Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

http://www.ohlalagallery.com/so-chic/bang-bang-by-vijat-mohindra-for-factice-magazine-8/bangbang5/

I am currently reading American Psycho. It is a deathly prediction, from the 20th century, of the world  to come, the world that is summed up quite graphically by this advert.

I’ve written before about the trend in visual culture for ‘dead bodies’ as a fashion statement.

It is a  post sexual era we live in, as Mark Simpson has mentioned (though not really elucidated much). And even ‘post-human’. Imagery shows metrosexuality to be undead

Feminists often complain about images of ‘dead women’ being used to sell products. They say it is misogynous. I think it is more of a portrayal of not only the ‘death’ of sexuality, but also the triumph of metrosexual masculinity over the ‘objectified’ female form. The men are all Patrick Batemans.

I will write more on this soon. I just wanted to share the chilling photos.

Letters Of Note

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/11/when-are-you-going-to-release-my-film.html

This letter from Terry Gilliam is concise and to the point.

When are you going to release my film, Brazil? It asks.

The context of the letter is that Gilliam is known as a director who has been riddled with problems throughout his career. It stands as a symbol of all that, and a reminder that film-making is not as easy or as glamorous as it looks.

Letters of Note is an amazing website that collects letters from famous and not so famous people, from the past – either distant or recent, and publishes them online.

It is a tribute to a dying/dead art form, but also a living, breathing, contemporary celebration of communication.

L O N are raising money to make a book – another dying artform.

Their campaign is here at UNBOUND:

http://unbound.co.uk/books/17

I hope people can donate and support this wonderful collision of the old and the new world.

An Overdose of Meaning

The Byzantine Iconoclasts wanted to destroy images in order to abolish meaning and the representation of God. Today we are still iconoclasts, but in an opposite way : we kill the images by an overdose of meaning. – Baudrillard

Like most people, I found out about the policeman pepper-spraying the student protesters at UC Davis, California, via the images of the event.

As the website Sociological Images told us: ‘images and videos of the pepper spraying incident have flooded the internet. One video has received over 1.7 million views on Youtube; another shorter clip has almost 1 million’.

The event became over-powered and replaced by the mediation of it. Without the initial photograph, and then its reproduction online, we might not think of the pepper spray incident as important at all.

The Scientific American was impressed by this process:

‘When U.C. Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-sprayed a line of student protesters last Friday, his actions were recorded in replicate. Dozens of cameras captured video and still images, and soon swarms of photographs seeped across the internet. If there was ever a more-recorded single event in history, I am not aware of it. Yet, from the cloud of pepper-spray photographs, one has come to dominate. It is this image, taken by Davis psychology student Louise Macabitas, from the west side of the blocked path:

This is the photo that birthed the Pepperspray Cop meme. After spending time looking at this and dozens of similar captures, I think I know why.

• A low perspective elevates Pike’s head above the crowd, leaving an indelible impression of dominance & authority.
• Pike is in mid-stride, adding motion to a still image, and the outward-pointed foot puts the Casual in the “casually pepper-spray everything” meme.
• Pike’s face is visible, more so than in images taken from a higher angle.
• The spray itself is unmistakable in silhouette.
• Every person is identifiable as either Police, Onlooker, or Protester. The story tells itself.
• See that police officer back-right? His stance, and his high head, reinforce a detached arrogance on the part of the police.
• The expressions of the onlookers- at least not those in the standing paparazzi- convey a mix of surprise and disbelief.

Leaving politics and sociology aside, the image compels on its own merits. It is at once both complex and simple. There is a lot to look at, but each element adds into the same narrative. As Megan Garber notes:

…the photo’s narrative is built into its imagery. It depicts not just a scene, but a story. It requires of viewers very little background knowledge; even more significantly, it requires of them very few political convictions.

A remarkable image. I hope that eventually Ms. Macabitas receives due recognition for it’.

I find it fascinating how the imagery of this moment of police violence has been taken and separated from the event and analysed as a photograph, as a work of art. It’s not the first time this has happened of course. This incredible photo from the Vietnam war in 1972 featuring the naked girl Kim Phuc, won a Pullitzer prize for the photographer, Nick Ut. It has featured in many books, galleries and museums since. But the Kim Phuc photo was also used to publicise the horrors of the Vietnam war. It became an emblem of the anti-war movement. Does the pepper spray photo have a similar, political value? The writers at Sociological Images think it does: ‘I think this meme is itself a form of visual protest. The variations on the original image reinforce the perception that the police officer’s actions were inappropriate and an abuse of power. The use of famous scenes and works of art creates a cartoonish depiction of inequality and injustice, of someone using their power unjustly against those who obviously have less power — children, kittens, the unemployed, etc. (via the Pepper Spraying Cop tumblr)’.

