Monthly Archives: February 2009

Carroll Baker’s “eurosleaze” career

Orgasmo by you.

Lou Castel and Carroll Baker

Paranoia with Carroll Baker by you.

Carroll Baker’s “eurosleaze” career

After finding out about Bill Landis‘s death last month, I finally ordered his Sleazoid Express and surprisingly almost read it from cover to cover in chronological order.

I’m amazed by the book.

It is very much “spirit of place,” (I should explain, the whole book is divided in chapters that correspond to certain film theatres in the vicinity of 42nd Street, with knowledge of every hot dog stand, every theatre’s audience, the condition and relative safety of the bathrooms etc…).

At times Sleazoid Express reads like a realistic plotless piece of fiction in the manner of the enumerations of consumer goods in American Psycho.

Just like the consumer goods in Psycho, the films referenced are real and range from silents such as Trapped by the Mormons (1922) in its Mondo film chapter, to intriguing eurosleaze titles such as Orgasmo by Umberto Lenzi in its chapter on the sexploitation school of European exploitation so well documented in Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984.

Let us focus on Orgasmo, a 1969 Italian film by Umberto Lenzi starring Carroll Baker and Lou Castel.

Carroll Baker’s eurosleaze career

Carroll Baker’s “eurosleaze” career

Following a protracted legal battle with Paramount Pictures and divorce from her second husband, Jack Garfein, Carroll Baker moved to Europe. Eventually settling in Italy, she would spend the next several years starring in hard-edged giallo thrillers, including The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968), Paranoia (1970), and Baba Yaga (1973). During those years, film locations would take her all around the world, including Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. A lead role in Andy Warhol’s Bad (1977) brought her back to American shores.

Umberto Lenzi

Umberto Lenzi (born August 6 1931), is an Italian film director who was very active in low budget crime films, peplums, spaghetti westerns, war movies, cannibal films and giallo mysteries (in addition to writing many of the screenplays himself). He is the director of two highly controversial exploitation films: Eaten Alive! (1980) and Cannibal Ferox (1981) as well as the film adaptation of the Italian comic book Kriminal (1966). He was one of the first Italian directors to get involved in the Giallo film craze (along with Mario Bava and Dario Argento), and his “Man From Deep River” is credited as being the film that started the “Italian cannibal film” genre later popularized by Ruggero Deodato, Jess Franco and others. His most critically acclaimed film is Milano odia: la polizia non può sparare (1974).

Paranoia/Orgasmo

Trailer

Orgasmo is a 1969 Italian film by Umberto Lenzi starring Carroll Baker and Lou Castel. The film was released in the United States as Paranoia. Lenzi’s other film Paranoia (1969) was released as in the United States as “A Quiet Place To Kill” in the USA, since “Orgasmo” was already released in the USA as “Paranoia“.

Orgasmo premiered in Italy on February 2 1969. Bertrand Tavernier was credited but did not actually work on the film.

Orgasmo is my first exposure to Umberto Lenzi. It is the story of a rich woman being seduced by a male, who moves in with her but his “sister” comes along. His sister appears to be his lover and their goal is to destabilize the woman with drink and drugs and then kill her. (the plot twist of bringing a “sibling” to the party and destroying their host  has been best explored in The Servant (1963) with Dirk Bogarde).

The film brings up interesting links.

Cuckoldry discovery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPnPpPzcKpY

Carroll Baker in scenes from Paranoia/Orgasmo, A Quiet Place To Kill and The World Is Full of Married Men.

For example the above YouTumentary of a recurring scene in Carroll Baker‘s oeuvre played by her in three different movies. In Paranoia/Orgasmo, A Quiet Place To Kill and The World Is Full of Married Men. This scene ought to have a name in narratology. The first hand experience of catching your lover making love to another woman or another man. An iconic moment in this category would be the famous walk-in scene in Brian De Palma‘s Body Double in which the hero discovers his wife after a long and painful build up.

When I think of myself I want to vomit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xf5WKB791M

An iconic scene of Orgasmo is Baker saying “When I think of myself I want to vomit.” Great stuff for when you are in a self-loathing mood.

Charles Darwin @200

Charles Darwin @200

Contemporary satirical drawing of Darwin

It is my fashion to view people’s careers in terms of their controversies and their influences outside of their own fields.

Darwin’s claim to fame in this context is that he said we are of common descent with “apes.”

Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882) was an eminent English naturalist who achieved lasting fame with his 1859 book On the Origin of Species which established evolution by common descent as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.

