Dirty Pictures, Or the Enduring Allure of the Leather Clad Superman Kake: Tom of Finland’s Art (NSFW)

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Academic Book, anal penetration, Art, Art Commentary, biography, Book Review, Dirty Pictures, Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland Masculinity and Homosexuality, Gay, Gay Men, Gay Porn, Gay Sex, Kake, leather, Male Body, Martin P. Levine, masculinity, Masculinity Studies, Micha Ramakers, Penis, Pornography, Queer, Robust, Robust totally TOTALLY means gay, Sexual Exploration, Sexual Fantasy, sexual idealism, Sexual identity, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, Tom of Finland, Tom of Finland Foundation, Working Class Men, Writing

There’s something about marines.  I really can’t explain it. It’s like how there’s something about men wearing denim.  Or men wearing leather.  Or men wearing lipstick.  Or men wearing cowboy hats.  Or men wearing police uniforms.  Or men wearing work boots.  Or men with long hair.  Or men with tattoos.  Or men shopping for vegetables.  Or men handling wood at hardware stores.  Or men…actually, you know there’s just something about men period.  Maybe that’s what lead me to Tom of Finland in the first place.

Justifying book purchases is getting more and more difficult, and my regular reader probably knows this already if they’ve ever read my homage to Christopher Hitchens.  The space, or, really lack of it, is the primary concern, however there’s also now the issue of mortality.  As I am just a few months away from turning thirty, and becoming yet another in a long line of cliched individuals who realize that they’re youth is quickly becoming a thing of the past, my concern now with purchasing more books is the worry that I won’t actually have time to read them all.  This creates a compulsion towards priority.  DO I really want to read that Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Andrew Jackson when I can’t fucking stand Andrew Jackson, and do I really need to sit down and read Finnegan’s Wake when I realize now that I will never read Ulysses ever again?  There are some positives here, as I have realized more and more that there are books and topics that I legitimately want to read about.  Whether it’s books about Ancient Greece, the Ottoman Empire, anything having to do with Queer identity, and the entire collected works of Vladimir Nabokov these are books that I will read and will make an effort to read. 

And so as I reevaluate my priorities I can honestly write that I felt neither fear nor guilt in purchasing a $50 book about the work of Tom of Finland titled Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity, and Homosexuality. 

I only feel guilty that, after the book arrived in the mail, I hopped into a couple volumes of the manga One Punch Man before actually reading it, but in my defense One Punch Man is freaking hysterical and I apologize for nothing.

I’ve written before about what Tom of Finland’s work has meant to me, as well as to the homosexual community.  It’s not just that the man was able to help establish an unashamed model of gay porn for queer men to use and gravitate towards, it’s the fact that this pornography and art was able to validate the viewers with men who were attractive and quite visibly happy to be gay.  No matter what Tom’s men were doing (sucking, fucking, sexually harassing postal workers) they always managed to find something to enjoy about being sexual with one another, or, to put it another way, they were having fun being gay. 

This happiness helped establish Tom, real name Touko Valio Laaksonen, as one of the most important gay pornographers and artists, but this happiness, coupled with the fact that the men he drew were typically butch and traditionally masculine, did more for the queer male community who often had been regulated to the “fairy” and “queen” identity.  Tom created a new model of masculinity for queer men, one they were happy to embrace.

Ramakers notes this as he observes the emergence of an unapologetic gay culture:

In the seventies, gay subcultural reality in the United States began to bear an even closer resemblance to Tom of Finland’s images of gay sexuality.  According to sociologist Martin Levine, in that decade there was a noticeable growth in anonymous erotic activity.  Gay meeting places were decorated with Western, leather, or high tech styles and sported “masculine” names such as The Eagle, Badlands, Ambush, Anvil and so on.  In many bars, sparsely lit or darkened rooms were designated for cruising and tricking (spontaneous sex).  Crusing and tricking became the sexual norm.  Sexual techniques were rough and phallocentric and consisted mainly of “deep-throating” (blow job with the entire penis thrust down the throat), hard fucking (jamming entire penis into anus while spanking hard), and heavy tit work (robust sucking, pinching, or biting of nipples).  (106-7).

Before I address this quote I really need to observe that the adjective “robust” always sounds gay to me.  I don’t know what it is.  Just saying the word “robust” it sounds like something a fairy (such as yours truly) would say while describing the repairman who showed up to fix his plumping.  And then maybe, while he was working and trying to keep his long hair out of his face, his shirt would get wet and he’d have to take it off revealing a mess of thick black chest hair that would curl while light would reflect in the small beads of water clinging to…

Oh, I’m sorry, I got distracted.  Anyway, “robust” always just sounds super-gay to me for personal reasons.

Ramakers quote is important though because it reveals where queer men of the seventies were at sexually as well as personally.  It’s easy to forget in an age of Grindr and Scruff and Tindr, but free and casual sex between men was actually quite would have to use codes to find one another, and even then men could find themselves accidentally exposing themselves to straight men who might not always be so happy to discover another man’s hand on their leg.  Compounding this is the fact that, before the seventies, and even some-time after that, being open about one’s queerness could wind one up in a mental institution where there are all manner of nightmare stories.

The ability to suck and fuck, and be sucked and fucked, without fear of social reprisal was not only liberating it was revolutionary.  And in this new erotic atmosphere men began to look for a new character to embody.

Ramakers points his reader to Martin P. Levine, who’s work I’ve reviewed in the past, but then tries to show that the push towards a more traditionally “masculine” culture was an effort by queer men to become something new.  Rather than continue to the idea of the “invert,” or the feminine “fairy,” guys wanted to act and behave more like straight men, only with a lot more sex.  And in this new desire for a masculine ideal, Tom’s work was a great boon.  If the reader has never seen any of Tom’s work the first thing they will observe is, obviously, that it’s pretty gay.  But after this observation what becomes obvious is the fact that his men incredibly masculine.  Ramakers notes this earlier in his book when he observes:

Tom’s men are paper constructions of the ideal body, less a reflection of a particular reality than a representation of a social ideal or mental vision.  Tom’s male bodies are reminiscent enough of reality to be credible, but just far enough beyond that reality to form a nigh unattainable ideal. (72).

Now Ramakers observes that body-building culture impacted this but then later on he observes how Tom accounted for this:

In the later years of his career, Tom attempted to retain idealization, by exaggerating his men’s muscles even further […].  Because of this tendency, however, Tom’s man increasingly became a caricature: “when people criticized him for that, he would tell them, ‘I’m not trying for realism.  I want to express our fantasies.’” (73).