I am not so sure. The sophisticated social media internet, which is dominated by what I call the ‘tumblr generation’, means the relationship between ‘reality’ and ‘representation’ has transformed in recent years. Baudrillard’s early 90s take on this, well before the internet got underway, was incredibly controversial at the time, partly because he used the Gulf War (1991) to illustrate his point. But I think his ideas hold true today:

‘For  Baudrillard thinks that language has broken free from its moorings and now proliferates out of control. The best one can do is show how every proposition can be shown to be no more true than its opposite. The ‘evidence’ of the Gulf War taking place can also ‘prove’ the opposite. That what took place was not a war at all, but something else — the spectacle of a massacre. Or that the ‘place’ that the war ‘took’ for those of us who watched it on TV was an imaginary place, an orientalist fantasy of mad Arabs and imperial splendour. The war took the space of our televisual imaginations.’

Now our ‘televisual imaginations’ have been replaced by internet imaginations, and through the endless production and reproduction of ‘memes’, the possibilities for art/photography/film to have political meaning I think has lessened. As I said here at Death At The Mall before:

‘It is in this age of ‘meaninglessness’,  and ‘kitchified…tragedies’ that the internet ‘meme’ has flourished, particularly, unsurprisingly, on tumblr. The UK riots were captured and butchered on ‘photoshoplooter’ tumblr, a spoof, in itself of the other ‘serious’ tumblr, ‘Catch A Looter’ aimed at indentifying participants in the riots by posting photos on tumblr.

And feminists, those well known believers in ‘debate’ and ‘rational discussion’, produced ‘Privilege Denying Dude’, who was supposed to represent the arrogance and misogyny of white middle class men. But their ‘irony’ was lost on me, because I actually found myself agreeing with much of what PDD said!  And, if you are reduced to using internet memes to make your political points, haven’t you lost the argument? Or am I just behind the times? ‘

There are a number of results of this ‘meaninglessness’ of imagery in relation to politics and political action. It is complex. I am not saying there is no relationship between the two at all – there are too many examples of youtube videos ( most recently the one of the racist British woman on a tram that led to her arrest) which have resulted in protests, criminal convictions etc for me to argue otherwise.

The first effect of this ‘overdose of meaning’ I think is that most representation of violence, war and trauma becomes concern porn. Middle class people watching that video of the woman on the tram may have phoned the police, but the main reason they watched it was to establish themselves as good, ‘concerned’ citizens in comparison to the bad woman who uttered the tirade.

Another result I think, of this mediated imagery overload, is that the value of people’s individual responses and ‘real life’ discussions about events and politics becomes very limited. If you can Retweet a link to an atrocity, why bother going to a meeting or even writing a blogpost about it? I know #ows is a real life, real time movement, but there are many many more people who claim to support it simply sending hashtags round the twittersphere than there are camping out in city squares. Also, I have found the level of debate amongst occupy activists to be dire.

There has been a kind of triumphalism from Occupy protestors when they have successfully ‘shut down’ meetings or talks by their ‘opponents’. For example the British Conservative minister David Willets was forced to abandon a talk at Cambridge university recently, and occupy activists in America have shut down a number of meetings and events. Their own meetings and events have been severely lacking in any kind of political analysis. 1968 this is not.

http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2011/11/two-brains-v-no-brains.html

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/11/28/whose-capitol-our-capitol

A kind of enthralling but also depressing example of this lack of ideological backbone to the occupy movement is a youtube clip of Judith Butler addressing OWS. They do that ‘human mic’ thing and her usually complex and subtle discourse gets reduced to a kind of show and tell event. I ended up spending the duration of the video admiring her leather jacket, her ‘look’, rather than listening to what she had to say. To underline my point, Butler has been described  by (internet) activist fans as being the dreamiest in the video:

I am forced to abandon the 21st century and its tumblr memes, and to return to Baudrillard, who saw all this coming back in the 1990s. He wrote:

‘Today everything takes the look of the image – then all pretend that the real has disappeared under the pression and the profusion of images.. What is totally neglected is that the image also disappears under the blow and the impact of reality. The image is usually spoiled of its own existence as image, deyoted to a shameful complicity with the real. The violence exercised by the image is largely balanced by the violence done to the image – its exploitation as a pure vector of documen-tation, of testimony, of message (including the message of misery and violence), its allegeance to morale, to pedagogy, to politics, to publicity. Then the magic of the image, both as fatal and as vital illusion, is fading away. The Byzantine Iconoclasts wanted to destroy images in order to abolish meaning and the representation of God. Today we are still iconoclasts, but in an opposite way : we kill the images by an overdose of meaning.’

