Monthly Archives: June 2007

John Zorn plays his favourite records

John Zorn plays his favourite records via dmtls

The thing I like to find out most about my favourite artists is who influenced them. Show me your bookcase/record case/video library and I’ll tell you who you are!

A bit about Zorn at Art and Popular Culture.

The originating broadcast is NYC FM, c. a. 1992.

The tracklisting is Mauricio Kagel, Napalm Death, James Blood Ulmer, Hasil Adkins, Juan Garcia Esquivel, Roland Kirk, Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, Husker Du, Die Kreuzen, Naked City, Indian Karnatic Jazz (directed by T.K. Ramamurthi), Funkadelic, Beach Boys, Ennio Morricone, John Zorn, Lenny Tristano, very similar to the one found here.

This is the hippest hour of music I’ve’ heard in a long time.

“These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!”

I Spit On Your Grave (1959) – Michel Gast

On the morning of this date in 1959, Boris Vian was at the Cinema Marbeuf in Paris for the screening of the film version (see picture above) of his controversial “Vernon Sullivan” novel, I Spit On Your Graves. He had already fought with the producers over their interpretation of his work and he publicly denounced the film stating that he wished to have his name removed from the credits. A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: “These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!” He then collapsed into his seat and died of a heart attack en route to the hospital.

Background:

J’irai cracher sur vos tombes (Eng: I Spit On Your Graves) is a 1946 French language novel by Boris Vian written under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. It was adapted to film by Michel Gast in 1959. Radley Metzger bought the American the rights to this film and distributed it there from 1963 onwards. Miscegenation, murder and revenge are the themes of this French crime drama set in the American south.

Plot

The story, like the other stories that Vian wrote under the “Sullivan” moniker, is set in the American South and describes the difficulties African Americans face in their daily lives with “whites”. In this novel, Lee Anderson, a light-skinned African-American, leaves his native town after his brother was lynched and hanged because he was in love with a white woman. Once arrived in this other city, Lee becomes librarian and fraternizes with the local youngsters who crave for alcohol and sex. His goal is to avenge his brother.

Different in style from other Vian novels, this story is more violent, rawer and most representative of the “Sullivan” series, in which Vian denounces the atmosphere of racism and the precarious situation of African Americans’ living conditions in the American South.

Shortly after its publication (in 1949) the novel was banned because it was perceived as pornographic and immoral; Vian himself was convicted of “outrage aux bonnes mœurs” [2] a French phrase meaning outrage to public morality or “an insult to public decency. (see Censorship in France) There was a 1947 illustrated version by Jean Boullet. The novel also exists in a bowlderized version.

I’ve previously written about Vian here.

Carnivalesque damsels

Apparently, Michel Houellebecq is to be found behind the camera these days. He is busy with the film adaptation of Platform (or is it Possiblity of an Island?). Some stills can be found on the website of Fernando Arrabal. Scarcely clad body-painted carnivalesque damsels draw the immediate attention. It has been rumored that Rem Koolhaas would design the decors. Fernando Arrabal is prominently present. –via De Papieren Man

A phantasmal group of huntsmen

The wild hunt (1872) by Peter Nicolai Arbo

The Wild Hunt was a folk myth prevalent in former times across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground, or just above it. It is often a way to explain thunderstorms.

The devil destroyed all young baobabs

Baobab is the common name of a tree, native to Madagascar, mainland Africa and Australia. The baobab is occasionally known as the devil tree, from African folklore which has it that the devil was mad at the tree because he got stuck in its branches, pulled it out and planted it upside down, making the branches the roots and vice versa. To make sure no future baobab trees would grow, the devil destroyed all young baobabs, that is why there are only fully grown baobabs. The Devil Tree is also the name of a novel by Jerzy Kosinski which I just finished reading and liked a lot. It’s the story of a ‘poor little rich kid’ who travels, goes in group therapy, is initiated into ‘the concern’ (its mysticism reminded me of Iain Banks‘ The Business). This revenge tale is the male equivalent of Fear of Flying (without the literary references). Both were published in 1973 and reflect the American zeitgeist. There is a fine review by Mary Ellin Barrett, Cosmopolitan.

Also, don’t miss Her Private Devil, the tale of the love affair between Kosinski and Laurie Steiber as told by Steiber over at nymag.

The power to unlock any door

Hand of Glory, image sourced here

The Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged, often specified as being the left (Latin: sinister) hand, or else, if the man were hanged for murder, the hand that “did the deed.”

According to old European beliefs, a candle made of the fat from a malefactor who died on the gallows, virgin wax, and Lapland sesame oil (the candle could only be put out with milk), and the hand having come from the said hanged criminal, lighted and placed in the Hand of Glory (as in a candlestick) would have rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented. The Hand of Glory also purportedly had the power to unlock any door it came across.

The legend is traceable to about 1440, but the name only dates from 1707. It was originally a name for the mandrake root (via French “mandragore” and thus “hand of glory”) that became conflated with the earlier legend. The confusion may have occurred because mandrakes are said to grow beneath the bodies of hanged criminals.

Liquid Sky and Eugène Atget

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9-n9gpFVpk]

Liquid Sky trailer via Dennis Cooper‘s today’s Video Nasties special .

Liquid Sky is a 1982 science fiction film produced and directed by Slava Tsukerman that has become a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit and to electroclash afficionados. The film would make an ideal double bill with Café Flesh.

Also, GmtPlus9 (-15) has a post on perennial favorite French photographer Eugène Atget, whose work can be compared to E. O. Hoppé‘s cityscapes of London.

Rue de la Colonie (1900) – Eugène Atget
Image sourced here.

Jules Janin presents the roman frénétique

Jules Janin

“The frenetique school is a school of literature in 19th century France. The term frénétique is French for frenetic and means fast, frantic, harried, or frenzied. The term was coined by Charles Nodier.

In the category of “la littérature frénétique”, most frequently cited are Jules Janin (The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman), Charles Lassailly, Xavier Forneret (Un pauvre honteux), Arlincourt (Le Solitaire) Charles Nodier (Smarra, or The Demons of the Night, 1821), Frédéric Soulié (Les Mémoires du diable, 1838) and Petrus Borel (Champavert, contes immoraux, 1833). Its peak was the late 1820s and early 1830s.

Its wider context is gothic literature. Every European country had its own terminology to denote the sensibility of the gothic novel. In France it was called the roman noir (“black novel”, now primarily used to denote the hardboiled detective genre) and in Germany it was called the Schauerroman (“shudder novel”). Italy and Spain must have had their own, but I am unaware of their names as of yet.

Their is some overlap with the Bouzingos.”

I’ve posted about this before here.

I, Galileo, kneeling before you

Galileo’s recantation

On June 22, 1633 – a memorable date in the history of counterculture – Galileo was forced to recant his scientific theory that the earth moves around the sun. The Inquisition had threatened the astronomer and mathematician with torture on the rack if he did not retract his “heretical” ideas. Torn between wanting to fight for the truth and not wanting to offend the Church, Galileo recants:

I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before you, Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity throughout the entire Christian commonwealth, having before my eyes and touching with my hands, the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by God’s help will in the future believe, all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But whereas — after an injunction had been judicially intimated to me by this Holy Office, to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the world, and moves, and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine.

After the trial, Galileo is sent to his villa outside Florence, where he will be confined for the remaining 9 years of his life, supposedly frequently muttering “e pur si muove!“

What a humiliation!