Influence on Naturalism

Writers who belong to the 19th century literary school of Naturalism were influenced by the evolution theory of Charles Darwin. They believed that one’s heredity and social environment decide one’s character. Naturalism attempts to determine “scientifically” the underlying forces (i.e. the environment or heredity) influencing these subjects’ actions. In fact, Zola wrote a long essay in which he mentioned Darwin in relation to contemporary literature. The essay was called The Experimental Novel and described the process of writing a novel as an experiment, in which the writer introduces “characters”, and the outcome is determined by heredity and mileu.

He wrote:

Sans me risquer à formuler des lois, j’estime que la question d’hérédité a une grande influence dans les manifestations intellectuelles et passionnelles de l’homme. Je donne aussi une importance considérable au milieu. Il faudrait sur la méthode aborder les théories de Darwin; mais ceci n’est qu’une étude générale expérimentale appliquée au roman, et je me perdrais, si je voulais entrer dans les détails.

If I remember correctly, Naturalism in literature shares its etymological roots with the Natural Sciences, of which Darwin was a practitioner.

Also, one-time-Naturalist-turned-decadent Huysmans‘s in Against the Grain has his alter ego Des Esseintes praise the “evolution of language so rightly insisted on by Darwin“. But that book appalled Zola, who felt it had dealt a “terrible blow” to Naturalism.

Influence on Bergson

Henri Bergson was highly influenced by biology, particularly Charles Darwin‘s On the Origin of Species, which was released the year of Bergson’s birth. This leads Bergson to discuss the ‘Body’ and ‘Self’ in detail, arguably prompting the fundamental ontological and epistemological questions to be raised later in the twentieth-century French philosophy.

Related subjects

To say that Darwin has been influential is an understatement. His name has been linked to other controversial issues such as degeneration, social hygiene, color terminology for race, and social Darwinism, as well as the notion of the survival of the fittest.

See  reaction to Darwin’s theory

Maybe?

Scatole d’amore in conserva by you.

Scatole d’Amore in Conserva

Maybe Marinetti‘s 1927 book Scatole d’Amore in Conserva (boxes of love conserved) later inspired Piero Manzoni so famously to can his own excrement. “Conjecture, your honor!”

Merda d'Artista by Piero Manzoni by [AMC]

“Merda d’Artista” by Piero Manzoni by Flickr user  [AMC]

RIP Blossom Dearie (1926 – 2009)

RIP Blossom Dearie

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHUVWEgHAy8&]

“I Like London In The Rain“

Blossom Dearie (April 28, 1926 – February 7, 2009) was an American jazz singer and pianist, often performing in the bebop genre and known for her “distinctive, girlish voice”. Outside of the jazz world, she is noted for such songs as the 1970 “I Like London In The Rain“, which features an opening breakbeat that has been sampled by hip hop producers.

“I Like London In The Rain” is WMC #277.

John Ruskin @190 and Siegfried Kracauer @120

Grotesques from the The Stones of Venice (1851 - 1853)

Grotesques from the The Stones of Venice (1851 - 1853)

Grotesques from the The Stones of Venice (1851 – 1853)

British cultural critic John Ruskin (1819 – 1900), who I’ve mentioned here[1] would have turned 190 today if such a thing were possible.

By the same token, German cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer (1889 – 1966), would have celebrated his 120th birthday. I’ve mentioned him here[2] and here[3].

John and Siegfried were both cultural critics. Ruskin largely dealt with pre-industrial society, Kracauer with modern mass culture.

Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket, (1874 - 1877) James McNeill Whistler


see art controversy with James Whistler on Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket

John Ruskin is best known for his work as an art critic and social critic, but is remembered as an author, poet and artist as well. Ruskin’s essays on art and architecture were extremely influential. He is perhaps best-remembered for the books Modern Painters, The Stones of Venice; the speculations surrounding his sexuality; and the art controversy with James Whistler on Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket.

Siegfried Kracauer was a German-American writer, journalist, sociologist, and cultural critic, particularly of media such as film, as well as the urban form. His best-known work is From Caligari to Hitler (1947), which traces the birth of National Socialism via the cinema of the Weimar Republic.

Kracauer analyzed and critiqued the phenomena of modernism‘s mass culture. He built up a general theories based upon dozens of smaller examples. His attention to detail lends itself to an inductive method. He was one of the first to treat the cinema seriously; in it he saw a mirror of social conditions and desires.

