Monthly Archives: February 2007

I can’t remember how I happened (oh yes, now I do, search terms used matrist+patrist, see my previous post on the work of Gordon Rattray Taylor) but I found this interesting text by the recently deceased Robert Anton Wilson on the relationship between James Joyce and Eastern philosophy. Some excerpts:

Throughout the long day of Ulysses the thoughts of Stephen Dedalus and Mr. Bloom repeatedly return to the East; and this is not without reason. Ulysses is so profoundly Oriental in mood and conception that Carl Jung has recommended it as a new Bible for the white race. Molly Bloom’s fervent “Yes” mirrors the author’s acceptance of life in its entirety – an acceptance that transcends the dualisms of light and dark, good and evil, beautiful and sordid.

…

Some Sinologists trace this “Eternal Female” back to a Chinese “Urmutter” myth of pre-Chou times, but Lao-Tse was far beyond primitive mythology. He was using this myth as a pointer, to indicate the values that must have been in the society which created the myth. The distinction between Patrist and Matrist cultures made in such books as Ian Suttie’s The Origins of Love and Hate and G. Rattray Taylor’s Sex in History (not to mention Robert Graves’ The White Goddess ) places the Taoists as representatives of a Matrist social-ethical system living in Confucian Patrist China. —cached source

Molly Bloom’s fervent “Yes” from her famous soliloquy:

“…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. “

For the Italian aesthetician Benedetto Croce

Under construction: trying to align some random thoughts regarding genre theory and how much difference and repetition we need in our lives.

“For the Italian aesthetician Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), an artistic work was always unique and there could be no artistic genres.” quotes Daniel Chandler in his excellent An Introduction to Genre Theory. I’ve always opposed this take on genre theory because I have a hard time with modernist concepts such as authenticity, the cult of originality, the great man theory and the resistance of things to be generalized. I like generalizations. I am a lumper, more than a splitter.

Last week however, I went through a small film experience that was analogous to blind wine tasting, which re-balanced my perception of genre theory. I saw the trailer to David Lynch’s new film INLAND EMPIRE without expecting it because I was in a mainstream cinema. As I thought to myself …. this is something special, I came to realize that this was Lynch. And it dawned on me that Lynch’s work does not belong to a genre but is unique or sui generis (of its own kind).

Other examples of genre-defying artists abound: take someone like mannerist painter Arcimboldo, reggae musician Lee Perry, novelist Céline, filmmaker Jacques Tati and most if not all eccentric artists.

Quotes sustaining the lumper view:

“It can be argued that all novels, no matter how “literary”, also fall within the bounds of one or more genres. Thus Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a romance; Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a psychological thriller; and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a coming-of-age story. These novels would usually be stocked in the general or possibly the classics section of a bookstore. Indeed, many works now regarded as literary classics were originally written as genre novels.”

Quotes sustaining the splitter view:

“There is no great work of art which does not convey a new message to humanity; there is no great artist who fails in this respect. This is the code of honor of all the great in art, and consequently in all great works of the great we will find that newness which never perishes, whether it be of Josquin des Pres, of Bach or Haydn, or of any other great master. Because: Art means New Art” — Arnold Schoenberg

So I’m thinking about this interplay between genre on the one hand and uniqueness on the other. Has David Lynch’s uniqueness inspired a new genre or will his style of filmmaking die with him? What can be said about the cinema of Lynch? Where does one draw the line between the history of art and the sociology of art? Is there any way to develop a genre theory which includes both strains?

I thought of the concepts used by Ken Wilber (derived from Koestler) holon and holarchy and the concepts used by Deleuze difference and repetition. Also, Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance and the species problem, an analogy from biology ……………..

