On Sexiness (With Reference to Malcolm McLaren's Shallow 1-21)

 

A still from Malcolm McLaren's Shallow 1-21 (2008) 

showing a woman slowly eating some grapes in a sexy fashion 

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art  

 

'What excites today - after the orgy as Baudrillard would say - 

isn't explicit pornography, but very slow-moving portraits of people 

thinking about, desiring, wanting, wishing for, and imagining having sex.' 

 

 

I. 

 

D. H. Lawrence famously equates sex with beauty, insisting that they are one and the same thing; "like flame and fire" [1] and that sex appeal is, therefore, the appeal of living beauty. 

 

Barthes, however, isn't having any of this. 

 

For Barthes, the sexiness of a body has nothing to do with its beauty. Rather, it "inheres in the fact that it is possible to discern (to fantasise) in it the erotic practice to which one subjects it in thought" [2].     

 

That's a definition which would make Lawrence splutter in his tea. He'd accuse Barthes of having his sex in his head (to be fair, the above does very much lend itself to such a reading). 

 

But it's a definition that I think Malcolm McLaren would have immediately understood and appreciated; for, in a sense, it provides the key with which to unlock the secret of his multimedia artwork titled Shallow 1-21 (2008). 

 

 

II. 

 

Consisting of a series of what he liked to call musical paintings, the work combines some of McLaren's favourite songs and pieces of music with appropriated video clips from vintage films of people just before they engage in sexual acts, looping moments of heavy breathing, the parting of lips, or the slow unbuttoning of a shirt [3].

 

By focusing entirely on the excitement of anticipation rather than explicit acts, McLaren conceptualised the 86-minute work as a subversion of pornography and hoped to demonstrate the truth of Casanova's famous claim that the finest of all moments in the game of love comes when one is climbing the stairs [4].    

III.

 

Lawrence, of course, would hate McLaren's film. 

 

But Barthes, I think, would have appreciated the work. Indeed, it might be argued that, in some manner, Shallow is a version of Barthes's projected work on sexuality.

 

Enchanted by a young couple sitting opposite him on the train - "the woman is blonde, made up; she is wearing big dark glasses, reads Paris-Match; she has a ring on each finger, and each nail on both hands is painted a different colour from its two neighbours" [5] - Barthes conceives the idea of a new book (or of a film). 

 

In this work, there would be "nothing but secondary sex characteristics (nothing pornographic); in it one would grasp (would try to grasp) the sexual 'personality' of each body, which is neither its beauty nor even its 'sexiness' but the way in which each sexuality immediately lets itself be read" [6].

 

From this, one can see why Barthes once described himself as a homotextual. 

 

He continues:

 

"For the young blonde with the harlequin nails and her young husband with his tight pants and warm eyes were wearing their couple-sexuality like the legion-of-honour ribbon in a buttonhole (sexuality and respectability relating to the same kind of display), and this legible sexuality [...] filled the compartment, by an irresistible metonymy, much more certainly than any series of coquetries." [7]   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 145. For a discussion of this piece, see the post dated 24 September 2018: click here.  

 

[2] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Papermac 1995), p. 164.  

 

[3] McLaren developed the first eight videos for Shallow in 2007 for a New York group show. He completed the rest of the 21 musical paintings in 2008, officially premiering the entire collection at Art Basel in Switzerland in June 2008. 

      For those readers who might be interested, McLaren discusses the work on Artforum (16 July 2008): click here. 

 

[4] Interestingly, Michel Foucault points out that whilst this may well have been true within an eighteenth-century heterosexual context, the reverse is probably the case within the world of homosexuality. Foucault claims that the modern homosexual would be more likely to say something along the lines of: The best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi. 

      He explains: "It is when the act is over and the boy is gone that one begins to dream about the warmth of his body, the quality of his smile, the tone of his voice. It is the recollection rather than the anticipation of the act that assumes a primary importance in homosexual relations. This is why the great homosexual writers of our culture (Cocteau, Genet, Burroughs) can write so elegantly about the sexual act itself, because the homosexual imagination is for the most part concerned with reminiscing about the act rather than anticipating it." 

      This brilliant observation was made in the interview conducted by James O'Higgins titled 'Sexual Choice, Sexual Act'. It can be found in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston (Semiotext[e], 1996), pp. 322-334. The lines quoted above are on page 330. 

 

[5] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes ... p. 164. 

      The interview can also be read in the American quarterly magazine Salmagundi, No. 58/59 (Fall 1982 - Winter 1983): click here to read online.  

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Ibid.

 

 

For a related post to this on the politics of accelerationism contra slowness with reference to Shallow 1-21, which was published on 11 April 2025, click here.  

 

 

A Thing of Beauty in the Abstract: on the Sexiness of the Periodic Table (A Post for Ian Buxton)

Blair Bradshaw: Periodic Table (2013) 

Oil on canvas (30" x 72") [1]

blairbradshawstudio.com 

 

 

I. 

 

In a recent 6/20 paper on paraphilia [2], I claimed that desire needn't be constrained and shaped purely by our own human experience and capacity and that once desire is liberated, then we are free to love anything and everything and not just anyone - including animals, plants, and atypical objects of every description. 

 

This is not, however, to posit a model of pansexualism: I'm not saying all is sex [3]. What I am suggesting, rather, is that an element of libidinal energy is invested in everything we do and that desire is what brings things "which otherwise are incommensurable" [4] into touch. 

 

In other words, desire - which has no fixed essence and therefore evades definition - can best be thought of in terms of how it functions as a "strange current of interchange" [5] flowing between bodies (including abstract, virtual, or artificial bodies). 

