Category Archives: French culture

Nobrow manifestos, #2

The Pornographic Imagination is is my second entry in this series, the first was Leslie Fiedler’s Cross the Border — Close the Gap (1969).

The Pornographic Imagination is a nobrow essay by Susan Sontag first published in book form in Styles of Radical Will. It had been originally published two years earlier in the Partisan Review of spring 1967.

The subject is erotic literature and Sontag contends that five French literary works are not ‘just’ pornography but literary fiction and thus genuine literature. Although the term paraliterature had not been coined at the time of its writing (we have to wait 17 years for Fredric Jameson to do that), the connection between science fiction and erotic fiction makes this essay one of the first defenses of the nobrow or paraliterary category.

Her ‘case’ is based on these five novels:

On Georges Bataille she writes:

“One reason that Histoire de l’oeil and Madame Edwarda make such a strong and unsettling impression is that Bataille understood more clearly than any other writer I know of that what pornography is really about, ultimately, isn’t sex but death. I am not suggesting that every pornographic work speaks, either overtly or covertly, of death. Only works dealing with that specific and sharpest inflection of the themes of lust, “the obscene,” do. It’s toward the gratifications of death, succeeding and surpassing those of eros, that every truly obscene quest tends.”

The shoe of a dead woman at the bottom of a cupboard

Dead_Woman's_Shoes

The Critical Dictionary (French: Dictionnaire critique) was a regular section of the journal Documents. It offered short essays by Georges Bataille and his colleagues on such subjects as “Absolute“, “Eye“, “Factory Chimney”, and “Keaton (Buster)“.

In the entry for aesthete one finds the following sentence:

“When it comes down to it, these words have the power to disturb and to nauseate: after fifteen years, one finds the shoe of a dead woman at the bottom of a cupboard; one throws it in the rubbish bin.” […] The unfortunate who says that art no longer works, because that way one remains disengaged from the ‘dangers of action’, says something deserving of the same attention as the dead woman’s shoe.” (translation by Art in Theory).

Bataille never fails to intrigue me. I must confess – and I always do – that I do not understand one iota of what he means by the image of a dead woman’s shoe in relation to art and aesthetes, but not understanding is a very big part of the attraction. As I stated before, I like my philosophy poetic and incomprehensible.

Icons of erotic art #20

Jeune fille en buste 1794 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a typical illustration for the blog Femme, femme, femme

Consider me: my hands can not cover my breasts, I cling to them tightly to hide my shame. But also consider this: sunlit windows gaze down upon me like undeniable eyes, millions of bronze eyes; and shame turns into pride.

Jeune fille en buste 1794 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a typical illustration for the blog Femme, femme, femme.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

Honoré Daumier @ 200

Honoré Daumier would have been 200 today.

This Year, Venuses Again... Always Venuses! (1864) - Honoré Daumier
This Year, Venuses Again… Always Venuses! (1864) – Honoré Daumier

At the Theater (The Melodrama) (c. 1860-64) - Honoré Daumier
At the Theater (The Melodrama) (c. 1860–64) – Honoré Daumier

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (ca. 1865-70) - Honoré Daumier
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (ca. 1865–70) – Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10, 1879), was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, sculptor, and one of the most gifted and prolific draftsmen of his time. He is best-known for his satirical work in Le Charivari, and underrated for his work as a painter.

Introducing Bxzzines

Charles Fort
Image sourced here.

 

Bxzzines [1], is a French-language blog by an anonymous internet user who goes by the pseudonym of Clifford Brown, indicating a link to Jess Franco (Franco worked under innumerable pseudonyms and was a big fan of jazz music, many of his pseudonyms are taken from famous jazz musicians, such as Clifford Brown and James P. Johnson).

Bxzzines is dedicated to zines and has featured posts on film directors Max Pécas, Michel Lemoine, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Jean-François Davy and 1970s magazines such a Midi-Minuit Fantastique and Sex Stars System.

The illustration shown depicts a part of a promotional insert [2] for the Le Terrain Vague publishing imprint of Eric Losfeld, inserted in Midi-Minuit Fantastique n°15/16 (12/1966). The page depicted above is an advertisement for Charles Fort‘s The Book of the Damned, in its second French translation, translated by Robert Benayoun; with a forward by Tiffany Thayer.

The censored title on the same page is George de Coulteray‘s Sadism in the Movies.

Recent entries on the Bxzzines blog include:

 

World cinema classics #39

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Xgn63o7UU]

Erotissimo is a 1968 French–Italian film directed by Gérard Pirès. Its theme is a satire on the use of sex in advertising and sexual objectification of women. I’ve mentioned this film before and posted a different trailer, but this trailer is superb, good rhythm, extremely funny (sorry French only!), nice score and stunning visuals.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

A reappraisal of Amélie

I had seen Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain in the winter of 2001 when it came out in theatres in Belgium and had not taken to it because of its faux happiness and its European hollywoodity. I’ve seen it again today and I think it is time for a reappraisal. This clever film shows a unique understanding of visual and auditory culture. It is told by an omniscient narrator* in an extremely writerly and accomplished style.**

The visuals and the score from Yann Tiersen are virtually symbiotic. One peep show scene features music from French house musician Alex Gopher‘s “The Child” (1999) (“them that’s got, shall get”). I wanted to give you the Kenny Dope remix (the one actually featured in Amélie). In stead, here Youtube is a slower version with many intrusive voices but interesting visuals (animation made out of typography by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet). If you badly need the Kenny Dope remix, buy Beats & Pieces vol. 2 on the highly recommended series out on BBE Records.

*On the omniscient narrator, see scenes in the recent film Stranger Than Fiction in which Dustin Hoffman teaches a whole seminar on the omniscient narrator phrase par excellence “little did he know”, illustrating the excesses of literary theory.

** Films such as Reconstruction (which I liked immensely) owe a lot to the Ameliesque aesthetic.

Blazon of the Ugly Tit

Contreblason du Tetin (1535) (Eng: Blazon of the Ugly Tit) is a poem by Clément Marot on ugly female breasts.  Here in a translation by Helene Marmoux [1]. Clément Marot (1496–1544), was a French poet of the Renaissance period, for his poems on body parts, known as blasons and contreblasons. The  ugly woman is a surprisingly common figure in Renaissance poetry, one that has been frequently appropriated by male poetic imagination to depict moral, aesthetic, social, and racial boundaries. The subject has been treated in dept by Patrizia Bettella in The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models in Italian Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque ( 2005).

Tit, skinny tit,
flat tit that looks like a flag,
big tit, long tit,
tit, must I call thee bag?
Tit with its ugly black end,
forever moving tit.
Who would boast having touched you?
With their hand fondle you? more…

Tip of the hat to On Ugliness

RIP Alain Payet (1947 – 2007)

Nathalie rescapée de l’enfer / Nathalie, Fugitive from Hell (1978) – Alain Payet

Alain Payet (January 17, 1947 – December 13, 2007) was a French writer-director.

Payet started his career in regular cinema as second assistant director on Philippe Labro‘s L’ Héritier (The Exterminator), which starred Jean-Paul Belmondo.

He directed 1970s Nazi exploitation movies (Nathalie, Fugitive from Hell) and “porno chic” features. He also made “porn versions” of some famous French films such as Astérix, Les Tontons flingueurs, and Les Visiteurs.

He died of cancer in Paris.