Banana woman and a gentle devil

Banana Woman

A Kind Devil

Both works by Lucio Bubacco (b. 1957) , an Italian Murano glass artist. His sensual work is steeped in mythology and is erotically flavoured. A distinct series of pieces has slight sadomasochistic iconography. I saw his work today at the Alfabetagaga gallery here in Antwerp. One more link before I go. I love wikis and I love eroticism. Someone’s started a wiki (based on MediaWiki, a CMS I’m looking into for future Jahsonic developments) dedicated to big breasts. The site is called Boobpedia and is nsfw. A clear distinction is made between natural and fake breasts.

Dian Hanson on the big-breast lover:

There’s something very lovable about the big-breast lover. They tend to be open, outgoing, physical, accepting of the flaws of women, happy with the functioning female body. They like the body that gets pregnant. They like the body that gives birth. They like the body that lactates. There wasn’t the picky demand for perfection. They tended to be more rural men. They tended to live in the red states rather than the blue states. They were often slightly less educated. They were the kind of guys who in their personal ads would say, “Fats welcomed! All ages okay!” They loved mom. –Dian Hanson (2005)

Also today on Radio Centraal, Antwerp’s non-commercial independent radio station, a show by Pierre Elitair on the mid eighties revival of mid sixties garage rock with bands such the Swedish Nomads (‘The Way you Touch my Hand’), the Fuzztones, the Belgian Paranoiacs and his favourite: The Lyres (‘I want to help you Ann’).

Groping each other in a car

After treating us to a review [nsfw] of Japanese cult film The Bedroom (Hisayasu Sato, 1992), Mike now turns our attention to the cult classic of the pink film era The Embryo Hunts in Secret. It would make an ideal double bill with Blind Beast.

Mike says:

“The film opens with a man and woman passionately groping each other in a car; outside, it is pouring down rain. The man grabs for the woman’s sex, but she denies him the pleasure, insisting that they go inside. The man takes the woman to his apartment. It turns out that the man is the owner of a department store where Yuka, the woman, works in the men’s clothing department as a sale girl. The two know little about each other, other than what is knowable from an outsider perspective; they know their power relations in the business, and they know they are attracted to each other. “

See also Youtube clip of Blind Beast vs Killer Dwarf by Teruo Ishii and this German trailer of the unforgettable 1988 Tetsuo.

Lastly, this looks surreal, from a film that is not as good as the poster shown below:

The Last Supper (2005) – Osamu Fukutani

More films seen last week: Brice de Nice, an ejoyable silly French comedy; Le Dîner de cons, a very funny and dark French comedy; Pan’s Labyrinth, a diabolical version of Alice in Wonderland and a tribute to the fantastique and the magnificent trailer for David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE. Curious about: Terry Gilliam’s Tideland and Rampo Noir. Of the last a picture:

Rampo Noir

Why Bush won

Sex in history (1954) – Gordon Rattray Taylor [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

[About] 50 years ago, a book was published which accurately predicted the results of the 2004 [North American] election. No, this wasn’t a book of psychic predictions. It was a book called “Sex in History” by Gordon Rattray Taylor, a sociologist. In this book, he talked about how societies swing back and forth between two tendencies, each of which places particular prominence on one of the genders. The patrist side is the ascendant male, and the matrist side is more focused on the female. Comparing characteristics of the two cultural tendencies looks almost exactly like a comparison of the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties.

Patrist	Matrist
Restrictive attitude to sex	Permissive attitude to sex
Limitation of freedom for women	Freedom for women
Women seen as inferior, sinful	Women accorded high status
Chastity more valued than welfare	Welfare more valued than chastity.
Politically authoritarian	Politically egalitarian
Conservative: against innovation	Progressive: revolutionary
Distrust of research, enquiry	No distrust of research
Inhibition, fear of spontaneity	Spontaneity: exhibition
Deep fear of homosexuality	Deep fear of incest
Sex differences maximised	Sex differences minimised
Asceticism, fear of pleasure	Hedonism, pleasure welcomed
Father religion eg. “Thou shall not break the Ten Commandments or you will burn in hell”	Mother religion eg. “God is all loving, all forgiving and all understanding”

HMMM… I WONDER WHICH ONE OF THESE WON THE ELECTION…?