 

As Deleuze and Guattari argue, if you examine the social field closely enough, you'll find that beneath the conscious investments of economic, political, and religious formations, "there are unconscious sexual investments, microinvestments that attest to the way in which desire is present" [6]          

 

Thus, sexuality exists even in the way that a bureaucrat fondles his records [7] - or, we might add, in the strange manner that the periodic table exerts its allure upon a scientist.

 

 

II.

 

The periodic table is an ordered arrangement of chemical elements into rows and columns based on their assigned atomic number [8]. It's both a marvellous product of the scientific imagination and an iconic piece of graphic design [9].  

 

Of course, I'm aware that one must exercise a certain degree of caution here; that the periodic table is first and foremost a visual record of scientific knowledge rather than a work of the artistic imagination. Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was almost certainly more concerned with physics than aesthetics when he produced the first periodic table in 1869 [10] and, ultimately, it's determined by function rather than form.

      

Nevertheless, it relies heavily on certain design principles to do with layout and colour in order to translate highly complex scientific laws into a pleasing and accessible format and anyone who cannot see the elemental beauty in it must be blind. 

 

And beauty, of course, isn't tied to truth or goodness, so much as to sex appeal. Thus, we can say that not only is its vertical and horizontal cross-referencing lovely to look at, it also communicates a sense of joy and warmth. My critics at the 6/20 may not like to admit the fact, but for certain men a body of knowledge is more seductive, and more arousing, than that of even the most comely young wench.  

 

 

III.

 

To understand this allure, one might look past the design aesthetic and consider the libidinally material behaviour of the elements themselves. For the periodic table is perhaps best thought of as a map of highly eroticised intensities. 

 

Take, for instance, the alkali metals sodium (Na), potassium (K), and caesium (Cs). Hyper-reactive and volatile, these elements are driven by a desperate, unstable promiscuity. They cannot bear to exist in isolation and will explosively couple with almost any partner in a flash of consummating heat.

 

At the opposite end of this behavioural spectrum lie the noble gases helium (He), neon (Ne), and argon (Ar). Embodying a mixture of coldness, cruelty and self-contained celibacy, they refuse to bond or even flirt with the rest of the chemical universe. Theirs is an erotics of absolute refusal and pristine isolation - until that is a sudden, intense electrical current causes them to glow with the ecstasy of one who has been ravished.   

 

Between these extremes lie tactile and toxic temptations such as quicksilver (Hg) - a queer, elusive liquid metal that defies the standard boundaries of its state. 

 

But of course, for me - as a writer and homotextual - the seduction of the periodic table lies more in the wonderfully evocative and allusive names of the elements that roll off the tongue with almost liturgical sensuality: from the dark gothic beauty of cobalt (Co) [11]; to the celestial beauty of selenium (Se) [12]. 

 

If, as Einstein once suggested, the mathematical formulations of science are the poetry of logical ideas, then to read the periodic table aloud is to recite a chant of desire; a poetic incantation where language itself becomes a site of bliss. 

 

So, when 6/20 regular Ian Buxton asks if the periodic table is sexy, the answer is obviously - and resoundingly - Yes! [13]  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Blair Bradshaw is a contemporary American artist known for his visually striking paintings of the periodic table of the elements. His work blends the scientific data with an aesthetic interpretation of human experience, thereby giving familiar elements whole new meaning (often of a whimsical character). Physically large in size, his pieces are created using diverse mediums, including oil on canvas, oil on paper, and wood. 

      For a discussion of Bradshaw's work, see the adapted extract from Tami I. Spector's article 'The Art of the Periodic Table', posted on The MIT website (4 Feb 2021): click here. The full piece can be found in Leonardo, Vol. 52, Issue 3 (June 2019). 

      In brief, Spector argues that the intersection of art and science has the potential to build new insights, ideas, and processes beneficial to both disciplines. She also makes the interesting observation that Bradshaw "elevates the iconography of the periodic table, using its form to create visual-linguistic connections and rearranging and isolating the elements into clever wordplay". In other words, for Bradshaw, it's the cultural associations and linguistic connotations that most excite about the periodic table.

 

[2] See the Events page on Torpedo the Ark for details of the paper: click here. 

      The 6/20 Club is a twice-monthly salon graciously hosted by Christian Michel at his west London home. Established for over twenty years, it has seen an impressive assortment of speakers present papers on a huge number of topics.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, '...... Love Was Once a Little Boy', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 339.

 

[4] The politics of desire is far more subtle and further reaching than a naive form of pansexualism. Lawrence was always insistent on this point. Thus, even if an element of sex enters every aspect of human life, this does not mean everything can or should be reduced to sex. Greater even than the sex impulse is the creative impulse; it is the latter - not the will to love - that is the world-forming drive. 

      See chapter IX of his Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (CUP, 2004). And see chapter 11 of my Outside the Gate (Blind Cupid press, 2010), where I discuss this.    

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's Two Years Before the Mast', in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 109.

 

[6] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 183. 

 

[7] See Deleuze and Guattari writing in Anti-Oedipus ... p. 293. The passage reads: "The truth is sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a business man causes money to circulate ..." D&G are also keen to emphasise that this is not merely a metaphor. 

 

[8] Elements are organised in horizontal rows - known as periods - by their increasing atomic numbers. The vertical columns - or groups - represent elements with similar electronic structures and properties.  

 

[9] For an interesting short piece discussing the periodic table by graphic designer and visual communications expert Tony Pritchard, see Eye, Vol. 20, Issue 78 (Winter, 2010), please click here.  

 

[10] It might be noted that Mendeleev did not actually know about atomic numbers in 1869; he organised elements by atomic weight. The physical basis for atomic numbers was discovered by English physicist Henry Moseley in 1913. 