He applied his methods in such works as The Detective Novel, The Mass Ornament, The Salaried Masses, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film and Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality.

From Caligari to Hitler by Kracauer by you.

German edition of From Caligari to Hitler

I like to imagine that From Caligari to Hitler sheds light on the process of desiring-production by Deleuze and Guattari on the one hand and Wilhelm Reich‘s fundamental question — why did the masses desire fascism? on the other.

Desiring-production is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Œdipus (1972). They oppose the Freudian conception of unconsciousness as a “theater“, instead favoring a “factory” model: desire is not an imaginary force based on lack, but a real, productive force. They describe the mechanistic nature of desire as a kind of “Desiring-Machine” that functions as a circuit breaker in a larger “circuit” of various other machines to which it is connected.

Fly Girls!


Soul Jazz Presents Fly Girls: B Boys Beware – Revenge of the Super Female Rappers (2008) [Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

I’ ve mentioned this before, that the majority of releases in my cd-collection are anthologies. One of the finest anthology labels since the 1990s is Soul Jazz Records. That British company has just released
Fly Girls! (full title Soul Jazz Presents Fly Girls: B Boys Beware – Revenge of the Super Female Rappers), anthology of female rap artists that celebrates the genre’s 30th anniversary. What follows is a wikified version of the liner notes, of which I could not identify the author. Please fill me in on that blank if you own the cd. The liner notes are hyperlinked to Youtube entries.

The compilation is worth its price alone for featuring the below track by Camille Yarborough.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg1oh45n5iI&]

“Take Yo’ Praise“

The history of female rap on record begins in 1979 in New York City as the clamour of the city’s artists, record companies and producers strove to make it onto vinyl in the wake of The Sugarhill Gang’s squillion-selling hit, “Rappers Delight“[1] – released that year on the former soul singer Sylvia Robinson’s Sugarhill Records. It would be the Winley family – comprising sisters Tanya, Paulette – who made the first female rap record produced by their mother Ann and released on their father’s label, Paul Winley Records.

Aside from the singing/rap styles that earlier soul artists such as Aretha Franklin[2], Shirley Ellis[3], Millie Jackson[4] and Laura Lee[5] would occasionally adopt in their songs, female rap (like rap itself) had its antecedents in the groundbreaking black poetry of the 60s and 70s with radical, free-thinking poets such as Nikki Giovanni[6], Camille Yarborough[7] and Sarah Webster Fabio[8] – all of whom are included here – vocalising hitherto unheard expressions of female and black self-determination in their work. These strong, educated, political women not only led the way stylistically but also helped define how a female artist could make their own career path – weaving creativity, politics and family in a way that Missy Elliott[9], Queen Latifah[10] and others have since followed – establishing the boundary-breaking career paths of many female artists in rap. Hip-hop is a culture of which music is only a part; nowadays (and to an extent from the very beginning) the most successful female hip-hop artist is often singer, DJ, actress, manager, political and social agitator and more in multiple combinations.

Hip-hop’s story begins in the tenement blocks and community centres of the South Bronx. In the first three years-or-so history of hip-hop (1976-9) – before the first rap records were made – aspiring female artists could watch onstage the early female MC role models of Sha-Rock (the first female MC in the group Funky Four Plus One[11]) or the Mercedes Ladies[12] (the first female MC and DJ crew). With Tanya and Paulette Winley’s ‘Rappin and Rhymin’ on vinyl by 1979 it would not be until the following year that the first all-female crew made it onto vinyl when The Sequence[13] (featuring a then unknown Angie Stone) was astutely signed, once again, by Sylvia Robinson to Sugarhill Records.

Robinson was not the only woman on the business side of hip-hop. There was Kool Lady Blue who first brought rap out of the Bronx and into downtown NYC at the Roxy nightclub and also later managed The Rocksteady Crew. Monica Lynch who rose to head of A and R and president of Tommy Boy Records, and later vice-president of Warners, comments that because hip-hop was new it did not have the hierarchy of the traditional music industry and women were thus able to move more easily into executive roles. Later, as we shall see, many of the artists moved into the business themselves taking control of their careers and aiding others.