Seriously though. This is probably the single-most accurate model to explain why Bush won. It fits in precisely with what I wrote yesterday about how Bush’s people tapped into the fear of the average male that their cultural importance was at risk.

Keywords in contemporary culture which denote matrist values are, “feminism,” “metrosexual,” and “equal rights”. Keywords which currently denote a more Patrist attitude are “family values,” “traditional values,” “fundamentalism”. —Pop Occulture

Hippies, modsters and other long haired youngsters

Sourced here is a cover of Dutch underground magazine Hitweek, depicting Frank Zappa. Of which Dr. Vinyl says:

Legendary Dutch underground music magazine. The first year was only available in Amsterdam ( 1965-1966) but the later issues also in other big Dutch cities. The was THE magazine for hippies, modsters and other long haired youngsters. Not like commercial magazines such as Muziek Expres or Muziek Parade HITWEEK was the magazine were you could find articles and pictures of obscure US, UK and Dutch bands such as THE OUTSIDERS, THE PINK FLOYD, Q65, THE CREATION, LAZY BONES, THE MOTHERS, VELVET UNDERGROUND + many many more. HITWEEK was also famous because of the artwork , especially the years 1967-1969 had GREAT psychedelic drawings and pictures. HITWEEK can be compared to the UK underground magazine IT!

The magazine’s editor was Willem De Ridder, who is connected to Jim Haynes, the Dutch Provos, the Fluxus art movement, Suck magazine and the whole late of sixties underground/counterculture Europe.

Do not confuse De Ridder with Bernard Willem Holtrop of Hara Kiri magazine.

The fate of a waiter

Waiter (2006) – Alex van Warmerdam

A new film by Alex van Warmerdam is something to look forward to, Warmerdam is the only Dutch language filmmaker whose work I follow closely.

Annet Malherbe in Abel

One of his earlier features, Abel (1986), is an underrated — criminally as epithet is wholly in its place here — film that deserves to be seen by a wider audience. Maybe a Hollywood remake?

Duration is that which decomposes

Via Methods and Black Squares comes this lovely multimedia poem by Deleuze who states:

“Who introduced duration to the novel before cinema? It was Flaubert with Mme Bovary.”

Gilles Deleuze, photo credit unidentified

La durée c’est ce qui se décompose

Ha!
La durée c’est une
défection . La durée c’est,
tomber en poussierrrrrrrrrrr.
Oui, oui.
C’est Flaubert. C’est Flaubert.
Et. Et.
Si ça dure, ça se décompose.
[silence]
Ce n’est pas du tout Bergsonien.

Muybridge’s Complete Human and Animal Locomotion

Sadness in the corporate world

Dadanoias reports on a film by personal fave Gaspar Noé (Irréversible and I Stand Alone and most recently Destricted), starring Eva Herzigova; here are more clips from a site dedicated to the work and person of Noé. Dadanoias got the clip via a blog she follows, which is called The Stream Monkey; it has some very edgy posts, just have a look at this, called Sadness in the corporate world.

In case you are wondering who this Eva Herzigova girl is, here is her Google gallery. Eva has apparently acted in two films I am curious about: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Modigliani.

Again via Stream Monkey, Dark Side Hotel this series of very nice photographs, of which this one is the most erotic.

A terrifying, fabricated documentary

The War Game (1965) – Peter Watkins [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

“A terrifying, fabricated documentary records the horrors of a future atomic war in the most painstaking, sickening detail. Photographed in London, it shows the flash bums and firestorms, the impossibility of defence, the destruction of all life. Produced by the BBC, the film was promptly banned and became world-famous and rarely seen.” —Amos Vogel, 1974

Phinn has just published a post on this film with links to the film on Youtube. I like the category pseudo-documentary –also called mockumentaries or quasi-documentaries — to which also belong such diverse genres as white coaters and cinéma vérité. Girish recently did a post on them, but this category was not included in it.

From Phinn:

The War Game Part 1 (of 5)