Death Goes To The Disco: Guest Post by @How_Upsetting

The ‘death of pop music’ has been declared a number of times now. Most notably, for DATM, by Mark Simpson. In 2010 he thought Lady Gaga was the only thing that could save pop from its inevitable demise:

‘Until last year I thought pop was a completely spent force.  Oh, there were some nice bands around with nice tunes and some nice haircuts, but pop as a total art form was pooped.  Along with pop culture.  It was just another Facebook app’.

But by the time Gaga released Born This Way Simpson had changed his mind even about her, and decided pop was well and truly O.V.E.R.

In the light of that I found this recent piece by Philip (@How_Upsetting) http://howupsetting.tumblr.com very interesting, and a good piece in the jigsaw narrative of Pop’s Last Gasp:

‘http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-olly-murs-in-case-you-didnt-know-epic-6267459.html

This is of note purely for this:

‘It’s the erosion of true character – especially vocal character – in favour of spurious “personality” that may be talent-show telly’s most damaging effect on pop’.

Yes yes and yes. I said to the MANMYTHLEGEND wotyougot the other day that, the way pop is these days, artists like Madonna and Prince would never become hugely popular because they never had ‘reality show’ personalities. Witness the hysterically overblown response to Lady Gaga hugging some reality show contestant she had met (at best) hours before. Once we revelled in our pop stars being slightly alien creatures, now we fawn over their insincere interactions with ‘the plebs’.

X Factor and its ilk are hugely depressing circles that most people never seem to cotton onto. The contestents in the shows have to fit into very defined and digestible boxes. Anyone stepping outwith these boxes is completely crucified. People with passable-to-very good voices and inoffensive personalities – Olly Murrs, Rebecca Ferguson, Marcus whateverhissurname is, Little Mix – are lauded out of all proportion to their abilities. Yet every year the same complaints will be made that most of the contestants are boring, as if the above response is disconnected and of no relevance.

Being old enough to have been around when X Factor began, I remember distinctly that it started as a response to ‘Pop Idol’ being a ‘singing competition’. In interviews Simon Cowell would mention people like Madonna and David Bowie as artists who would never do well on a ‘Pop Idol’ format. That’s where the name came from – the idea was that they would find pop stars with ‘the x factor’ – that indefinable quality that makes a technically mediocre singer like Madonna one of the greatest pop stars in history above hundreds of accomplished wailers. This purpose was quickly forgotten and now I hear people who work for record labels praising the fact that people like Marcus and Little Mix are ‘blank slates’ waiting on managers, producers and songwriters to do whatever they want with. Someone with a strong sense of their artistic identity such as Matt Cardle or Misha B (whether you like their music or not) finds that it counts against them. ‘Pop music’ becomes about what sells, and what sells is a chirpy personality saying inoffensive things and singing catchy songs which fall into an ever diminishing range (electro-pop, sub-Winehouse r&b, MOR balladeering).

Of course, it’s hugely relevant that the vast majority of people who watch and vote for these shows are not big music listeners, if they are music listeners at all. There is no sense of pop music as something that can be profound, something that has real value. It is treated as plastic entertainment, a degrading approach which would be pounced upon were it to be verbalised. Indeed, I gathered from a ferocious response on Twitter that one of the contestants on X Factor last week said that they didn’t like pop music. The people treating such a statement with scorn would do well to think about what ‘respect’ X Factor actually has for pop music in the first place. It has none.’

Baudrillard: America

‘This country is without hope. Even its garbage is clean, its trade lubricated, its

traffic pacified. The latent, the lacteal, the lethal – life is so liquid, thesigns and

messages are so liquid, the bodies and the cars so fluid, the hair so blond, and the

soft technologies so luxuriant, that a European dreams of death and murder, of

suicide motels, of orgies and cannibalism to counteract the perfection of the ocean, of the light, of that insane ease of life, to counteract the hyperreality of everything  here.’

Jean Baudriallard: America

Simpson is influenced by Baudrillard – there is something about his ‘End Times’ analysis of sex and gender that is incredibly Baudrillardian. He gives a nod to the postmodern philosopher in this essay: Transexy Time. The idea that bodies/people are now ‘hyper-real’ is an important aspect of Simpson’s thesis.

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2008/03/25/transexy-time/

 

Photo: Jeff Bruows: http://www.getaddictedto.com/jeff-brouws-interview/

Azis and The Post-Metrosexual Gaze

Who is Azis?

