As you may or may not know, I recently completed an internship with Arts & Business in London. As well as helping out with things like the Private Investment in Culture Survey and the in-house journal library, my main task was to research and write a series of case studies on innovations in digital technology and user-generated content in the cultural sector.
These have now been published online for your reading pleasure, here.
On January 12th 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, leaving two million homeless and without access to clean water, food or medical aid. In just a matter of days, Dubstep record label Betamorph Recordings created and organized ‘Dubsteppers for Haiti’, a compilation album which would rally the worldwide Dubstep community to join together to help relieve the unbearable suffering caused by this disaster.
‘Dubsteppers for Haiti: Volume One’ contains thirty tracks contributed by Dubstep artists from around the globe uniting for this cause. The fundraiser is unique because 100% of the royalties raised go directly to the Haiti relief fund. This has been made possible because retailers Digital Tunes, Juno, Dubstep Records, Addictech, Chemical and Symphonic Distribution have agreed to waive all fees in order that the maximum possible amount is raised for the citizens of Haiti. This is a remarkable logistical achievement for online distribution of music in such a short time frame.
All money raised is donated to AmeriCares, a charity with a unique model that allows $3,500 of humanitarian aid to be provided for every $100 donated. This includes critical medical supplies, nutritional supplements and other vital assistance. Please see www.americares.com for more information.
In only five days, sales of ‘Dubsteppers for Haiti: Volume One’ have already totaled just under $1000 from Digital Tunes and Juno alone, which means that AmeriCares will be able to provide close to $35,000 in aid to the people who need it most. These two retailers are the first choice to purchase the compilation from, as they release the proceeds every month. This means that the result of Dubsteppers for Haiti’s efforts will come to fruition in visible aid as soon as 1st February. The compilation will also be released on more widespread sites such as Beatport and iTunes in the next week or so to reach a wider audience.
DeeJ, the man behind Dubsteppers for Haiti and Betamorph Recordings has been inspired by the altruistic approach of his peers. Moved by the distressing images he witnessed of the destruction, and his own humanitarian philosophy, he was motivated to make a difference in the best way he knew how: gathering the support of his artistic community. Dubsteppers for Haiti wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible hard work and swift execution of Symbl, Betamorph’s skilful mastering engineer who has worked for labels such as Savory Audio and Stupid Fly, and also released his own LP on TRiLLBASS Digital recordings. Betamorph also relies on the unique style of Megatron, the graphic artist responsible for the distinctive and popular science fiction imagery that compliments the label’s sound. The spirit of collaboration inherent in this fundraiser shows that Betamorph’s futuristic perspective is also an ethereal manifestation of concern for the needs of our own planet.
News of this release has already spread to all levels of the Dubstep music scene. The compassion and haste with which it was organized has inspired unity throughout this community with a positive energy to make a difference. There has already been extensive social media coverage and support from prominent individuals. The extremely positive response and spirit of cooperation it has inspired means that Volume Two is already due to follow within a week. This time the list of producers continues to reach out to all spheres of Dubstep and includes such artists as 12th Planet, Matty G, DZ, Stagga, Babylon System, Orien, Total Recall, Ultrablack, Trill Bass, Charlie P, Dan Wall, Olie Bassweight, Sook, Boot, Magenta, DLX, Kelly Dean, Kid Logic, Richie August, and the list just goes on and on. This release will feature another thirty huge tracks and is even expected to overflow onto Volume Three. With a partnership already established with Twenty Twelve Records to release Volume Four, it is evident that ‘Dubsteppers for Haiti’ is not a one-off benefit album, but rather a serious ongoing fundraiser that reaches all echelons of a musical community to provide increasing relief through their continual benevolent spirit and goodwill.
In such a short amount of time, Dubsteppers for Haiti has achieved something very special. Their aim is to now raise $10,000 and then find an individual associated with NPR or an internationally known organization to match that amount. This would result in $700,000 in aid being raised through AmeriCares, an incredible grassroots achievement and an accomplishment that Betamorph Recordings and the entire dubstep community can be truly proud of.
http://www.americares.org/aboutus/index.html
http://www.dubstepforum.com/haiti-relief-effort-ftw-dubsteppers-for-haiti-volume-one-t124598.html
Dearest all,
Alongside bagging the dream job and cleaning the kitchen, my main New Year’s Resolution is to sort out my internet and social media presence. In the spirit of congruence, I’ve stripped this site down to just my published journalistic and promotional work (and the odd topical blog post). It is now just my online portfolio and a compliment to my CV.
But…
For those of you wondering where my music writing went, read on.
After a year or so of trying to conquer the blogosphere by not posting anything, I have learnt several lessons. The first is that if you want an internet following you need focus. Nobody would read this site because very few people are interested in reading a critical analysis of Salome, a dj’s biography as well as an expletive littered review of a sub-par ska album released in 2008. I would be, but I’m just too awesome. One internet publishing trend we are already aware of is a shift in dynamic from presentation to conversation and the need to fully engage your audience under refreshed rules. As such, I have taken my music writings to a separate home where I can nurture them and be inspired to try and build something out of it. And get an audience again.
Therefore, I encourage you to keep checking my new site: Punk for Posers.
Stick around here for new work I’m doing for Betamorph, all my old student articles, as well as some new things I’m getting published. These will include my contributions to the Arts & Business Report on Digital Technology.
As always, enjoy!
2009 has been the year for intergalactic label Betamorph Recordings. To our friends in China it may have been the year of the Ox, but in the dubstep calendar it’s been the year of the ALIEN. Growing from the bass heavy fruit of veteran DJs and producers Dylan James (aka Deej) and Chris McCahill (aka Megatron), Betamorph has been pummelling the scene with a twisted series of epic soundscapes and dirty symphonies. Nominated in the Best New Label category of the DSF Awards 2009, Betamorph are now ready to conquer the world with their unparalleled brand of subterranean sci-fi.
Taking the visceral edge of Deej’s roots in the early nineties Los Angeles rave scene and combining it with Megatron’s seminal graphic imagery of a galactic future has helped Betamorph create a rare coalition between art and music. The science fiction imagery synonymous with every Betamorph release is symbolic of the ethos that dubstep’s lack of boundaries epitomise the innovation capable in a digital age. The Betamorph symbol not only represents a futuristically styled archive of groundbreaking music, but a fair deal for the artist, a perspective that many currently see as alien.
This has allowed Betamorph to build a prolific catalogue and extend their reach worldwide. The artist roster not only includes insane talent from Ruckus & Roke, Metaphase and Magenta, but also releases from legends like Orien and DZ. Already positioned at the forefront of dubstep evolution, Betamorph have also been picked up Symphonic, featuring as October’s label of the month in Symphonic Distribution. Although based stateside, Betamorph have also been harbouring talent from around the globe. A partnership with British journalist Simon Fogg has helped ensure that the label’s written output will always match the quality of the imagery and the beats in professionalism, but also in never becoming predictable. Betamorph conquers across all platforms.
With the spotlight on 2010, look out for forthcoming releases from EMU, Pawn, Direct Feed, DZ, SymbL, Orien, Sook and Boot, Wascal and many others. There are even talks of working with Zaudio towards pressing vinyl to compliment digital releases and add a new strand to Betamorph’s empire. Since the label’s inception earlier this year, the Betamorph journey has been unreal. This is the future of dubstep: a genre currently undergoing Betamorphosis.
Psychics who claim to be able to see a person’s aura would tell you that magenta is the colour of innovation and creativity. They’d be able to tell that just by listening to this release as well. Magenta is already recognised as a serious up and comer, and the tracks on Entity do nothing to dispel his potential supremacy. Anyone trying to psychically connect with this EP should be warned though, as the digital spirituality that they witness may corrupt their mind and transmute their perspective of reality.
We begin with the title track hovering to expose a futuristic skyline, and a sampled voice warning us: ‘What if you awoke with no memory? What if the world you knew was gone? What if you discovered you were not alone?’ Before you have a chance to contemplate the message, Magenta waylays you with frantic mind altering beats and psychic disturbance. ‘Transformed’ has already captivated praise as a highlight on the recent Betamorphosis Volume Three compilation, and here it is the overlord breathing even more strength into its silicon counterparts: ‘Rancid’ is digitally ethereal, and evokes haste as well as the slow process of anthropomorphic decay. Then ‘Condemned’ completes the judgement with a cybernetic consciousness that overwhelms the organic with the precision of artificial intelligence. Finally, the pulsating bass of ‘The Warriors’ is audible proof that the EP’s opening prophecy has come true, and the world now only exists in Magenta’s twisted digital construction.
The sinister electronic undertones do give this EP an ambience of calculated destruction, but it is also apparent that this is merely the manifestation of potent skills testing their powers. Where some beats are aggressive, others are playful and this gives Entity a dissident symmetry. This is mirrored in Magenta’s enigmatic personal touches, as well as the duelling interior and exterior worlds deployed in the tracks. By the end you may in fact wonder about your own reality. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if a man in a long black leather jacket had turned up to offer me the choice between a blue pill and a red pill. My advice would be to take both and have an awesome time being absorbed by the sounds of Betamorph’s most unreal new talent.