Tom’s work was never, and has never truly been about capturing some kind of realism.  While erotic art and pornography as an institution can at times create and capture the beauty of real and accurate sex, the fundamental purpose of the medium has always been to celebrate and enjoy sexuality, and in this action there is often a great desire for hyperbole.  Looking through some of the many drawings Tom did over the course of his life (the man was amazingly prolific given the fact he began this art at a time where it could have cost him dearly) there is often a great amount of play in his drawings. 

Breasts and shoulders tend to be well defined while hips and legs tend to be slimmer, although the buttocks can often be large and round.  The men, regardless of race or nationality, tend to have similar bone structure in the face, becoming more or less the same copy over and over again.  And, of course, the penises range from simply large to ridiculously gargantuan.

Not that I’m complaining but at some point one has to wonder how these men don’t throw out their back.

At this point the reader may question the immediate relevance of Ramaker’s book.  So what?  Why should I care about the analysis of pornography?  There isn’t any redeeming value in smut, it’s just dudes banging each other so other dudes can jerk off.  How could any of this be considered art?

As always my contester has some excellent points.  It is important to recognize that Tom of Finland’s work was and still is considered pornography by a significant portion of the population, and because the work is homoerotic in nature his appeal is going to be largely limited to a number of queer men, some women, and then a few art critics bold enough to make a serious assessment of the man and his work.  And, to be fair, the typical aesthetic goal of any erotic material is to inspire sexual arousal in the viewer, a sensation which is largely considered base and temporary in most people’s minds.  Looking at this then, Tom’s drawings does not seem to have a great amount of relevance to many people.

But if I can make a solid enough case, this criticism reveals a larger truth about the perception of sexuality in our culture.  Sex is often, at least as far as the United States is concerned, portrayed in the media in a dichotomy.  While there is near constant reference to human sexuality, the lingering Puritanic trend in most Americans ensures that this sexuality is portrayed as obscene, disgusting, or even grotesque thus leading to “abstinence only” environments which have been demonstrated time and time again not to actually work.  The conversation about sexuality is almost non-existent at the same time it is ever-present.

Tom of Finland entered my life entirely by accident, and since he did I’ve been able to explore a facet of my sexuality that feels not only true but liberating.  In Tom’s leather-clad supermen I found my sexuality and discovered that while at time it could be a serious, all-consuming drive, it could also be something funny and enjoyable.  Rather than feeling my desires as something grotesque or morally wrong, my sexuality, my attraction to women and men, was a chance to play and appreciate an idealized world where men could have sex freely without fear.  And while there are probably few straight men that would gravitate to the man’s artwork, the spirit of the work is something that is, at least in my estimation, universal. 

Sex is supposed to be fun, and Tom’s men are often smeared with the word pornography, they seem to find even in this distinction something to revel in.

And on the note of fear, Ramakers observes something incredibly powerful in Tom’s work:

Tom’s work is dedicated to the glorification of the male body, in all its vulnerability: his bodies are constantly being penetrated in every possible way and through every orifice.  (165).

Soon or later every essay about gay sex leads to the anus, and those people who enjoy having their’s penetrated or stimulated.  For the record I tried getting the previous sentence put on a t-shirt but the printers told me that they could move the shirts but there wouldn’t be enough room for the little cartoon anus I illustrated so I decided to scrap it.  If I’m going to make t-shirts about anal penetration you can bet there’s going to be a cute cartoon anus on them.  Integrity matters damn it.

I’ve written before about how the “problem” of penetration in gay sexuality has been discussed by writers and theorists and so I won’t bother my reader with long academic quotes that totally kill the vibe.  The simple matter is often the practice of anal sex between men, and the frequent use of the “top/bottom” dynamic within the community, has lead to this perception that gay sex is simply about which partner acts “like the girl” during sex.  What’s important about Tom’s work is that this dynamic is not only not apparent, it simply doesn’t exist.

Whether it’s construction workers, cops, sailors, soldiers, business men, or the leather-clad Kake himself, Tom’s men love to suck and fuck, and be sucked and fucked.  And so while some readers used to the concept of a pure top/bottom dynamic may at first be bothered by Tom’s presentations, there is actually a real and powerful disruption in the man’s work.  Tom’s men simply enjoy sex, and so rather than constructing identities where sexuality is limited to one action or one sexual organ, his men simply embrace the concept that they are sexual objects and beings and so they are willing to simply play with their sexuality.

Ramakers observes the power of this presentation:

Straight porn is for the most part based on the possession of the penis, which is used as a weapon against those who no not possess I.  In Tom of Finland’s work it is precisely the penis that is possessed by both—or all—parties, thus unhinging that basic tenet  from its supposed immutable position.  This allows the power to fluctuate between partners, none of whom can lay claim to “natural” prerogatives on the basis of possession of the penis. (219).

Or to put it another way, nobody is the “girl” in Tom’s work because there aren’t any girls period.  The matter of women being the weaker creature in pornography is well documented and in fact is its own essay.  For now I simply wanted to focus on Tom’s work because, as I’ve written before in another essay about Tom’s work, the mode of sexuality presented is something I appreciate and respect.

Whether we like it or not, pornography is a staple of the culture, and more and more children will experience pornography as they develop into adults.  In such an environment the importance of sexual education is important, but so is sexual representation.  Whether it be gay or not, Tom of Finland’s work is an incredible presentation of sexual activity because it does not attempt to present sex as a power-play.  Even at it’s most shocking and potentially violent, Tom’s men are not participating in a corrupt or revolting sexual display, they are simply trying to enjoy sex, thus crafting an image of masculinity and humanity that is liberating rather than constricting.

As a queer man, I don’t apologize for enjoying and consuming pornography because it’s an art which has allowed my exploration of self to take place.  And I consider it a point of pride that I blame of Tom of Finland for most of my gay sexual development.  In the pages of his work I found and fell in love with men who were strong (and “robust”) in a physical as well as personal way.  And that in turn was a source of inspiration.  My sexuality is something to celebrate rather than fear.

Dirty Pictures is a serious look at a genre of art that is often denied to the possibility for serious reflection and analysis, and as Tom of Finland’s work and life is recognized more and more by the culture such a book is a vital resource.  Ramaker’s book is an inspiration for those of us who found solace in Tom’s work, and an inspiration to continue the legacy of the man long after he has died.  In this way this review wasn’t just a chance to talk about gay sexuality, it was a chance to thank Ramakers for his book, as well as to thank Tom for his art.

