A while back, I can’t remember which thread, Kate mentioned cultural theorist Marjorie Garber’s excellent book Vice Versa – on bisexuality and the eroticism of everyday life. I was dipping into it last night, and her discussion of early/mid 90s culture is a real culture shock in a way – so much has changed (and not just online dating through Usenet)… Much of Garber’s discussion of “bi chic” and the elision of hard lines of sexual identity by queer, and the openness to different forms of intimacy among college students now seems like a fond memory of a time that offered more possibilities. I’ve always thought of the early 90s as a time when culture and politics became almost anarchistic – and a new sense of freedom opened up by the Velvet Revolutions and the end of the Soviet Union seemed to hover in the air. Culture and life since then have been marked by deep and pervasive backlash projects – summarised as the “Culture Wars” but really just reflective of a re-inscription of “traditional” mores and patterns of life in more than one domain.
Among the phenomena that Garber discusses are the transgressive nature of sexualised male bodies in advertising, the first signs of normalisation and diffusion of tats and body piercings by supermodels, and the coinage of the term “metrosexual” to mean upper class “A-list” San Francisco gay men.
On one hand, in the age of Queer Eye, ubiquitous piercings, and the secular decline in public hair, much of what was seen as a transgressive queer aesthetic has passed into general culture – as a sort of hyperstylised hip.
Which produces its own reaction.
On the other, even the return of family values, and post-feminism, and all sorts of other renormalising projects seems to incarnate postmodern kitsch.
And the description of the sexual life of John Maynard Keynes and the Bloomsbury set has lost its power to shock – serial monogamies, bisexuality, and all sorts of triangles and quadrangles now seem, well, just life.
What is transgressive, and what is normal now, in our cultural and intimate lives?
It is a great book.
I used to get funny stares on public transport when I was reading it. Is that an act of transgression, even reading a book about bisexuality on a bus? (Joke).
I really don’t know what is trangressive in the noughties. I think there are a great many things that are frowned upon, but are they shocking? Are conservatives ‘shocked’ by the idea of gay marriage–no. They just don’t like it.
But then, I live a rather vanilla lifestyle (monogamous heterosexual relationship with man of same age group and ethnicity) that wouldn’t shock many people, so I’m not regularly, personally, confronted by the disapproval of the community at large.
“Transgressive” just sounds like an old performance art blowhard in a cultural studies department. when I hear that word now I just roll my eyes. Basically if you are “transgressive” you are probably not standing in front of an audience and telling them this – you are probably having the crap belted out of you by some lowlife screws in a protection unit or a pair of coppers in the back of a paddy wagon or something.
As for “transgressive” art, I believe that death is the final frontier. “Transgressive” sexuality as I’ve usually encountered it (labelled as such) places things at the center of an individual’s existence that I don’t actually think *are* at the centre of most people’s self-referential systems. If you asked me who I am, which hole or gender I prefer to stick my dick in comes way down the list of things I would list. I do believe there is still ONE book that can be bought in Australia that is truly “transgressive” on those terms – and I doubt it rate a mention in a Queer Studies curriculum – but nonetheless it’s still the only book you buy in a book shop that comes with a wrapper. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
As for the 90s, I am over it. A child of the 80s, I though at the time the 90s were pretty exciting, but I had most of my wildest transgressing the decade before. Now I look back and see more value in the things we were trying to achieve in the 1980s than the things that followed it in the 1990s. We were harder edged and knew the limits, and the real strengths, of our power.
What Rex said. Plus, there’s a mile between having a transgressive identity (by which I assume we mean practices deriving from a sense of self), and all sorts of experimentalism driven by boredom. The problem with the latter trangression is the borders of familiarity tend to follow you into no-mans land.
I agree with Mark about the freedom of the early 90s, but maybe that’s the demographic we share.
Incidentally, is transgress even a word? If so, I draw the line at felching.
But seriously, I wish I knew more people in their early 20s (other than my students, who I cant really discuss this with): but my sense is there is a new vibe in general. More dating & less shagging, perhaps. The mobile phone thing must be huge – not risking waking parents if you text pissed at 2 am.
I also get the sense that all the things we saw as bravely transgressive in the 80s just seem a bit dull to Gen Y. But then, I wouldnt know. Most transgressive thing I do these days is weekend smoking while on the piss. Now thats unpopular!
Transgressions? I’ve had few, too few to mention.
It seems, this week, that nudity when associated with healing ( the beautiful radiation painting removed from an exhibition in Melbourne after complaints) is a greater transgression against societal mores than nudity associated with inebriation (any Brownlow count).
(small apologies for the parochial references and lack of linking – if ya don’t know, then ya don’t know, y’know?).
Ah, the 1990s…
Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms and foreign places
All the people I was kissing
Some are here and some are missing
In the nineteen-nineties
I never dreamt that I would get to be
The creature that I always meant to be
But I thought in spite of dreams
You’d be sitting somewhere here with me
‘Cause we were never being boring
We had too much time to find for ourselves
And we were never being boring
We dressed up and fought, then thought: “Make amends”
And we were never holding back or worried that
Time would come to an end
We were always hoping that, looking back
You could always rely on a friend
Yeah transgress is a word, I used it a lot in my thesis. But then, I did a wanky cultural studies/communications thesis (no performance art, thankfully) that dealt a fair bit with gender/sexuality. In film, even. Oh, the horror.
(And I like the word transgressive. And the word hegemony. And I really like the word liminal.)
Rex, I’m curious as to why you find American Psycho so ‘transgressive’. Is it purely ’cause it is wrapped in plastic, or is it the content? Or are you saying the general public finds the book transgressive?
On Brownie’s point, breastfeeding in public often pushes a lot of (priggish) buttons.
As someone who was an undergrad in the early 90s – yeah, it was an exciting, interesting period.
The Net killed the Zine star somewhat later in the 90s.
Bret Easton Ellis is massively over-rated. Can’t write. Only good thing = the film of one of the books because it has James Spader in it (now he’s transgressive!). I can’t remember the name of the book he wrote that came out in 99/00 ish – almost unreadable. Gave up after the first chapter – and that’s very rare with me.
But I think there is a broader point here – is body mod/bisexuality just a new pose? So po/mo? Witness – the Lesbian til graduating phenomenon that started with college chicks in the States in the 90s.
And it is true that so much of pop culture/style/lifestyles now are derivative/diffusions of gay/queer practices of the late 80s and 90s.
Oh, and Lefty E, let me assure you – the 20 somethings are still shagging. Next time you’re in Brisvegas, I’ll take you on a tour of the Valley to demonstrate this point empirically.
Also, when and why exactly did pubic hair become so last century?
Nah, for me it was the 1960s. Maybe it’s whenever you were in your 20s. Yet I do recall a young lecturer in politics at Adelaide Uni, name of Neil Blewitt, having to make special arrangements with the library so that his students could read “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” as an example of censorship.
There was ‘flower power’, Woodstock, people setting up communes and all sorts of transgression for a while. Then in 1975 Fraser became PM, darkness fell upon the land and universities turned into degree factories.
Transgress is a good word Kate – moving across, if my etymology serves me. Which is quinty pomo, no? Discursive borders, epistemological limits; into liminal spaces; eschewing forward movement qua ‘progress’ as essentialist, teleological.