Good’s White Legs: The Quest for Perverse Beauty in King Solomon’s Mines and Salome
‘“Damn it! Roared Good, ‘that black villain has got my trousers.’[1]
-King Solomon’s Mines
‘Thou didst put upon thine eyes the covering of him who would see his God. Well, thou hast seen thy God, Iokanaan, but me, me, thou didst never see.’[2]
-Salome
Let us begin this discussion of paradox, perversity and desire at the point where Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judea holds the severed head of a prophet in her hands, and whilst a Kukuana warrior makes off with the nautical man’s beloved trousers. Much like Allan Quatermain embarking into the desert, we have quite a daunting task ahead of us in discovering the essence of perverse beauty here. There is initially a gorge of difference between Haggard’s boys’ adventure, and Wilde’s aesthetic masterpiece, but I intend to argue that these two texts will converge at several points which will illustrate the paradox of fin de siècle decadence. To analyse the numerous tensions we will encounter, our model shall be Matthew Arnold’s ideas about Hellenism and Hebraism as we see that both Good and Salome fulfil a decadent manifesto of the triumph of artificiality over authority.
Let us begin with a very brief discussion of the decadence that frames both texts. It is easy to be flippant and romanticise decadence as a period of louche living, sex and Oscar Wilde, so before we do that, let us begin with a summary of the period from Bernard Bergonzi: ‘the conviction that all established forms of moral and social certainty were vanishing and that the new situation required new attitudes in life and art.’[3] As Dorian Gray was well aware, ‘life is a great disappointment,’[4] and the end of the Nineteenth Century was apparently so very self-consciously fin de siècle by valuing the merits of art over life. Here we have decadence as an artistic response to what was seen as a bland and moralizing society, but let us not forget that we also have a time of Empire and anthropology in our hands where seeking new territory meant exploring exotic terrain both inside and outside the text. An authority on the subject, Holbrook Jackson comments that decadence included ‘a demand for wider ranges, newer emotional and spiritual territories, fresh woods, and pastures new for the soul.’[5] King Solomon’s Mines certainly adheres to this ‘imperialism of the spirit’, quite literally, as Haggard’s intrepid men head off in search of ‘madder music, stronger wine’[6] in a very masculine outdoor environment. Indeed, as their journey begins, Quatermain notes how Umbopa breaks into ‘a Zulu chant about how some brave men tired of life and the tameness of things, started off into a great wilderness to find new things or die,’[7] quite a decadent objective.
Jackson also believed that ‘the chief characteristics of decadence were (1) Perversity, (2) Artificiality, (3) Egoism and (4) Curiosity’[8], and the aim as Symons stated was ‘to be a disembodied voice, and yet the voice of a human soul.’[9] These unorthodox tactics were in service of a profound point: to reclaim the sensation of humanity that had been lost through experiencing only uniform mass culture. As Symons states more explicitly, ‘for its very disease of form, this literature is typical of a civilisation grown over-luxurious, over inquiring, too languid for the relief of action’ and therefore in practice, ‘its very artificiality was a way of being true to nature.’[10] Here we have the first of our tensions; between sensation and mass culture, and therefore between artificiality and authority. Both our texts serve as expositions of Symons’ and Jackson’s hypotheses of decadence as a perverse yet profound subversion which involved embracing unusual echelons of art. Before we apply these tensions to our texts, we must pause with the idea of truth and the human soul and turn to Matthew Arnold.
In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold discusses the rival forces which lead man’s energy to divinity, those of Hellenism and Hebraism. His definition of these is as follows: ‘the uttermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uttermost idea with Hebraism is conduct and obedience’[11]. Hellenism is to strive to know beauty, with Hebraism being the need to be virtuous and moral. Perhaps most importantly, Arnold describes the energy we have as a nation which is channelled this way: ‘we may regard this energy driving at practice, this paramount sense of obligation of duty, self control and work, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we have, as one force.’[12] Here we are introducing additional tensions to compliment those already mentioned. The relationship between light and darkness will become important, as will the battle that exists for our energy between beauty and morality.
In King Solomon’s Mines, Foulata is surprisingly calm as she relates her dying words: ‘the sun cannot mate with darkness, nor the white with the black.’[13] Quatermain is relieved at her death, due to the complications she would bring to Good upon their exit from this land. Despite Good’s wonderfully ‘susceptible nature’[14] as a sailor, Foulata is unsuitable for marriage because of the racial difference. However, her final words are extremely suitable for explaining the tensions which frame this novel; here between masculine and feminine beauty. One of Haggard’s first admissions is that ‘there is not a petticoat in the whole history,’[15] and the result could be seen as blatant homoeroticism. This is certainly a male orientated adventure, with the only other female presence being the androgynous ‘withered up monkey’[16] Gagool and her witchcraft. Instead, beauty in this novel is a male orientated concept, and as such can be quite barbaric. Twala states that ‘kisses and the tender words of women are sweet, but the clashing of men’s spears and the smell of men’s blood are sweeter far!’[17] Quatermain’s party stop during their journey to appreciate the rugged engineering of Solomon’s road, and one particular sculpture ‘which was exceedingly beautiful’ because it ‘represented a whole battle scene.’[18] Here we see that Kukuanaland is a space where beauty can be inverted. The presentation of a masculine beauty based on conflict highlights the merging tensions within the novel that will soon become apparent. If male beauty is what walks and colonises the landscape, then presumably feminine beauty exists underneath their feet.
Many critics have pointed out that the landscape crossed appears akin to a female body on the map which is illustrated, from the mouth of the diamond mine (where are adventurers are swallowed) to the mountains labelled ‘Sheba’s breasts’[19] (which they traverse). One critic notes that ‘Haggard understands human identity and its relation to nature in terms of a mother/mistress analogue in which birth and death are expressed by a female landscape, both generative and fatal.’[20] This is an astute observation, for the juxtaposition of terrain and desire highlights a complicated relationship between colonisation and beauty, or authority and aestheticism. The same critic embellishes on this by finding another symbol in the name Kukuanaland, separating it as ‘cuckoo anal land’, with the question of ‘will the British hatch themselves in Africa’s nest’?[21] Although the explanation is a valid question to ask, the disambiguation itself falls between tenuous and hilarious. Perhaps here we should take advice from Salome that ‘it is not wise to find symbols in everything one sees.’[22] Indeed, this critic amusingly falls victim to the aesthetic tactics of manipulation which we will soon see are employed. However, at least we are closer to understanding the main tension inherent in this text and the aspect of desire in Empire.
This tension between Empire and aestheticism is further constructed through Haggard’s protagonists. Firstly, in the character of Sir Henry we see the masculine idea of adventure personified. Quatermain says ‘I never saw a finer looking man, and somehow he reminded me of an ancient Dane.’[23] There certainly is something ancient and almost mythological about Sir Henry, much like the space they enter. Indeed, the entire expedition to the exotic Kukuanaland is Sir Henry’s plan, so it appears as if this ethereal character is returning to his natural panorama where he can relish battle and be with men of similar stature and strength. This mythological element of Sir Henry is further exposed when we see him attired in full native battle armour. Quatermain admits that he ‘never saw a finer sight’[24] than this gentleman in a timeless image of warrior. Indeed, one almost thinks of Dorian Gray posing for Basil Howard in all the historical costumes suitable for a narcissus[25]. As much as Henry is a symbol of masculinity, this is filtered through his existence as a very English gentleman. Indeed, Quatermain is the authentic adventurer, but he constantly reminds us that he is ‘timid’[26] in comparison. We should note that Quatermain’s Kafir name is ‘Macumazahn’ which translates as ‘he who keeps his eyes open.’[27] Quatermain is one who observes, as he narrates the tale, and Henry is the one who is gazed upon like a work of art.
This colonial beauty soon meets a native beauty, that of Umbopa (later Ignosi). Henry and Ignosi stand side by side with their similar physiques, believing ‘we are men, thou and I’[28] even though in colonial terms there is an element of difference between them; they are at least united in beauty. Here we see a tension, as although both are ‘magnificent’[29], it is only Ignosi who is sexualised. At least twice does he strip down and reveal his naked form to show the truth of his ancestry, which is tattooed around his waist as a phallus, or serpent. Indeed, as Ignosi raises the severed Kings head and presents it to his people, Quatermain can only describe the scene as ‘so beautiful, yet so utterly savage.’[30] The expedition to Kukuanaland is a process which awakens the implicit aestheticism in exploration and Empire, giving us an aspect of perverse beauty. Henry and Ignosi represent the tensions between Hebraism and Hellenism; English colonial authority and raw nature. In this space, both are beautiful.
