Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Coming Unwrapped
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The ASBO Chorus
Lying awake at 6am, having been wrenched from happy dreams by the dawn chorus, I decided – No, I'll be precise here. Staggering around in a sleep-deprived daze the next day, mind wandering at random, I decided the following. The dawn chorus is the equivalent of a night club. The attendees kick up a hell of a racket at anti-social hours in the hope of copulating.
I know what people say about bird song. I agree with them too. Bird song can be sublime, heavenly, enchanting. Nonetheless, it is all about bonking. Human tunes can be sublime, heavenly and enchanting too, and most of them are also to do with bonking. I've often wondered why a great majority of our songs are obsessed with love and the attending actions. Perhaps we are unconsciously just mimicking the birds.
We do so in very few other fields. It is frequently said that today's society is highly sexualised. Perhaps compared to the Victorian era; but next to the animal kingdom it is a wet Sunday in Grimsby. And the most debauched, libidinous societies in history cannot match up to, say, the average duck pond. Animals are motivated by two things only: food and sex. That's pretty much it. When they have eaten they want to breed. When they're not eating or breeding they're stopping others humping 'their' partners. They devise elaborate territorial patterns, intricate feathers or furs and, of course, beautiful songs – and it's all about sex. Whereas we have denigrated and marginalised it. A raft of new desires have been created. Sex is either shut into private compartments or defined as perverse.
I quite like the dawn chorus, when the damn thing isn't waking me at some ungodly time. (Dawn, I suppose). But it's amusing how a breed so prudish about sex has treated this shameless display of libido. It's seen as heavenly and put in the same twee category as a sunset or a teardrop. In fact it's a bunch of blokes sat in a hedge bellowing “Shag me! I'm great!” If humans tried it, the police would scoop them up quicker than you can say “Anti-social behaviour order.”
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Name, Rank and Serial Number
I learned one interesting thing from the trial of Keith Owen, phoney egg retailer. Owen has just been convicted for what must be a very tempting crime. He sold eggs to supermarkets claiming they came from free range hens eating proper grain. In fact, of course, they were from battery creatures gorging chemicals. Owen was given three years in prison and forced to return his £3m profits. What I didn't learn, incidentally, was to whom he gave the money. The government, most likely. the supermarkets possibly. Almost certainly not the customers who paid mark-up prices for his eggs believing the originators bore the fripperies, like feathers and beaks, denied to caged hens.
But what I did learn was how the authorities try to prevent scams like Owen's. Every single egg in Britain is apparently stamped with a unique serial number. Every single egg. And if you have the right databases you can track down the farm where each was laid, the conditions, possibly even the actual mother. Looking at the three eggs left in my fridge, the numbers on two are too smudged to be legible. But here we are on the third: 1UK13714-B/B 18Mar. So with a few phone calls I might be able to find out which chicken squeezed this out of her nether regions.
I'm almost tempted to try. To write a letter of thanks, perhaps, if the egg is particularly good. Or one of complaint if it has annoying features like a thick inner skin, pointing out that the art of cooking eggs is a precise one and the slightest deviation can be disastrous. Maybe, though, I should be apologising to the poor hen, free range though she is. After all, when she laid this egg she must have thought she was giving birth to a son or daughter, the next in the new generation of her proud family. When in fact she was just supplying me with lunch. Not even that: part of a lunch. Together with another thwarted attempt at chicken procreation and some noodles, whose own hopes and dreams are unknown.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
To London To See The Queen
Well, not exactly. To see my friend Cara actually, who may or may not enjoy being called a queen. And certainly not to see Queen: The Musical, though I enjoyed the bombastic Freddie Mercury statue which some lunatic has erected over the theatre doors. I had a very good day out, appreciating as ever London's beauties and architectural vainglory. A few points stuck out:
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Venus & Olympia
The nude has a long history in Western art. Rampant in ancient Greek and Roman times, it resurfaced in the late fifteenth century. This is fairly surprising considering the restrictions of society at the time. Women's bodies especially were rigidly controlled by religious doctrine. Displaying an ounce more of flesh than was permitted could bring severe punishment. Sex and nudity might have flourished in the unregulated morass of folk tales and ballads. Paintings, though, were censored and often directly commissioned by the church. Priests could condemn a painting for the crime of depicting Biblical characters as real people. (As if believing that anyone in the Bible could actually exist). Yet look what they permitted. The bush, the willy, the whole full-frontal panorama which today would bring immediate banishment to the late-night schedules. There were rules, of course. The nude had to be young, pleasing to the eye. Most of all, she (and it was usually a she) had to be distant. Not contemporary, certainly not Biblical. The reappearance of the nude was part of the Renaissance and she was supposed to remain in the fantasy world of Greek and Roman legends.