But it would seem, mo or po, we all gress somewhere. Why does philosophy need subjects to gress anywhere, trans, pro or re? But I digress…. possibly into a rare state of pure, unmitigated wankdom, known among German philosophers as ‘selbstgress’.
PS I just coined ‘quinty’ …. and I like it.
20-somethings still at it Kim? Good. I read some thingo somewhere about a Gen Y move back to partnered monogamy at a younger age. Probably one of those dodgy mags you find in waiting rooms.
Pop sociology, Lefty E. Cleo/Cosmo have a new line this month – how to give the perfect head job.
Rex, that’s probably because you’re straight. If you’re a man, and have a normative sexuality, you don’t have to think about it that much. Just saying…
Very, very interesting to know the derivation of metrosexual, btw. I knew I’d heard it before.
I’m serious about wondering how the Brazilian wax trend started – and why it took off. Someone needs to do some proper research on it, as I’ve said before. But Dr Nelson would be sure to veto the ARC Grant.
Yes, how do they keep coming up with new sex tips? And how can they, in good conscience, trump their own “ultimate” guide time and again?
Thats it. I’m ringing consumer affairs.
In the 90s, like Kate, I used to find people looked askance at me when I read my Cosmo on the bus. Not so now. I read it for sociological/cultural professional reasons, of course.
Lefty E, I refer you to the guide on why not to have sex in the walk-in wardrobe. Very practical stuff.
Seriously, though, such mags have shifted remarkably from 10 years ago – when the discourse was still couched in “romantic” terms. Not that they don’t still incarnate anti-feminist attitudes while proclaiming their (post)feminism, but they’re basically bonking manuals these days.
Bonking manuals of considerable sociological import, Mark.
I quite agree about walk-in wardrobes. But is the growing bonk focus, perchance, because they know they have a considerable metrosexual male (sociological, article-driven) readership these days?
Lefty E, they’re targetting that audience with frequent “male view on bonking/breakups/pashing/Brazilians” articles. Not only are the mags less female centred than they were in the late 90s (conform yourself to “what your boy thinks”, please), they’re also implicitly marketed to boys seeking the SECRETS OF THE ETERNALLY MYSTERIOUS FEMININE!
Sensible advice not to bonk in a built in wardrobe, though.
Indeed. I also advise against bonking in Toowoomba.
Seriously, though, I was at a caf the other day with my little girl, of but 1.5 summers, and was flicking bored through the beauty-myth sea of scanty, scrawny babes in Cleo, when I thought: “How much older till I decide she doesnt need to see this crap?”
I reckon 2.
“Most transgressive thing I do these days is weekend smoking while on the piss. Now thats unpopular!”
Correct.
“Maybe itÄôs whenever you were in your 20s.”
Correct.
“In the 90s, like Kate, I used to find people looked askance at me when I read my Cosmo on the bus. Not so now.”
If I saw you today, I’d still look askance.
Stuffed shirt, wbb!
Bonking in Toowoomba should carry a health warning. “Sex in this town may produce a National Party voter” or something of the sort.
On topic, one of my long-term gfs was a monthly reader of Cleo…she used to proclaim the stupidity of the mag, but I could only wonder, if it was as easily dismissed as all that, then what that said for people that bought it every month could only be a matter of conjecture. Do women read this the same way I read New Idea in the doctor’s room….knowing it’s crap, and finding it a good laugh, or are the messages far more insidious that that?
They are insidious. They are about enslaving women to men’s desires. Take Cleo away and half the shrinks will lose their jobs overnight. Well that’s what feminists told me in the 80s. Has it all changed?
Yes, that’s a simplification, wbb! They’re really about shaping the post-feminist young woman – and us (postmodern?) feminists wouldn’t be so dogmatic or think things are that easy to analyse. But there’s no doubt, Luke, that they do influence the way teenage girls and young women see themselves, and what they think social and sexual norms are.
As Lefty E says, you can’t be too careful!
I do feel duty bound to point out that the State seat of Toowoomba North is held by Labor, and has been since 2001.
So bonking in Toowoomba is now an officially sanctioned Leftist venture? Lovely…one for mum, one for dad, one for the Party, comrades….
“Rex, IÄôm curious as to why you find American Psycho so ‘transgressiveÄô. Is it purely Äôcause it is wrapped in plastic, or is it the content? Or are you saying the general public finds the book transgressive?”
The latter, because as a book, it’s the only one that has to be in a wrapper at the point of sale. Which proves the point that the general public find this novel ‘transgressive’ (I find it funny, generally, but there are some part- like with the prostitutes, and also the many chapters on Bateman’s favorite musical artists – that are pretty disturbing).
“On BrownieÄôs point, breastfeeding in public often pushes a lot of (priggish) buttons.”
So does talking on your mobile phone on the bus. I don’t think that prigs find offensive is particulary transgressive. I mean, people defend breast feeding. Something is transgressive if everyone -here- would instantly condemn it. Prigs, always have got *something* to condemn.
Actually another “transgressive” artist comes to mind. The UK comedy writer/performer, Chris Morris. Wikipedia info about Chris Morris. Anyone else here seen his TV series “Jam” (also … “Jaaaaam” the remixed version)? Here’s a particularly apt review of Jam. One sketch description from Jam: “A wife’s fury at her husband having been caught apparently having sex with another woman is tempered when her husband tells her he was merely raping the woman.”
Or the paedophilia episode of the current affairs spoof, “Brass Eye”? The latter is the most complained about tv program in British television history, it lampooned media hysteria about paedophilia.
I remember at UQ in about ’83 or ’84 GLOC (Gays and Lesbians on Campus) invited a speaker from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association – not the National Association of Marlon Brando Lookalikes for you South Park fans) to make an address at one of its love-ins. Now that was transgressive. I recall that GLOC staunchly defended its decision at the time, but it’s difficult to imagine that happening now.
On that note, perhaps it is a case that what is truly transgressive these days is stuff that needs to stay that way.
Over breakfast I just read the most horrific account of a paedophilia ring in France; ring leaders were convicted etc. The author of the article I read was distinctly unimpressed by the lack of interest shown to the case by the French media, however.
Nasty stuff.
Rex- Brass eye is magnificent. I urge people to see the DVD.
And the related The Day Today (“Fact x Importance = NEWS”)
Griff – I was thinking the same thing. I saw a paper recently about the radical Gay French magazine Gai Pied in the early 80s -which openly advocated ‘Boy Love’. This seems this has become more trangressive with time, rather than less (as per some liberation through activism narrative)
Sorry Mark, but I fail to see how this is bohemian?
Czechs, Harry. Into all sorts of weird perversions. Including an on-again, off-again romance with sister state Slovakia.
Im more of a Moravian myself.
Islam does far more damage than Cleo “enslaving women to men’s desires.”
Saying so is transgressive.
You wish, CL. I’m sure you have tortured visions of yourself as a free-speech martyr, but you’re just wrong, Bogieman.
See what I mean?
Does losing arguments a lot count towards beatification, or do you have to protect pedophiles from justice? That’s what I call stepping over the line.
See what I mean (#2)?
Oh, I’m sorry. Did I transgress?
Not really, CL. And how long have you had these persecutory delusions?
Proving that theory was like shooting bara in a barrel. Pile on with the Fred Nile outrage folks!