However, the aesthetics of colonisation are more explicitly shown through Good. Quatermain’s first impression of the Navy man is that he is ‘so very neat’ that it is ‘curious’[31]. Good is several things in this novel; both an unwelcome presence and a necessity, and in many ways he is an anomaly who presents the tensions between Hellenism and Hebraism. Quatermain remarks on his incongruous presence in this man’s world of hunting: he was the ‘neatest man I ever had to do with in the wilderness.’[32] With his Grooming habits and eyeglass, Good is clearly a Dandy. He is therefore a symbol of decadence entering the novel in the form of artificiality. As Jackson states, dandyism is a ‘revolt against nature.’[33] As a being embracing the artificial over the natural world, Good is ultimately unwelcome in the wilderness. He tries to initiate himself by killing a giraffe with a fortunate shot, but this combines the natural world with the artificial artistic world in a dangerous way. He is quickly punished for his interference when he tries also to shoot an elephant. We learn that he ‘fell a victim to his passion for civilised dress’[34] because his ‘trousers cumbered him’[35] and he fell in the elephant’s path. Thankfully for Good, his servant Khiva throws himself in the way and Good remains alive. The symbol is obvious: had Good not been subject to his feminine aesthetic habits, he would not have been in danger. As Good has started a collision between two tensions, a sacrifice is made. Umbopa, the symbol for desire and masculine beauty looks at Khiva’s corpse and says: ‘he is dead, but he died like a man.’[36] Indeed, for Good’s feminine artistic presence, a masculine sacrifice is required and Khiva must fulfil it. Now that the opposing tensions are merging, Good’s punishment continues but now the effects are often more comical than sinister. For example, it is not long before more of the fauna antagonise the incongruous hunter. Next, Good falls onto the back of a ‘sleeping quagga’ but survives with his eyeglass still firmly fixed in his eye’.[37] In terms of empire and aestheticism, Good is a catalyst for the merging worlds of artificiality and authority.
Soon after they enter Kukuanaland, as Good is endeavouring in ‘an elaborate toilet’[38], the group are approached by some natives. Now that they have fully entered the space where the Hellenic and the Hebraic merge, Good’s role as a dandy can be completed. If we think of that role as bringing back sensation to mass culture by embracing the perverse and artificial, then that is what Good and his fellows achieve. His half shaven face, bare legs and eye glass may be the aesthetic inversion of a fin de siècle poser, but here they have the same effect; a form of defamiliarisation. As Quatermain states: ‘Your “beautiful white legs” and your eyeglass are now the feature of the party.’[39] In many ways this is further punishment for the nautical man’s vanity, but he is also achieving the effect the dandy intended: fascination. Upon further examples from his removable false teeth, the tribesmen believe that they are ‘wizards, indeed’[40] and their lives are spared. Although the natives will soon become impressed by Henry’s strength, it is Good’s aesthetic that they are first to notice, and which gives the party its God-like, or as Arnold might say, ‘divine’ status. I would argue that here is the crux of the issue. It is Good’s legs which allow the party to be seen as Gods, so they are therefore the Hellenic path to divinity. Indeed, one critic notes that ‘leg lifting’ was nineteenth century slang for sexual intercourse, and also that in Solomon’s legends, ‘Sheba is lame in one foot.’[41] Good is therefore a sexual being who has merged the aesthetic with the colonial and has personified that ‘imperialism of the spirit’ that is vital to decadence. His legs are a work of art with a perverse beauty.
As a dandy who is subversive to mass culture, Good is in danger during the battle for the throne. A soldier appearing to be dead jumps up and ‘began to spear him,’[42] but Good survives thanks to the ‘capital armour’ that he had been given by the tribe. Of course, it is ironic that it is his attire that saves his life, showing once again the ambiguous relationship between aesthetics and nature. However, it is Good’s penultimate punishment which serves the larger symbol; his relationship with Foulata. As we have previously examined, Foulata cannot remain alive due to the aggressive masculinity in place. In fact, Good’s femininity is a factor in her death. Here we have the opposing tensions in symbolic form, and due to the colonial aspect and the impossibility of marriage, one must be lost. This is seen in quite stark sexual terms as Good and his friends soon find themselves in darkness trapped inside the body of the cave. As darkness has overwhelmed the light, Good’s final trial is to fall into the river that runs through the cavern, and to be nearly consumed by the female landscape. He survives these ordeals with his eyeglass till fixed in place showing the strength of aesthetics, but the amalgamation he brings will unfortunately not allow Foulata to live. As Good leaves Kukuanaland, his parting gesture to Infadoos is a spare eyeglass, even though ‘eyeglasses don’t go well with leopard skin cloaks and black ostrich plumes.’[43] As the party leaves, this act of aesthetic colonisation confirms the amalgamation of conflicting factors which was made possible in Kukuanaland. They have achieved the aim of decadence in art, and in effect, colonised the paradox.
Now let us examine the same tensions in Salome. Donohue believes that these conflicts are inherent in the theme: ‘the play is about illicit but overwhelming desire and its fateful clash with ultimate authority.’[44] Ironically, the first clash is between Beardsley and Wilde for despite his illustrations, Beardsley did not actually like the play’s author. Jackson notes that ‘his designs overpower the text—not because they are greater but because they are inappropriate, sometimes even impertinent… the Salome drawings sneer at Oscar Wilde rather than interpret the play.’[45] As we shall see, the key features of Salome in relation to our quest are the idea of sensation, the spectacle and eventually the collision of rhetoric and beauty, all of which are shown by Beardsley’s illustrations mocking the author. The ambiguity of intent in Beardsley’s illustrations gives the play an appropriate undercurrent of ambivalence in our discussion.
With our analysis of King Solomon’s Mines in mind, perhaps the most germane aspect of Salome is that of the decadent search for sensation. Donohue also observes that Salome has an ‘unbridled curiosity and insatiable thirst for experience.’[46] This thirst forms a paradox though, between absolute sensuality and an absence of such. For example, Salome lusts after Iokanaan and demands to quench her capricious thirst through different parts of his body; ‘I will kiss thy mouth.’[47] At the same time however, she refuses to satisfy Herod’s lust for her. He wishes for ‘ripe fruits’ for Salomé to gnaw, so the flavour is enhanced for him by her lips: ‘Bite but a little of the fruit, that I may eat what is left’,[48] but she refutes his desire because her own hunger for Iokanaan is insatiable. She needs a sensation outside the boundaries of conformity. This is akin to the trials faced by Quatermain’s men as they travel through the barren desert devoid of sustenance before they reach their exotic goal. Salome presents a variety of symbols to warn of the coming danger stirred by Salome’s sensual paradox, such as the threatening wind ‘that is like the beating of vast wings.’[49] King Solomon’s Mines also has a nature based symbol in the form of a lion and an antelope intertwined in a predatory dance which killed them both.[50] The idea of paradox is key to Salome.
This sensual desire is linked to the idea of the gaze. The tension here is between things that can and cannot be seen, and the danger of exposing them. This is shown in theological terms as soldiers argue over the logic in believing in a God that is not visible[51] with the echo of Iokanaan’s prophecies behind them, hidden. Herodias frequently reprimands her husband for his lascivious glances at her daughter, and her page often warns the young Syrian that it is ’dangerous to look at people in such fashion. Something terrible may happen.’[52] Salome’s beauty elevates her as an artwork to be admired, and as such, her interest is in seeking a sensation which is contrary to her nature and therefore cannot be seen. Her first step to acquiring Iokanaan is to seduce the page with a visual trade. She wishes to gaze upon Iokanaan because Herod does not; he is afraid of the sight of the prophet because of the religious rhetoric he hears and dare not silence. Her contract is thus: ‘And on the morrow… I shall look at thee, Narraboth, it may be I will smile at thee.’[53] Salome has an incongruous presence like Good’s, bringing artificiality into a world of authority. Hence a sacrifice must also be made here in the form of the young Syrian. He must die like Foulata, because light cannot blend with darkness, and like Khiva because an inversion of beauty is required. Donohue states that ‘Narraboth is thus both visually and actually a sacrifice to the opposing forces of Herod’s authority and Salome’s will, and as such, a sign of the crisis yet to come.’[54] It is worth noting how in sacrifice, Khiva’s masculinity is noted, and here the Syrian’s femininity is showcased.[55] Salome is no dandy, but she does initiate a spectacle to locate divinity.
This spectacle is a symbol of the collision that is to follow. Salome offers herself as a work of art to Herod to manipulate him through the lure of aesthetics, but the ultimate irony is that in reading the play, we will never see the dance of the seven veils. In both texts, the spectacle merges morality and image. Donohue believes that ‘the unavoidable conclusion is that what she does is a striptease’[56] to present what is desired, but also forbidden. Here we see a parallel with Ignosi’s disrobing, as his naked body is a sign of ancestry and strength even though by this act in this space, he becomes sexualised. The ‘great dance’[57] in King Solomon’s Mines takes the form of a witch hunt where Gagool selects those for death. In many ways, Gagool resembles Salome, both encapsulating expressions that are ‘cruel and sensual to a degree.’[58] However, Gagool has numerous agents working under her who refer to her as ‘mother.’[59] If we were to analyses the Biblical account of Salome, we could see her as a pawn for her mother’s desire.[60] However, outside the text of authority she is the opposite, a sexualised being acting of her own free will. Rewriting the Biblical version is the first act of volition. The spectacles on display both rely on visuality, with Gagool’s slaughter embracing the previously stated barbaric beauty of violence. Quatermain admits: ‘I tried to keep my eyes shut, but they would open at the wrong time.’[61] The spectacles are aesthetic traps which conjure all the power of decadent art. They are grotesque, sexualised, and intrinsically linked to death, but this is as a mode of practice to reclaim authority from sterility.