For a start he is a gift to someone like me, looking for ways to describe and analyse this phenomenon of masculinity that has swept across the globe in recent years. He’s a David Beckham. A Daniel Craig. A Mikey Sorrentino.

Azis is a metrosexy icon.

According to a slightly sneering, touchingly homoanxious  New York Times article, Azis, a star in his own country of Bulgaria, performs  ’Chalga, a form of Bulgarian folk-pop that combines Roma, Turk and Bulgarian folk strings and brass with electro beats and over-the-top lyrics. ‘

He has also ‘been heavily involved with Euroroma, his country’s socially liberal Roma’s rights party, and was recently voted the 21st greatest Bulgarian of all time.’

Thanks to some smart scouts (@Bangpound and @Balkaniafanzine), I have now seen quite a few Azis videos.

Wow.

The still at the top is from ‘Gadna Poroda’ which translates roughly as ‘nasty breed’. It features some very buff built, metrosexy  men. The picture beneath is from the video of ‘Hop’. It is basically a gay sauna scene, with Azis in the centre of the frame, naked and self-loving.

Obviously, the homoerotics are unavoidable, in yer face, OTT eurotrashtastic. So it’s not really surprising the white middle class respectable types at NYT have picked up on them, saying Azis ‘is also known for simulating sex with men onstage’. It’s also not surprising the gay press have noticed Azis, with the queerty website declaring: ‘you cannot handle the heat of the Azis bathhouse’!

However the homoeroticism of Azis and his imagery are also quite complex, and extremely contemporary, possibly even futuristic.

Bangpound, on seeing one of the videos commented:

One of the great features of Azis music videos is his gaze… am I shopping for him or is he shopping for me? t.co/8cZF3cfv—
Benjamin Doherty (@bangpound) November 18, 2011

This sums up Azis for me. He is taking the gaze and turning it round, twisting and moulding it so we don’t know who is looking at whom, who is ‘shopping’ for whom, who is a desiring subject, who is an object of desire. That’s what ‘metrosexuality’ is!

Three aspects of this confection of looking and being-looked-at-ness stand out for me in particular.

One is how playful, how childlike Azis is. He may sport an Eddie Izzard style beard, and rock some Ru Paul style dresses, but he is cavorting and flirting with the camera, with us, like a toddler. The photo (a mock-up of a Maxim magazine cover made by http://balkania-fanzine.com/blog/) shows Azis naked and covered in soap suds, his tongue sticking out from his lips. He could be a gurgling baby at bath time. There are no ‘phallic’ objects in this picture as we often see in metro photos of men, keen to remind us ‘I am still a man’ despite their passive feminine displays. Azis has no armour of masculinity to hide behind. He is pure unadulterated Slut.

I can’t help but be reminded of Uncle Sigmund and his theory of polymorphous perversity:

‘Freud theorized that humans are born with unfocused sexual libidinal drives, deriving sexual pleasure from any part of the body. The objects and modes of sexual satisfaction are multifarious, directed at every object that might provide pleasure. Polymorphous perverse sexuality continues from infancy through about age five, progressing through three distinct developmental stages: the oral stage, anal stage, and phallic stage. Only in subsequent developmental stages do children learn to constrain sexual drives to socially accepted norms, culminating in adult heterosexual behavior focused on the genitals and reproduction’.

Of course, I am reminded of Mark Simpson too, who I am sure would have a LOT to say about Azis. And he would say it better than me. Though he is a pop star and not a sportsman, and – refreshingly from my point of view- does not have a typical, buff, tits and abs metrosexual body, Azis for me embodies Simpson’s theories of sporno.

Read this passage from Simpson’s original article on Sporno. I have swapped the word ‘sporno’ for ‘Azis’ every time it appears and I think you will see what I mean:

‘In an Azis age it’s no longer enough for the male body to be presented to us by consumerism as merely attractive, or desiring to be desired, as it was in the early days of nakedly narcissistic male metrosexuality. This masculine coquettish-ness, pleasing as it is, no longer offers an intense enough image. Or provokes enough lust. It’s just not very shocking or arousing any more. In fact, it’s just too… normal. To get our attention these days the Azis body has to promise us nothing less than an immaculately groomed, waxed and pumped gang-bang in the showers.

But of course, because this is Azis and not actual pornography, it remains just that: a promise…the homoprovocative nature of Azis is much less easy to overlook than it was in metrosexuality, which could pretend when it wanted to that it was ‘straight’ and something entirely for the ladies. Where metrosexual imagery stole slyly from soft gay porn, Azis blatantly references hard gay porn’.