Roxanne Shante is certainly the first female rapper to make a career out of her music. Shante and fellow Queens-resident and producer Marley Marl fought their corner for both their borough (taking on Boogie Down Productions and the Bronx) and anyone else who dared call themselves ‘Roxanne’ in a slanging-match known as The Roxanne Wars[14]. This verbal jousting had its antecedents dating back to the ‘dozens’ of the playground and tower-block (‘Your mother is a …’, ‘No, your mother is a …’) and to the Griot storytellers of Africa. Roxanne Shante, and many others here, effortlessly subverted this – and many other – male-dominated traditions to create and re-write new histories.

Alejandro Jodorowsky @70

Alejandro Jodorowsky (born 1929), Chilean artist and countercultural icon turns 70 today.

El Topo (1970) – Alexandro Jodorowsky [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Alejandro Jodorowsky (born 1929), Chilean artist and countercultural icon turns 70 today.

Like so many of us, we were first acquainted with Jodorowsky via a midnight screening of his psychedelic Western El Topo. In my case that must have been either at the Filmhuis Theater or at Cartoon’s. In fact, the film practically jumpstarted the genre of the midnight movie:

“In December 1970, Jonas Mekas was organizing one of his periodic festivals of avant-garde films at the Elgin, a rundown six hundred seat theater, not unlike the Charles, on Eighth Avenue just north of Greenwich Village. Although the program was laden with major avant-garde figures, the most widely attended screenings were those on the three nights devoted to the films of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The Elgin management took advantage of the hippie crowds to announce an added feature-Alexandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo to be shown at midnight because, as the first ad announced, it was “a film too heavy to be shown any other way.”” —Midnight Movies (1983)

El Topo[1]

El Topo (The Mole) is a 1970 Mexican allegorical, cult western movie and underground film, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. Characterized by its bizarre characters and occurrences, use of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy, the film is about the eponymous character – a violent, black-clad gunfighter – and his quest for enlightenment.

El Topo was World cinema classic #28

Panic Movement

Researching Jodorowsky in the internet era, brought up the Panic Movement link.

The Panic Movement (Fr:Mouvement panique) was a collective formed in Paris in 1962 by Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor after casual meetings at the Parisian Café de la Paix. Inspired by and named after the god Pan, and influenced by Luis Buñuel and Antonin Artaud‘s Theatre of Cruelty, the group concentrated on chaotic performance art and surreal imagery.

In February 1962 Arrabal, Jodorowsky and Topor settle on the word panique. In September 1962, the word panique is printed for the first time: Arrabal publishes five récits “paniques” in André Breton’s periodical La Brèche.

The Panic Movement performed theatrical events designed to be shocking, as a response to surrealism becoming petite bourgeoisie and to release destructive energies in search of peace and beauty. One four-hour performance known as Sacramental Melodrama was staged in May 24 1965 at the Paris Festival of Free Expression.

Jodorowsky dissolved the Panic Movement in 1973, after the release of Arrabal’s book Le panique.

Introducing Yuka Yamaguchi

Introducing Yuka Yamaguchi

Yuka Yamaguchi

Yuka Yamaguchi

I found this image[1] by Japanese artist Yuka Yamaguchi yesterday. Artwork which features innards of bodies are a personal favourite, I first realized this after discovering Ferdinand Springer‘s Ecorché I[2] some years ago.

I can’t tell off hand who else belongs in this category from an artistic point of view, but from a utilitarian point of view there is the anatomical art by the lickes of Vesalius, Jacques Gautier d’Agoty[3] and John Bell[4]. Perhaps my first exposure to the subversion of inside and outside was David Cronenberg‘s Videodrome in which a videotape and a pistol are inserted in the belly of James Woods.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytp69fBh0J8&]

Videodrome (belly insertion scene at 2:54)

More of her art can be found by clicking this[6] Google gallery. She also has presences on Youtube[7] and Flickr[8], as well as a blog[9].

She is a woman with excellent and adventurous tastes. From her Flickr profile:

Favorite Books & Authors: Mishima, Osamu Dazai, Mitsuo, Cyu-ya, Oliver Sacks, Murakami Haruki, Saki, Yourou Takeshi, Tsurumi Shunsuke, Kindaichi Haruhiko, Malcom Gladwell, Jan Wong,

Favorite Movies, Stars & Directors: Ozu, Kurosawa, Yamada Yoji, Wong Kar Wai, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry

Favorite Music & Artists: Aeroplane, Superpitcher, Junior Boys, Jacques lu Cont, DFA, France Gall, Daniel Wang, Kelley Polar, Loo & Placido, Alpha, Satie, Kahimi Karie, Tom Waits, Stereolab, Yuzo, Fujiyama Ichiro

Most of the comments on Yamaguchi’s work focus on the fact that she transcends the “weird for weird’s sake” aesthetic found in many of her contemporaries (think many of the lowbrow Americans presented by Wurzeltod). Her work is an uncanny mix of cruelty and innocence, benign in spite of its undercurrent of disturbance.