In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold states that Christianity defeated Hellenism.[62] In Salome, the figure of Iokanaan clearly represents the new religious rhetoric that echoes with such power that Herod will not silence it, merely hide it away. Salome’s lust for the prophet is initially for the exotic; that which she is not allowed to possess. Iokanaan’s beauty exists at first because of his opposition to the Tetrarch and his status as forbidden. However, it is his discourse with enthrals Salome. She takes pleasure in the sensation of the taboo and all she receives is religious diatribe. She is offering an aesthetic principle, and through conversation it conflicts with his rhetoric. He offers her the Son of Man, a symbol of virtuousness and morality, but she refutes this sermon in favour of beauty: ‘who is he, the Son of Man? Is he as beautiful as thou art, Iokanaan?’[63] It is this collision of his spirituality and her blasphemous artificiality that she finds perversely beautiful. Her desire is to defeat blossoming forces of Hebraism, as Hebraism first defeated Hellenism. By having the prophet decapitated, she has achieved the triumph of artificially over morality. This is shown in decadent terms as she uses the severed head to satisfy her senses: ‘I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit.’[64] She was not interested in Herod’s ripe fruit, which would have acknowledged her slavery to mass culture, instead she chooses the fruit of the prophet’s lips to subvert it and crush the system. Her destruction of his sermon is shown in perversely sexual terms as she compares his holy tongue to a phallic serpent: ‘thy tongue, that was like a red snake darting poison, it moves no more, it speaks no words.’[65] Although she appears to have corrupted his purity through death, she curiously remarks that ‘thou dist take my virginity from me. I was chaste and thou didst fill my veins with fire.’[66] Although Iokanaan did not use her sexually, he did take her innocence. She was natural and comfortable with her chastity before Iokanaan’s dialogue of law aroused in her the prospect of sexual insurgence. She offered the light of beauty, but he oppressed her.
Jackson states this more eloquently by returning to his four aspects of decadence. We can certainly see Salome’s victory as one of the principles of decadence: ‘what after all, is human conscience when compared with nature but a perversity—the self turning from nature to contemplate itself? And is not civilisation artifice’s conspiracy against what is uncivilised and natural? As for egoism… it is not sufficient for a being to say “I am”. He is not a factor in life until he can add to that primal affirmation a consummating “I will”.’[67] If we see ‘I am’ as Jesus’ affirmation of divinity, quite possibly as related by Iokanaan, then Salome is certainly attacking this and turning an ‘I am’ into a decadent ‘I will’ by kissing Iokanaan’s dead lips. Once again, this is the tension between Hellenism and Hebraism; between sensation and beauty, and moral rhetoric. Much like Good, Salome shows the triumph of Hellenism through this act of blasphemy. Instead of taking moral pleasure in Iokanaan’s words, she takes sensual pleasure through his lifeless features. In a certainly perverse way, one could argue that this is her path to divinity, both through Hellenistic beauty, but also through the relish with which she ravishes his severed head; this is her way of actually seeing the hidden God; kissing the corpse of His prophet. This is a truly perverse beauty.
The symbol for this is the moon. Herod remarks earlier that the moon resembles a ‘mad woman’ who is ‘looking for lovers’[68]. Indeed, the moon is a parallel presence to Salome. This symbol also shows the paradoxical nature of perverse beauty as the page of Herodias and the young Syrian argue whether the moon is like ‘a dead woman… looking for dead things’ or like a ‘princess who has white doves for feet.’[69] This is the first of several metaphors which show the ambiguities of description to this aesthetic. Salome is both a cruel figure of decay, as well as a chaste girl who dances without shoes. It is her encounter with Iokanaan when she enters the paradoxical space of decadent tensions that she moves freely between the two. Perverse beauty therefore can be best described through contradictory metaphor.
Another example would be when some soldiers are discussing wine. One is suggested to be ‘yellow as gold’ whereas the other is ‘red as blood.’[70] Blood suggests a sinister wine, and gold one of pleasant taste, but as the soldiers observe, both blood and gold are each favoured by some. The description therefore has no effect on the qualities, only on the strength of the sensation or the lengths of beauty. As Herod predicts danger, he comments on this aesthetic which will soon defeat him: ‘it makes life too full of terrors. It were better to say that stains of blood are as lovely as rose petals.’[71] This effect also governs the savage masculine beauty of King Solomon’s Mines. Here, perverse beauty is illustrated to be a paradoxical aesthetic, and an aspect of fin de siècle decadent technique.
Whereas Haggard’s men escape Kukuanaland with their colonial act of aestheticism completed, Salome’s success will have to remain symbolic. Donohue suggests that ‘when the moonlight falls upon Salome, it illuminates her as the ultimate interpreter of what the moon means: it means no less than herself, and all that her Self comprehends.’[72] She becomes a triumph of the aesthetic over society, but also a victim of its distaste for artistic form. As Salome completes her perverse objective, Herod decries to hide away and be unseen by the claws of aestheticism, and as such the moon is covered. Upon its return it illuminates Salome as a success, and seeing her true form, Herod has her destroyed. It is worth comparing the transition of moonlight in Salome to the act of the eclipse in King Solomon’s Mines. Good manages to turn this into an act of blasphemy as well, for while Henry quotes the Old Testament to appear with divine powers, Good ‘addressed the king of day in a volume of the most classical bad language that he could think of.’[73] Their trick is complete, and they achieve divine status in the minds of their audience. The contrasting symbols of blocking the sun and hiding the moon lead us to a conclusion of our argument.
In both King Solomon’s Mines and Salome we see the opposing tensions collide and Hellenism triumph over Hebraism. This comes in the form of an individual using decadent art and artificially to the purpose of subverting authority, which in both texts is seen as incestuous and malignant. The first example is Good’s legs, giving the party a divine presence so they can overthrow the vile ruler of the land, and aesthetically colonise the territory by seeking new experience. As Monsman states, ‘Haggard’s assertion [is] that neither social conventions nor literary art can or should suppress passion and beauty’[74]. The second is Salome’s blasphemous treatment of Iokanaan and her juxtaposition of beauty with rhetoric. She overthrows the dominance of religious dogma with the pure light of Hellenism, but her quest has a penalty. As Donohue notes, she is ‘an emblem of sensuality, of unhealthy curiousity, and of that terrible fate reserved for searchers after a nameless ideal’.[75] In both texts a treasure is supplied, be it diamonds or Herod’s ridiculous peacocks[76], but in both instances it is refused on grounds of simply achieving sensation. This is the perverse beauty in these texts: the success of decadence in probing unusual echelons of art to recover sensation, and the triumph of artificiality over authority.