Depends CL. If the theory was “that boring us again with disingenuous claims of censorship by Feminazis and Islamophiles might provoke a couple of bored, half-hearted one-liners” then yes: QED.
Kapow! Yummy fish! Five bored, half-hearted one-liners so far!
This is a lame-o stoush.
CL, this sort of thing isn’t up to your usual standards.
If you want to make some geniune points about the patriarchal values of many of the practitioners of Islam and how that oppresses women, please do so. In fact, I welcome your nuanced exploration of the numerous ways traditional Islam can oppress women. I would also welcome some recognition that there are many Muslim women working to overthrow that repression.
While you’re at it, perhaps you can also discuss how female genital mutilation is practised by Christians as well. Then you could discuss rape statistics in the western world.
That is, if you’re actually concerned with women’s rights, instead of just slagging off against Islam. The ill treatment of women (and gays) is by no means limited to that religion or the middle east, but I’m sure you already know that.
And also. Women’s magazines are pretty vile pieces of consumerist rubbish. They are, of course, in no way comparable to stoning women to death or forcing 14 year old girls to get married. But that doesn’t excuse the consumerist rubbish from being consumerist rubbish, no? I can critique Cleo and Fundamentalist Islam too, can I not? I see no contradiction there.
Good stuff Kate – all the points I was too uninspired to make.
Trusty old Leftie Stratagem #1.
I didnt click the link CL, but does it perchance say “using empirical evidence to demonstrate the pitfalls of ill-informed generalisation as a mode of social scientific enquiry”?
I found “American Psycho” transgressive too.
Stoning as a method of execution is not transgressive because it only happens in places where it is deemed appropriate. Same with 14yo marriage. Cleo would be transgressive in Kabul on the other hand.
CLs blanket condemnations of Islam are transgressive here. My blanket disparagement of Christianity is fine however.
CL has linked to his own witty description of “Leftie Stratagem No 1′:
“All instances of Islamic fascism/woman hatred/mass murder can be ignored…
…because a fatuous comparison can be made with (a long list you can read on the link if you care to)”
Bizarre, because Kate said:
If you want to make some geniune points about the patriarchal values of many of the practitioners of Islam and how that oppresses women, please do so. In fact, I welcome your nuanced exploration of the numerous ways traditional Islam can oppress women. I would also welcome some recognition that there are many Muslim women working to overthrow that repression.
Pissweak effort, CL. Leftie strategem No. 1 is actually to read the frickin’ link.
And I didn’t find “American Pyscho” transgressive, just boring as batshit.
“Czechs, Harry.”
# Ahh. Just so long as there are balances otherwise society is doomed [quails]
“Into all sorts of weird perversions. Including an on-again, off-again romance with sister state Slovakia.”
# That makes it clear – as crystal.
” IÄôve always thought of the early 90s as a time when culture and politics became almost anarchistic”
Seriously though, anything becomes normal once you’ve been exposed to it. The ease at which you can find ‘things that shock’ on the internet [which arose in the 90's, you will note] means that the act of shocking is no longer, well, shocking. Remember when every movie had a twist – and they were advertised as having a twist? Kinda defeats the purpose of a twist, doesn’t it.
Just apply that sort of scenario to everything and voila – next to nothing is transgressive any more – certainly when it is dressed in the robes of expression or individualism etc
I don’t know how you’d go about measuring it empirically but are media frenzies more short-lived than ever before? Seems that way to mean. When not even the glossy media can get excited for long, you’ve gotta think something has fundementally changed.
Good point Harry – the West has just about bored itself into a coma with its own spectacles. They’re just not spectacular any more.
I loved Leunig’s cartoon of the sad man on a toilet, being observed by the nation a la BB. Captured the growth of an aimless, aspiritual form of cultural narcissism very well.
I’ve always thought Leunig himself captures that particular zeitgeist.
Indeed Fyodor… the times will suit him, as our glorious leader might put it.
How do you those indent quote thingos, anyone?
<blockquote>Your text here.</blockquote>
If you want the symbols to come up visibly, use:
<and>in place of < and >.I love it. Are you using
<socratic dialogue<?
yes Liam, but no one in my head is falsifying the proposition.
Comment Comment….
Lefty E, get the Jam DVD. It’s fantastic. I have taped-off-tv copies of the Brass Eye episodes. A pity neither of these shows will ever make it onto Australian TV screens.
Hey it works. Ta Liam!
Rex – definitely – if it half as good as as Brass Eye I’m there. Brass Eye & The Day Today are now on DVD – Ive seen them around. In case your tapes go bung one day.
Zoe: I presume you read all of Kate’s post… oui?
While you’re at it, perhaps you can also discuss how female genital mutilation is practised by Christians as well. Then you could discuss rape statistics in the western world.
As I implied, this is just the same bogus LP relativism, designed to take the focus off Islam. Why? Because Muslims are the new Viet Cong as far as many (not all) on the left are concerned.
Hell, Jane Fonda’s even heading to the Middle East for another anti-aircraft gun photo-op.
Muslim women – to any sane, morally prioritising person – are faced with an institutionalised maltreatment that transcends anything in the developed West. Referring to Christan clitorectomy and the always-present, cross-cultural abomination of rape is just begging the question. I don’t know what the rape statistics for, say, Kuwait are in relation to, say, Ireland. Hard to say given that most Muslim women are far too invisible and powerless to ever bring action.
I recently read a human rights report that described Iran as a “prison for women.” That’s millions of women. Just in Iran. Pathologies exist in all societies but where there are differentials of this magnitude, sensible people concentrate most of their energies on the bigger task, without allowing their love all-comers passion to wane. That’s what the greats of social change and feminism did. Today, the left isn’t interested because of infantile sookiness relating to its own marginalisation.
As for Kate’s final point, it relates to nothing I wrote. I loathe the culture of women’s magazines. I took it – if not them – as read that the crisis for Islamic women living with violence is just a smidgen more serious than whether or not Our Mary’s zits got airbrushed this week.
Yes I did, CL. As I read all of yours, and your link. Kate was not asking for Islamic enormities to be ignored, as your link suggested. That is what I objected to.
As for Kate’s last paragraph, I took it as referring to the earlier discussion of women’s mags, and staking her claim to be able to look at all of the world around her with an analytical eye – it actually did related to what you wrote, but it seems the subtlety escaped you.
Oh, and I’ve been thinking transgressive all day now, and I reckon it’s two morbidly obese people expressing sexual affection in public. Perhaps at the beach?
Wasn’t a certain commenter claiming on the stoushing thread that lefties are just a bunch of boring people who think the world is just politics and are incapable of talking about anything else – and lack a sense of appreciation of the aesthetic and human dimensions of life?
I quote Rob:
On cue, on a cultural/social thread, along comes C.L., picking up on the one word “transgressive” to reopen a discussion on, well, politics…
I’m not interested in engaging with arguments on this on this thread.
Transgressive or monomaniacal, C.L.?
Lefty E, if you’re reading, I’m just back from Rebecca K’s place where I dropped in for a couple of hours after work to talk about a workforce planning consultancy we’re doing together, and have a general gasbag/reminisce. She says hello. We both agreed that there was lots more nudity at parties and in pools and in share houses when we were students – late 80s, early 90s. We were telling her 20 year old brother – who sparked off the convo by asking if we knew John Birmingham (answer is yes) and he didn’t think that the young folks nuded it up to anywhere near the same extent all of us used to.
