Guilty pleasures #7

I’ve recently taken the decision to watch more pulp and listen to more pop. Let’s start with the pulp.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c92TGgK68ZE&]

From: Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005) is the sequel to the 1999 film Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. Rob Schneider stars as Deuce Bigalow, a male prostitute who must go to Europe to help his pimp T.J., played by Eddie Griffin, find a murderer who is killing the greatest male prostitutes of Europe. Film critic Roger Ebert includes the movie in his most hated films list.

This particular scene is about African American stereotypes . Don’t worry, plenty of European stereotypes in this American nouveau exploitation: the gross-out film. My previous male prostitute film was American Gigolo, I suppose. My latest male prostitute novel was Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet.

For pop I have an enduring classic of camp and pulp by Belgian’s own Lou Deprijck, principally known for his underground disco twelve inch “Que Tal America”. While the previous is considered the “high art” of disco, what I’m about to present you is truly guilty. Here is

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsJun-ZtqTs&]

“Disco Samba”

The dodgiest things about this track are that a) it is a medley; and b) it is rip-off of Jorge Ben but nevertheless succeeds in spreading a joyous vibe; c) the song originated in Belgium, a country of which American journalists have remarked in post-9/11 hysteria that they ” have trouble enough fighting bad breath, never mind a real enemy soldier.”

A wanderer on the face of the earth

Rice terrace in The Philippines

“He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth – and not even as a traveller towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.” –from The Wanderer, of Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human

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:

 

Introducing Chris Morris

The list of sensibilities published in my recent post on Grillet prompted a regular reader to alert me to the work of Chris Morris.

“Sex for Houses“

Chris Morris (born 1965) started his career on radio, the clip above is from his television work, which – so it is said – is a little less powerful than his radiophonic work, but works better on the blog format.

The clip is very disturbing and funny, it appropriates the tropes of reality TV shows.

I’ve long stopped watching television on a regular basis, but I have known periods of serious telephilia. The BBC has always been a haven to the telephile.

Recent British television I did enjoy (on Youtube) have included:

Eyecandy #7: Arboretal arabesques

Winter (1573) by Arcimboldo Suddenly each saw the other putting forth leaves. Their skin started to turn into tree bark. They embraced each other and cried,

Suddenly Baucis and Philemon each saw the other putting forth leaves. Their skin started to turn into tree bark. They embraced each other and cried, “Farewell!” Baucis was turned into a linden tree and Philemon into an oak, two different but beautiful trees intertwined with one another.

Indeed Rafaela, thanks.

Part of the same trope is:

Apollo and Daphne

Apollo and Daphne, Apollo and Daphne by Antonio Pollaiuolo, one tale of transformation in the Metamorphoses—he lusts after her and she escapes him by turning into a bay laurel.

Previously on Eye Candy.

Cult fiction #3

The Nuba and Riefenstahl

From Leni Riefensthal’s book

[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

I have a habit of running into ontological problems, so my third entry in the “cult fiction” series [1] is appropriately not really fiction. It’s documentary photography, a problematic genre that is neither fact nor fiction. The Last of the Nuba belongs to the realm of documentary, faction, pseudo-documentary and pamphlet.

Leni Riefenstahl, better known for directing Triumph of the Will and Olympia, published a collection of her photographs of the people titled The Last of the Nuba in 1974. The book was extensively reviewed in Fascinating Fascism by Susan Sontag.

Fascinating Fascism is quite an essay. It was first published in 1975 and republished in Under the Sign of Saturn, in 1980. The essay considers the link between fascist aesthetics to sadomasochism.

[…] Between sadomasochism and fascism there is a natural link. “Fascism is theater,” as Genet said. As is sadomasochistic sexuality: to be involved in sadomasochism is to take part in a sexual theater, a staging of sexuality. Regulars of sadomasochistic sex are expert costumers and choreographers as well as performers, in a drama that is all the more exciting because it is forbidden to ordinary people. Sadomasochism is to sex what war is to civil life: the magnificent experience. (Riefenstahl put it: “What is purely realistic, slice of life, what is average, quotidian, doesn’t interest me.” As the social contract seems tame in comparison with war, so fucking and sucking come to seem merely nice, and therefore unexciting. The end to which all sexual experience tends, as Bataille insisted in a lifetime of writing, is defilement, blasphemy. To be “nice,” as to be civilized, means being alienated from this savage experience—which is entirely staged.

I started reading the essay last evening, and haven’t finished yet, but time and time again, Susan Sontag strikes me as one of the most insightful cultural critics of the 20th century, way up there with Walter Benjamin.

The essay is of an era that also saw Salò by Pasolini and The Night Porter by Cavani, both aesthetic meditations on fascism and sadomasochism.

World music classics #24

Embedding disabled by request, click to play

“Can You Feel It” (1986) by Larry Heard

In the beginning, there was Jack. And Jack had a groove. And from this groove came the groove of all grooves. And while one day viciously throwing down on his box, Jack boldly declared, “Let there be House!” –first lines from the lyrics

I remember listenin to this song on Grand Theft Auto! I was speeding down the highway then ended up in the ocean and the song stopped and I went crazy and jumped off my house (in the game). -Youtube comment

Previous World Music Classics.