The history of the nude is not entirely honerable. The best painters could make her an immediate and plausible figures, allowing the mythical settings to fade into irrelevance. The increasing perfection of the portraits and the meticulous attention to detail was linked to the Renaissance interest in biology. And there is a sensuousness in some works which empowers rather than degrades the subjects. Yet the nude is still invariably part of the old male creator-female formula, with all the corresponding power relations. Rather a lot of artists have taken advantage. A great many nude paintings – and the oeuvre of William Etty springs to mind here – are basically porn. Not always soft porn either. The arch façade of the nude has been used to excuse rape (those unfortunate Sabine women in many works), paedophilia (some of Balthus' dodgier moments) mutilation and snuff. At its crudest, the genre was a painter hiring a local prostitute to pose as Diana and boinking her in the studio afterwards.
Titian may have hired a prostitute too and may even have boinked her. Otherwise, though, his Venus of Urbino is unimpeachable. The mythological title is an irrelevance given to please the censors. This is simply a vivid study of a beautiful young woman. His Venus reclines on a couch, every part of her body a brilliant portrayal of comfort. Her legs cross easily, her heads leans back towards the pillow and her golden hair splays across her shoulders, offsetting her soft pink skin. In the background an older woman is watching a girl rummaging in a chest. An ordinary domestic scene, and its mundaneness emphasises the natural sense of Venus' pose. She has simply dressed as she chose and sees no reason to be embarrassed when we stare in.
Yet the eroticism of the painting can't be denied either. Make what you will of the expression on her placid face – the faintest of smiles, possibly a hint of an invitation? Regardless, our gaze is drawn towards her left hand. On the surface she is just discreetly covering up her private parts. Her fingers are curling inwards, however. Maybe, just maybe, the Venus is starting to masturbate herself. This hint, lying in almost the very centre of the painting, epitomises the whole feel of the work. It is a masterpiece of subtle sensuality; a celebration of a woman perfectly in control of her body, able to present it without humiliating either herself or the viewer. The next two nudes I came across as I flicked through my art books – Francois Boucher's Miss Louise O'Murphy, a courtesan presenting her fat arse for the taking, and Corregio's Jupiter and Io, a woman being raped by a cloud, for God's sake – confirmed how rare a truly erotic nude is.
And look how she has been painted. Her body is rather scrawny, her pose awkward, her skin pallid and unhealthy. Her eyes are empty and dead. None of the tricks used to portray the third dimension are employed here. She is flat and unnatural, barely more than a blob of paint. In fact, nothing at all has been done to give Olympia beauty, none of the schemes which normally wrap the nude with a spurious respectability. If her vacant expression says anything at all it is: “Tits! That's what you came for, isn't it? Well, here they are. Tits!” There they are, as erotic as a torn-out page of 'Jugs' magazine stuck to a wet pavement in January.
We find it hard now to understand the controversy which Olympia evoked, all the caricatures and criticisms and pure hatred. It wasn't because Olympia was a bare body. It was because she was nothing else. As Gilles Neret said in his excellent book, “Olympia was not a nude; she was naked.” Manet blatantly broke the rules for the nude. Worst than that, he was mocking them. In giving his prostitute the name of a goddess and the pose of a Old Master's beauty, he was implying that all nudes were nothing better than his. Simple porn, the product and satisfaction of male lust. If I was a member of the Royal Salon I would have been outraged too.
Nudes still exist in art today. Thankfully, they very rarely pose as nymphs or goddesses; and they don't have to be Beauty personified. Their bodies have been stretched, distorted, made almost demonic (most memorably in Picasso's Three Dancers). And other women other than the young and perfect are depicted. The most famous in recent years is Lucien Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, an overweight middle-aged woman presenting herself. The Impressionists dramatically widened the possibilities of art. Manet was their leader; and though Olympia is hardly an Impressionist painting, it has all the movement's daring and invention. With a single painting Manet overturned a centuries-old tradition. Flat, awkward Olympia became the future. For all her beauty, the Venus of Urbino belongs to a remote past.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
What Nick Thinks
Nice to see that our mutual friend, Nick Griffin, will be attending the Copenhagen conference. Not to help save the world, of course. The BNP leader denies that it needs saving. The evidence for climate change, he states, “is somewhat dodgy.” It is an argument also taken by another noted humanitarian, George W Bush. Never mind that by now the scientific evidence for the devastating impact of carbon burning, deforestation, water, ground and air pollution and the rest of the gang is pretty incontrovertible. If a single report asserts otherwise then certain people can challenge the science. As if any yahoo cannot do a dubious study, pull out some random numbers and conclude anything in a report. Griffin's party claims that his presence at Copenhagen will show the BNP “is not only interested in race and immigration.” Well, it will certainly do that. Griffin is apparently not only wrong about race and immigration. He is wrong about the environment too.