The nude dinner party at Jo’s place was transgressive.
I know you have a point, there, Mark, and probably a cogent one, but I’m just not seeing it. I’m dense today (again).
Thank you CL, for providing something substantive. I am horrified at the situation of women in Iran.
It’s fine for you to come over here and start a fight by being all outraged that we’re talking about women’s magazines when we should be horrified at the treatement of women in Iran.
The thing is, I don’t know what you think you’re fighting for, because in the end we’re horrified by many of the same things.
Really, I don’t particularly like the way you attack people, and I don’t like being drawn into an argument with you because you say things like “infantile sookiness” and so forth. Primarily, instead of engaging with the issue you attack and insult, and I find that off-putting.
Now, I don’t really think much of Islam as a religion and I happen to agree with you about the institutionalisation of violence against women in these countries. My point, CL, was that violence against women isn’t a monopoly held by Islam. Yeah, I think the worst place in the world to be a woman today is an Islamic country, or maybe sub-Saharan Africa. That’s not moral relativism, it’s reality.
So, I agree with you in many respects. I just fail to see what you’re getting all worked up about.
I respect the fact that you care so deeply about women in Muslim countries. I was also pointing out that there are many women across the world who are raped, abused, and punished, merely for being female. Blaming Islam alone for violence against women is pointless, IMHO, because it fails to recognise the endemic nature of violence against women across the entire world. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognise how bad things are for women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc.
So, given that we agree on so much, what do you think is an appropriate course of action for we in the west to take against the oppressive regimes of Iran and other fundamentalist states?
Note: and when I say I don’t think much of Islam, I don’t think much of any religion.* This is because I am an atheist, and I am as likely to believe in Allah or Jesus as I am the Flying Spaghetti monster. I do respect other individual’s rights to hold beliefs they care about deeply, so long as there’s no law forcing me to believe. The end.
*(Oh, except Quakers. I like Quakers.)
Excellent Mark. Wish you both well with it. I did my first consultancy earlier in the year and it gave me a sore head.
Yes, Birmingham: anyone who didnt have a beer or seven with him just wasnt at the UQ Rec Club circa 88-90.
I woke up one morning at my share house in indooroopilly to discover he was going out with one of my many housemates. His whole uni experience appeared to be a note-taking exercise for Felafel.
Rob, my point is this: we’re having a nice old discussion about culture and society and sexy stuff. C.L. can’t resist – derailing the thread into a discussion of POLITICS!
You’d previously accused THE LEFT of being only political. We’re not particularly, on this thread, as on others, but THE RIGHT (or at least the SANTAMARIA SOCIALISTS) can’t resist turning the discussion to – POLITICS – on the slightest of pretexts.
Lefty E, we’re old hands at it. Know our way around the ABS website, the need for a report to have a spin, and the Cabinet Handbook. Plus at $1000 a day, pays better than the academic game.
Anyway, Bec’s brother – was saying “so do you guys actually know all those people in Felafel?”. Yep, Crazy Nina, etc etc. Many’s the beer I shared with Mandy C at a certain Auchenflower felafel central – to the great annoyance of Dirk (not the Dirk, the Dirk in the book, if you get my drift…)
And I can well remember Mandy showing me her underwear drawer – which for some reason her personal Drug Squad D insisted on thinking was the location of her stash each time he visited with the latest warrant.
And I can remember not quite turning up at a house on Whynot St in time to witness the infamous strip chess incident.
Ah, I can remember him being at that party at the share house in Indoro in question – and the housemate in question! Ah, those were the days!
C.L. – two words. Like. Whatever. No-one answered my question about the absent present – pubic hair! Too transgressive?
First time I observed a Brazilian, Kim (in 2002), it struck me as most odd. Most odd. Now pubic hair is unexpected.
Btw – for non Brisvegans, you may have heard of Zigzag St in Red Hill from the Nick Earls book. But Whynot St in West End has the best Brissie street name.
You’re wrong, Zoe. I quoted (using quotation marks) wbb’s remark re magazines. This in no way implied that I ignored the substance of the magazine discussion or that I couldn’t juggle that issue’s profundity with the other, larger, issue I raised. And why did I raise it? Just to make a point about what is or is not transgressive – which is the topic of the post.
Your censoriousness proves my point, Mark. Transgressive social, artistic, sexual and literary conduct are almost invariably political. That’s the point. That’s why Elvis was filmed from the waste up; that’s why Hendrix copped a massive serve from the preppie set for his version of Start Spangled Banner; that’s why people were miffed with Gough Whitlam over Blue Poles; that’s why Jean Shrimpton caused a kerfuffle at Flemington by wearing that mini; that’s why Jim Cairns got in trouble with Junie Morosi; that’s why Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner was important; that’s why the Black Panther salute stung at the 1968 Olympics… need I go on? You lefties are supposed to be on top of this stuff but you’re not.
I’m not getting “worked up” up Kate. I can’t think of anyone on the net I don’t like or am not – in some cases – even fond of. So there’s no animosity in my remarks, not even against dear Fyodor. Writers, bloggers, all species of public intellectuals have waves of interest in particular topics. Presently, for example, Mark is extremely devoted to IR discourse. This is despite the fact that the government’s policies – about which I have multiple reservations – were fairly telegraphed and subsequently mandated by a landslide last October.
As regards action, Kate, I believe – and this goes to my present interest in this issue I think – that we start by acknowledging the problem. Kevin Rudd pointed out yesterday, in relation to the Islamic child-bride scandal, that there is no cultural defence of such practices. So – he implied – don’t even bother trying that on. This is Australia, that sort of thing is illegal; if it’s part of your sub-culture, too bad. Etcetera.
A lot more of that kind of definitiveness has to come into the discourse on Islam and be projected en bloc by the Western world. Italy has now banned the full-on burka. People are starting to realise that tolerance doctrine is a cop-out in relation to people who wish to preserve sub-Western standards of human rights within our culture. To make Rudd’s point inter-national rather than merely intra-state is a lot more difficult, of course.
The short-term hope for Iran is traditional geopolitical clubsmanship: so you’re a rising power? Why not to do this and give us that and then we can talk about this prize of prestige or that trade deal etc. The more Iran desires prestige and power, the more it might be inclined to liberalise. The danger with this is that it tends to be read and used for a consolidation of Tehran’s already worrying hubris.
Also, the body established for this kind of moral suasion is the UN and I don’t believe it’s capable of projecting these kinds of messages – largely because it adheres to the cultural relativism that sustains the immobility on human rights in the first place. The women of Iran probably have a long wait to either 1) a liberal, internal revolution; 2) gradual economic enrichment and attendant liberalisation; or 3) improvement imposed post bellum, if Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme cannot be haulted.
Off topic, C.L. Take it somewhere else, please.
Indeed it does Mark – with the possible exception of Lamington Drive.
Yes, housemate in question was in fact the woman with bats hanging in her room. My favourite depiction (though a bit low, I guess, as he really was a great guy) was of a certain chap who came out, and no one cared.
I was previously oblivious to the whole consultancy game, and couldnt believe what we were able to charge. Indeed, one of my colleagues has given academia away as a result. Take that, Nelson! (…yeah, like he cares…)
As a one-time Red Hill loyalist, I lived a stone’s throw from Zig Zig Street. And, to participate in the far more profound pubic hair discourse being conducted by the Like Whatever Set, I loathe the very idea. The au natural, so-called ’70s look’ (but, really, the ‘up until now in history look’ or the ‘adult woman look’) is more preferable and more desirable.