      Before Moseley's work, atomic numbers were simply a placeholder for an element's position on the periodic table. Moseley used X-ray spectroscopy to measure the characteristic wavelengths of various elements, revealing that the square root of an X-ray's frequency is directly proportional to its atomic number. This breakthrough - known as Moseley's Law - allowed him to reorganise the periodic table by atomic number rather than atomic weight, correcting long-standing inconsistencies in Mendeleev's original table. 

 

[11] The word cobalt derives from the German word kobold, the name of evil underground goblins and given to the ore by medieval German miners because the rock was considered not only worthless, but emitted toxic fumes when smelted.   

 

[12] The word selenium is from the Greek word selēnē [σελήνη], meaning moon (though this is not related to its silvery colour when existing in its most stable form). 

 

[13] Ian Buxton mistakenly thought I wasn't being serious when I answered in the affirmative to his question 'Is there anything sexy about the periodic table?' Normally, I would let such a misunderstanding pass. But, just for once, I wanted to let it be known that while I might present my work in a relatively light-hearted manner, I do, as a matter of fact, take the ideas fairly seriously. 

      Similarly, if I choose not to discuss things at length or in depth at the 6/20, that's because I think of it not as an academic space, but as a forum in which speakers are invited to please their audiences by playing with ideas, rather than engage in an aggressive form of dialectics or intellectual sparring.          

 

 

This post is for Christian and Jennifer (my co-presenter on the night) - and with special thanks to Maria, Dawn, Fatima, Ruth, Soko, and Rebecca. 

 

 

SA and Christian Michel at the 6/20 

(20 May 2026)

Photo by Maria Thanassa 

 

D. H. Lawrence and Rudolph Valentino: the Priest of Love Versus the Latin Lover

Messrs. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Valentino (1895-1926) 

 

Oh Mister Rudolph Valentino / I know I've got the Valentino blues  

And when you come up on the screen / Oh! You're so romantic, I go frantic at the views [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Like many men at the time [2], D. H. Lawrence was not a fan of cinema's greatest male sex symbol of the silent era, Rudolph Valentino, the so-called Latin Lover [3]:

 

"We think ... a handsome man must look like Rudolf Valentino. ... But ... there is a greater essential beauty in Charlie Chaplin's odd face than there ever was in Valentino's ... which only pleases because it satisfies some ready-made notion of handsomeness." [4]

 

 

II.  

 

As the above quote makes clear, Lawrence dislikes Valentino because he thinks the latter reinforces a stereotypical ideal of beauty. 

 

But he also accuses actors cast in the same mold as Valentino of counterfeit emotion and of stimulating such in their audience. In a poem written about his experience at the cinema, for example, Lawrence jeers at the black-and-white feelings and fake ecstasies pretended by those who moan with pleasure when watching close-up kisses on a screen [5].

 

One suspects that, just as he thinks Valentino's sex appeal to be essentialy false, Lawrence might also have cast doubt on the actor's masculinity if given the chance to do so and may even have agreed with the attack upon him by the Chicago Tribune in the so-called 'Pink Powder Puffs' controversy ....

 

 

III.   

 

There had long been those who had called Valentino's manliness and, by unspoken implication, his heterosexuality into question. 

 

Some all-American boys - fair of face and blue of eye - felt threatened by his dark good looks and strange foreign manner; particularly as these things clearly excited the all-American girl. Anti-Italian racism was not uncommon at this time and if wops could also be seen as effeminate as well as criminal and foolish, then that was all the more reason to despise them. 

 

Thus, Valentino's critics repeatedly pointed to his pomaded hair, his dandyish dress sense, and the misogyny that seemed to underlie his treatement of women. 

 

This abuse came to a peak - whilst paradoxically hitting a new low - when an editorial in the Chicago Tribune concerning the installation of a facial powder dispenser in a gentleman's washroom at one of the city's leading hotels, decried the feminization of American men and pinned the blame for this on Valentino and his movies. 

 

The article, published on 18 July 1926, so infuriated Valentino that he challenged the anonymous writer to a fight [6]. As this challenge was not taken up, Valentino sought advice from others, including the writer H. L. Mencken, on how else to respond to such an infamous libel [7].    

 

Unfortunately, however, Valentino didn't get the chance to take matters any further; for he was to die in hospital following surgery the following month, aged just 31.  

 

 

IV.

 

Since his premature death in August 1926 [8], rumours have continued to circulate regarding Valentino's sexuality; was he secretly homosexual; was he bi-curious; or - as the evidence suggests and his recent biographers [9] conclude - was he in fact a genuine lover of the ladies, with no desire to suck cock ...?  

 

Who knows? 

 

And these days, who cares? Thankfully, a man can now present another man with an art deco dildo without everyone rushing to judgement, or speculating as to what such a gift reveals about that person's orientation or sexual preferences.  

 

Even Lawrence, who may not have been a fan of Valentino's - and often addressed questions around gender and sexuality in a way that many might now find problematic to say the least - conceded that the most girlish looking men often have "the finest maleness, once it is put to the test" [10]. 

 

 

Don't you ever stop being dandy  

showing me you're handsome [11]

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from 'Rodolph Valentino Blues', by Jack Frost (published by Jack Mills Inc., 1922). For a recent version of the song uploaded to YouTube by valentinolover70, click here. 

      Note that the spelling of Valentino's first name is not an error; in February, 1922 Life magazine reported that he would henceforth prefer to be known as Rodolph rather than Rudolph. This semi-Italianised styling of the name seems not to have caught on, however.   

 

[2] As the author of the WordPress blog Rudolph Valentino-Connections writes, Valentino was a target of innuendo, racism, and ridicule almost from the start of his career. In the July 1922 issue of Photoplay, for example, which featured Valentino on the cover, the cartoonist and illustrator Dick Dorgan wrote a piece entitled 'Song of Hate' which asserted that all men hate the actor for his foreign features, including his slicked hair and glistening white teeth. 