Somewhere on the road there’s a leather-clad superman wearing a winged cock on his hat, and a smile on his face.  And it’s because of Tom’s work that a generation of men made it possible for at least the latter to be not so shocking to us.  Though as I write this I realize it might also just be because Terry Spots is doing another photo shoot in which case I’ll probably have to stop writing so I can disappear into Instagram for a few wonderful hours.

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Dirty Pictures: Tom of fInland, Masculinity, and Homosexuality were quoted from the first edition hardback St. Martin’s Press edition.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/tom-of-finland-who-is-the-gay-icon-a7319911.html

**Writer’s Note**

I included this in a previous essay about Tom of Finland, but I’ll put it here again.  This website totally and completely supports the work of tOm of Finland and those who try to maintain the legacy of the man’s art.  In fact, one such organization is the Tom of Finland Foundation, a sort of museum, archives, community center which maintains the legacy of Tom of Finland, houses most of his work, and actually supports the work of other erotic artists working today.  I mention this organization not just because I love Tom of FInland, but also because I’m a member of the Foundation and considered it one of the proudest moments of my life when I received my membership card in the mail.

If you love Tom of FInland, or at least would be more interested in learning more about the man’s work, I’ve included a link below to the FOundation’s website where you can contact them directly as well as see some of the various artists who have contributed to their organization.

https://www.tomoffinlandfoundation.org/foundation/N_Home.html

I would also recomend, if you get the chance, visiting the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.  While their work is not dedicated solely to Tom of Finland, it was partly because of his art that the leather-scene took off in the United States and became not just an aesthetic but an entire lifestyle.  Their museum and website is dedicated to collecting and preserving leather-culture and the various arts and artists and peoples who have helped establish the community.  you can see their site by following the link below:

https://leatherarchives.org

***Writer’s Note***

If the reader is at all interested I found a few articles and pages about the lasting significance of Tom of Finland and have included them below.  Some of them have to deal with the new biopic film about Tom of Finland himself (which I do intend to watch and review at some point)  Enjoy:

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/tom-of-finland-who-is-the-gay-icon-a7319911.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_of_Finland

http://www.worldoftomoffinland.com/xToF_home.php

https://www.npr.org/2017/10/12/555652264/the-man-behind-all-those-behinds-tom-of-finland

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/aug/10/tom-of-finland-review-biopic-gay-artist

And finally, if you would be interested in reading (really seeing and owning) Tom’s work for yourself, I’ve provided a link to TAschen’s website where you can purchase some of the beautiful collections of Tom’s work.  I would ABSOLUTELY recommend it:

https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/search/tom-of-finland

 

****Writer’s NOTE****

Okay, seriously this time. THIS is the last thing I’ll say.  Tom’s work was largely responsible for creating a “working-class” model of homosexuality thus shattering the illusion that queer men could only be upper-class-fairy-limp-wriested-fops.  Not that there was anything wrong with being an effeminate queen (lord knows I am), but Tom essentialy gave queer men more room to find themselves, and this perception that anybody could be gay has allowed for some beautiful moments in art.

Case and point my all time favorite scene from The Simpsons.  Homer thinks Bart is gay and so he takes him around to see several examples of burly-straight-men all of which turn out to be gay until it culminates in this moment of pure comedic genius.

Surface Matters: Lolita Part 1

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"Nymphet", Art, Charlotte Haze, Childhood, Delores Haze, Delorez Haxe is Lolita's Real Name, Frederico Infante, GoodReads, Harry Potter, Humbert Humbert, Invitation to a Beheading, linguistics, Literature, Lolita, Novel, pedophilia, Pnin, prose, Rape, Rape in Literature, rape-culture, sexual assault, sexual assault within the home, sexual idealism, Sexual Rhetoric, Victim Blaming, Vladimir Nabokov, Writing

Despite the now gargantuan pile of books that is building up around me everyday, I keep looking back to the books on my shelves and thinking to myself, “I need to read that one again.”  Part of it is the fact that I always find something new in the books that I’ve read before; it’s either a sentence that excels in aesthetic merit, or else a passage that seems to capture where I am intellectually or emotionally at that time.  The other reason is because of Goodreads.  I observed after a while that my friend Aleya would make regular posts on Facebook that were made through Goodreads.  They were always the cover of a book and said either, “Aleya has begun [TITLE X]” or else “Aleya has finished [TITLE X].”  This intrigued me and when I asked her about it she mentioned that you could link your Goodreads account to your Facebook page.  I set up my account, and after only a month I discovered that you could see a years’ worth of books that you read as one large picture.  The image of all the different titles was illuminating because each book was a different experience, a different memory, and showed me exactly what I was doing, reading, and thinking about at the time.  Because of this I’ve been looking back over the books I’ve read and been thinking, “that really needs to be in the log.”  As such my copy of Lolita (distinct with its picture of a little girl’s pink lips) made its way into my path again, and I saw an opportunity to add another book to the log.

I really wish I could remember when I first read Lolita.  My earliest memory of actually reading the book was one summer during a binge of the Harry Potter series.  I’d just finished The Goblet of Fire and was about to move onto the Order of the Phoenix when a strange thought entered my head: “I should read Lolita.”  The context of a pedophile controlling and raping a fourteen-year-old girl in between the magical adventures of Harry and his friends in the castle of Hogwarts probably would be enough to kill most people’s so-called “innocence,” but the book was illuminating.

Childhood that was being poisoned by corrupt adults seemed to make sense in its context for the arrival of Voldemort seemed a perfect segway into the whiny gasbag that is Humbert Humbert.

Reading the book again I’ve had time to read other Nabokov works such as Pnin, Invitation to a Beheading, and several of his short stories and so the most beautiful part of reading Lolita is the prose.  I often compliment Nabokov for his writing, and this isn’t just literary kiss-assing on my part.  Nabokov truly is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, proseists of the twenty-first century.  Every sentence is a careful construction and the man has a linguistic skill that many writers could only aspire to.  Part of it is a careful attention to puns that litter throughout the work, but more than anything is Nabokov’s ability to seduce with linguistics.

The opening lines of Lolita remain the most beautiful opening passage of any novel I have read, so much so that I’ve stored it in memory and can recite it at will:

Lolita.  Light of my life, fire of my loins.  My sin, my soul.  Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.  Lo.  Lee.  Ta.