The ultimate sentence for the trangressor: banishment.
I actually raised more references to social and other forms of trangression than any other commenter. This agree-athon blog is now too childish to bother with.
C.L., to clarify, you’re not banished. You are well aware that there are numerous threads on this blog where discussions of Islam are relevant. It’s pretty clear from the post that the thread is intended to be about Western culture and our lived experience of same. You can carry on the debate on any relevant thread. Your frequent mentions of “transgression” do not relevance make.
Lefty E, yep, that’s as I remember it.
Nelson won’t be that upset – he could follow the example of another medical doctor who was a Howard Minister and hit the government up for post-Ministerial consultancies worth a lot more than we’re able to charge!
He might even be able to wear that earring again. It seems earrings are still transgressive for Liberal Ministers! How many Howard Ministers have bod-mods?
Sorry Mark, I’ll remove my comments if you want.
With all due respect to Mr Birmingham, I think it’s more accurate to say in actual fact that the person who came out surprised nobody. Which is not quite the same as saying “no-one cared”, as JB had it. But – and I hate to say it – gays and women didn’t get the best spin put on their stories in Felafel – which wasn’t massively surprising to those who’d shared those seven beers with him.
No, Kate, please don’t. But if you do want to respond further to C.L., I suggest this thread. Where I’m happy for you and C.L., and anyone else who cares to, to join this debate. Of course, you can respond to his on topic remarks about 70s pubic hair on this one! But only if you choose to!
Thanks Mark. I was carried away by the class of Sauvignon Blanc I had at 3pm this afternoon. Drinking! Weekday! Aahgghgh. It’s all downhill from here. (I was with a friend though).
Well, when it comes to pubic hair I don’t have much of an opinion at all. Except that obviously having more pubic hair is more transgressive than having it removed. And I’m not a fan of brazilians, which makes me clearly a member of a dangerous fringe minority group.
Okay, clearly I do have an opinion on pubic hair.
Kate, after a hard day’s work, I’ve had 3 glasses of shiraz cab! Drinking! Weekday! In moderation!
Tomorrow night there might be cocktails though!
This agree-athon blog is now too childish to bother with.
Certainly a kind of tired lack of spiritedness creeping into LP of late. Oh for the Troppo stoushes of yore.
That comment will get me bahnisched as well, I expect.
Rob, last time I looked, asking people to stay on topic wasn’t AN ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH.
We can’t win with you, can we? Either we’re just arid sociological theorists obsessed with politics and out of touch with the deeper currents of the human condition, or we talk about stuff that isn’t about politics, and we’re evil Lefty censors who won’t let people rant ad infinitum about Islam on a post about Western pop culture and patterns of lived experience.
Ho hum.
So what’s your view on the culture of the early 90s? Or whether “radical” lifestyles are now a self-reflexive pose? Or even, should you wish, the great pubic hair disappearance debate?
Come on, Rob, you’re always saying we should talk about non-partisan stuff?
You have my absolute permission to discuss opera or classic 40s horror films, if you can find a hook for same!
Yes, Kate, you are clearly a member of a dangerous fringe minority group – I’m assuming the double entendre was intentional!
?
Thanks, Mark, but I’m disinclined. I think it was the Mark-Kim year 12 bonkarama of a few days ago most strongly fuelled my disillusionment.
well, ive been yearning to discuss pubic hair… Brazilians – bah! Is there anything less sexy? I want a woman, not a rash with a mohawk.
And whoever thinks shaved is sexy has, IMHO, certain issues that are best discussed in confessional booths (where they’ll probably understand).
There, Ive said it.
And as for Birmingham – lets not forget teh downside of him hanging out at certain friends’ place in the latter days of the Brazil campaign, notebook in hand, hoping they’d get busted by the plods (fair bit of it going around at the time), and that he’d scoop the tale for the novel.
But then again, the personal is the political. (Oh, bollocks it is.)
Easy Rob!
IMHO, the only thing in blogdom more groundbreaking than the Mark-Kim online lefty-love fest is my upcoming, merlot-fuelled, live & online, schizoid-breakdown battle-to-the-death with my alter ego, Barry Battler…
hmmm. birmingham at uq late 80s? how come I got the impression from falafel that he was one of the the surry hills old hands in the 80s. some sort of dilletante then. one of these days i’ll write that ‘gunnery’ screen play.
Rex- from memory, he did time in Sydney at some point in that long decade.
Well, Rob, this is my last word on the topic – you and C.L. hang around a lot for people who are deeply disilussioned with the online bonking Islamofascism denialism infected far too political or too personal when it’s not political (hint – Opera!) nature of this blog.
So much so that many a thread becomes meta-commentary on whether you and C.L. and sundry others should stay or go, or what you think of argumentative tactics, or whatever.
Well, I do hope you enjoy being the centre of attention.
I’m contemplating a new rule – no more meta-agonising over the state of the blog. Except on open or meta threads.
Now back to the topic, as opposed to the fascinating topic of whether the end of the blog as we know it is arriving, Rex, no he was an Ipswich boy. Read the article he wrote in the first issue of The Monthly for more personal background. He lived in Sydney after he stopped hanging around UQ.
Lefty E, there were a lot of downsides about Birmingham, but I’ll just say – I had a chat to him last year and he graciously suggested we should put past differences from uni days behind us – and no doubt there were a lot of downsides about me and others too – we were all young – so I’ll leave it that.
And on the pubic hair question, I’m surprised that no-one has mentioned one very obvious (gender-non-specific) benefit thereof. I’ll leave it at that.
Can we have a virtual show of hands? How many LP’ers agree with Mark that the personal is the political?
Sorry, Mark. Sometimes I just say silly stuff to fill in tme before going to work or going to bed. Ignore.
jeez, as a student of the 80s, of course i’d agree the personal is the political. but then i’d also agree that for the purposes of achieving practical ends, and getting everybody suitably out of it and naked, that we immediately suspend standing orders, cease discussion of organisation principles and vacate the floor for beer swilling, pot smoking, and some lines of crystal meth out in the back loo.
I do. And I’d like to see you mount an argument to the contrary, Rob. And don’t give us aesthetics.
But – hey – let’s not talk about the topic – let’s talk about ROB’S DEFINITION OF POLITICS! Woohoo! That’s transgressive!
And I’ll bonk whom I like online or offline, thank you very much. If you don’t like it, deal, or go tell Sophie how hot she is, or something.
Seriously, chill out, Rob. If you want to talk about the topic, then do so. If you don’t can we please not have a stoush over your disillusionment or how we’re an agreeathon, or on C.L.’s contentions on Islam? I’m quite enjoying this thread – except for the interpolations – which are tedious.
Why not distinguish yourself by what you have to say rather than this “ha! this blog is so LEFTY and political and I’m a truth teller and so disillusioned with it” shtick. So I say to you as well – Like. Whatever.
Heard it all before.
Deal.
And, yes, while I personally like to maintain a lush but well trimmed garden, there is one advantage that’s obvious.