      Click here to access the post, which also includes the 'Pink Powder Puffs' editorial in the Chicago Tribune (18 July 1926) which we shall discuss shortly and which declares: 'Better a rule by masculine women than by effeminate men.'     

 

[3] Valentino was born in southern Italy, but arrived in New York in December 1913, aged 18. Although eligible - and despite becoming a Hollywood icon thanks to his exceptional good looks, personal charm, and unique talent - he never completed an application for US citizenship. 

       Undoubtedly the role that defined not only Valentino's career but his image and legacy, was that of Ahmed Ben Hassan in The Sheik (dir. George Melford, 1921) - much to his own irritation.  

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 145-146. 

      What Valentino thought of Lawrence's looks is not, as far as I know, on record. But, interestingly, Clark Gable - the actor promoted as Valentino's successor after the latter's untimely death in 1926 - named Lawrence as his favourite author. See the article 'Will Gable Take the Place of Valentino', by Gladys Hall, in Movie Classic (November 1931), which can be read on the Clark Gable archive site dearmrgable.com: click here.   

 

[5] See the poem 'When I went to the film' in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 385.  

 

[6] Although Valentino didn't get to fight the writer of the Pink Powder Puffs editorial, he did box sports writer Frank ONeill from the New York Evening Journal, who volunteered to fight in place of his colleague from the Chicago Tribune. Valentino - who had been trained by world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey - won the fight. Afterwards, Dempsey described Valentino as the most virile and masculine of all the actors he had worked with.

 

[7] Mencken, who found Valentino very likeable, advised the latter to simply let the whole thing fizzle out. After Valentino's death - just a month later - Mencken published a sympathetic piece in the Baltimore Sun, in which he claimed that it was not the Chicago episode that really upset Valentino, but the grotesque futility of his life as a famous film star. See H. L. Mencken, 'Valentino', in A Mencken Chrestomathy, (Vintage Books, 1982), pp. 281-284.   

      

[8] Valentino died on 23 August 1926 from infections following surgery for perforated gastric ulcers. A post discussing the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his death and his posthumous life can be read by clicking here.

 

[9] See, for example, Emily W. Leider's biography Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino (Faber & Faber, 2003).    

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 126. 

 

[11] Lyrics from 'Prince Charming' by Adam and the Ants, a single release from the studio album Prince Charming (CBS, 1981), which reached number 1 in the UK charts. The video for the song, directed Mike Mansfield, famously ends with Adam singing the chorus refrain - ridicule is nothing to be scared of - in the guise of several iconic male figures, including Valentino as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. Click here to play on YouTube.  

 

 

Aphrodite's Girdle

Aphrodite's Girdle, contributed by Mary Metzer to

The Museum of Fictional Literary Artifacts [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The girdle has a long, long history, reaching back into an ancient time that fashion historians term BP (Before Playtex). 

 

Perhaps the most famous girdle of all was one said to have been worn by Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love - although whether it was recognisably a girdle in the modern sense is debatable [2]. 

 

According to Homer, the girdle was imbued with the magical power to arouse desire in mortals and gods alike [3]. Thus, it can legitimately be regarded as an erotic accessory rather than merely a garment worn for practical reasons; Aphrodite, one assumes, didn't require any help maintaining her shape.  

The same might not be true of Hera, who had a fuller, more matronly figure and sometimes borrowed the girdle from Aphrodite when looking for a little extra something in order to capture the attentions of her husband (and brother) Zeus [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, later authors claim that Aphrodite also lent her embroidered girdle to Helen, to ensure that Paris would succumb to her natural charms. 

 

But Aphrodite was always keen to have the item returned to her as soon as possible, however, and the 18th-century German poet and playwright Schiller explains why that is so in his long philosophical essay On Grace and Dignity (1793) [5]. 

According to Schiller, Aphrodite - or Venus as he prefers to call her in the Roman manner - can be stripped naked and still remain beautiful; but without her girdle she lacks grace - and without grace she is no longer so alluring. 

 

In other words, even a naturally beautful woman is desexualised the moment she is stripped naked; something that Roland Barthes picks up on in his essay on striptease in Mythologies. 

 

Ultimately, it's the clothes and jewellery and make-up - "in short the whole spectrum of adornment" [6] that give the living flesh its erotic fascination and places the body within the realm of luxurious objects.

   

 

Notes

 

[1] The Museum of Fictional Literary Artifacts is an amusing digital project created by students at Dakota State University. The aim is to establish an online archive of imaginary objects that might - had they been actual things - have been sought after by collectors. The MFLA houses a vast number of such artifacts found in all genres of literary work, from novels to comic books. For more details, please click here.  

 

[2] The Girdle of Aphrodite has variously been imagined as a strap, a belt, or a breast-band rather than a girdle as we might think of it today in a post-Playtex world of rubber. Whatever it was, Aphrodite's girdle has been a popular theme in the arts and literature of Europe, particularly during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods.  

 

[3] See Homer, Iliad 14: 159-221. Homer. An English translation of the full text by A.T. Murray can be found on the Perseus Digital Library: click here to read Book 14.

 

[4] Theirs was not what you might call a happy marriage; she may have found him agreeable at first - just as he found her sexually attractive - but their relationship is marked by infidelity, jealousy, and violence. 

 

[5] Über Anmut und Würde (1793) is an attempt to reconcile aesthetics and ethics based upon the philosophy of  Immanuel Kant. For Schiller, the trick is to synthesise the physical and spiritual nature of man and thus produce a beautiful soul. An English translation of this essay by George Gregory can be read as a pdf online via the Schiller Institute website: click here.