5209 words
Bibliography:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matt%2014:6;%20Mark%206:17,%2019,%2022;%20Luke%203:19&version=49 (last accessed 12/01/08)
Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy and other writings, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Bergonzi, Bernard, The Turn of a Century, (London: Macmillan, 1973)
Donohue, Joseph, ‘Distance, Death and Desire in Salome’, in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. Peter Raby, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Haggard, H. Rider, King Solomon’s Mines, (London: Headline Review, 2007)
Jackson, Holbrook, The Eighteen Nineties, (London: Harvester Press, 1976)
Monsman, Gerald, ‘Of Diamonds and Deities: Social Anthropology in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines’, English Literature in Transition (1880-1920), 2000, Issue 43:3
Rodensky, Lisa, ed. Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu, (London: Penguin, 2006)
Symons, Arthur, ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’, in Arthur Symons: Selected Writings, ed. Roger Holdsworth, (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1989)
Wilde, Oscar, Salome, (New York: Dover, 1967)
Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray, (London: Penguin, 2003)
[1] H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines, (London: Headline Review, 2007) p.104
[2] Oscar Wilde, Salome, (New York: Dover, 1967) p.65
[3] Bernard Bergonzi, The Turn of a Century, (London: Macmillan, 1973) p.19
[4] Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, (London: Penguin, 2003) p.171
[5] Holbrook Jackson, The Eighteen Nineties, (London: Harvester Press, 1976) p.64
[6] Ernest Dowson’s decadent search for new experience, ‘Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae’ in Lisa Rodensky, ed. Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu, (London: Penguin, 2006) p.86
[7] King Solomon’s Mines p.42
[8] The Eighteen Nineties p.64
[9] The Eighteen Nineties p.64
[10] Arthur Symons, ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’, in Arthur Symons: Selected Writings, ed. Roger Holdsworth, (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1989) p.73
[11] Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy and other writings, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) p.127
[12] Culture and Anarchy p.126
[13] King Solomon’s Mines p.151
[14] King Solomon’s Mines p.156
[15] King Solomon’s Mines p.3
[16] King Solomon’s Mines p.124
[17] King Solomon’s Mines p.156
[18] King Solomon’s Mines p.94
[19] King Solomon’s Mines p.19
[20] Gerald Monsman, ‘Of Diamonds and Deities: Social Anthropology in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines’, English Literature in Transition (1880-1920), 2000, Issue 43:3
[21] Gerald Monsman
[22] Salome p.51
[23] King Solomon’s Mines p.4
[24] King Solomon’s Mines p.176
[25] The Picture of Dorian Gray p.13
[26] King Solomon’s Mines p.1
[27] King Solomon’s Mines pp.38-39
[28] King Solomon’s Mines p.40
[29] King Solomon’s Mines p.110
[30] King Solomon’s Mines p.210
[31] King Solomon’s Mines p.4
[32] King Solomon’s Mines p.45
[33] The Eighteen Nineties p.111
[34] King Solomon’s Mines p.51
[35] King Solomon’s Mines p.51
[36] King Solomon’s Mines p.52
[37] King Solomon’s Mines p.64
[38] King Solomon’s Mines p.95
[39] King Solomon’s Mines p.104
[40] King Solomon’s Mines p.102
[41] Gerald Monsman
[42] King Solomon’s Mines p.203
[43] King Solomon’s Mines p.277
[44] Joseph Donohue, ‘Distance, Death and Desire in Salome’, in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. Peter Raby, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) p.121
[45] The Eighteen Nineties p.64
[46] Joseph Donohue p.126
[47] Salome p.24
[48] Salome p.32
[49] Salome p.31
[50] King Solomon’s Mines P.47
[51] Salome p.5
[52] Salome p.3
[53] Salome p.16
[54] Joseph Donohue p.127
[55] ‘He was my brother, and nearer to me than a brother. I gave him a little box of perfumes…’ Salome p.27
[56] Joseph Donohue p.131
[57] King Solomon’s Mines p.132
[58] King Solomon’s Mines p.124
[59] King Solomon’s Mines p.143
[60]http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matt%2014:6;%20Mark%206:17,%2019,%2022;%20Luke%203:19&version=49
[61] King Solomon’s Mines p.148
[62] Culture and Anarchy p.136
[63] Salome p.21
[64] Salome p.64
[65] Salome p.64
[66] Salome p.65
[67] The Eighteen Nineties p.64
[68] Salome p.28
[69] Salome p.1
[70] Salome pp.4-5
[71] Salome p.51
[72] Distance death
[73] King Solomon’s Mines p.162
[74] Gerald Monsman
[75] Joseph Donohue p.128
[76] Salome p.59
‘There’s so much I’ll never be able to understand or visualize. I mean, reality is too complex for comics… So much has to be left out or distorted.’[1]
-Art Spiegelman, Maus
‘”La-la-la,” said Cruso, and motioned to Friday to repeat. “Ha-ha-ha,” said Friday from the back of his throat.’[2]
-J.M. Coetzee, Foe
I believe this to be a suitable way to begin this discussion of survival, storytelling, and silence. The question is how does contemporary literature cope in describing that which is beyond description? In Maus, Art Spiegelman creates what is essentially a Holocaust comic, yet despite the cultural implications of the form, his art is both distressing and beautiful. I intend to argue that he achieves his success through a process of visual defamiliarisation, which locates the historical and literary tensions in this sensitive issue, and then finds an aesthetic milieu at the centre at which to present what I believe can be seen as true sight. I intend to conclude with the character of Friday in Coetzee’s Foe to hopefully give weight to any discussion of silence, power and narrative that might arise from analysis of these tensions.
In Murder in our Midst, Omer Bartov discusses the problems of teaching students about the Holocaust: ‘Nor for that matter anyone who had experienced it or studied it from some geographical or chronological distance could quite grasp the essence…or make it understandable to others.’[3] If one aspect the Holocaust can be verbalised, it is the cliché that those events will remain one atrocity that is beyond our human power of description. As Omer Bartov digresses: ‘Somehow fiction and imagination seem to be unable to confront… Auschwitz, a place even those who had been there, both victims and perpetrators, kept describing as unimaginable.’[4] A secondary and rather sardonic cliché might be consideration of how history could have unfolded slightly differently had Adolf Hitler been successful in his goal of being an artist, rather than a politician. This link is often stated implicitly, for example in Glamorama, a postmodern satire on the image and destruction, Bret Easton Ellis begins his tale with a quote directly from Hitler: ‘You make a mistake if you see what we do as merely political.’[5] Indeed, it is impossible to study this period without considering the successful use of aesthetics in tyranny; the legacy of Nazi propaganda all the way from the Second World War to contemporary pop culture. Spiegelman also begins by merging the political and the aesthetic by taking Hitler’s view that ‘The Jews are undoubtedly a race but they are not human’[6] and manipulating the concept into something subversive to that ideology. The first tension provided to us is between the aesthetic power of Nazi Germany, and the void of representation it left behind through genocide. Spiegelman’s first success is retelling the story through his own images and those of his Father, highlighting both the success and failure of the image and its implicit work in politics of representation, both past and present.
Bartov also presents us with our second example of tension: Should the Holocaust be seen as the most important event of the epoch, or merely as a distraction which ‘obscures our perception and prevents us from a more vivid understanding of the real issues and cardinal problems’[7]? Indeed, the Holocaust may resist representation because it is being pulled apart from two opposing perspectives and cannot remain stable. All representations are also subject to varying motives, be they to achieve catharsis, or to promote a moral rhetoric. This myriad of tensions does create a problem for art. However, as Bartov relates, there is one solution: ‘Perhaps we can remember the unimaginable, but we can’t imagine it by definition.’[8] Although ultimately fragile, the personal memory seems to be the key in Maus, which is able to aim between the dichotomies, and strike ever so poignantly where prose would just remain ‘contrived.’[9]
However, this raises the question of whether Maus should be viewed as fiction or nonfiction. Despite critical acclaim upon release, it was initially relegated to the fiction section of The New York Times’ Bestseller List, until an acerbic letter was sent by a less than impressed Spiegelman and it changed category. Although the artist may not have approved of this error in journalism, he could surely have taken solace in the larger symbol of Maus moving freely between fiction and nonfiction so effortlessly, both artistically and inside the text, as well as outside in reproduction and consumption. As a piece of genre transcending art, Maus does achieve an almost ethereal status. Part of this is due to the fact that with its chosen subject matter, ‘poetic license and tolerant forbearance are not granted automatically’[10]; the Holocaust aesthetic means that Maus cannot be subjugated to regular media. Indeed, as Thomas Doherty also notes: ‘Maus redrew the contractual terms for depictions of the Holocaust in popular art.’ Of course, Maus is no regular text, as it has movement both in genre and through the tensions which complicate representation of the Holocaust.
The primary technique being used in Maus is what Viktor Shklovsky might label defamiliarisation. As Doherty observed, where the Holocaust is concerned, there are slightly different rules for attempts at media representation. Being a sensitive subject, there have to be boundaries constructed so that it is never treated flippantly. In this respect it can never become overly familiar because access is not so easily granted. However, with such fixed status, it could always remain static in perception. The result therefore requires a more spherical view of Shklovsky’s concept that ‘as perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic.’[11] Indeed, he notes that ‘art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stoney.’[12] Maus is certainly an exposition of the latter parts of this statement, but its true success is not in recovering the sensation of life, but rather in penetrating the void and also recovering either the truth of loss, or perhaps the essence of death. A very subjective version of defamiliarisation is in effect in here, where Maus approaches the concept from both angles, once again manipulating tensions. Ironically, the idea seems reluctant to be articulated, but perhaps the best example of a similar interpretation can be found in the world of graffiti. On the website of urban artist Banksy, a manifesto is provided. This is an extract from a military man’s diary, and his recollections upon liberating a concentration camp. He can give ‘no adequate description’ of the terrors he saw, but one event stands out; when the Red Cross distributed lipstick. I believe this result to be very close to the visual defamiliarisation employed in Maus:
This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.[13]
By recovering both life and death as sensation and art, Maus finds a true sight that can only be described as human.