Quite so Mark. Young and foolish all. But, dare I say, when your some of your best friends are having drugs planted on them by special squad, its hard to see it as just ‘raw material’ for someone else’s book. Anyway, long time ago… in Quinceland of old…. And it did show an intrepid gonzo spirit.
PS Just read Pig City recently, brought it all flooding back.
And what Rex said!
I dare say, Lefty E. I wasn’t disagreeing with you on that one. Not at all, not at all.
Ok, I’ll bite – what the obvious advantage? (if its really obvious I’ll be Lefty Dill for the evening)
How often did Hayek nude it up?
And Kim, yes, that seems to be the elephant in the garden. As it were.
Lefty E, bite, but with discretion.
Two words. Tongue. Hairs.
Two other worse words in this context.
Teeth. Hairs.
Like. Whatever. Teeth. Hairs. Yeah. Right.
Right. Had it all arse about – advantages of *not* having it. In which case, quite.
Yes, I was thinking what Kim was thinking. To clarify, it’s gender non-specific in the sense that it doesn’t matter whether a man or a woman is facing the problem of the tongue/teeth hairs – when it comes to female pubic hairiness/otherwise.
Doesn’t so much matter with boys, because they have no hairs on the bit that the teeth and tongue meet, but with girls…
Hey – Rob – glad to see you getting into the spirit. Smells – like – teen…
Rob, that last one was positively petulant. Is this necessary?
Rob’s auditioning for “Grumpy Blog Commenters”. Unless such popular shows won’t be shown on a privatised ABC.
Rebecca and I are contemplating auditioning for BB next year.
Lefty E, I thought I was just entering into the spirit of the thing. Whatever the thing was.
Kim, my “contentions” were on trangression principally, with Islam and women as attitudinal case study. And my lengthier post cited numerous instances of transgression that were more worthy of comment than anyone’s pudendum. Mark ignored those and weant straight back genitalia. Second half of said post was an answer to a question civilly put to me by Kate. All I see from you, dear Kim, is a desire to Benny Hill-ise substantive discussion with adolescent auto-eroticism.
Deal.
I transgressed against an orthodoxy; it caused trouble and ended with an invitation to leave. This performance art piece demonstrated very effectively that people who watch and discuss a merchanised product like Big Brother can’t really be expected to understand actual transgression. You;re far too conservative.
What is the thing, Rob? Could it be the Lacanian thing?
C.L., you’re far too sober.
It’s the Kantian noumenon. Or the Hegelian dang-in-sich.
As Sartre said…
Mon dieu!!! La Nausee!
CL, you’re quite right. we are defending an orthodoxy here and are very uncomfortable with you so effectively demolishing it before our eyes. And all we can do in tha face of this compelling critique is band together like some outraged PC lynch squad of femocrats and howl you down for daring speak the truth.
(Has he gone now?)
It’s a matter of weltanschauung.
I thought we were talking about oral sex. Specifically, the non-political boy on girl variety.
As I was saying to the battlers down at the pub.
Oh yes, Rob, we were, but from a phenomenological and dialectical point of view.
Et quelle est la raison?
NB – girl on girl as well. As stated above.
I do seriously want to know how and why Brazilian waxes became popular so quickly. Which returns us to the original hypothesis about the diffusion of trends through media such as women’s magazines – which are much more sexualised than they once were.
There’s also the question of – infantilising adult bodies, a certain desire to de-naturalise the human body generally. While there may be practical benefits, these are not the motivating factors. And bikini waxes give way to hipster jean waxes give way to Brazilians – the commodification of beauty and grooming marching in step – but I’m not entirely satisfied. I think there are other deeper causal factors at work.
In vino veritas, LE.
Look how much more fun this thread has suddenly become….
Latin always gives a certain undefinable grace and style to a thread.
The motto of retired stoushe/rs:
Bonum certamen certavi, cursum consummavi, fidem servavi (2 Timothy 4:7).
Kim, to be honest, I think its probably a net-porn driven phenomena (or so my UQ cultural studies colleagues tell me).
Speaking of things oral (*warning: may contain self-aggrandisement*), I was once told by a lovely young lass that I gave head ‘like a girl’. Could there be a finer compliment?
Well, Kim, you’re welcome to oral sex from a ‘phenomenological and dialectical point of view’. Personally, I prefer….no, I won’t say it, but it has something to do with noises and tastes.
I’m sure you said the same to her.
No, I don’t think so, Lefty E – because they’re media studies types they tend to jump to that conclusion. That would tend to suggest that men were leading women down that track (or absence of landing strip) – being the big internet porn consumers. I don’t think that’s the case at all – a lot of men were quite surprised and shocked, I think when women started doing it. Reference – continuing complaints in the blokes’ pages of Cleo/Cosmo and anecdotal evidence.
Cultural studies tends to go back to its marxist origins – too reductionist and monocausal (except it’s not the economic this time that’s determinant in the last instance).
You’d need to do a seriously fine grained study – identifying the origins and disseminations of images and texts. I’m pretty much convinced it does – like a lot of the other things that are discussed in the post – go back to queer body aesthetics.
Oh, and yes, a fine compliment indeed!
Incidentally, men say the same thing about men giving them head – not quite the same, but you know what I mean – it seems that it takes one type of genitalia to really get what stimulates that type of genitalia. That’s why there’s never, or should never, be any embarrassment in asking or accepting guidance – from either sex – in opposite sex sexual contexts.
Good one, CL. I’ll pay that.
Hehe. Very good CL! Wish I’d thought of it.
C.L., and to think I thought you were, as Martial wrote:
Say three Hail Marys!
Anyway, these pretzels are making me thirsty!
Off to have a bath to perform self-grooming depilation tasks.
And then to bed.
Night all!
May the fields of your dreams be lush!
Kim, you should write journal articles.
Interesting that bi-men say the same.
C.L., perhaps you shouldn’t worry too much about *hmm* *a certain religion* and worry more that Kim and I are evidently the Last of the Romans – the last redoubt of a universal Latinity on which all the best of our glorious civilisational heritage rests!
And it’s come to this!
I too, will take, forthwith, to my bed!
Quae Nox Est!
The shaved/waxed look, Kim, is a sexaul fashion. Like all fashions they appear out of nowhere because that’s the point – fashion is when everybody does what everybody else is a doin’.
Lefty E’s point about the proliferation of the naked form on the net is the medium by which the fashion is spread.
Specifically this fashion is driven by the desire to sexually expose and the desire to sexually view. Once nudity became ubiquitous via the net, then the only way to gain priority attention by professional exposers was to split wider and wax more closely.
There will be a backlash however. As there always is – the fashion will disappear just as suddenly – but whether that is next year or in five nobody knows of course.
It’s a curious fashion only in that mainstream business can’t really make such a big buck out of it. Unlike say the mini-skirt.
ItÄôs a curious fashion only in that mainstream business canÄôt really make such a big buck out of it.
wbb, go down to your local beautician and check how much a Brazilian wax costs. Some gay boys I know now are getting permanent hair removal – round about $500 for your back for instance. As I understand it, a decent Brazilian will set you back $80 ish if you want it well done. And you want it well done because I’m told by female friends it’s not exactly painless.
Just ask any woman of our acquaintance how much she usually pays for a leg and bikini wax.
Most men wouldn’t have a clue. I ask!
So, this form of body shaping or grooming is eminently commodifiable.
