The Surrealist Sex Pistols According to Marie Arleth Skov

 

André, Johnny & Marie 

(The Surrealist, the Sex Pistol & the Punk Scholar)

 

 

I.

 

I don't know why, but there are some people in the world I just like. 

 

And the Berlin-based Danish art historian, curator, and author Marie Arleth Skov is one such person - even though we have only met once, very briefly, a couple of years ago at a punk symposium in London [a]. 

 

Partly, the reason I feel her to be sympathisch is because her interests and mine intersect and I admire her as a writer. But I also think she has a nice face and a stylish way of dressing [b].  

 

And while Johnny Rotten tells us not to judge a book by its cover [c], D. H. Lawrence argues that if you can't judge a thing by its appearance - which is to say, by the instinctive impression it makes upon you - then you're a fool [d]. And while I'm many things, like Stinky Turner I am not a fool [e].    

 

 

II. 

 

Anyway, this is all by the by. 

 

For we're actually here to discuss Dr Skov's contribution to the recently published Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols (2026): an essay titled 'Dustbin Flowers, Fallen Angels, and Safety-Pin Lips', which examines the punk band in the light of surrealism ...

 

Skov opens her chapter with André Breton's definition of the simplest surrealist act: namely, blindly firing a pistol into a crowd (Breton, 1930). 

 

One immediately assumes, therefore, that we are going to be discussing the random shooting that ends Sid Vicious's unique performance of 'My Way' in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980). However, Skov surprises us by referencing instead Johnny Rotten's declared wish to destroy the passerby, which she feels is an "echo of sorts" [f]. 

 

I have to say, that's not my interpretation of this line from 'Anarchy in the U.K.' (EMI, 1976). 

 

For me, just as Rotten's self-description as an anti-Christ is rooted in his ethnoreligious background as the son of Irish Catholic parents - and not, alas, in Nietzschean philosophy - so too does his ambition of wanting to destroy the passerby display traces of lessons learnt in Sunday school by a good little boy in shirt and tie. 

 

Particularly, of course, the parable of the Good Samaritan, as told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (10: 25-37) [g].

 

In other words, the line echoes Christian moral teaching, rather than French surrealism. 

 

Rotten is not, unlike Breton, simply expressing his (typically modernist) political contempt for those who conform to mass society [h]. He is displaying his moral outrage with those who refuse to get involved or directly participate in events. 

 

Like early Christianity - and, indeed, like fascism - punk as practised by Rotten obliges everyone to adopt a position and take a stand; it compels us to action. There can be no passersby and no passive audience members.    

 

III. 

 

According to Skov, as movements, "both punk and surrealism merged the poetic with the political, romance with revolt" (315). 

 

I think that's true. 

 

But, the thing is, one might have hoped for a certain wariness when it comes to this aestheticisation of politics, the logical outcome of which is either the fascism of the far-right or the militant asceticism and theoretical terrorism of the ultra-left - and yet I'm sensing Skov's tacit approval. 

 

In 2026, however, we've got a bigger problem now, as Jello Biafra would say [i] ... 

 

For what's infecting politics today isn't the poetic, but the sacred; and revolt is no longer tied to romance but religion. And even if shouting Allahu Akbar before driving a car into a crowd can be interpreted as a surrealist act against global hegemony inspired by a creed of combat and sacrifice [j], I don't think we should romanticise it.

 

 

IV.

 

Skov is right to highlight the connection between André Masson and Malcolm McLaren - something I've done myself on Torpedo the Ark: click here.

 

I still think Masson's cover design for the first issue of the journal Acéphale (1936-39), featuring an iconic headless figure with stars for nipples and a skull where his sexual organs should be, is one that McLaren should have got Jamie or Vivienne to adapt as a design for the Sex Pistols. 

 

And I still think Bataille's "Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être" would have made a great punk slogan [k]. 

And Skov's right also to insist that when speaking of the Sex Pistols, it is vital to remember that one is not merely referring to members of the band, but also McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, Jamie Reid, and Jordan - although, rather sweetly, she still insists that "music was the key" (318).    

 

 

V. 

 

Skov quotes a famous couple of lines from the Sex Pistols song 'God Save the Queen' (Virgin, 1977): 

 

We're the flowers in the dustbin  

We're the poison in your human machine.

 

But whereas she sees the first as indicating a "very fragile, tender imagination" (319) and somehow connected to Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), I've always thought it simply revealed Rotten's contempt for the hippies.

 

And whereas she reads the second line as a neo-Luddite critique of relentless mechanisation, for me it's a line that lends weight to Bernard Brook-Partridge's characterisation of the Sex Pistols as the antithesis of humankind [l]. 

 

In other words, it's not the "rejection of a societal system that [...] crushes dreams" (319), and nor does it essentially correlate with "fighting the (dystopian) future" (319). Rather, it echoes the nausea expressed by D. H. Lawrence who wrote: "The very words human, humanity, humanism make one sick." [m]

 

VI.  

 

I like that Skov brings up the subject of alchemy. I would argue that the slogan cash from chaos can be read as an alchemical formula.

 

However, before getting too carried away, it's important to remember the crucial scene in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle in which Steve Jones defecates on a gold disc presented to Johnny Rotten to recognise sales of Never Mind the Bollocks in what is an explicitly counter-alchemical gesture (i.e., the turning of gold back into base matter). 

 

As the female A&R executive with ants crawling on her face in the Swindle says, the Sex Pistols have a "sort of negative Midas touch - everything they touch turns to shit" [n].  And after dumping on the golden disc, Jones credits Malcolm with knowing how to bring out the punk in him - i.e., one who desires to destroy success. 

