Le Flâneur

Part of me resents the channel 4 weekend ‘list format’ for its lazy and cheap approach to programming, but ‘The 100 Greatest Stand Ups’ on Sunday evening was interesting and informative - the two of the four hours of it I watched anyway. It introduced me to some new comedians, and showed some rare footage of well established performers. Particularly shocking was footage of Eddie Murphy’s deleted ‘delirious’ show where he makes some very ignorant comments about homosexuals and AIDS, but Eddie Murphy was never exactly ‘alternative’. What was more interesting was how this program highlighted the radically alternative right-wing, misogynistic, proudly bigoted and down right obscene fringes of the circuit, and I’m not just talking about Jim Davidson here.

There is this vile man, the successful career of which stateside, I am probably too young to remember, who goes by the name of Andrew “Dice” Clay. He was selling out venues like Madison Square Garden in the 80s and 90s to an audience of white suburban adolescent boys who lapped up his obnoxious sexist take on life. On this page you can read samples of his trademark nursery rhymes which I’ve deemed too disgusting to reproduce here.

What puzzles me is that some fairly influential people must have thought him funny because in 1989 he hosted the MTV video awards. His act was so blue and offensive he was subsequently banned from the network. Even more remarkable was that shortly after this appearance, he guest hosted Saturday Night Live causing cast members and other performers to boycott the show. But looking back, it now seems that what was going on at that time was the beginning of the backlash against political correctness, and for a brief moment, it may have seemed hip to adopt such a stance. Feminism was coming under a sustained attack from the political right and it seems television executives couldn’t resist a piece of the action.

Fortunately Andrew “Dice” Clay’s star faded as quickly as it had risen and the entertainment establishment saw some kind of sense. After a brief spell trying to remodel his image in the 90s, he now performs (according to this website), in his “Dice Man” persona again in Las Vegas - but to considerably smaller audiences one would imagine.

The astute comedian, critic, and commentator Stewart Lee, who was one of the talking heads on the show, made the point that there are ‘comedy greats’ among us now, who may not be receiving the coverage and adulation they deserve. In particular he singled out Daniel Kitson for high praise. But this show also reminded me about people like Jerry Sadowitz and Dennis Leary who I’d like to hear more of in the future.

In ‘researching’ my MA dissertation I came across this little gem, a Good Housekeeping advert from would you believe it 1988, obviously riding on the back of much anti-feminist sentiment. This poster is used by a scholar in an essay to make some very serious points about so-called ‘post-feminism’, but though I see point they’re making, I just can’t help seeing this kind of thing as rather funny. There’s an event better picture from Women’s Day (that I can’t be bothered to scan in), of Barbara Bush posing immaculately in Pearls on a White House sofa, superimposed with speech marks it reads: “Women’s Lib made me feel inadequate and useless”.

I feel like this dissertation, now more then anything else, is impeding me from getting on with the rest of my life. What doesn’t help matters is that I’ve been reading some fairly subversive literature recently slamming post-modern academia, and feminists in particular. Nick Cohen posits that, as well as certain historical factors, it is the academic left’s insistence on ‘theorizing’ identity politics, it’s zombie like fixation on ‘otherness’ and ‘the tyranny of the signifier’, that accounts for its current impotency and lack of moral compass. It’s an argument I find rather appealing having just come through the ‘cultural studies’ experience myself. A typical reading list at a university in the thrall of the ‘post’ies will contain a couple of essays by Enlightenment thinkers early on, and then the rest will be reams and reams of post-modern ‘theory’ characterised for the most part by unnecessary complex language and obscurantism. The general feeling is that the harder to read or understand something is, then the more worthy and important it must be. Maybe this sounds a bit anti-intellectual or plebeian even. But I honestly think George Orwell would be turning in his grave at some of this crap.

In 1996 Dennis Dutton, the editor of Philosophy and literature, opened an annual Bad Writing Contest. The winner in 1999, as Cohen highlights in his book What’s Left: How Liberals Lost their Way, was the radical marxist feminist theorist Judith Butler. There are several of her texts on my reading list, all of potential use in my dissertation – so help me god. Here is the winning entry in all its glory:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearctiulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

What, except on a very abstract level, does this have to do with reality? And what right do the writers of such stuff have to claim they are coming from the left? Is it any wonder that I’m beginning to take the view that the ‘University experience’ for many of my generation is a complete sham and a swindle?

I had the pleasure recently of meeting two members of the lesbian art collective Toxic Titties. They attended our seminar on identity politics, an area in which they are heavily invested. They were very entertaining and charming as they discussed their latest projects. Being male and straight put me in a bit of a minority but this was no place for prejudice - this was radical critical theory with a punk attitude. Right on sister!

Naturally they were acquainted with our esteemed Professor Jones - part of the hip side of the Los Angeles art scene. It would seem as though LA divides into high end big bucks art palaces and a subversive bohemian counter culture just like any other big city. Though by their description in LA it is even more pronounced, it is after all the playground for the American super-rich (parts of it anyway). Can’t wait to visit.

There is an artist called Vanessa Beecroft who caters for the extremely rich. Her work seems to straddle a variety of contexts, I first encountered it in a style mag for example, but it has also graced the covers of respected art journals. Toxic Titties have a real problem with her work for obvious reasons. Mainly though it is because for some people, mostly straight men in positions of authority, though perhaps a growing number of women also, her work is designated post -feminist. Now this is a can of worms I don’t intend to open here but I would recommend to anyone to read Ariel Levy’s recent book ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture’ for some thoughtful and considered insight into this matter. To cut a long story short though a couple of members of Toxic Titties answered a call on behalf of Beecroft for ’skinny boyish looking models’ and were recruited to take part in a performance at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. This involved standing around in high heels in the nude for punishing hours, both in a studio and in a three hour performance in the gallery itself. The result for the Toxic Titties was a damning indictment in essay format of Beecroft’s working practices. They exposed the exploitative mechanisms behind an image such as the one above. In the process of their stint as models, Toxic Titties also unionised and negotiated a better pay deal for the women involved. They had planned to sabotage the actual performance but I suppose they chickened out. They were apparently unprepared for how exposed and degraded they felt. The only escape from the boredom was to indulge in fantasies about their fellow models, the only real perk in their ordeal. Have a look at their website to find out more. http://www.freewaves.org/festival_2002/artists/toxictitties.htm