Category Archives: eroticism

I intend to read every ‘roman dur’ by Simenon

'The Move' by Georges Simenon

‘The Move’ by Georges Simenon

The Move (1967) is a ‘roman dur’ by Belgian writer Georges Simenon.

I intend to read every roman dur by Simenon.

The Move is both a flawed novel and at the same time one of his more interesting ones due to its near total plotlessness and focus on psychological detail.

Its sub-theme is a criticism of the anonymity of modern high rise, the lack of social control, a side effect of living in the banlieue, in the same vein as Jacques Tati’s films Mon oncle (1958) and Playtime (1967).

Its protagonist is an unwilling eavesdropper.

Another of its themes is an exploration of dark sexuality, a recurring motif with Simenon, such as in Un nouveau dans la ville (1950).

Related: Dick Bruna covers of the ‘romans durs’.

RIP Mel Ramos (1935 – 2018)

Touché Boucher (1972-73) is an oil on canvas by Mel Ramos, is a pastiche of the Odalisque blonde by François Boucher.

Touché Boucher (1972-73) is an oil on canvas by Mel Ramos, is a pastiche of the Odalisque blonde by François Boucher.

Mel Ramos was an American painter, specializing in paintings of female nudes.

He was one of the pop art erotica artists noted for his ‘flat light’ photorealism.

He also interpreted the female nudes of European masters in paintings such as Touché Boucher (1972-73) [above], which is a pastiche of the Odalisque blonde by François Boucher.

RIP Maria Rohm (1945 – 2018)

Rohm belongs to an age of cinema that died in the 1980s. She was one of the euro girls.

In the picture above you see her kissing Marie Liljedahl in Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey Into Perversion, one of Jess Franco’s Marquis de Sade film adaptations, in this case Philosophy in the Bedroom. In that book, Madame Saint-Age, the part played by Rohm, is responsible for the terrible maltreatment of Madame de Mistival.

Here is the trailer to that film.

In the documentary clip below you see how Christopher Lee was tricked into “doing” nude scenes.

Maria Rohm is the blond one.

Here is Rohm’s page from the original Jahsonic site.

RIP Mel Gordon (1947 – 2018)

Research occasioned by the death of Adam Parfrey (see prev. post) brought to my attention that one of the writers who were often published by Parfrey, Mel Gordon, also recently died.

Mel Gordon was a theatrical historian. He wrote on 1920s Berlin, Grand Guignol, lazzi, Hanussen, Dada, drugs and Expressionism.

From left to right: Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant (2001) The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber (2006) Horizontal Collaborations (2015) Voluptuous Panic (2006) The Stanislavsky Technique (2000)

From left to right:

RIP Steven Marcus (1928 – 2018)

Steven Marcus is best-known for The Other Victorians (1964) [below], a study of Victorian pornography in which he coined the term pornotopia.

The Other Victorians cover

The Other Victorians cover

The Other Victorians back cover

The Other Victorians back cover

The book is a classic in the academic study of pornography.

I’ve never been able to find out the identity of the author of the illustration on the cover. It’s in the skinny style of Raphael Kirchner (1867– 1917) and Léo Fontan (1884 – 1965) which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That’s all I know. Anyone?

Why I like the rhetoric of censors so much

Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography (1981) is one of the best anti-pornography documents around, better than Perversion for Profit (1965).

I found Not a Love Story while researching my paper and being sidetracked into feminist antiporn rhetoric.

The most blatant variety of this rhetoric is the part where they say that pornography leads to rape, first expressed by Robin Morgan in 1974 when she said “pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice“.

Recent feminists such as Anne W. Eaton have toned down their statements from the once virulent rhetoric of women such as Robin Morgan, but Rae Langton, a well respected source in the current debate, still references Ed Donnerstein in “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts“, her much-cited paper of 1993.

Researching Ed Donnerstein brought this film to my attention. He is interviewed on the effects of violent porn.

New to me was a soundbite uttered by Robin Morgan who states that “the first things that the Nazis did when they moved into Poland was to engineer a huge proliferation of pornography.”

The statement baffled me and I knew right away that I would not be able to find whether this was true or not, the only thing I could hope to discover is who first spread this piece of information.

After some googling I found this information cited in Take Back the Night (1980) by Laura Lederer. Some more googling and I discovered that it can be pinpointed to Pamela Hansford Johnson’s statement “when the Nazis took on the government of Poland, they flooded the Polish bookstalls with pornography” recorded in On Iniquity (1967), an attack on permissive society occasioned by the Moors murders.

I’ve previously mentioned why I like the rhetoric of censors so much but must write more about it, see in praise of censorship. This documentary is up here in its entirety but for how long considering the amount of explicit imagery?

PS 1. There is another explicit video on censorship, which has escaped the YouTube censor, I’ve written on it here and the video is still there.

PS 2. If you know where Pamela Hansford Johnson got her info from, I’d love to hear from you.

Rodin’s eroticism

Les dessins de Rodin, part 1

Les dessins de Rodin, part 2

While researching my thesis, I came across the text “Les Dessins de Rodin” (above), in which Arthur Symons says:

“The principle of Rodin‘s work is sex-a sex aware of itself, and expending energy desperately to reach an impossible goal.”

Also new to me was Rodin’s Iris, Messenger of the Gods  and “Rodin’s Reputation“, Anne Wagner’s deft article on it.

All my research on Rodin and eroticism can be found at Eros and Rodin.