And I agree with Kim – the internet porn explanation just doesn’t work for the reasons she identified. “Mainstream” porn was quite late to the trend – ie Playboy, Penthouse.
Porn is an inherently static and conservative visual form and a highly stereotyped and narrativised one – rather than being boundary pushing and innovative.
It’s also quite wrong to say that fashions appear out of nowhere. People have tracked their origins and their cultural bases – and the results can be extremely interesting.
So I disagree entirely with your comment. Just saying – in this “agreeathon”!
And on that note, I am off to bed now!
As there always is – the fashion will disappear just as suddenly – but whether that is next year or in five nobody knows of course.
That’s wrong as well. Ask anyone who works in fashion about the books showing what styles will be in come 2010. It’s largely preprogrammed in general outline – though with some room for manoeuvre. See also the phenomenon of spotters – people who are paid by US conglomerates to pick up on fashion trends on the street. William Gibson novelised this well in Pattern Recognition.
I actually found this out, and got interested, to start off with when I observed to someone who worked in fashion design how prescient the costumes in Strange Days (made in 1995) were in 2000 (the movie, of course, is set on 31/12/99). It was explained to me that nothing could have been easier. I did a bit of research, and incidentally discovered work in the sociology and anthropology of fashion – which is quite fascinating.
Like many other things, it works very far from what the model of a customer driven market would suggest. Only occasionally, as in 1996, in a negative way – the year that pastel green and orange jeans almost sent two large Australian jeans shop combines broke. However, the designers and marketers get smarter. Witness the fact that pastel pink jeans this season are the hotness for girls, and only available in upscale brands over $200-ish.
Jeans almost died in the late 90s for the youth market – and the companies reacted, and smartly. Now you can get people to buy jeans for $300-500 – at least to have one pair of same. Next time you see a pair of Marcs jeans – they’re $500+. The whole point is that people who know can spot them.
I could pick sass & bide from Lee jeans at 50 metres! See how useful sociology training is!
Dilapidorists are not what I meant by mainstream business. I meant to mean big business.
Mainstream fashion as everybody here attests pubic waxing is, is not boundary pushing either. Clearly to be hairy and young would be the daring thing these days.
Fashion is the essence of conservative – it is the following activity.
I don’t mean that there is no genesis of any particular fashion – my figure of speech was just to say they arrive very quickly. One day everybody’s shirt meets their waist – the next day it seems everybody’s shirt has shrunk a couple of inches.
Sexuality is not boundary pushing either. Pornography is part of sexuality – despite the inherently static and conservative attributes you nicely ascribe to it.
In fact the whole pubic hair discusion does not belong to this post. A “conservative-aesthetics” post would make a better home for it.
Myer, DJs both have waxing services, wbb.
In fact the whole pubic hair discusion does not belong to this post. A “conservative-aesthetics” post would make a better home for it.
No, because that’s missing the nuance that something that was radical (see also piercings) a decade ago has now been mainstreamed. So my question was – what’s radical now? Anything?
Yes – those created fahions are the norm and predictable by the insider.
Is why I initially proposed that waxing is unusual. Not driven by Big Fashion. I can’t imagine how Big Fashion will usher in the hirsuit return. Hence still, for mine, unpredictable.
I’d bet there won’t be a hirsute return. It’s gone on rather too long to be a fad, I think.
That’s why I think Kim is onto something with the idea of de-naturalising the body.
I’ve talked to a 21 year old woman who said “when did anyone not shave their pubes”? Not unrepresentative, I’d wager. This is how generational change works – when something hangs around long enough to seem natural.
Hence why crapping on to people about writing essays on typewriters just gets you incomprehension. Or not really grasping what it was like. Remember the liquid paper and the annoyance at having to type a whole new page again to edit? Because there have always been computers.
Do you think pubic waxing was ever radical – or a cross-over from the porn industry. From male porn consumer to girlfriend. (Sounds like AIDS, put like that.)
Or to guess at your response – it was a cross-over from radical ie gay culture to straight?
I bet there will be a hairy revival. Fashions are not analogous to tech improvements.
De-naturalising a very particualr part of the body remember. It’s normal sexual display behaviour.
Or piercings and tats. Quite out there even 10 years ago. Go to any uni campus for maybe the last 7 years and they’re pretty much ubiquitous among young women. It’s also when people take irreversible or difficult to reverse steps (ie permanent hair removal, tatts, cosmetic surgery for young people) that you know something has now crossed the cultural boundary of being “normal” – though obviously still affected by style, gender and class differences.
The total class reversal of the signification of tattoos in less than a decade is really quite amazing. It’s symptomatic of wider social and attitudinal change. Otherwise, things would not change so quickly. The one thing you should learn from a serious study of sociology and/or anthropology or history for that matter is things change much slower than we think. That’s why it’s so interesting to pick the new and enduring and then put it into a longer term context.
Or to guess at your response – it was a cross-over from radical ie gay culture to straight?
Yes, as I said in the post.
I’m thinking sociologically and you’re thinking in terms of sociobiology – ie “normal sexual display behaviour”. The latter only explains things at a very gross level of causation.
By the way, that point’s not speculation – it can be demonstrated. Which again is why I talked about Garber’s book as an artefact – a snapshot – of queer culture in the early 90s – and not for her actual argument (which is very worthwhile btw).
De-naturalising a very particualr part of the body remember
It has a flow on effect. There’s a lot of arm waxing around now among young women. And guys no longer have to come up with the “cycling excuse” for leg waxing. And waxing bum hair and pubes is a big market among young straight men now too.
Anyway, perhaps Kim and I should follow Lefty E’s suggestion and write a paper on this, and marshall the evidence as you can’t do with instant blog writing/commenting.
WTF? Were you so bored ce matin that you had to stoush with yourself, Mark? I think this topic deserves its own thread.
Personally, I’m on the hairy side of the issue, and I’m very disappointed that the yoof of today can’t leave well enough alone. Is that conservative enough to be transgressive these days?
BTW, what was the ruling on the sesquicentennial thread nomenclature? Sheil(a), von Mises, wha’?
“Cultural studies tends to go back to its marxist origins – too reductionist and monocausal (except itÄôs not the economic this time thatÄôs determinant in the last instance).”
Kim please don’t confuse “cultural studies” with “media studies”. Feminist film theory (eg the scopophilic gaze of the Laura Mulvey acolytes) is actually pretty marginal in film theory circles. ‘Gentlemen prefer blondes’ is practically the disproof of those assertions.
Cultural studies people would probably say “Laura who?”.
Did I ever tell anyone of the time I was in a surry hills pub and my mate introduced me to this post-grad girl he knew from art college (COFA). I asked, “What do you do?”. She said she was, and I quote, “A film theorist”. Also she was interested in the French New Wave. Knowing this territory a little because my wife was writing her thesis so she could be one (a film theorist) I tried to get engage her in a basic conversation about … Andre Bazin and Truffaut. She gave me a blank look. I was amazed that anyone describing themselves as a “film theorist” hadn’t heard of the “father of the French new wave”, and godfather of film theory. But that cultural studies for you.
ps. as i have a degree in cultural studies, from the grand old lady of all the pomo cult.studs departments (UTS). also engineering. so i’m allowed to laugh at either.
Wbb; pubic waxing to the brazilian degree became integral when low low rise jeans became popular. We’ve all see the look I’m talking about.