It’s impossible to read this out loud and not feel uplifted and simultaneously repulsed, and if that isn’t a demonstration of Nabokov’s ability nothing is.  The content of this opening is enough to make one squirm but the constant use of “l’s” and “t’s” creates an auditory balm that just settles over the reader wooing them to Humbert Humbert who continues his “invitation” to the reader with a veiled order:

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.  She was Lola in slacks.  She was Dolly at school.  She was Delores on the dotted line.  But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor.?  She did, indeed she did.  In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child.  In a princedom by the sea.  Oh when?  About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer.  You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied.  Look at this tangle of thorns.  (9).

This opening remains troublesome because if the reader was paying attention it’s clear that what is taking place is not a seduction, but a veiled order to listen to his story and so from the start the tone of Lolita is clear. Humbert Humbert is not interested in defending himself, he’s interested in seducing his reader so that he can exert his will over them and, more importantly, his interpretation of the events of Lolita.

Numerous critics and readers have observed the conflict of Lolita for Nabokov’s prose is beautiful, so much so that my creative writing teacher could recite this opening at will and just pause and reflect on the beauty of it.  Humbert Humbert is a man gifted with a “fancy prose style” and because of this he’s able to try and sway the reader who should really be far more concerned with the fact that he’s regularly raping a twelve-year-old girl, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

If the reader has never read Lolita before, some background of the plot is necessary.  Humbert Humbert is a man who, when he was young, had a failed sexual liaison with a family Friend’s daughter on the beach.  Because of this failure his sexuality become stunted and he begins a lifelong pursuit of “Nymphets” his term for young girls about the age of twelve.  He has a failed marriage and then hops place to place in Europe before coming to America where, in the home of a woman named Charlotte Haze, he meets a young woman named Delores Haze who becomes the center of his erotic and psychological being.  He marries Charlotte, who dies not long after the marriage starts, and this gives Humbert the chance to abscond with Lolita across the territory of the United States.  Humbert spends the next two years traveling with Lolita and raping her while keeping her locked tight within his grasp.  Eventually Delores escapes with the help of a writer named Quilty who Humbert Murders at the end of the novel.

The duplicitous nature of Humbert is established early in the novel, for while Humbert is presented as a kind young man who had an unfulfilled erotic experience with a girl his own age, over time he becomes a crafty pervert whose chief talent is duplicity.  Later in the novel after he has suffered a failed marriage he enters a sanitarium where his favorite hobby is tricking the doctors on staff.  Humbert describes this activity gaily:

I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style […] teasing them with fake “primal scenes”; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual prediction.  (34).

It’s this quality of Humbert, his need to constantly reveal and conceal his true self, that can make reading Lolita somewhat exasperating.  In fact, I’ll be completely honest, there isn’t a page in this novel where I didn’t want to slap Humbert just for being a self-righteous and duplicitous jackass.

There’s nothing so obnoxious as someone who is constantly the victim of some past or ever occurring offense, but when one is the agent of one’s own destruction it makes it doubly annoying.  Humbert is constantly calling himself the victim of a real affliction, and the later passages of the novel reveal him writing at length about how he is the subject of Lolita’s cruelty because she doesn’t return his amorous feelings.  And perhaps the most troublesome aspect of the novel is that there are times when his prose is so thick with ornate arrangements of words that the reader is almost compelled to believe him.

If the reader is careful however, and remains diligent, Humbert often reveals himself in small instances.  During one passage in which he’s recalling a diary he kept while living with Delores and Charlotte he describes his true nature:

My white pajamas have a lilac design on the back.  I am like one of those inflated pale spiders you see in old gardens.  Sitting in the middle of a luminous web and giving little jerks to this or that strand.  My web is spread all over the house as I listen from my chair where I sit like a wily wizard.  Is Lo in her room?  Gently I tug on the silk.  She is not.  (49).

Later in the novel when he contemplates killing Lolita’s mother Charlotte he elaborates a long, thought-out plan and reveals himself once again:

Simple, was it not?  But what d’ye know, folks—I just could not make myself do it!  (87).

Though perhaps the most revealing is a passage that occurs not just but a few paragraphs later:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them.  We are not sex fiends!  We do not rape as good soldiers do.  We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet.  Empirically, no killers are we.  Poets never kill.  (87-8).

If the reader is absolutely repulsed by this passage they shouldn’t feel bad at all for that is my exact reaction.  Humbert is often defending his desire for “nymphets,” a term that was introduced into the general lexicon after the novel was published, and reading this passage which can border on the erotic is disturbing.  It’s a sane reaction to be bothered or repulsed by Lolita, but it’s when the reader turns away and decides to stop listening out of disgust that a real problem occurs.

The surface matters.  It matters because it’s a topic many would prefer not to talk about.

Within the last decade, I’ve become more and more aware of the reality of rape-culture, at least as far as the culture of the United States is concerned (I can only ever speak for my own culture), and while this has temporarily hurt some of my comfort, the knowledge is worth more than my ease.  One particular story stands out.  My wife would often, while we were just dating, read me stories about women who were victims of rape and ignored or else victim-blamed.  The most pernicious story was one of a twelve-year-old girl in the Houston area who was gang-raped by a group of teen-age boys.  None of them served any jail-time because the defense argued she had “dressed provocatively.”

Now my first reaction wasn’t to cry, but to often scream at the top of my lungs, “How the fuckity fuck does a twelve-year-old “dress provocatively?”

Yet this the world and society I’m living in.  The victim being denied a voice isn’t a new development, for in fact Nabokov uses this as a strategy of writing Lolita.  The reader should note that the little girl who is the center of Humbert’s desire isn’t actually named Lolita, that’s his name for her when he speaks about his desire.  In fact her name is Delores Haze, yet the reader might completely miss this during their reading because they are always being narrated to by Humbert.  The victim’s story is silenced because Humbert presents himself often as the victim, the victim of a form of rational love.  There’s no possible way he could possibly be a murderer or rapist because his feelings for Lolita are pure.

I’ve thrown quite a lot at my reader who may be wondering at this point where to begin with their criticism.  Why should they bother reading a book about pedophilia in the first place?  It’s revolting and by the sounds of it Nabokov was just a pervert who was hiding behind his character to express gross feelings and sentiments?  Why should I pick up a book that, by the sounds of it, is just going to repulse me and make me sick?