 

[6] Roland Barthes, 'Sriptease', in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, (The Noonday Press, 1991), p. 85.   

 

  

On Suzy Kendall, Tuesday Weld, and the Curious Sex Appeal of Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore, Suzy Kendall & Tuesday Weld

 

"Dudley possessed a pagan, almost Pan-like ability to attract women." 

                                                                               - Jonathan Miller

 

I. 

 

Other than the fact that he was funny and highly talented, the thing I admire about diminutive Oxford-educated Essex boy Dudley Moore [1] was that he had an excellent eye for the ladies - four of whom he even married, including two that I'd like to speak of here: Suzy Kendall and Tuesday Weld ... [2]

 

II.

 

Suzy Kendall is one of those beautiful blonde British actresses best known for her film and TV roles in the late 1960s and early 1970s [3]. 

 

I remember her fondly, for example, as Kay Hunter in an episode of The Persuaders! entitled 'The Man in the Middle' (dir. Leslie Norman, 1971), which also co-starred Terry-Thomas as Brett's cousin Archibald Sinclair Beachum: click here to watch her first scene alongside Roger Moore and Frank Maher. 

 

Born in Derbyshire in 1937, Kendall was an art student turned fabric designer turned photographic model, before finally becoming established as an actress - not just in the UK, but in Italy also, where she appeared in several giallo films [4]. 

 

Kendall married Dudley Moore in 1968 and although they divorced just four years later, she remained close friend's with Moore until his death in 2002; she even hosted his memorial service.    

 

Having retired from acting in 1977, Kendall made a return to the big screen in 2012 as a special guest screamer in the (giallo-inspired) psychological horror film Berberian Sound Studio, directed by Peter Strickland and set in a 1970s Italian horror film studio.

 

 

III.

 

Tuesday Weld is a beautiful blonde American actress, born 1943, who began acting as a young girl and progressed to adult roles in the 1950s. The name Tuesday - which she officially adopted in 1959 - was an extension of a childhood nickname (Tu-Tu) and doesn't reflect the fact she's full of grace.

 

Weld often played impulsive and reckless young women acting out sexually; at least that's how I remember her - as a bit of a rock 'n' roller, with curves and attitude [5]. Danny Kaye, who played her father in The Five Pennies (1959), described her as 'fifteen going on twenty-seven' and so she was perfectly cast the following year as Jody in the classic comedy Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) [6].

 

Interestingly, like Suzy Kendall, Weld once acted alongside Terry-Thomas [7]. But the main thing these two women had in common was that they both accepted a proposal of marriage from Dudley Moore; Weld tied the knot with the latter on 20 September, 1975, and they had a son the following year. Sadly, they divorced in 1980 (though Weld received a generous financial settlement, plus alimony and child support). 

 

Newly single, Weld enjoyed the attentions of some of Hollywood's leading male actors including Al Pacino, Omar Sharif, Richard Gere, and Ryan O'Neal, before eventually marrying husband number three, in 1985 (an Israeli violinist and conductor whom she divorced in 2001). 

 

Meanwhile, away from the romantic rollercoaster she seemed trapped upon, Weld's acting career continued to blossom and she won the critical acclaim of her peers throughtout the 1970s and 80s [8]. She retired from acting in 2001, having given over 45 years of her life to the profession (which is long enough to give to anything). 

 

IV.

So, returning to Dudley Moore ... What was it about him that women such as Suzy Kendall and Tuesday Weld found so attractive? 

For Moore was a man acutely aware of his own inferiority; the fact that he was only 5' 2" tall and had a club foot was something about which he remained self-conscious throughout his life. But he was still regarded as a sexually charismatic figure and perhaps this demonstrates that if you are intelligent and can make a woman laugh, then physical limitations don't matter ...?

 

Or perhaps it shows that if you combine confidence with a certain vulnerability - and then openly profess a desire and a need to be loved - you'll soon have women eating out of your hand ...?

 

But then again, it could simply be that having international movie stardom and millions of dollars in the bank pretty much enables you to fuck whoever you want ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dudley Moore (1935-2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer, who first came to prominence (alongside Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, and Peter Cook with whom he formed a hugely popular and influential double act) as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He later achieved big-screen success in Hollywood; including a role in one of my favourite Goldie Hawn pictures, Foul Play (dir. Colin Higgins, 1978), about which I have written here. 

 

[2] Moore was married (and divorced) four times: to actresses Suzy Kendall (1968-1972); Tuesday Weld (1975-1980); Brogan Lane (1988-1991); and Nicole Rothschild (1994-1998). In writing here of only the first two women, I mean no disrespect to Lane and Rothschild. 

 

[3] Other actresses who might be categorised in this manner include Susan George and Juliet Harmer - both of whom, like Kendall, appeared in an episode of The Persuaders!

 

[4] In Italian cinema parlance, giallo refers a genre of murder mystery movie combining elements of sex, horror, and psychological suspense in order to create a unique form of violent thriller. The genre developed in the mid-1960s and peaked in popularity during the 1970s. It was a predecessor to - and a significant influence upon - the later American genre of film known as the slasher movie.  

 

[5] Weld played alongside Elvis in Wild in the Country (dir. Philip Dunne, 1962) and had a brief off-screen romance with Presley.

 

[6] Click here to watch the official trailer. Stanley Kubrick was so impressed by her performance in Sex Kittens Go to College, that he selected Weld as his first choice for the role of Lolita in his 1962 film adaptation of Nobokov's notorious novel. Weld, however, turned the offer down, explaining that she was already living the part so didn't need to play it on screen.  

 

[7] Weld and Terry-Thomas star together in Bachelor Flat (dir. Frank Tashlin, 1962).

 

[8] Weld was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in the 1972 movie Play It as It Lays (dir. Frank Perry); for an Academy Award for her role in the 1977 movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar (dir. Richard Brooks); and, finally, for a BAFTA for her role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984). 