In fact, I'd like to know what he believes about everything. The BNP should publish a vast database of his views on their ever-entertaining website. What Nick Thinks. After all, in this world of complex moral issues and contrasting beliefs it is often hard to make up one's mind about issues. This could help. See What Nick Thinks – be it about the Iranian nuclear program, the Schleswig-Holstein dispute or the eternal black socks v. white socks debate. Then take the diametrically opposing stance and there's a very good chance you will be right.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Enough To Make A Lionheart Laugh
It makes me wonder how often humour was used as a weapon in warfare. Especially medieval warfare, which was somewhat less disciplined. When we laugh, after all, we are not entirely in command of our bodies. Sometimes we are brought giggling to a virtual collapse. And soldiers often have a fairly basic sense of humour. Were there cases of red noses being worn, fake breasts or (aptly for the times) foam arrows through the head? Did regiments march into battle chanting “The boy stood on the burning deck, His pockets full of crackers...”? Perhaps Richard's slayer intended using his utensil as weapon as well as shield in a full comic routine. There is surely nothing more hysterical than the sight of a soldier scaling a castle wall and being whopped over the head by a frying pan. It could have brought the whole army to its knees.
After the siege succeeded, the crossbowman was executed. I don't know if it happened in suitably ironic manner; egg whisks and wooden spoons being inserted in various orifices, that sort of thing. Probably better that we don't know.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Tide Of History
Canute's intention was supposedly to prove a point to his overly sycophantic courtiers. He was then one of the most powerful men in the world. Not only had he united England, not an easy task in the eleventh century, he had welded it to Norway, Denmark and part of Sweden to build an impressive northern empire. His courtiers were very aware of this and their flattery was grating on Canute's nerves. After all, even he was still controlled by higher powers. God was God and he, Canute, was still just a man. So stop mixing us up, Aelthwan of Glostobchick and the rest of you.
What Canute inadvertently demonstrated was that he was also subject to another force. This is the capricious beast of popular history. Because while we have all heard the story of Canute and the waves, we don't always remember that he knew what he was doing. The version that springs first into the mind is that Canute the Great really did believe he controlled the sea. He got an unpleasant shock when the tide disobeyed him. And so he is relegated into the same zany category as the Roman Emperor Caligula, who took an army to the English Channel, ordered them to what the water with their swords for a while and declared himself Conqueror of Neptune.
We like to cut them down to size, these great figures of the past. Very often the most effective way is to take a single damning fact and wrap it around them like a shroud. Alfred burnt the cakes; Catherine the Great shagged a horse; George III was off his head; Victoria had a face like a slapped arse; and so on. Sometimes it can be a simple as a name. Alfonso the Slobberer could have united or conquered as much as he wanted but that isn't going to be the vision conjured up. Said 'facts' might be exaggerated, distorted or simply invented but that doesn't matter. Proper historians can disprove them over and over again but the stories remain with us. The process might be illogical but it is probably healthy. Disrespect or past rulers encourages irreverence towards current ones; something which cannot happen enough. And we see how they are already being distorted and reduced. John Major stood on a soap box and nobbed Edwina Curry (though not simultaneously); Bill Clinton let That Woman do Those Things to him; George W Bush talked like an intoxicated monkey; Tony Blair just grinned and grinned and grinned. These are the images which our children will learn, unless something more lurid is found. Blair fretted over his legacy in the last years of his rule. Someone should have told him: it's out of your control, Tone.
Canute may not have gone to Bosham at all. It could have happened at Southampton. Or, most likely, not at all. Perhaps he got to the beach, found it was already high tide and just said what would have happened if he tried bossing it around. Or the whole thing could have been fabricated. Possibly by a courtier asserting his king's wisdom; thus continuing the flattery which the parable was intended to banish. It really doesn't matter. Nor, in the end, does the fact that we remember it backwards. Because it just makes a better story, a mad king getting his come-comeuppance; rather than a smart-arse king doing the not-exactly-difficult trick of outwitting his courtiers.