Homoprovocative. Hard Gay Porn. Gang bang. Azis is sporno. Azis is post-metrosexual.

The third thing I notice about Azis is just how ‘knowing’ he seems about the metrosexual ‘way of looking’. In video, Gadna Poroda for example,  we are treated to lingering, lascivious shots of some fit (but bigger built than many US/UK models) metroboys in tight bright lycra. But Azis is also in the frame, looking (and touching) too. It is as if we are encouraged to see these beauties through his eyes. He actually reminds me to some degree of Mr MetroDaddy Simpson himself. Azis and Simpson both present a ‘queer eye’ on the metrosexual guy. In their company, we cannot ignore or deny the homoerotics of metrosexuality. And why would we? They make it look so good.

I don’t know much about Bulgaria as a place or a culture. But from what I have seen, and from what I have seen of metrosexuality emerging (or rather erupting) from other countries that don’t fit the American/Western European mould, I get a sense that the transformation of masculinities has been quite sudden. It could even be that in some places, the culture has gone from a ‘pre-gay’ to a ‘post-gay’ environment, with none of that boring white middle class gayist ‘hegemony’ in between. I don’t know for sure. But it’s an idea.

At the end of their article on Azis the NYT say he is ‘challenging not just musical conventions, but just about every traditional notion of masculinity.’ Their tone is snide as far as I can tell, but I think the same sentence can be said as a celebratory statement. Because the destruction of traditional notions of masculinity is my favourite aspect of the metrosexual revolution. Viva Azis!

Talking to myself about narcissism

Barthes basically says all writing involves ‘transference’ – you have to put your stuff somewhere.  ’In transference, one always waits–at the doctor’s, the professor’s, the analyst’s’ – Barthes. But the question I am interested in is what about the other guy? what was he involved in? Who is he? analyst? professor? doctor? patient? Ghost?

———————–

I think though when you write you have to be your own ‘amourous subject’ and ‘loved object’ simultaneously, your own analyst and analysand. And sometimes Mr Simpson, in contrast to Barthes, seems to avoid being his own ‘loved object’ – he often tries to get out of the frame. But you can’t. And as Sontag said, writers *always* end up with autobiography. Barthes did. That’s why Saint Morrissey made me smile – because it was analysis by someone trying very hard not to be analysed. Like a slippery eel.

———————–

The irony being that Metrosexuality, Simpson’s main theory, is all about taking yourself as your own love object. I, who lack narcissism and ‘self-love’ physically and often emotionally, am more than able to take myself as my ‘love object’ in prose. Maybe if you are too ‘narcissistic’ you can’t examine yourself closely as the whole thing might fall apart? I don’t know. Where’s Sigmund? I mean, metrosexuality has not produced a whole generation of self aware men has it? Maybe the opposite?

————————

scribd.com/doc/58531502/F… Freud ON Narcissism On Scribd

marksimpson.com/blog/2008/11/1… Twinsome Devils and the Narcissus Complex by Mark Simpson

http://www.digiworldinc.com/users/j/james/barthes.htm Waiting by Roland Barthes

————————

From QRG HQ:
In Barthes’ Lover’s Discourse he says that the ‘amorous subject’ suffers from an overload of empathy. In one sense it is the opposite of narcissism as the amorous subject focuses on the ‘loved object’ more than himself (Barthes always uses ‘he’ and ‘him’) but in another sense ‘love’ in the constructed sense of the word, is all about reflecting back on the self. There is this devestating bit in the book where he basically says every time you think you care about how your ‘loved object’ feels you are kidding yourself. You only care about how he feels in relation to you.

It really hit home to me.

But after reading it I was with Barthes all the way. He positioned himself as the ‘amorous subject’ and that seemed to me like the font of his creativity and knowledge and writing and work. If you are always the ‘object’ of someone else’s affections, it is a very passive role. What do you actually do?

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/12/05/still-ill-narcissism-is-sick-again/

————————–

This subject made me recall this, one of the first conversations I had with Mark Simpson, king of metrosexual narcissism, on his blog in 2010:

QRG: ‘Classic Pushy Bottom’ is a classic phrase!

MS: Well, I’ve enough experience of that particular species to recognise one when it pushes back at me – in Widescreen

QRG: Maybe the ‘Classic Pushy Bottoms’ and the ‘Classic Passive Tops’ should get together in a (very large) room and fight it out amongst themselves. With the cameras rolling of course, for the rest of us to enjoy the carnage.

MS: Oops, I think I may have already appeared in that movie….