 

 

Notes on the Sex Appeal of Belly Dancing (With Reference to the Case of Johara)

Ekaterina Andreeva (aka Johara)
Seems like a nice girl ...

I have to admit that, unlike Flaubert, I'm not a great fan of Eastern dance - or, as it is commonly known, belly dancing [1]. It's too obscenely sensual for my tastes I'm afraid and always makes me think of that old expression about jelly and jam.

Having said that, I quite like the costumes that some of the young women wear [2] and have no objection to them wiggling, wriggling and jiggling across a dance floor in order to earn a living if that's what they want to do. It clearly requires skill and discipline and performers deserve to be recognised as professional artistes continuing a long tradition of shimmy and shake.       

Although this style of dancing is found across the Arab world, Egypt has a special claim to be the home of belly dancing and the modern form (and modern outfits) originated in the nightclubs of Cairo. Many of the performers, however, are non-native; despite concerns that foreign-born dancers lack authenticity and didn't fully appreciate the folk traditions associated with the dance.

Unfortunately, as a more conservative form of Islam has taken hold across the Middle East in the contemporary period, dancers - as well as other female performers, including singers and actresses - have increasingly been villified by the authorities on the grounds that their immodest displays of flesh are haram.

In Egypt, for example, there are strict laws in place governing what dancers can and cannot wear; can and cannot do. Whether they wear a traditional bedlah or a more modern dress design with mesh-filled cutouts, is up to them. But they must cover their lower bodies, breasts and stomachs and retain their modesty (including modesty of movement and gesture) at all times.

Many dancers in Cairo ignore these rules, however, and they are rarely enforced. Having said that, there are multiple instances of foreign dancers being arrested - which brings us to the case of Russian-born Ekaterina Andreeva, known by the stage name Johara, meaning Jewel, who has been sentenced to a year behind bars in an Egyptian jail after she was filmed giving a performance which, the authorities claim, incited debauchery.

Not only was she said to be working without a licence, but, worse, she was clearly dancing without underwear! The ruling follows a video clip of her performance - on a boat sailing along the Nile - going viral and gaining her a large global following on social media: click here.         

Obviously, she's expected to appeal the sentence. And obviously I hope Miss Andreeva's conviction will be quashed. Though, equally obvious, is the fact that her performance is sexually provocative - what would be the point of belly dancing if it were not erotically charged? 

Not that there's anything wrong with that ... Indeed, I'm tempted to remind readers of Lawrence's view that sex and beauty are essentially one and the same thing, like flame and fire: "If you hate sex you hate beauty. If you love living beauty, you have a reverence for sex." [3] 

The greatest disaster that can befall any civilisation is a morbid fear of the body, its forces, its flows, its mysterious openings, and its desires. For this causes the instinctive-intuitive life within us to slowly atrophy. What we call sex appeal is really just the communicating of a sense of beauty and it will always invoke an answer of some kind:    

"It may only kindle a sense of warmth and optimism. Then you say: I like that girl, she's a real good sort. It may kindle a glow, that makes the world look kindlier, and life feel better. Then you say: She's an attractive woman, by Jove, I like her. Or she may rouse a flame that lights up her own face first, before it lights up the universe. Then you say: She's a lovely woman. She looks lovely to me. Let's say no more."

I'll let readers decide for themselves what level of heat Miss Andreeva produces and whether the fire of sex that she rouses is pure and fine, or something of which we should be ashamed ... 

Notes

[1] The term, belly dance, is a translation of the French danse du ventre, coined by an art critic in response to a controversial painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme entitled La danse de l'almée (1863). The picture is a classic example of pervy Orientalism, depicting a woman dancing, accompanied by musicians, before an audience of soldiers sitting with their legs spread in a fantasy setting. Eventually, this term came to be used for all dances of Middle Eastern origin in which a woman displayed her charms. It first entered into English in 1889.

[2] The costume most commonly associated with belly dance is the bedlah, which typically includes a fitted top or bra, a hip belt, and a full-length skirt or harem pants. The bra and belt are often decorated with beads, sequins, crystals, or coins. The modern bedlah style which originated in the early twentieth-century, is an amusing example of (Arabic) life imitating (Western) art, in as much as it took inspiration from Hollywood. I suspect my own forndness for the harem-look is due to childhood memories of Barbara Eden in I dream of Jeannie. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), lines quoted are on pp. 145 and 147. 

It's important to note that Lawrence doesn't always approve of women exploiting their sex appeal: "There is, of course, the other side of sex appeal - it can be the destruction of the one appealed to. When a woman starts using her sex appeal for her own advantage, it is usually a bad moment for some poor devil." [148] Such thinking - clearly sexist in character - is unfortunate; as is his branding of these women as prostitutes and vamps.     

See also 'Pornography and Obscenity' in the above collection of essays and articles, where Lawrence develops his notion of sex appeal and admits "No matter how hard we may pretend otherwise, most of us rather like a moderate rousing of our sex. It warms us, stimulates us like sunshine on a grey day." [239] Those who deny this and are genuinely repelled by even the simplest and most natural stirring of sexual feeling, are, he says, perverts and puritans "who have fallen into hatred of their fellow men" [239]. That nicely sums up the theocratic morons who have brought the case against Miss Andreeva. 
 
To watch Johara doing her thing in another video on YouTube, click here.

This post is dedicated to my favourite Arab girl about town, Nahla Al-Ageli, creator and writer of the wonderful online journal Nahla Ink.

Notes on the Sexy, Secret, Stereotyped World of the Secretary

Select her carefully and she'll prove the loveliest 

and most valuable of all fringe benfits. - Helen Gurley Brown

I. 

