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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Notes

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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