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2006/11/20/bashing-bonds-blonde-bollocks/#comments

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I Want To Understand (What is happening to me)

I want to understand.

comprendre/to understand

Suddenly perceiving the amorous episode as a knot of inexplicable reasons and impaired solutions, the subject exclaims: ‘I want to understand (what is happening to me)!’

1. What do I think of love? – As a matter of fact, I think nothing at all of love. I’d be glad to know what it is, but being inside, I see it in existence, not in essence. What I want to know (love) is the very substance I employ in order to speak (the lover’s discourse). Reflection is certainly permitted, but since this reflection is immediately absorbed in the mulling over of images, it never turns into reflexivity: excluded from logic (which supposes languages exterior to each other), I cannot claim to think properly. Hence, discourse on love though I may for years at a time, I cannot hope to seize the concept of it except ‘by the tail’: by flashes, formulas, surprises of expression, scattered through the great stream of the Image-repertoire; Iam in love’s wrong place, which is its dazzling place, ‘The darkest place, according to a Chinese proverb, is always underneath the lamp’ (Reik).

from A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes

A Lover’s Discourse is an amazing piece of writing. It has floored me.

But I am picking myself up and attempting to read it ‘properly’, to not just be ‘dazzled’ by it. By my love for Barthes.

This section stood out for me today (the book is becoming a constant companion), as I think about embarking on this project, my own book, Death At The Mall.

I notice two things in particular:

1) When Barthes writes:

‘What do I think of love? – As a matter of fact, I think nothing at all of love. I’d be glad to know what it is, but being inside, I see it in existence, not in essence. What I want to know (love) is the very substance I employ in order to speak (the lover’s discourse).’ he reminds me of Judith Butler writing about gender. She says:

‘There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.’

If you swapped ‘gender’ or ‘identity’ for ‘love’ in those two paragraphs you’d have the same meaning. There is no love behind the expressions of love. What I want to know (identity) is the very substance I employ in order to speak (identity).

So when we are grappling with ‘love’ or ‘gender’ or ‘identity’ we are always saying ‘I want to understand (what is happening to me)!’ and more existentially, I want to understand who I am.

My interaction with Mark Simpson (not to mention Barthes and Butler)’s work, (which is all about gender and identity, if not love) then, is not merely an intellectual pursuit. It is a quest to understand ‘what is happening to me’ and ultimately ‘who I am’.

2) Barthes’ makes the assertion that when in love:

‘I cannot claim to think properly…Iam in love’s wrong place, which is its dazzling place, ‘The darkest place, according to a Chinese proverb, is always underneath the lamp’ (Reik).’

Readers and writers are always lovers. And as a reader of Simpson’s writing I think I have made it clear by now I have been ‘dazzled’ by it. By him. Just as I have been dazzled by Barthes. I think it’s best to acknowledge that from the outset. So many ‘critics’ write about writers as if they are achieving some kind of clinical objectivity, as if they can step away from emotion and assess the writing in a detached manner. But they can’t. If you are compelled to take an author’s work and study it, immerse yourself in it, read it and write about it, you are engaging emotionally.

I am in ‘love’s wrong place’ in relation to the work of Mark Simpson. And part of the challenge here is for me to try and get out from the shadow of the lamp and take a step back. Not to pretend like those lofty critics to have any kind of objectivity, but to not always be ‘dazzled’ by ‘love’ by the lover’s/reader’s discourse.

Barthes of course, though not joking (he is always deadly serious), is playing with the reader here to a degree. He is writing about being immersed in love, but in an incredibly clear, incisive manner. He has achieved that which he says is impossible, and is able to think properly even whilst in love’s shadow.

That’s my aim. I don’t know if I will achieve  it.  As Barthes asks, so do I ask:

‘To understand – is that not to divide the image, to undo the I, proud organ of misapprehension?’

Barthes v Simpson

 

‘Sex is the theory. Porn is the practice’. – Mark Simpson, Male Impersonators (1994)

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/03/06/tarty-armanis-latest-sporno-spunk/

Susan Sontag on Barthes:

‘It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making’.

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/01/18/does-my-brain-look-big-in-this/#comments

THE WORLD OF WRESTLING

 

From ‘The World of  Wrestling’ in Mythologies by Roland Barthes (1957):

The graniloquent truth of gestures on life’s great occasions.