My reader has more or less summed up the standing argument against Lolita, and the various criticisms laid against it.  A few years back one of my friends in graduate school was teaching an American Literature course and he had the fortune (or misfortune) to teach the novel Lolita and the general charge against the novel was exactly the points made before.  Most students shut down and refused to listen to the analysis or look past the rape to see the deeper literary and rhetorical goals of the novel.  All they could see was the rape of Delores Haze.

This isn’t my place to hop up and say they were wrong to do so.  Reading the novel again I’m finding it easier and easier to cut through Humbert’s fluff and observe every level of his sexual corruption and manipulations.  This doesn’t always lead to a comfortable read, in fact often reading the book I feel repulsed.  My reader may object then that I have proven them right, but in point of fact I’ve proven them wrong.  It’s for the very reason I feel repulsed that this book matters.

Rape is an act of violence that has been allowed to have more and more exposure in contemporary media.  Whether it was the fifth season of Game of Thrones which seemed to have a rape in every other episode, to the fact that Law & Order SVU has somehow managed to outlast the original series, to the fact that Bill Cosby has now become a national headline.  These are just some examples, and not even the most potent illustrations of how rape-culture is infecting the society.  But they do serve as a reminder that most people are aware of the crime of rape and the damage it has upon people who have to live and try to exist after becoming a victim of rape.

Lolita as a novel is more relevant than ever because the culture, as it exists now, is open to discussing the contents of the novel and reminding people that sexual assault isn’t just an abstract idea, it’s a concrete reality that affects people in the real world.

But I’ll end this first discussion of the book with an important observation.  Humbert Humbert was a stranger who entered the home of Charlotte Haze and eventually managed to capture her daughter, but the idea of someone within the home as the attacker is perhaps the strongest argument for the reading of Lolita because most instances of pedophilia are not random strangers, but instead family friends or members who rape their children or siblings.  It’s this last fact that perhaps makes most people so uncomfortable because many would prefer not to think about that.  The idea of the home is that it is a safe space from the chaotic mess of the outside world.  The corruption of rape isn’t supposed to exist, or at least nor originate from this safe space and many would prefer to hold onto that surface reality rather than acknowledge that the home isn’t always safe.  Sometimes people get hurt by the ones who are supposed to love them.

I intend to write more about Lolita in a few more essays, but in this first approach I just wanted to address this surface issue because it’s the element that creates the most controversy around the novel.  But where most readers focus on the element of Humbert’s sexual manipulations, the far more important element is that Nabokov succeeded in demonstrating that parents worrying about their children being prey to sexual deviants didn’t need to look outside their living rooms, because unfortunately the spider had already set up shop and might have been sitting next to them on the couch.

 

 

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

I probably need to give my reader more credit.  If you weren’t reading my essay then I wouldn’t be speaking with them directly.

 

 

**Writer’s Note**

If the reader is at all interested, I’ve found a few website which have compiled some statistics about the rate of sexual assault, what are the ages of attackers, and their types of relationships with the victims.

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem

https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/child-sexual-abuse-statistics

https://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/Pages/rape-notification.aspx

 

***Writer’s Note***

While researching this essay, I managed to find a link to an article published on Slate.  I’ve provided it here below:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2005/12/lolita_at_50.html

 

****Writer’s Note****

I apologize to the reader who brought up the idea that Nabokov might be expressing personal desires through Lolita; I never got around to debunking this idea.  This is a common charge against Nabokov’s Lolita, but unfortunately it is the most misinformed criticism and therefore the easiest to combat.  Just because an author writes about a topic does not means that he or she validates or believes in such a moral system.  Edgar Allen Poe often wrote in first person personas that were often mad lunatics or sexual deviants but that does not mean Poe supported premature burials or animal abuse.  There is a divide between the writer, the author, and the creative persona.  tHe writer is merely the person who writes the text, the author is the original manager of the inspiration, and the creative persona is the person what is being written by the author.  This system exists to give the writer distance from his or her creation, allowing a freedom to express and explore ideas that they may find repulsive, frightening, or else simply evil.  Nabokov was not a pedophile, he was merely a writer who wrote a character who was.  If readers intend to hold authors responsible for the actions of their characters, or worse, assume that their characters are the extensions of their creator’s personality then artists will not be free to tackle difficult subjects like rape, murder, pedophilia, and torture in which case life will be nothing but Family Circus Cartoons and I will not live in that world.

Unless it’s Nietzsche’s Family Circus, that shit’s hilarious.

 

 

*****Writer’s Note*****

Several of the watercolor images in this article are from an illustrated copy of Lolita.  The artist’s name is Frederico Infante and if the reader is curious about how he handled, what would be for many potential career suicide, they can read about it in an article published on The independent by following the link below:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/lolita-folio-society-edition-of-vladimir-nabokovs-famous-novel-features-illustrations-by-federico-a6701671.html

Are You a Fag? If So Check “Other”

Tags

"fuck-fest", Alison Bechdel, Annie Proulx, Barbara Love, Brokeback Mountain, Crisco, culture, dehumanization, Essay, Faggots, felching, Fun Home, Gay, Gay Sex, Homoeroticism, Homosexuality, Humor, Larry Kramer, Lesbian sex, Lesbianism, Literature, Male Sexuality, Oscar Wilde, Othering, Politics, Queer, Queer Theory, racism, Sappho Was a Right-On Woman, Satire, Scott Esk, Sense of Self, sex, sexual idealism, Sexual identity, Sexual politics, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, Sidney Abbot, Social-sexual satire, The Other

Fred Lemish states a summation of his character in what is by far one of the most brilliant, borderline pornographic, and uproarious social-sexual satires in human history when he thinks to himself:

I’m not gay. I’m not a fairy. I’m not a fruit. I’m not queer. A little crazy maybe. And I’m not a faggot. I’m a Homosexual Man. I’m me. Pretty Classy.

By today’s standards this statement is not pressingly significant. In an age where gay pride parades have assumed the same social element as St. Patrick’s Day and Fourth of July processions and the ever echoing axiom, “I’m here, I’m queer, get used to it” feels old hat, such a comment seems to mean very little. And yet so important. I will admit that this passage from Larry Kramer’s novel Faggots is not an astounding one to open this essay, however, should one actually read the entirety of the work and eventually read this passage, Fred Lemish’s statement is not only powerful, it is one of the few sentiments not reeking of semen, piss, shit, Crisco, spit, or what other bodily fluid may be produced during the non-stop fuck-fest that is the plot. Few contemporary authors achieve the sexual power that Faggots conveys. In one page twenty men may participate in a circle jerk while others are being physically dominated with leather belts while multiple cocks slide in and out of assholes and the “slurping” is the heavenly opera that creates the background harmony to the hedonistic splendor…and that is merely one page. Contemporary works attempting to pass themselves off as erotic (I will lightly mention Fifty shades of whatever-else publishers scrape the bottom of the bucket for) will approach Faggots and fail miserably in flames for the untapped sexual powerhouse of the work is so great one can become numb from the experience.