 

I rather worry at times that Skov's reading of the Sex Pistols is just a tad too upbeat and positive; did they really dance in the dirt in order to create glory? Or did they not seek to degrade the idealist pretensions attached to the latter? 

 

 

VII. 

 

It's true that McLaren and Westwood subscribed to a radical politics of desire that weaponised sex. 

 

But it's also true that this was because they were quite naive and old-fashioned in their thinking, subscribing, for example, to the repressive hypothesis that would be so brilliantly exposed by Foucault in the same year that the Sex Pistols entered public consciousness (1976).  

 

And just as we no longer find it so appealing to romanticise surrealist acts of terrorism, we are no longer nostalgic enough to cling to ideas of sexual revolution, whether inspired by Sade, Reich, or Marcuse (not when we live in a world after the orgy). 

 

Having said that, Skov's ideas on the body in punk and corporeal aesthetics remain fascinating and I really liked her discussion of posture - particularly the idea of slouching as nonconformity.

 

I'm grateful also to learn of Leo Dohmen's surrealist photocollage titled Revanche de la nuit (1958), which features a steel safety pin pierced directly through the lips of a woman - a work about which I knew nothing before reading Skov's essay. 

 

 

VIII.      

 

In the final section of her essay, Skov writes this: 

 

"Of course, the political implications of the Sex Pistols are difficult to pin down [...] Being ambiguous and paradoxical was part of punk's DNA." (323) 

 

And again, that's true as far as it goes, although the politics of boredom or radical negativity as expressed by the Sex Pistols are not entirely beyond our conceptual grasp: beneath the ambiguity lies a fairly simple message after all. 

 

Namely, that politics as traditionally understood and practiced is no longer possible in a transpolitical era and that in order to survive our engagement with nihilism we need to become a little more ironic, a little more insouciant, and a little more intelligent. 

 

In a word, more playful ... 

 

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,  

don't make it in ghastly seriousness,  

don't do it in deadly earnest, 

do it for fun.

 

Above all: 

 

Don't do it because you hate people, 

do it just to spit in their eye. [o] 

 

 

Notes 

 

[a] See the post titled 'On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive' (25 March 2024). 

 

[b] I wouldn't normally comment on someone's looks. But as Dr Skov is someone who writes on the visceral history and rhetoric of the punk body and challenges dualism, I'm assuming she will appreciate that one cannot divorce the intellect from its physical embodiment and stylisation. Without wishing to resurrect and fully endorse the ancient Greek notion of καλοκαγαθία (Kalokagathia), which aligns beauty and virtue, as a Nietzschean, I find the idea still strangely resonates. 

 

[c] I'm referencing the lyrics to 'E.M.I.', by the Sex Pistols, on Never Mind the Bollocks ... (Virgin Records, 1977). 

 

[d] I'm referencing Lawrence's essay 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 192. 

 

[e] Stinky Turner (aka Jeff Geggus) is the lead singer with the Cockney Rejects. 'I Am Not a Fool' was a single on EMI Records, released in 1979. It would be hard to find any trace of surrealism in the Rejects. 

 

[f] Marie Arleth Skov, 'Dustbin Flowers, Fallen Angels, and Safety-Pin Lips', in The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols, ed. Mike Dines, Gabriela Gelain, Paul Graves-Brown and John Schofield (Routledge, 2026), p. 315. All future page references to this work will be inserted directly in the main text.

    It might be noted that Skov does, in fact discuss Sid's 'My Way' performance later in her text and assumes that Breton "would have loved it" (p. 320). 

 

[g] See the post 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby: Notes on Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan' (28 May 2020). 

 

[h] I'm aware that his defenders will say my reading of Breton's famous, provocative passage in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism is crass and all-too-literal. I'm afraid, however, that I agree with Camus writing in The Rebel (1951). 

      By fantasising a blind act of violence against a random crowd, Breton reveals a terroristic level of contempt for the public whom he thinks have been debased and crétinised by the System and so deserving of whatever they get. Like so many other modernist intellectuals who claimed to love the People and wish to liberate them, Breton was frustrated and resentful when they preferred the safety and stability of bourgeois lives over the revolution he was offering. 

 

[i] Jello Biafra was the lead singer with the Dead Kennedys. 'We've Got a Bigger Problem Now' is a reworked and updated version of their classic track (and debut single) 'California Über Alles' (1979). It can be found on the EP In God We Trust, Inc., (Alternative Tentacles, 1981). 

 

[j] I'm paraphrasing Michel Foucault who famously characterized the Iranian uprising not as a traditional revolution, but as a collective outburst of political spirituality outside of secular liberalism and the ideals of the Enlightenment. He rightly faced accusations of romanticising anti-modern religious fundamentalism and largely remained silent or evasive regarding the regime's subsequent human rights abuses. 

      See the post 'Foucault's Islamic Folly' (14 Aug 2014). 

 

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

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

 

[l] Brook-Partridge was a high-profile Tory member of the Greater London Council and, as this interview shows, he was not a fan of punk rock in general, but had a particular loathing of the Sex Pistols. The interview was included by Julien Temple in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

[m] D. H. Lawrence, 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 255. 

 

[n] This two-minute scene at MAMIE Records - which Skov would, I'm sure, describe as surreal - can be watched between 34:56 - 36:54 in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. The role of the A&R executive is played by Jean Warren. Sex Pistols aficionados will recall that a gold disc version of Never Mind the Bollocks with a plastic dog turd on it is featured on the back of the compilation album Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980). 

 

[o] I quote these lines from D. H. Lawrence's poem 'A Sane Revolution', Pansies (1929) and discuss them in my own essay in The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols (2026); see 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Swindle: Or, Why I Still Believe in the Ruins', pp. 180-191.