Baudelaire

‘The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient theaters. And in fact wrestling is an open-air spectacle, for what makes the circus or the arena what they are is not the sky (a romantic value suited rather to fashionable occasions), it is the drenching and vertical quality of the flood of light. Even hidden in the most squalid Parisian halls, wrestling partakes of the nature of the great solar spectacles, Greek drama and bullfights: in both, a light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.* Of course, there exists a false wrestling, in which the participants unnecessarily go to great lengths to make a show of a fair fight; this is of no interest. True wrestling, wrongly called amateur wrestling, is performed in second-rate halls, where the public spontaneously attunes itself to the spectacular nature of the contest, like the audience at a suburban cinema. Then these same people wax indignant because wrestling is a stage-managed sport (which ought, by the way, to mitigate its ignominy). The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees.’

…

This function of grandiloquence is indeed the same as that of ancient theater, whose principle, language and props (masks and buskins) concurred in the exaggeratedly visible explanation of a Necessity. The gesture of the vanquished wrestler signifying to the world a defeat which, far from disguising, he emphasizes and holds like a pause in music, corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mode of the spectacle. In wrestling, as on the stage in antiquity, one is not ashamed of one’s suffering, one knows how to cry, one has a liking for tears.

Each sign in wrestling is therefore endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles. As in the theater, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant. Thauvin, a fifty-year-old with an obese and sagging body, whose type of asexual hideousness always inspires feminine nicknames, displays in his flesh the characters of baseness, for his part is to represent what, in the classical concept of the salaud, the ‘bastard’ (the key-concept of any wrestling-match), appears as organically repugnant. The nausea voluntarily provoked by Thauvin shows therefore a very extended use of signs: not only is ugliness used here in order to signify baseness, but in addition ugliness is wholly gathered into a particularly repulsive quality of matter: the pallid collapse of dead flesh (the public calls Thauvin la barbaque, ‘stinking meat’), so that the passionate condemnation of the crowd no longer stems from its judgment, but instead from the very depth of its humours. It will thereafter let itself be frenetically embroiled in an idea of Thauvin which will conform entirely with this physical origin: his actions will perfectly correspond to the essential viscosity of his personage.

It is therefore in the body of the wrestler that we find the first key to the contest. I know from the start that all of Thauvin’s actions, his treacheries, cruelties and acts of cowardice, will not fail to measure up to the first image of ignobility he gave me; I can trust him to carry out intelligently and to the last detail all the gestures of a kind of amorphous baseness, and thus fill to the brim the image of the most repugnant bastard there is: the bastard-octopus. Wrestlers therefore have a physique as peremptory as those of the characters of the Commedia dell’Arte, who display in advance, in their costumes and attitudes, the future contents of their parts: just as Pantaloon can never be anything but a ridiculous cuckold, Harlequin an astute servant and the Doctor a stupid pedant, in the same way Thauvin will never be anything but an ignoble traitor, Reinieres (a tall blond fellow with a limp body and unkempt hair) the moving image of passivity, Mazaud (short and arrogant like a cock) that of grotesque conceit, and Orsano (an effeminate teddy-boy first seen in a blue- and-pink dressing-gown) that, doubly humorous, of a vindictive salope, or bitch (for I do not think that the public of the Elysee- Montmartre, like Littre, believes the word “salope” to be a masculine).

 

The physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign, which like a seed contains the whole fight. But this seed proliferates, for it is at every turn during the fight, in each new situation, that the body of the wrestler casts to the public the magical entertainment of a temperament which finds its natural expression in a gesture. The different strata of meaning throw light on each other, and form the most intelligible of spectacles. Wrestling is like a diacritic writing: above the fundamental meaning of his body, the wrestler arranges comments which are episodic but always opportune, and constantly help the reading of the fight by means of gestures, attitudes and mimicry which make the intention utterly obvious. Sometimes the wrestler triumphs with a repulsive sneer while kneeling on the good sportsman; sometimes he gives the crowd a conceited smile which forebodes an early revenge; sometimes, pinned to the ground, he hits the floor ostentatiously to make evident toall the intolerable nature of his situation; and sometimes he erects a complicated set of signs meant to make the public understand that he legitimately personifies the ever- entertaining image of the grumbler, endlessly confabulating about his displeasure.