…Is there indeed a God who would understand such as:

“Baby I want you to piss all over me!”

Fred Lemish had never urinated on anything before, except perhaps some country grass late at night when he was drunk and no one was looking.

“Or let me piss on you!”

This Fred Lemish never allowed.

Fred stood there helplessly. Why was he inert in requiring action? The guy wasn’t bad looking. Should Fred enter of walk away?

“Or fuck my friend and I’ll suck your come out of his asshole.”

This suggestion Fred recognized as felching. Was he interested in joining a felcher?

“Or I could tie you up. Or you could tie us up. Or either one of us. Or anything else your cock desires!”

The man certainly offered a range of choices. Should Fred? Shouldn’t Fred?

“Are you into shit?”

Fred shouldn’t.

This exchange introduces the hero of the novel and also introduces us to the satire of homosexual paradigms that governed the late 1970s. Should we consider the actual homosexual community at the time we are observing a liberated, albeit self depreciating race of human beings that had yet to realize its full humanity. Indeed, one of the total effects of Kramer’s novel is to give us the impression of the male homosexual mindset at this time. Before the brave souls at Stonewall fought back against social dictatorship, and the rise of the homosexual political movements that helped gain most of the civil liberties (not nearly enough but the fight continues) gays enjoy today actually occurred, there was perception of self that lingered on in the gay man’s memory. Before these movements and socially defining moments, homosexuality was a disease. Those considered homosexuals were perceived as being less than human or else insane. Any interested in indigestion of the intellect should research the appalling “treatments” to the disorder of homosexuality which included electroshock therapy and chemical or physical castration. As such, the weight of self (I don’t trust the word identity, it possess too many philosophical implications) was burdened by the idea if one was a homosexual there was something inherently wrong about them. This of course does not even begin to consider the religious implications. The fear of homosexuality was often manifested in the charge of sodomy, a charge leveled to any and all sexual acts that did not eventually lead to fertilization. One realizes a conflict if it’s a Saturday night and you’d like a good blowjob, but let’s stay focused. One of most obvious examples of scape-goating was the charge of Oscar Wilde who suffered two years hard physical labor which in the end ultimately ended his life pre-maturely. (Wilde served his time and eventually chose exile in France where he died at the age of 46, a broken man and destitute; the empire looks after its own indeed). The trial of Oscar Wilde is just one of numerous examples of “queer-baiting” throughout human history. It remains the best known example, for many who were discovered before and after him have suffered far worse than a prison sentence. In short, the gay man discovering his sexual self would have most likely encountered a feeling of absolute terror coupled with revulsion.

But it has butts! Like so many butts!

Butts, my unusually dimwitted contester, is the least of your worries. There is, as there almost always seems to be, a greater social problem in the plot of Faggots, the tendency to create the “other.” Recently another essay of mine was published on the website Comicosity thanks to one of my friends who contributes regularly on the site and is currently building a nice career by publishing supplementary material of analysis of various comics and graphic novels. The article I submitted, and which he graciously hosted on his page (thank you Michael again), dealt with the graphic novel Batman Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, and it was the attempt of the essay to demonstrate the way in which the story followed the traditional trope path of “the journey.” I bring this up, because within the journey there is a concept of “the Other World,” and any student of English, psychology, history, or anthropology is perhaps aware of the indications of “the other.” For those who don’t, it is a culture paradigm that dictates the way our cultural understanding operates. There is an “us,” in which the subtotal achievements of our society work together to create a sense of camaraderie (and unfortunately tribal unity), and there is a “them” or “other” which may or may not stand opposed to our interests and way of life. More importantly, the “other” is simply different and often de-humanized to justify “our” behavior when it tends, and it often does, to become violent or anti-social. This “other” concept has been employed effectively over the course of human history to dictate behavior into a particular direction. The Rwandan genocide of the Hutu people, the attempted extermination of the Jews (throughout history, Nazi’s didn’t invent Anti-semitism though they did play their hand in that ongoing game), Eugenics, the entire institution of slavery, the imperialist system of Africa, India, China, South America, and North America,the anti-Muslim sentiment that dominated this country following the September 11^th attacks, the Internment camps of Japanese-American citizens following the attack of Pearl Harbour, the cultural imperialist and near genocide of Native Americans, nearly every Christian denomination subscribes to their paradigm insinuating and suggesting damnation for those outside the “know,” and in fact the student of humanity quickly discovers that the concept of the “other” is an undying institution for our public consciousness. As long as there is an alternative party to our society, there will be an “other.” Take note of Boo Boo Bronstein’s reaction to his own self discovery, “I’m going to be a faggot! I’m going to be a faggot!”

The dehumanizing slur employed with self discovery is what is most damning in the text, further demonstrating Kramer’s sharp wit. Rather than defining oneself as a homosexual, Boo Boo (don’t worry I’ll get to the names in a minute) adopts for his title a word rooted in an attempt to deny him any chance at participating in human society. Now the word “fag,” some would immediately protest, has become a word employed by homosexuals themselves as a form of identity much as intellectuals adopted the title for themselves in France during the Enlightenment or Suffragettes in the early twentieth century (inspiring a charming and unforgettable song in Mary Poppins that you may remember assuming you have a soul). What is wrong in assuming such a title for oneself? Kramer’s text demonstrates that power had yet to be assigned to that term. By today’s standards referring to oneself as a “fag” has little social meaning other than homosexual, however, as demonstrated through the long eloquent “fuck-fest” of the novel, it becomes clear that a “fag” is a sexually obsessed, self depreciating, borderline psychotic, druggie that is too concerned with satisfying physical needs than emotional or intellectual ones. Rather than try to build themselves as contributing and productive members of society, the faggots instead choose to fuck until they cannot walk. In which case The Gnome merely has to find you a bump and you may return to your rimming.