Much like the subversive effect of graffiti, defamiliarisation in Maus is enhanced by its style of illustration. The use of the comic form allows many techniques to flourish where in prose they may not be possible, or may also appear ‘contrived’ as stated earlier. In many places, Maus uses a dual technique of speech and symbolic imagery to add further metaphor to a point. For example, early in the story, Vladek is waylaid and nearly caught in an ambush by violent German officials. The frame captures him in a spotlight and is captioned ‘will I walk slowly, they will take me… will I run they can shoot me.’[14] The spotlight itself is shaped as the Star of David, matching the mandatory badge Vladek is forced to wear, which in turn creates a spotlight of race and difference in a crowd. It also points him out as a literal target to be shot, with the startled animal expression made more effective by Spiegelman’s use of actual creatures. Vladek is caught in the beam of something far worse than a car headlight, but the danger is equally imminent. An equivalent device is also employed much later in a frame captioned ‘Anja and I didn’t have where to go. We walked in the direction of Sosnowiec- but where to go?!’[15] Their sense of hopelessness and the futility of their journey can be brought right down to the terrain in this format, as they follow a road shaped like a Swastika. This further emphasises that all paths available to them lead to the same fate, as well as the fact that their world is under the control of a malevolent force; from the horizon to the ground under their feet. In prose this could certainly appear a spurious sentiment, but it is deadly effective in Maus.
As well as reinforcing larger themes, the comic format also encourages repetition as a device in a way language could not mirror so subtly. For example, as tension builds and Vladek is conversing about hiding his son with another family, the angle of the frame emphasises the young mice on the floor playing with a train set.[16] Their innocent play pre-empts a more sinister use of transport later in the narrative during Vladek’s train journeys to and away from Auschwitz. In the next frame, as the adults grow troubled and insistent (shown by the now straight angle) the children curiously dismantle the train. They won’t find what Vladek sees later on surrounded by corpses in a packed carriage. Another such repetition would be Anja’s hysterical expression upon realising the likely fate of her family and her own isolation: ‘Why are you pulling me, Vladek? Let me alone! I don’t want to live!’[17] Her expression seems purposefully identical to that of Vladek’s girlfriend Lucia when he informs her that he is leaving her for Anja much earlier in the memoir.[18] Instead, Lucia begs him to stay with her, whereas in the more traumatic circumstances Anja is begging to be left to die. This shows the effect of different levels of crisis on personal relationships. With Lucia, Vladek can be irresponsible, but his carelessness here intensifies his responsibility with his wife when their lives are threatened much later on. It also gives a human ambivalence to the mice, as Vladek is presented in both examples of a masculine role (carefree and restless, then later fiercely protective) showing that he is far from a faultless individual, but very much a human model.
In fact, Spiegelman’s primary mode of defamiliarisation is the use of animal characters in place of human facial features. Presumably, each species reflects either the stereotype or common misconception of each race or nationality as Spiegelman illustrates when he reflects on how to draw his wife. Her suggestion of a ‘bunny rabbit’ would be too cute to represent the French; ‘let’s not forget the years of anti-Semitism.’[19] However, Francoise appears as a mouse like her Jewish husband, showing that although the representation is a satire of generalisations its conditions are purely on personal experience level. This malleability is further highlighted when a supposed German war hero steps out from the captive Jews, begging for his life and a new definition. Mirroring his oppressor’s perceptions, he is drawn as a mouse, but in the next frame a shadow of the character (as well as his speech) appears with a feline form. German or Jew; cat or mouse, the character was still ‘dragged away’ by a guard who ‘jumped hard on his neck…’[20] Katalin Orbán suggests that the purpose of this device is to ‘prompt viewers to mobilize their imagination.’[21] Without wishing to compare Maus to a child’s colouring book, but the black and white figures often beg for definition and non-literal colour from the reader to fill in the gaps. Once again Spiegelman finds a true visuality, here by creating an absence of representation as a form of defamiliarisation.
There are also many connotations of using mice in particular to represent the Jews. As well as belonging to a food chain of prey (we could say: dogs, cats, mice), rodents are known to be quiet. This could mean in terms of storytelling; their perspective is silent. This could also play on derogatory perceptions of rodents as vermin, or pests which live quietly under the nose of society and unnerve the public when they reveal their malevolent presence. This generalisation is manipulated by Spiegelman to its full potential. One chapter begins with the illustration and the title ‘Mouse Holes’[22], but instead of lurking in society’s architecture waiting to sneak around, the mice are huddled for shelter, starving. This symbol is taken further as Vladek describes how his friends and family were forced to hide from their German oppressors. He draws Arty a picture of his ‘Mouse Hole’, which is a bunker in a coal cellar. The following three frames are structured around the diagram[23], as the comic form hides its characters in its own illustration, yet another method that prose could not articulate. It appears that Spiegelman’s methods of defamiliarisation often focus on absence as well as presence; silences and what remains unsaid (perhaps hidden, or in death) alongside the narrative that is actually explained to us.
Another technique employed in Maus is the framing device of the relationship between Vladek and Arty, as the narrative is structured through Vladek’s recollections which are recorded by his son. Memory is shown to be a painful process as Vladek mounts his exercise bike layered over three frames, and essentially begins pedalling into the past.[24] The number tattooed on his arm is clearly visible as a picture of his younger self appears in a circular frame where the wheel of the bike would be, presumably spinning to show a portal between past and present. Vladek cycles through a lot of his story until the exertion, either physically or mentally causes him to need rest.[25] Here we see Spiegelman assault the tension between past and present. Historians often assume that History benefits from a detached perspective, so to pierce the perceptions of his audience even more, Spiegelman uses an amalgamation of past and present to literally bring the effects of the Holocaust home: to introduce part two of Maus, we see a close up map of Auschwitz juxtaposed with a road map of New York State.[26] In the illustration of Birkenau we can see in personal detail the barracks where Vladek survived, whereas the road map merely shows impersonal interstates, and the location of Rego Park, where Vladek now resides. This contrasts Vladek’s two forms of survival; as a prisoner of race, but also as a prisoner of memory in his old age. Ironically, it is the modern map which appears akin to the detached historian’s perspective of History, simply added to the more immediate image of the concentration camp which consumes the page and our view of chronology in the tale.
As past and present are merged, Arty and Vladek’s relationship is shown to be complicated by the horrors we see conjured in the story. Their confrontations add a layer of struggle and legacy to the narrative, contributing to the tensions inherent in the idea of true sight. They argue over many things, which contrast the image of Vladek as a resourceful victim to his modern persona of utmost Jewish stereotype. Out of all things, it is Arty’s new tape recorder (the method of retelling Vladek’s story) that proves the stereotype to be correct, as Vladek criticises his son’s financial decision, saying he could have got the product cheaper elsewhere.[27] Also, whereas warmth and security are important in the Auschwitz narrative, Vladek is not averse to throwing out his son’s coat and replacing it with one of his own that he has no further use for.[28] It is important to note that later when Arty returns, he is wearing a different coat to the one his father gave him[29], rejecting part of his influence. Here we see how survival in the past has designed family life in the present. It is evident that Spiegelman’s true sight has a keen grasp on the layers of human relationships.
This humanity is continually shown through ambiguous representations of the characters. Vladek may be a hero by default because he survived, but as well as being a stereotype who collects wire from the street[30] and returns half eaten groceries[31], he is also a serious racist. When Francoise picks up a black hitchhiker, Vladek is quick to make similar negative generalisations to the prejudices which ultimately allowed the Holocaust to occur: ‘I thought really you are more smart than this, Francoise… It’s not even to compare the shvartsers and the Jews!’[32] Vladek’s ignorance helps dispel any notion of Maus being a didactic moral sermon. We see that once again it presents two contrasting points of tension, and finds a middle ground which best captures humanity, however hypocritical it might sometimes be.
To illustrate true sight and the contradictory nature of humanity, Spiegelman occasionally has his characters wear masks. When Vladek and Anja are forced to hide their race they appear drawn with pig masks to blend with the Poles, but the most notable example of masked behaviour is when Spiegelman deals with the subject of survivor’s guilt, through the character of himself. In the chapter ‘Time Flies’ the artist appears at his desk with a mouse mask over his human head, observing how quickly time has passed since events he is writing about occurred, whilst also surrounded by actual flies.[33] These flies are the pestilence of Auschwitz being summoned back by memory, although not his own. The mouse mask may symbolise his reluctance to adapt a story of his own race, or perhaps his sense of being an imposter for succeeding commercially with a personal narrative. As the frames continue, we see the bodies pile up underneath his desk, a watchtower appears outside the window, and an anonymous voice announce that they are ready to ‘shoot’[34]; either in media or military terms. Whereas the past and present had merely been juxtaposed before, here they literally return to plague the artist. The tensions in his relationship with his father gave Maus the middle ground of true sight, but his narrative also draws absence as much as it does presence, and here the ghosts of what hasn’t been said choose to surface.
Previously, Arty has tried to explain to Francoise the impossible task before him: ‘I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest dreams.’[35] Her only advice is to be honest. Due to the fact that Arty can never comprehend some of the images he must present, he begins to be haunted, ironically by an image; that of his lost brother. Richieu’s death relegated him to a photograph; something Arty’s parents never needed of him because was alive. He therefore developed a ‘sibling rivalry with a snapshot!’[36] Arty is attempting to create an immortal image, yet the only which he finds is that of Richieu, who had he survived would have a grasp of the horrors he lived through in a way Arty can never have. Arty begins to develop a strange sense of guilt because his story (Part One of Maus) was a commercial success, yet he believes his brother’s story would have been closer to the truth. This gives Arty’s character the body of a child while Spiegelman meditates on his thought process with this difficult issue. In fact, Arty has the true sight because he includes both the presence of his father’s tale, and the absence of his brother’s ghost narrative which must remain as a silence.