Also, those teeny swimmers all the girls wear in summer, also require a degree of pubic waxing/shaving. So while not a huge concern, there’s definitely a fashion-related element.
Also, Rex, with the whole ‘film is constructed for the male gaze’, Laura Mulvey scopophilia thing, I reckon it’s a pretty spot on. In what ways does ‘gentlemen prefer blondes’ discount the basic premise that the male viewer is the default position? I seem to remember the eroticisation of Ms. Monroe in that film fits in pretty well with the whole idea.
Sure, it’s only one way of approaching a film but it can be a useful concept to have in the theoretical toolbox…
Fyodor, I think we decided it was de Beauvoir.
De Beauvoir? I missed that memo. Alors, puis-je dire que la coiffure Bresilienne est preferee par les beaux voyeurs?
Lefty,
“… the West has just about bored itself into a coma with its own spectacles. TheyÄôre just not spectacular any more.”
# Well, I don’t think the things that were billed as ‘spectacles’ in the last ten years have been in anyway spectacular.
And, when something truly newsworthy does occur the reaction is some confection that then slips into apathy. I think it’s a combination of several things including how news is now infotainment; the moronic slavish devotion to fame and (even worse) pseudofame [ala Big Brother, Dancing with the Stars]; general laziness and complacency; a feeling of a lack of power/control in the individual.
An umbrella that I see hanging over the whole is this bizarre institution that has arisen in which it is important to have an opinion on everything NO MATTER how ignorant you actually are. This whole idea that ‘every opinion is valid’ drives me spare. [chuck in the complete lack of personal responsibility that people are increasingly demanding as a right and we've got a right old mess.] Giving the people what they want is only a problem when the people are too, for want of a better word, stupid to come up with good things to want.
This can’t but lead to a complete divorce from reality such that there is no perspective at all. I have my meta-theory as to what the War on Terror actually is, and pretty much it’s a product of people’s laziness.
It’s not as if it’s hard to find something interesting and worthwhile to put on TV!
There is no point catering to the all too numerous cud-chewers of our society, but that is what has happened. All this creates is an increasingly inward looking, stagnant and stupid society.
Irant’s wonderful posts about the politicisation of science can be thrown into the mix too.
We need a revolution of the mind – mostly just to remind people that they actually have one.
I’d like to find the people who convince the population that they just need to buy this commodified package called Life, and do very bad things to them.
People are meant to be inspired and then, in turn, inspire others! That’s why people rock.
The way that people are conditioned to not recognise the truely spectacular is horrifying.
Not to get even more carried away but sometimes I sleep without the alfoil beanie on and just will the aliens to take me away.
“I loved LeunigÄôs cartoon of the sad man on a toilet, being observed by the nation a la BB. Captured the growth of an aimless, aspiritual form of cultural narcissism very well.”
# Much as I loathe Leunig, this is a good one.
I think the rise of the g-string and thong made more waxing necessary as it increased the apparent width of the bikini line. Not necessarily a problem with underwear, but with swimwear something you want to be aware of.
Bring back Nanna knickers!
“Also, Rex, with the whole ‘film is constructed for the male gazeÄô, Laura Mulvey scopophilia thing, I reckon itÄôs a pretty spot on. In what ways does ‘gentlemen prefer blondesÄô discount the basic premise that the male viewer is the default position? I seem to remember the eroticisation of Ms. Monroe in that film fits in pretty well with the whole idea. ”
You are joking Kate. Laura Mulvey is just plain wrong. It’s crap and most people who are film theorists will tell you it’s crap – even those undertaking feminist film criticism. It pays no attention to the idea of “reception studies” and basically totalises the viewer into a single position and ideological viewpoint. Which is not at all connected with reality, in my view. People are not a viewing monolith.
In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell own the space they are in – when they are “put on display” for men they are not passive objects of the active male gaze but actually active actors in a space of their own making. View the court room scene, for example. The men recoil. The last scene with Munroe, where she reveals a considered engagement with the rules of matrimony on her own terms.
Okay Rex! I’m backing away from the feminist film theory reader, now, and my hands are in the air…
(Note to self: don’t spout off on stuff I haven’t had anything to do with since second year uni.)
Dear me, Ive suddenly become Keating. The gravatar we had to have.
Do you gutless spivs think gravatar choice can impact on blogstyle? I’m not running a seminar for dullards here, you know. Intellectual rust-buckets.
Harry – that post was long, but well worth reading, … Ill respond once Ive reordered Lord Byron – to whom one had become accustomed – and had some dinner.
Scumbags.
Perfumed gigolos.
“The way that people are conditioned to not recognise the truely spectacular is horrifying.”
Harry is channeling Guy Debord tonight, methinks.
On Richard Carleton. Magic stuff.
“You (Richard Carleton) had an important place in Australian society on the ABC and you gave it up to be a pop star…with a big cheque…and now you’re on to this sort of stuff. That shows what a 24 carat pissant you are, Richard, that’s for sure”
Lefty E you’ve seen the Keating insults page no doubt? One of my favorites.
Seen it Rex? I practically live in it.
http://www.webcity.com.au/keating/
On Fund Managers:
“It must get right up their nose, quaffing down the red wine at these fashionable eateries in Bent Street and Collins Street, with the Prime Minister calling them donkeys – but donkeys they are.”
No, I agree with Harry. An enormous amount of discursive work had to go into seeing s11 as an event. Why is po/mo out of style now? History has returned. Note also – Fukuyama’s dissent from the Iraq War and the project of “spreading freedom and democracy”.
After the Clinton/globalisation/end of history years, we were too well distracted by Panem et Circenses. Hence, Bush didn’t even dare to instantiate war – in the sense of real sacrifice. Too much po/mo you’re all happy with your soma non-history in the past decade…
Mark, I didn’t intend that comment as disagreeing with Harry. Just a little quip.
Postmodernism has nothing to do with it. Guy Debord is not a postmodernist. He might say something to the effect that the postmodernism is the theory of the Spectacle by the Spectacle.
The “spectacle” in situationist theory not being just the media, remember. It is the totality of everyday existence.
And as a student of Debord’s writing from before the time he became a cause celebre in the academy, I can assure you that no situationist worth their salt would ever, I mean ever, celebrate “the end of history”. Something Debord wrote about long before Fukayama appeared on the scene with his nonsensical ravings.
The end of history and the return to cyclical time is a natural state of the “spectacular commodity economy”; It is, It was, It always will be. I don’t see particularly that September 11 changed any of that. Probably the terrorists represent an even more concentrated form of the Spectacle itself, than even the Soviets. The ‘diffuse’ form of western society is far more powerful and persuasive, although in recent years the net effect is that is has become closer to the old Soviet model, with secret policemen on the television condemning various thought crimes.
I know that sounds very clumsy, too much so, I’m trying to write quickly I’ve got to get out the door to work my little cog in the big machine.
“Guy Debord”
Thanks Rex, something else to add to my reading list.
“I donÄôt see particularly that September 11 changed any of that.”
yes, I agree. September 11 is the largest media Red herring we have seen in a long time – and everyone is falling for it, or taking advantage of it.
September 11 is a brand now.
Harry, start with “The Society Of The Spectacle” by Guy Debord.
Rex, sorry if I misunderstood. In turn, I wasn’t trying to say that Debord was po/mo. I’ve read him, and he’s well worth the trouble.