It’s no wonder Kramer’s text caused such a controversy when it was released. Not only from straight “purists” disgusted by all the ass-play, but from the homosexual community itself. At the time of publication, the sexual revolution was drawing to a close and homosexuals were coming into a kind of social-identity. Though of course AIDS (or Gay Cancer as it was originally and idiotically assigned in a moment of medical haste) was not but three years away which would create yet another homophobic hysteria in the populace. Many gays became outraged by the presentation of themselves as sex-obsessed heartless humanoids who possessed no other ambition other than orgasms. So intense was feeling around the book that Kramer’s novel was banned even in the one openly gay bookstore in New York where it was released. Today, fortunately, the book remains and is actually studied in universities open minded enough to have a gender and sexuality program. It is encouraging to read testimony of professors who teach, even if it is only snippets of the text, and receive shocked reactions from students. Kramer’s sharp bite at his own community can be felt across the generations. Such is the mark of an astounding author. And such is the mark of great satire.

I promised I would touch on the names, but before we continue on it seems important to demonstrate further how the idea of label becomes important to the homosexual, even today. This leads to me a supplementary work, Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx. I purchased the short novella because I have, over the years, accumulated a gathering of friends and acquaintances who’s sexual habits and open-mindedness has forced me to confront my own sexual demons and ignorance. Where once there was a locked door bolted shut with rusted nails and paranoia that prevented further introspection, there is now an open closet door. Somewhat. I am not homosexual but becoming aroused or interested in others of the same sex for non-intellectual reasons no longer terrifies me as implication. I wanted to know what all the damn fuss was about. To this day I have never seen the film, and in some ways I do not want to. The writing is brilliant enough. Proulx’s pen works a magic of prose that I never tried of while reading through the whole of the text. Allow me a moment of weakness as I sample a passage for you.

Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis’s breakfast fire.

The reader is given prose that is as sweet on the tongue as honey, and perhaps the great feat of Brokeback Mountain is that we see two human beings falling in love surrounded by a combination of words that makes us drunk. But enough fawning. Brokeback afforded a new generation of readers and, as is often the case, audiences, a glimpse at the new social identity of homosexuals. The tragedy being there was still the Boo Boo reaction. The characters of Ennis and Jack begin what originally is the basis of any relationship, a purely physical affair, until it eventually deepens into love. Proulx then works what is perhaps the most over employed and, by this writing, hammed up trope an author can attempt: the forbidden love affair. Following the literary standard of Courtly Love, stolen from the tomes of Medieval poetry, the forbidden love affair can only operate effectively in the instances when the reader is: young and newly discovering the power of love, there is an element in the text outside of the romance that helps progress the plot (much like adrenaline being pumped into a dying heart), or else the reader possess little actual care for motivation and simply wishes to enact fantasy through the text. Proulx takes the second option. With the coming years Brokeback Mountain is unlikely to be remembered as a powerful literary document (were it not for the prose I doubt it would survive at all), but nevertheless it is an effective human document because it does not “ham-up” the forbidden romance, instead it attempts to tackle it directly.

“I doubt there’s nothing now we can do,” said Ennis. “What I’m sayin, Jack, I built a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? It ain’t her fault. You got your baby and wife, in Texas. You and me can’t hardly be decent together if what happened back there”—he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment—“grabs us on like that. We do that in the wrong place we’ll be dead. There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out of me.”

Rather than build a dramatic romance, Proulx examines the reality of contemporary homosexual society outside of an urban environment. Which is damn frightening. Homosexuals have been subjected to “queer bashing” and even instances of psychological and physical torture. Being gay or a “fag” as enemies are so often to say in the midst of repugnant laughter, is no longer a mental disorder, but the lingering fragments of the “other” continues to dominate. Proulx then uses this tendency of society to create the “other” to reveal the conflict of modern gay men. Throughout the text Ennis and Jack carefully avoid the word “gay.” During the passages describing the initial, and note the only detailed account of their physical actions, we see a resistance even to touch upon this.

As it did go. They never talked about sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight, with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, “I’m not no queer,” and Jack jumped in with “Me neither. A one shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours.”

Proulx succeeds in capturing something powerful in the mindset of contemporary homosexuality, the desire to define oneself before others may define you. Kramer’s novel follows along the same sentiment.

“Everyone is so silly. Everyone wants too much. Being gay isn’t fun anymore.”

It can be troublesome identifying yourself with a particular group or following. My regular conflict is declaring myself an atheist when the word skeptic is taking on more and more relevance. If I am an atheist I must hold myself to the standards of men such as Percy Shelly, Christopher Hitchens, and Carl Sagan which, some good ol boy said it best before me, are pretty damn big shoes to fill. I consider it an honor to share the same intellectual sentiment as men such as this. However for every intelligent and rational minded atheist, there is always an asshole. I will not mention names, suffice to say certain pompous and self promoting behavior seems detestable and sends me clamoring to the title of skeptic instead. Such is the case with homosexuality. Being gay, “isn’t fun,” because the society in which you operate defines you and your behavior before you can even begin to understand what being gay actually is.

This concept of the “other” is not an outdated institution as I demonstrated with the long (even by my standards) list of historical facts, that can be easily checked by scanning your local history books. Even today the concept of “others” is employed for odious justifications. The most recent example appears in the case of Scott Esk, a prospective representative from Oklahoma (why must they always be from the south, it’s becoming embarrassing) who has listed among his political ambitions to make divorce in his state more difficult, abolish gun licenses, disregard necessary organizations such as the EPA or FDA, punish abortionists for “murder,” but the most odious of this man’s claims is his consideration that homosexuals should be executed. Citing Leviticus, one grows tired of constantly rolling one’s eyes after hearing that phrase; Mr. Esk believes that he would be “totally within the right to do it.” It becomes clear as one reads about simple minded idiots like this, one who somehow finds supporters as pathetically minded as them, that the idea of the “other” for the homosexual community is alive and strong. Within America today there exists a cultural battle in which those who feel their way of life is being threatened quickly escalate their rhetoric into dim and brutish behavior because they lack the mental ability to frame logical sentences. Now should their opponents be praised however as great masters of prose. We have all suffered through facebook battles between individuals who apparently are so uneducated that they honestly believe you is spelled “u.” In our society today, there is a struggle between alternative perceptions of what this country’s moral and political values should be. While most of us would be content to allow this fight to remain in the hands of the extremists on either side butting heads until both are worn away or too disoriented to cause any further damage, those who are willing to enjoy the liberties attained from the political system should be on guard from such lunacy. Esk is unlikely to actually attain a position as a representative, but should he be, it would be an implication that we have allowed ourselves to turn a blind eye to the malicious hunger to create “others” and profit from their persecution.