Her closest percursor is probably Roland Topor.

RIP Lux Interior (1946 – 2009)

Lux Interior (1946 – 2009) of the Cramps died yesterday.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owF1iSVi8KA]

“Human Fly“

The encyclopedic stuff:

The Cramps are a punk rock band originally formed in 1972. Their line-up has rotated much over the years, with Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, the lead singer and lead guitarist respectively as the only permanent members. They were part of the early CBGBs punk rock movement that had emerged in New York and are best-known for their song “Human Fly“.

Their music is mostly in blues form, played at varying, (though usually fast) tempos, with a very minimal drumkit. An integral part of the early Cramps sound is dual guitars, without a bassist. The content of their songs and image is sleaze, trashy Americana (much in the style of filmmaker John Waters), sexual fetishism, clever bad jokes, and cheap, horror B-movie clichés.

Their sound was heavily influenced by early rockabilly and proto-rock’n’roll like Link Wray and Hasil Adkins, 1960s surf music acts such as The Ventures and Dick Dale, 1960s garage rock artists like The Standells, The Gants and The Sonics, as well as the post-glam/early punk scene from which they emerged. They also were influenced to a degree by The Ramones and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who is often credited for having pioneered their style of theatrical horror-blues. Their influences and/or the songs they covered were compiled in the vinyl album series Born Bad.

In turn, they have strongly influenced subsequent punk and rockabilly revival bands, even creating a genre in their wake. “Psychobilly,” a style played by bands like The Meteors and the Sharks, is a term† coined by the Cramps, although Lux Interior maintains that the term does not describe their own style. The Cramps also influenced or anticipated acts like The White Stripes, The Gun Club, The Fuzztones, James Chance and the Contortions and The Birthday Party.

The personal stuff:

I can’t really remember my first exposure to The Cramps, but I was hooked when they first came within earshot. The first song must have been “Human Fly“, which tapped straight into my veins. I bought most of their albums up until the early nineties, I believe the last one was Smell of Female which I played over and over. Phrases such as “This is to all you Gucci bag carriers out there” can be reproduced from memory.

The phrase is from “You Got Good Taste.”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYiGxfOL5eo]

Of course, my interest coincided with the then garage rock revival of the eighties. My best memories of The Cramps are bying their originals on the Born Bad series.

“To understand bad taste one must have very good taste” –John Waters

The clearly Betty Page/Irving Klaw-inspired sleeves could have been a lot better but the music opened up to a whole world of musical misfits and one-hit wonders, of which the following “Goo Goo Muck” is an excellent example.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj24CBT2NSE]

“Goo Goo Muck” (the music doesn’t start until :59)

Farewell Lux!

New erotic fiction in France

Coños. Juan-Manuel de Prada

Coños by Juan Manuel de Prada (in the Valdemar edition)

De Papieren Man reports[1] that French publishing house Seuil just launched an erotic fiction series in its Points collection of cheap paperbacks.

Nine titles have been published at the end of January. They feature strikingly bright pink covers. “Parce que la littérature est une provocation…” (Eng: Because literature is a provocation), goes the slogan to the new collection.

The slogan reminds me of Mallarmé‘s famous dictum on the subversive qualities of book reading “Je ne sais pas d’autre bombe, qu’un livre.” (I know of no bomb other than the book.)

Four titles were acquired from other publishing houses. Coños[2] by Juan Manuel de Prada, Le Beau Sexe des hommes by Florence Ehnuel, Le Fouet by Martine Roffinella and Légendes de Catherine M. by Jacques Henric on the exploits of his wife Catherine Millet. Other titles include La vie sexuelle de Catherine M. by Catherine Millet, Le Boucher by Alina Reyes and Putain by Nelly Arcan; an anthology of erotic poetry by Jean-Paul Goujon. Director of Points is Emmanuelle Vial. First prints range from 4.500 to 8.400 copies, price hovers between 6 to 8 euros. Every two books bought merit a “naughty gift” by lingerie brand Yoba. The first present was a mask.

It was not the first time that the color pink came to symbolize eroticism in the media. In the eighties started the popular TV series Série Rose.