it ludicrous. And, unfortunately, there were other things which served only to undermine the seriousness and the horror of the story. One should wince at the publicly displayed bodies of executed prisoners, but not at the clunkiness of dialogue exchanged between characters - even when spoken in the Latin that both Luke and the Commander for some peculiar reason had a penchant for.

I also think we could have done without the puns and without Nick, the chauffeur-lover, playing an almost Lawrentian role in the book. As for the 'Historical Notes' which Atwood attaches as an afterword, these too only serve to weaken the power of the novel which ends with an otherwise very memorable and moving last line: "And so I step, into the darkness within; or else the light."

Again, Atwood might be trying to make a (feminist) point about the manner in which an authentic female voice speaking its own experiences and memories is eventually transcribed, edited, and absorbed into an academic world (i.e. a system of power and privilege) still controlled by pricks such as Professor Pieixoto. But I agree entirely with Joyce Carol Oates who comments on the deflating effect of this heavily ironic coda:

"The appendix makes of the novel an astute, provocative social commentary, where its absence would have made the novel an abiding work of art ending with Offred's hopeful voice ..."     

Sometimes, as a writer, you just gotta know when to shut-up. And, ultimately, literature's not about scoring easy points or making lame jokes.  


Note: Joyce Carol Oates was writing in a piece entitled 'Margaret Atwood's Tale', in The New York Review of Books (Nov 2, 2006). Those interested in reading her article in full should click here.

From the Barbary Wars to the War on Terror

Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat (1804), by Dennis Malone Carter  Source: Naval Historical Center, Dept. of the Navy, Washington Many people seem to believe that the violent struggle between America and the Islamic world began on that fateful day in September, 2001. But, as a matter of fact, there's a crucial historical context to the present conflict which predates 9/11.

Indeed, whilst some commentators argue that the US inadvertently helped to create IS due to its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, it's actually more accurate to say that the Arab-Muslim world has determined (and provoked) US armed foreign policy from the very beginning. To understand why this is so, it's necessary to look back to the time of the so-called Barbary Wars at the beginning of the 19th century ...  Deprived of Royal Navy protection following victory in the War of Independence, American merchant shipping became increasingly vulnerable to the attentions of those powers and pirates who controlled the seas along the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Not only were cargoes looted, but crews and passengers were kidnapped and either held for ransom, or sold into slavery. Thus, as early as the 1780s, America was obliged either to take military action, or submit to Arab aggression and the payment of ever-increasing sums of protection money, or 'tribute' as it was known.  Rightly, I believe, under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the US decided it had to fight. For not only is it mistaken and shameful to give into extortion, but there were also terrible reports at the time concerning the mistreatment of captured American citizens. And so a fleet was constructed and a new, permanent force of marines assembled.  Of course, Jefferson was primarily keen to secure American access to free trade routes and was not particularly interested in fighting a holy war or crusade against the Muslim states per se. However, as Christopher Hitchens points out, he must surely have remembered what he was told in 1785 when he and John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador to London, Abd Al-Rahman: demanding to know by what right the Barbary states behaved as they did towards a newly born secular republic which had no quarrel with the Arab-Muslim world, they were informed that God gave them this authority and that it was written in the Quran that they were free to enslave or murder infidels.           Faced with such religious mania and intransigence, conflict was unavoidable. And so, between 1801 and 1805, was fought the first Barbary War. This was followed by a second skirmish over the same issues, directed by James Madison, in 1815. American victory not only meant the US no longer had to pay a percentage of its GNP to rogue states, it also helped bring about an end to piracy in the region which obviously benefited many other nations, including the UK. We should be grateful, therefore, for the courage of US marines on the shores of Tripoli two centuries ago. And we should be grateful that America is still prepared to step up when needs be and send its servicemen and women into battle.

Put on a Little Makeup ...

One of the things that I find a joy to watch is a young woman putting on her makeup in the morning whilst on the tube and, presumably, on her way to work; particularly when she does so with real concern and concentration and completely oblivious to the presence of her fellow passengers. 

For me, there's always something moving and magical about seeing a woman perform an otherwise private function in public; creating a little space and time for herself and about herself in a busy world with nothing more than foundation, blusher, mascara, and lipstick.

One invariably thinks of what Baudelaire wrote on the female use of cosmetics:

"Woman is quite within her rights, indeed she is even accompanying a kind of duty, when she devotes herself to appearing magical and supernatural; she has to astonish and charm us; as an idol, she is obliged to adorn herself in order to be adored. It matters but little that the artifice and trickery are known to all, so long as their success is assured and their effect always irresistible."

                                                                                                                   
- Charles Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life', in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne, (Phaidon Press Ltd., 1995), p. 33. 

Happy to Live in a Soulless World

 Cover art for Jean Baudrillard's Carnival and Cannibal 

(Seagull Books, 2010)

According to Roger Sandall, Disneyfication is the fourth and final stage of what he terms designer tribalism; the way in which a primitive, often savage but nonetheless authentic culture is finally reduced to the level of puerility within the Romantic imagination.

I have no arguments with this, but what Sandall doesn't seem to recognise is that the West has ruthlessly subjected its own culture and history to a similar process - something that Baudrillard was at pains to point out in a late essay entitled Carnival and Cannibal. 

Thus, whilst it's true that the West has obliged non-Western peoples the world over to accept modernity and wear a smiley white face, so too do we figure in this grotesque masquerade, effectively having carnivalized and cannibalized ourselves long before exporting such practices globally. 

The fact is, modernity spares no one: it's a great collective spectacle and swindle wherein "multiracial civilization is merely a trompe-l'oeil universe in which all particularities of race, sex and culture can be said to have been falsified to the point of being parodies of themselves". 

In other words, Western civilization has not triumphed - or, if it has, it has triumphed at the cost of its own soul. Still, this may not be a bad thing ... a soulless future and a disenchanted world may yet be the most beautiful (in its indifference, its irony, and its seductive emptiness). 

And if you think you might prefer to live instead in a world of fundamental values and absolute certainty, of sincerity and sovereignty, authenticity and enthusiasm, then I suggest you pledge allegiance to the Islamic State.

Notes

Roger Sandall writes about Disneyfication and the other three stages of Noble Savagery in an Appendix to The Culture Cult, (Westview Press, 2001), pp. 179-81.

Baudrillard's essay, Carnival and Cannibal, is translated by Chris Turner, (Seagull Books, 2010). The line quoted from is on p. 9.  

These are a Few of My Favourite Things: Sitcoms

Image via http://www.middlechildmade.com/shop/i-love-sitcoms/

I have spoken elsewhere on the political and philosophical importance of lists, but we should not overlook the pleasure aspect: quite simply, lists make happy; they are fun to write and fun to read.

So, here's a list of my thirteen favourite sitcoms - assembled not in order of preference nor following a critical assessment of humourous value, but alphabetically by series title. For compiling lists should not be simply another excuse to exercise judgement and construct hierarchies. I love all of these shows, not equally, but in any order that one might care to watch them and the only logic that links them is the fact that they have continually given joy (perhaps more joy than anything else).

I am not of the view that comedy serves some kind of radical function; I certainly don't think we can simply laugh all our worries or problems away. But I do think it's a higher form than tragedy.

Note that I have decided to exclude any animated shows - otherwise The Simpsons would certainly be on this list. 

Bilko (The Phil Silvers Show)

Cheers

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Hancock's Half-Hour

Extras
Father Ted
I'm Alan Partridge

Man About the House

Peep Show

Rhoda

Rising Damp

Seinfeld

Thirty Rock