As Derrida notes, the rise of the personal computer has made the figure of the secretary structurally redundant. Only those who wish to continue marking "the authority of their position" still insist on hiring a secretary, even when they could quite easily do the work themselves on their laptop. 

Why should that be? 

Well, partly, it's a sign of status to sit behind a machine-free desk and reconstitute the old-fashioned boss-secretary relationship, passing over hand-written notes to by typed, or dictating whilst some bright young thing practises her shorthand. As Derrida says, power in the workplace has to be mediated, if not delegated, in order to (be seen to) exist.

But, there's also something else going on; something to do with desire and the way in which it infiltrates and directly invests even the most formal and professional of workplaces as a kind of productive energy. 

The fact is, argue Deleuze and Guattari, sexuality is everywhere - not least in the offices and boardrooms of big business. It's in the way a bureaucrat fondles the files; an accountant analyses the financial data; and it's there in the relationship between a male boss and his female secretary ...          

Never shy of discussing sexual politics, D. H. Lawrence naturally had something to say about all this. In an article first published in the Sunday Dispatch in November 1928, Lawrence writes:    

"The business-man's pretty and devoted secretary is still chiefly valuable because of her sex appeal. Which does not imply 'immoral relations' in the slightest. Even today, a girl with a bit of generosity likes to feel she is helping a man, if the man will take her help. And this desire that he shall take her help is her sex appeal. It is the genuine fire, if of a very mediocre heat. Still, it serves to keep the world of 'business' alive. Probably, but for the introduction of the lady secretary into the business-man's office, the business-man would have collapsed entirely by now. She calls up the the sacred fire in her, and she communicates it to her boss. He feels an added flow of energy and optimism, and - business flourishes. That is perhaps the best result of sex appeal today - business flourishes."

I think that's a pretty astonishing passage for several reasons (not necessarily all the right reasons). For one thing, it anticipates Deleuze and Guattari's analysis in Anti-Oedipus - as it does Helen Gurley Brown's claim in Sex and the Single Girl that office romances have a positive effect on performance and productivity. For not only will a man up his game when trying to impress a woman, but a girl in love with her boss will exhaust herself 24/7 and still wish there was more she could do to help. 

 

II.

The term secretary is derived from the Latin secernere and has connotations of something private or confidential (the English word secret has the same etymological root). A secretarius was someone, therefore, who discreetly handled the personal (or business) affairs of a powerful individual. Over time, whilst the duties of the secretary have varied and expanded, essentially the role has remained the same.

In 1870, Sir Isaac Pitman founded his famous school for would-be secretaries. Originally, much like the profession itself, it only admitted male students. But with the invention of the typewriter more and more women began to train as secretaries and by 1919 the role was primarily associated with the fairer sex. 

The period between 1945 and 1980 can probably be regarded as the golden age of the secretary. After this date, new technology and new office politics increasingly saw the role decline or transform. Secretaries became office managers, or personal assistants, or, indeed, bosses themselves and the work place became a boring, sterile environment: no fags, no booze, no flirting, no fun. 

Obviously, no one wants to write in support of sexual discrimination or sexual harassment. But, I have to admit that I find the new puritanism and political correctness just as concerning. Over the last fifty years our attitude towards the erotics of the workplace has moved from bawdy delight and Benny Hill to stern disapproval and the Time's Up movement.

Glancing down blouses and upskirts, making risqué remarks and double entendres, is now strictly forbidden or even legislated against. Some companies, apparently, have even introduced solemn love contracts for employees to sign, outlining what is and is not appropriate behaviour and who they can and cannot date.

It's all a very long way from the world of Mad Men. And if, in many respects, that's a good thing, in some ways it's a bit of a pity, because, as indicated earlier, some men and women work better and with real joy when they feel themselves attractive and subject to the charged flow of desire. Lawrence writes:

"If only our civilisation had taught us how to let sex appeal flow properly and subtly, how to keep the fire of sex clear and alive, flickering or glowing or blazing in all its varying degrees of strength and communication, we migh all of us have lived [and worked] all our lives in love, which means kindled and full of zest, in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of things. Whereas what  a lot of dead ash there is to life now!"  

Notes 

Jacques Derrida, 'The Word Processor', Paper Machine,  trans. Rachel Bowlby, (Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 29-30. Click here to read online.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 293.

Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl, (Bernard Geis Associates, 1962).

D. H. Lawrence, "Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 147-48.

See also: Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, (Yale University Press, 2012), which offers a more critical and in-depth analysis on this subject than I've been able to offer here. 

Click here to view George Costanza's (failed) attempt to do the right thing and stay out of trouble when hiring a secretary in the Season 6 episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Secretary', dir. David Owen Trainor, written by Carol Leifer and Marjorie Gross (original air date 8 Dec 1994). 

And click here to view the trailer for the 2002 film Secretary, dir. Steven Shainberg, starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson based on the short story (of the same title) by Mary Gaitskill.

Gerontophilia: Notes on Beautiful Old Age

Carmen Dell'Orefice

Beautiful young women are freaks of nature; beautful old women are works of art.

Although I wouldn't identify as a gerontophile, I can certainly see the attraction of the older person - or even the much older person (especially if that older person happens to look like Carmen Dell'Orefice).   

D. H. Lawrence writes of men and women who have ripened like apples, "full of the peace that comes of experience / and wrinkled ripe fulfilment". That's the secret of their loveliness, he says.

However, I think we might challenge this vision of what constitutes the beauty of old age. For it's a vision that perpetuates myths of passivity and sexlessness: old people are soothing, says Lawrence, "and dim with the soft / stillness and satisfaction of autumn".

One only seeks out an elderly partner, he suggests, "when one is tired of love".