We are therefore dealing with a real Human Comedy, where the most socially-inspired nuances of passion (conceit, rightfulness, refined cruelty, a sense of ‘paying one’s debts’) always felicitously find the clearest sign which can receive them, express them and triumphantly carry them to the confines of the hall. It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theater. In both, what is expected is the intelligible representation of moral situations which are usually private. This emptying out of interiority to the benefit of its exterior signs, this exhaustion of the content by the form, is the very principle of triumphant classical art. Wrestling is an immediate pantomime, infinitely more efficient than the dramatic pantomime, for the wrestler’s gesture needs no anecdote, no decor, in short no transference in order to appear true.’

http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ikalmar/illustex/Barthes-wrestling.htm

From: Fight Club: How Gay Is MMA? By Mark Simpson (2008):

‘In the octagonal UFC cage set up over the Bell Centre ice hockey rink — octagonal perhaps because it better affords multiple viewing angles than a square boxing ring — Mac Danzig is still on his back; his sweaty, pumped, almost translucently white torso is flushed with the auburn heat that auburn skin produces when it is aroused. His panting, fetching head has been pushed up against the cage by redhead Marc Bocek’s energetic pounding, as if the cage were in fact a headboard. Bocek isn’t making love, however, or at least not the vanilla kind. He’s hammering the living daylights out of Danzig, stoking the crowd into ever-higher waves of frenzy. Although the Octagon is right in front of me, I’m watching all of this on one of the giant screens overhead: MMA is mostly a horizontal sport — one that requires multiple zoom lenses and a big TV to enjoy properly.

Bocek pauses for a moment to grab his partner/adversary by his hips, almost tenderly, and drag him backward while still kneeling between his legs, not wanting to break contact and negotiate that tricky “re-entry.” It isn’t, though, out of consideration for his chum’s cricked neck. He’s worried that Danzig will use the cage to get up off the canvas — and then get him in the “bitch” position. MMA is all about fighting for top. (Or maybe for extremely truculent bottom.)

Unfortunately for Bocek, Danzig succeeds in breaking away anyway, jumps to his feet, and deftly, impersonally, brings up his knee and smashes it against Bocek’s left eyebrow, which provokes another roar of excitement from the crowd and opens up a very nasty laceration that spills hot blood everywhere, streaming into his eye, across his face, down his chin, and splatters across his lily-white chest — and all over his opponent. MMA is definitely not safe sex. The ref pauses the fight to examine Bocek’s eye. If the blood is preventing him from seeing, the fight will be declared in Danzig’s favor.

Turning to my beautifully produced glossy fight program, which includes full-page colour images of the topless young fighters arranged opposite one another and their vital statistics, I learn that Danzig is 5 foot 8 and 155 pounds, 28, and a Cleveland native. His feisty opponent, Bocek, from Woodbridge, Canada, is 26, and is also 5 foot 8 and 155 pounds. As someone who has a thing for redheads and short-asses, I’d say they are well matched.

The ref continues the match — and why not? Blood looks good on TV. There are only a few seconds left of the third and final round (UFC fights only go to a maximum three rounds at five minutes each — about the average length of a porn scene). Bocek, despite the turned tables and his pasting and what must be deathly tiredness, is still putting up an astonishing fight. Danzig scores a take-down almost immediately and moves, as they say in MMA, “directly to the mount.” Bocek “gives up his back” to try to save his ruined face from further punishment but is then caught in a “rear-naked choke” by Danzig’s powerful, fatally inviting arms. He “taps out” (submits) at 3 minutes, 48 seconds.

I don’t know about Bocek, but these were some of the longest 3 minutes, 48 seconds of my life. I’m aroused and inspired and exhausted and confused. For my money, Bocek won that fight — morally speaking. Which of course means that he lost very badly. His face is roadkill. He is really fucked. But he displayed that quality you hear people talk about reverently in MMA: heart.

Despite the gore, MMA is generally safer than boxing — there are fewer fatalities and brain-damage is less common. Because the fight is “full-contact,” the head doesn’t take all the violence. When it does, though, it’s pretty gruesome. Yet amid all the mayhem, there is a touching tenderness to MMA. Not because it looks to my twisted, queer eye like very rough sex — but because of that “heart” business. After a bout is over, most fighters hug each other in a pseudo-post-coital embrace that re-enacts the warlike hug earlier, only this time it’s a hug of warm brotherhood.

There is another huge, manly Gallic roar. The arena’s giant screen is now tuned to the locker room; a rangy young blond skinhead fighter has peeled his shirt off, revealing a well-oiled fleshly fighting machine. The light behind him and his piercing blue eyes gazing into the camera, not to mention the low position of the locker-room cam, give him the cast of a demigod. It’s Georges “Rush” St.-Pierre, the handsome, stylish 26-year-old local Montreal boy who tonight is hoping to seize back his UFC Welterweight belt from Matt “the Terror” Serra, 33, the no-nonsense Long Island master of Brazilian jujitsu who dispossessed him of it last year with what some people said was a lucky punch.

We’ve only been watching the hors d’oeuvre. All this blood has just been so much foreplay.’

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2009/11/01/fight-club-how-gay-is-mma/