The result this brings is another aspect of the defamiliarisation in Maus; recovering not life, but death. As both the narrative and Arty’s shrink suggest, there was a tension between luck and skill as a means of survival. The shrink suggests that Arty is the true ‘survivor’[37], and in many ways he has experienced the impact of the Holocaust through his relationship with Vladek. In terms of survival, the theme which is important is silence: ‘it’s as if life equals winning so death equals losing… the victims who died can never tell their side of the story.’[38] As Arty grasps this concept he regains his human form (but retains the rodent mask) and relocates his muse. By the end of the chapter Arty has realised that describing the indescribable is a dual form of defamiliarisation; regaining the sensation and poignancy by also including noted absences and untold narratives, such as his brother’s. The last frames end with a symbolic silence of speech disturbed only by Vladek, whose nightmares cause him to moan in his sleep (proving him to be the opposite of silence in the tale). The flies from the beginning of the chapter return to gnaw at the artist’s body and subjectivity—‘damn bugs are eating me alive’[39] – but they can be dispelled into silence also as Arty now holds an insect spray. The dead time flies fall outside the frame as the question of the indescribable has been answered in Maus. The answer is silence.
The first of these silences is that of Anja’s diaries which Vladek destroyed. Although they would have benefitted the memoir, their absence serves the larger symbol; Arty calls his Father a ‘murderer’[40] but this death is also vital. The other is of course Richieu’s ghost; an aesthetic (photographic) silence. This perhaps best explained by the inclusion of a real photo of Vladek towards the conclusion of the text. Posing in a camp uniform after the event makes this ‘souvenir photo’[41] looks decidedly unrealistic compared to the two hundred and ninety three pages of mouse comic which precede it. An aspect of realism is certainly lost when Maus chooses to borrow visually from reality. This photo also serves as a double form of defamiliarisation, reminding us of the relationships and tensions Maus has employed until this point that have only come as close as they can to what really happened. It also proposes that was has happened with the mice is the actual true sight, and that reality ultimately fails next to art in this task of representation.
Perhaps this is because reality relies on presence and life, whereas art can also include absence and death. Maus concludes with Vladek in poor health, and he ends his tale as such: ‘more I don’t need to tell you. We were both very happy and lived happy, happy ever after.’[42] Of course, we know from earlier that this is a fallacy; Anja committed suicide and Vladek becomes nothing but frustrated with his new partner Mala. Before the frames cease and the lives of the characters thereby end, Vladek’s final address is not to Arty, but to Richieu. Here, all the tensions previously mentioned meet in the middle and the last aspect of true sight cements its creation. The two narratives of life and death, of presence and absence, of voice and silence have met and created this space. The story belongs to the ghost of Richieu as much as Arty. This is unsettlingly effective both in its literary technique, and its poignancy.
Katalin Orbán reaches a similar conclusion about the text. This critic believes that as time passes (or perhaps ‘flies’) the Holocaust slowly becomes de-sanctified and reduced to melodrama as generations end and culture changes. The success of Maus is how it models these changes by finding a middle ground: ‘it cancels and yet authorizes its own visuality and thereby seems to validate both sides of the conflict in an ambivalent and dynamic way.’[43] This is much like Bartov describing the conflicting social and historical tensions which capture the Holocaust in a difficult web. Orbán describes how Maus has ‘an ability to see inwardly, without the eyes, cancelling the visual image’ creating ‘blindness as true sight’.[44] With the Holocaust as a web of representation, Maus manages to locate an aesthetic milieu in the centre of the numerous tensions, and uses the numerous opposing forces to capture that which cannot be described.
If we are discussing the concept of visual silence, we should at least mention Foucault and the relationship between silence and power: ‘There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses.’[45] Here, we see that ‘for Foucault discourse is always inseparable from power, because discourse is the governing and ordering medium of every institution.’[46] In many ways Maus can be seen as a power struggle between Arty and Vladek; both in terms of their relationship, and in terms of the life and death narratives. Indeed, Arty comments that he only became an artist because his father would not threaten him in that field.[47] If we are probing the depths of Maus, power and discourse must be relevant. Our model for this conclusion is the theoretical labyrinth of Foe.
Initially, Foe can be seen as a text which also deals with race, in this case, contemporary South African racial politics. Brian Macaskill and Jeanne Colleran suggest that the eponymous ‘foe’ will be ‘those who design, uphold, live amidst, fail to dismantle, or fail to detach themselves from systematic racial dominance.’[48] Indeed, the character of Friday remains a silence throughout, as those who struggle to extract his story believe he ‘has no command of words and therefore no defence against being reshaped day by day in conformity with the desires of others.’[49] Susan Barton does find Friday’s presence (or perhaps absence) to be quite vexing at times, as she finds herself wiping ‘the utensils which his hands had touched’[50]. Presumably because these may have entered the mouth she is frightened to examine, and touched the neutered stump where a tongue once existed to promise a story she cannot control by herself. If we consider these racial terms alongside Maus, the story itself is both an object of power and oppression, leaving Friday as ‘helpless’[51] as a mouse shivering in its bunker.
There are many examples in Maus however where Vladek uses language as a means of survival[52]. Coetzee also painted a response to a reversal of power in the depths of the critical Foe. Lewis Macleod proposes that Friday may in fact have a tongue, and his silence is therefore ‘an epic gesture of defiance’[53]. This is certainly a possibility, as on the island we learn that Crusoe’s teeth have become rotten, yet Friday’s have remained ‘white as ivory’[54]. The contents of his mouth may be pure out of his choice to resist the seduction of storytelling offered by Barton: ‘unlike Susan, he refuses to put the story… of his life into anyone else’s hands and as a result he seems to avoid the kind of narrative conscription that troubles his more ambitious caretaker… he avoids becoming source material.’[55] If we see the tensions that Maus manipulates represented by Barton and Foe, each struggling for discourse and power, Friday’s silence is another example of what we can now more confidently label true sight.
Friday also represents the exhibition of death and absence in a story, as Barton recalls ‘townsfolk pay us no heed’[56] because they move like ghosts. There are several ways to interpret the almost incongruous final chapter of Foe, but if we are using it as a theoretical explanation of Maus we can see the endings of both texts as very similar. The now anonymous narrator informs us that ‘this is a place where bodies are their own signs. It is the home of Friday’[57]. It is a place of death that concludes Maus, where all the stories not told can exist, both Friday’s, and Richieu’s. As the speaker opens Friday’s mouth, his side of events flow forth, ‘up through his body and out upon me… soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.’[58] These are all the tensions and contradictions, historical, cultural, even personal, and all the complications that give Maus a true sight. Of course, this is where the text ends, so the silent story remains untold, to us at least. Both texts have located the space that exists between the tensions, and successfully found a way to capture the indescribable in contemporary literature. As Holocaust survivor Primo Levi states: ‘Silence, the absence of signals, is in its turn a signal, but it is ambiguous, and ambiguity generates anxiety and suspicion. To say that it is impossible to communicate is false; one always can.’[59] Describing the indescribable is possible through true visuality, an aspect of which will always include silence.
Let us conclude simply with Katalin Orbán saying that Maus ‘alerts one to the artificiality of visual representation.’[60] If discourse and storytelling is a power struggle, then Maus is a warning of this. The true sight that it achieves is reclamation of the power through its various techniques of anti realism and defamiliarisation. The type of power it has is its invitation to think about the holocaust in light of contemporary media[61] and therefore question political discourse as well as the power of the image in general. This purpose is illustrated with a certain grace through Foe’s Friday, who responds with a mocking ‘ha-ha-ha’ when asked to repeat after Crusoe’s inane ‘la-la-la’. Perhaps he is laughing because ‘real power is executed through discourse, and… this power has real effects’[62] or because like many readers he did not envision a Holocaust comic about mice to be so delicate and powerful, until he also fell under its spell.