Lawrence seems to find it inconceivable that people of mature years may possibly want more and offer more than slippers and cocoa; that there are, in fact, many sexually active and sexually desirable individuals in their sixties, seventies and beyond.           

To be honest, it's a little surprising to find Lawrence peddling this line of thought. For not only was he himself married to an older woman with an insatiable libido, but in an article written around the same time as his poem 'Beautiful Old Age', Lawrence insists:

"We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. [...] In youth it flickers and shines; in age it glows softer and still, but there it is."   

His position on this question - as on so many others - is therefore fluid and ambiguous.

My own position is that anything that counters our culture's marginalisation and infantalisation of senior citizens and not only protects but promotes and advances elder rights is a good thing.     

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Beautiful Old Age', The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Vol. I, p. 437.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 143-48. 

I might have chosen to say more about gerontophilia, but, unfortunately, the reserach data is almost non-existent - even Kinsey can't help us here. I'm not sure why this is so, but perhaps it's related to the fact that unlike some other forms of paraphilia - such as paedophilia, for example - gerontophilia has never been regarded as a problematic mental disorder. Indeed, as one commentator points out, gerontophiles find themselves in a category of deviancy that usually lends itself to mockery rather than moral panic. See: Jesse Bering, Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us, (Scientific American / Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013).

Those intrigued by this topic might be interested in the romantic comedy-drama Gerontophilia, (dir. Bruce LaBruce, 2013), which tells the story of a young man who takes a job in a nursing home and develops an attraction to an elderly resident in the facility. Click here, to watch the trailer. 

For a related post to this one on elder rights and ageivism, click here.

D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Cioran on Sex Appeal and the Beauty of Flames

Image: Desktop Nexus

I. Sex on Fire 

Just as for Lawrence sex and beauty are one and the same thing, so too is being something he always conceives in terms of fire, or what he calls the god-flame, burning in all things. Indeed, Lawrence ultimately conflates terms so that his erotico-aesthetic and ontological speculations form a unified metaphysics.

Thus it is, for example, that Mellors characterises his illicit relationship with Connie in terms of a little forked flame that they fucked into being.

And thus it is that Lawrence asserts in a late article that whilst he doesn't quite know what sex is, he's certain that it must be some sort of fire: "For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when the glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty."

This communicating of warmth and beauty is what Lawrence understands by the term sex appeal, something which he believes to be a universal human quality and not just something belonging to the young and conventionally attractive. In a typically Lawrentian passage, he writes:

"We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. Or, if it dies, we become one of those ghastly living corpses which are unfortunately becoming more numerous in the world.

      Nothing is more ugly than a human being in whom the fire of sex had gone out. You get a nasty clayey creature whom everybody wants to avoid.

      But while we are fully alive, the fire of sex smoulders or burns in us. In youth it flickers and shines; in age it glows softer and stiller, but there it is." 

I quite like this (re)definition of a golem as a human being in whom the fire of sex has been extinguished and who communicates only a cold, ugly deadness (unfair and as meaningless as it may be). 

And I like the idea of fire calling to fire and of sex appeal kindling a sense of joyful warmth and optimism. Lawrence is right, the loveliness of a really lovely woman in whom the sex fire burns pure and fine not only lights up her whole being, but transforms the entire universe. Such a woman - extremely rare even in a world of numerous good-looking girls and cosmetic enhancement - is an experience.  

Lawrence concludes:

"If only our civilization had taught us how to let sex appeal flow properly and subtly, how to keep the fire of sex clear and alive, flickering or flowing or blazing in all its varying degrees of strength and communication, we might, all of us, have lived all our lives in love, which means we should be kindled and full of zest in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of things …

      Whereas, what a lot of dead ash there is in life now."

II. Light My Fire

I don't know if Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran read Lawrence when young - his obsessions led him towards German and French thinkers, rather than English novelists - but there are certainly quasi-Lawrentian resonances in his early work for those of us familiar with the writings of Lawrence.

Thus, like Lawrence, Cioran was interested in love in all its forms, particularly the concrete and monogamous love between man and woman which he took to be the quintessential form; not only in its sexual aspect, but as a "rich network of affective states". Love, born not of suffering, but of sincere generosity, is what Cioran most cherishes.

And, like Lawrence, Cioran ties his idea of love to beauty, being, and to fire. Man's sensitivity to beauty, he writes, intensifies as he approaches the joy that love brings. And in beauty "all things find their justification, their raison d'être".

Further, beauty allows us to conceive of things as things and to accept existence as is: "To place the world under the sign of beauty is to assert that it is as it should be [...] even the negative aspects of existence do nothing but increase its glory and its charm." This, of course, is a profoundly Nietzschean as well as a Lawrentian idea.

Beauty, concludes Cioran, may not bring salvation, "but it will bring us closer to happiness" and to the point where we can make a total affirmation of life. And what is more beautiful than the nakedness of flames, dancing in darkness:

"Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. [...] The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn."

It's not only moths, it appears, that are transfixed by candlelight and dream of a fiery climax to their lives ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). See the famous letter from Mellors to Connie with which Lawrence closes the novel.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Often known as 'Sex Versus Loveliness', this article can be read online by clicking here. 

E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, (the University of Chicago Press, 1992). See: 'Enthusiasm as a Form of Love' (75), 'The Beauty of Flames' (88), and 'Beauty's Magic Tricks' (119). All lines quoted above from Cioran are taken from these three sections.

Readers interested in earlier posts that compare and contrast Lawrence's work with that of Cioran on questions to do with becoming-animal and becoming-ash, can click here and here.

Musical bonus #1: click here. Musical bonus #2: click here. I must admit that I don't much care for either of these (hugely overrated) songs, but readers of a more hippie-persuasion will doubtless enjoy listening to them once more.