5225 words
Bibliography:
http://www.banksy.co.uk/manifesto/index.html (last checked 8/01/08)
Bartov, Omer, Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
Coetzee, J.M., Foe, (London: Penguin, 1987)
Doherty, Thomas, ‘Art Spiegelman’s Maus: Graphic Art and the Holocaust’, Write Now: American Literature in the 1980s and 1990s, March 1996, Volume 68, No. 1
Easton Ellis, Bret, Glamorama, (London: Picador, 2006)
Foucault, Michael, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley, (London: Penguin 1979)
Levi, Primo, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal, (London: Michael Joseph, 1988)
Macaskill, Brian, and Jeanne Colleran, ‘Reading History, Writing Heresy: The Resistance of Representation and the Representation of Resistance in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe’, Contemporary Literature, Autumn 1992, Volume 33, No. 3
MacLeod, Lewis, ‘’Do we of necessity become puppets in a story?’; or, Narrating the world: on speech, silence, and discourse in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe’, Modern Fiction Studies, Spring 2006, Volume 52, Issue 1
Orbán, Katalin, ‘Trauma and Visuality: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers’, Representations, Winter 2007, Issue 97
Selden, Raman and Peter Widdowson eds. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 3rd Edition, (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)
Shklovsky, Viktor, ‘Art as Technique’, in Literary Theory: An Anthology, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan eds. 2nd Edition, (Cornwall: Blackwell, 2004)
Spiegelman, Art, The Complete Maus, (London: Penguin, 2003)
[1] Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus, (London: Penguin, 2003) p.176
[2] J.M. Coetzee, Foe, (London: Penguin, 1987) p.22
[3] Omer Bartov, Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) p.115
[4] Murder in Our Midst p.129
[5] Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama, (London: Picador, 2006) p.3
[6] Maus p.10
[7] Murder in Our Midst p.117
[8] Murder in Our Midst p.129
[9] Murder in Our Midst p.129
[10] Thomas Doherty, ‘Art Spiegelman’s Maus: Graphic Art and the Holocaust’, Write Now: American Literature in the 1980s and 1990s, March 1996, Volume 68, No. 1
[11] Viktor Shklovsky, ‘Art as Technique’, in Literary Theory: An Anthology, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan eds. 2nd Edition, (Cornwall: Blackwell, 2004) p.15
[12] Art as Technique p.16
[13] http://www.banksy.co.uk/manifesto/index.html
[14] Maus p.82
[15] Maus p.127
[16] Maus p.83
[17] Maus p.124
[18] Maus p.22
[19] Maus p.171
[20] Maus p.210
[21] Katalin Orbán, ‘Trauma and Visuality: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers’, Representations, Winter 2007, Issue 97
[22] Maus p.97
[23] Maus pp.112-113
[24] Maus p.14
[25] Maus p.93
[26] Maus p.166
[27] Maus p.75
[28] Maus p.71
[29] Maus p.108
[30] Maus p.118
[31] Maus p.249
[32] Maus p.259
[33] Maus p.199
[34] Maus p.201
[35] Maus p.176
[36] Maus p.175
[37] Maus p.204
[38] Maus p.205
[39] Maus p.234
[40] Maus p.161
[41] Maus p.294
[42] Maus p.296
[43] Trauma and Visuality
[44] Trauma and visuality
[45] Michael Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley, (London: Penguin 1979) p.27
[46] Raman Selden and Peter Widdowson eds. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 3rd Edition, (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993) p.127
[47] Maus p.99
[48]Brian Macaskill and Jeanne Colleran, ‘Reading History, Writing Heresy: The Resistance of Representation and the Representation of Resistance in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe’, Contemporary Literature, Autumn 1992, Volume 33, No. 3
[49] Foe p.121
[50] Foe p.24
[51] Foe p.121
[52] For example, Vladek teaches his Kapo to speak English, and is treated less harshly as a result, Maus p.192
[53]Lewis MacLeod, ‘’Do we of necessity become puppets in a story?’; or, Narrating the world: on speech, silence, and discourse in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe’, Modern Fiction Studies, Spring 2006, Volume 52, Issue 1
[54] Foe p.22
[55] Narrating the world: on speech, silence, and discourse in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe
[56] Foe p.87
[57] Foe p.157
[58] Foe p.157
[59] Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal, (London: Michael Joseph, 1988) p.69
[60] Trauma and Visuality
[61] Trauma and Visuality
[62] Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory p.158
Opening to tribal drums and the backdrop of the shadowy jungle, Xian1 leads us into an anachronistic documentary about the ancient God Quetzalcoatl. Represented by the head of a feathered serpent, he apparently taught man both the arts and the cultivation of corn, before buggering off back to the stars. As a loquacious synth lead penetrates the darkness between the trees, Xian1’s own version of the deity returns. Thankfully, this time he comes to share the secrets of digital art and futuristic Dubstep, not how to harvest snacks from the ground.
After the chimerical and ambiguous introduction, things build surreptitiously with ‘Spearfishing’. Using a tantalising bassline as bait, the track manages to find the volume implicit in stealth without ever needing to explode. Somehow it’s all the heavier for it. The reggae of EZ Dread Dub is equally nonchalant, alternating between apocalyptic and mellow. This track recently featured on the Betamorphosis Volume Three compilation, proof that Xian1 can already hold his own alongside scene legends such as DZ and Orien.
By the time we close with ‘Why Have They Come’, Xian1 has upgraded from ethnic tools to laser weapons. Amid a chorus of b-movie narration, we analyse the after effects of the alien invasion with erratic and swift bass. Handling the collision between ancient civilisations and alien wisdom, this EP has some big historical themes in mind as it traces our time on this planet. As well as the clever and unique dynamics employed in these tunes though, this EP is remarkable because Xian1 performs it all so casually. With his tracks encompassing the myths of the past as well as those of the future, Xian1 is another powerful deity among Betamorph’s own growing Mythology.
Since the first Betamorphosis compilation was released over 6 months ago, a lot has changed for this stateside Dubstep label. After a brief glance at this latest instalment of their signature compilation, it appears that Betamorph are now definitely in a position to show off: the track listing reads somewhere between a police identity parade and a full on alien circus. Betamorphosis Volume Three is a cavalcade of sonorous and dirty subterranean sci-fi.
The compilation is bookended by legends: We open to a sly combination of melody and pressure in ‘Tension’, courtesy of Orien, already legendary from the Dub Police and Poizend Audio. Later, the truly epic finale is orchestrated by Sam XL and DZ through the pure white-knuckle friction of ‘Munch’. Centre stage however is shared by the up and coming Magenta with ‘Transformed’. This symbolic heart of the release features unapologetic kinesis interspersed with lucid dream vocals.
As well as selections from artists currently dominating the scene, the spotlight is also on remixes by Betamorph veterans. The face-melting Ruckus & Roke remix of Mark Instinct’s Sketchy Maxx is a club favourite, and guarding its back are two versions of the more choreographed Richie August tracks: Metaphase’s pulsating version of ‘Hard Step’ and ABZ’s perverse rendition of ‘Dirty Waltz’. The compilation’s chemistry between scene giants and newcomers is ample proof that Betamorph strives to birth new fables, as well as simultaneously being able to handle the Dubstep almighty.
Betamorph has garnered attention for the extraterrestrial imagery associated with each release, and Betamorphosis Volume Three confirms that it is not only a metaphorical trajectory of the label’s goals, but also a signifier of the keen atmospherics that have won their releases such praise in the scene. A full range of soundscapes are here to be absorbed, from Wascal’s playful bandit orchestrations, to Xian1’s curiously aloof apocalypse reggae and the unique swamp styled beats of Organikismness’ slippery ‘Hybrid’. The bass corrupting assortment on here is a credit to the innovative catalogue that Betamorph is devoted to building.
The theme of these compilations is growth and transformation, but rather than the gradual evolution shown on previous releases, this one highlights Betamorph’s final transmutation into one of the most prominent and respected purveyors of equally fine, equally intergalactic Dubstep. The tunes on here are a twisted alchemy of everything Betamorph has already accomplished, as well as an authoritative promise of what is coming soon.
Metaphase has been engineering atmospheric noise and worldly influenced beats for ten years, so it’s no surprise that his contribution to Betamorph’s L.A.LIENS series is both elemental as well as urban. It begins with opener Xenolith which paints a nocturnal landscape of a hibernating city, before unsettling the dreaming metropolis with rumblings from underneath the pavement. As Quantum pierces through the concrete, the EP explodes with alien sirens and the city feels the full force of a dubstep invasion from under its feet.
The earthy tones are undoubtedly a product of the fact that Metaphase is as experienced with Indian folk music and a tabla as he is with 2 step garage and a laptop. Having shared sound systems with DZ and Boxcutter, as well as dabbling in film composition and sound design, this EP allows him to craft a perfect fusion from natural and electronic dissonance. The result is a futuristic sensibility that also remains entirely tellurian.
The first two tracks set the scene with ambience turned into volcanic eruptions, but it’s the remixes that truly ignite the asphalt. To start, Metaphase somehow manages to make Richie August’s Hardstep even harder with sharp injections of drum n bass. Meanwhile, Mark Instinct’s Sketchy Maxx gets a lobotomy and becomes strategically cumbersome. Both are destructive in different ways. By the time we close with Razorlight’s transcendent riff, the city has not only woken from its slumber, but is now ablaze.
This next stage of L.A.LIENS takes what is already brooding underneath the metropolis, and turns it into a cataclysmic blitzkrieg from above and within. The result is equal parts concrete, soil and space opera. Always revolutionary, this is the sound of Metaphase not only destroying civic property, but also musical boundaries.