This of course leads us to yet another essential text: Sappho was a Right-On Woman a Liberated View of Lesbianism. A philosophical and social manifesto, this work by Sidney Abbot and Barbara Love, catalogs the psychology and sexual politics of what it meant to be a lesbian in 1972. Should one read the text it becomes clear women did not come out on top higher than men.

Living in an environment that is hostile or indifferent, Lesbians find themselves floundering for validation. They feel alien, uprooted—no longer able to count on acceptance from anyone or in any place. They feel they don’t count, don’t exist, in a system whose social institutions and resources do not include them. […] Sooner or Later, the lesbian begins to see her carefully constructed and valued seclusion as forced upon her. Isolation drains her will, her convictions of the rightness of her love, even her passion and feeling.

Abbot and Love’s manifesto carefully outlines the philosophical conundrum of being a creature outside of society’s grace. As we read, we discover that homosexuality was a game of drama in which a part must be played and never broken. Should a woman come forward, revealing her true self she would be met often with rejection from society indicating a loss of job, lack of familial support, and general exile from supposed friends.

Where does this leave us? It would appear then that being a “fag” or an “other” is an unfortunate condition to find oneself in, particularly should you desire something more out of life. Rather than a perception of the self that leaves only self loathing and hedonistic distraction, all of us as human beings desire at our most inner core, to feel some kind of connection to other human beings. The graphic novel Fun Home, apart from being one of the most well written literary documents and memoirs I have expierienced, garners the same recommendation I have previously made for the novel Animal Farm. It is not a question of should one read Fun Home, but when. The graphic novel operates as an autobiography tracking Alison Bechdel’s life from her early days as a child growing up to her current age, all the while unraveling the façade of her father’s closeted sexuality. Bechdel is gay and the main theme working throughout the text is parental connection and support. Her father being a closeted gay man(or at least bisexual), and a femme to boot, can be seen working against his sexual impulses (rather poorly) thereby creating a disharmony within the familial unit. Bechdel follows her own sexual discovery until eventually coming out. The graphic novel ends with a powerful mutual conversation in which both parties understand one another and the author recognizes the gift her father ultimately gave her.

What is remarkable about the graphic novel, apart from the intricate psychological and literary power of the writing that would make Tolstoy weep and Freud smile(yes Freud smiling, it isn’t that hard to believe is it?), is that the sexuality expressed is not self loathing, for the most part. Like many gay people, Bechdel does retract somewhat at first from the knowledge of herself, but upon the realization, she is unapologetic. The presentation of homosexuality is not self loathing or maniacl, it just is. This is not to suggest that Bechdel does not struggle with her sexuality, for that conflict runs throughout the entire text, and continues in the sequel to the book Are You My Mother?, but that struggle never pushes her sense of self to the point that she feels less than human.

I promised I would touch upon the names in Faggots and so it seems appropriate to end this essay with them. Kramer’s Faggots floored me. Reading the text would require long breaks for one can only encounter so much sensual stimulation for so long. The characters in the text however, despite their eccentricity and erratic activities, never push themselves so far that they completely lose their humanity, even if they perceive themselves as somehow less than human. Who could forget a text with characters like Randy Dildough, Bruce Sex-toys, BLT, Leather Louie, The Gnome, Canadian Leon, Billy Bonner, Boo Boo Bronstein, Midnight Cowboy, Feffer, and our troubled Hero Fred Lemish. The latter soul, who is the central figure of the novel, attempts throughout the text to find love, as the saying goes, in all the wrong places. In Turkish bathouses, in a bar called the Toilet Bowl, and finally on Fire Island where the faggots of the greater New York Area converge for a massive love-in. The effort of Fred Lemish ultimately fails, yet despite the failure Fred achieves a kind of satisfaction.

I’m a Homosexual Man. I’m me. Pretty Classy.

Despite the rampant fucking, Faggots is a crucial novel for any interested in the study of human culture. It transcends the homosexual self and attempts to understand why “the other” is assigned and accepted, both to outsiders, as well as to the group it is assigned. Kramer’s work shocked and offended the homosexual community upon its release, but there were those who understood the effort and praised the work. Stained with shit, and piss, and semen, spit, and Crisco, and sweat, and, yes Philadelphia, even love, Faggots is Kramer’s love letter to his own community. And what’s the point of love if you can’t have a little fun along the way.

 

“Smut With Class”: It’s The Ladies’ Turn

Tags

1984, A Modest Proposal, Animal Farm, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion, Essay, Expose, Feminism, Gloria Steinem, Hugh Hefner, I Was a Playboy Bunny, Individual Will, Isabella St. James, journalism, Literature, mysogeny, Playboy, Playboy Bunnies, Playboy Club, Satire, sex, Sexual Fantasy, sexual idealism, Sexual politics, syphilis, Totalitarianism

It has been the concerted effort of this blog and these essays to demonstrate that the study of literature can be more than “recognizing the Pipe as a symbol for patriarchy,” and in my last essay I touched upon the idea of sexual domination (no, not the fun kind) through a study of Richard Wilbur’s poem Playboy. It’s important, when approaching an argument, to get multiple viewpoints and Gloria Steinem is a writer brings so much to the table already.  It would be irresponsible then not to discuss what is in my mind one of the most powerful (and yes, wonderfully hilarious) essays, I Was A Playboy Bunny.

This effort of gonzo journalism (enacted before Hunter S. Thompson had taken that first snort and forever set the standard for the medium) has defined the career of Gloria Steinem, for it created such a profound statement concerning the reality of the porn industry at this time. Written as a journal, Steinem auditioned for a job at the then popular Playboy club in New York that had been running ads insinuating that being a Playboy Bunny was, in essence, the equal experience of celebrity and adventurer. Her actual experience speaks for itself and I will my best to sample a few pieces of the prose to gain a real idea of what this woman actually experienced. When the essay was actually published Hugh Hefner was less than thrilled to say the least. Steinem has commented in interviews (in a tone that masterfully employs sarcasm but retains that almost Voltairesque smirk) that it seemed to her that Hefner’s greatest criticism of her essay was that the job wasn’t glamorous.

The work begins with an advertisement and right away we’re struck by the sales pitch

GIRLS:

Do Playboy Club Bunnies Really

Have Glamorous Jobs,

Meet Celebrities, And

Make Top Money?

 

Yes, it’s true! Attractive young girls can now earn $200-$300 a week

At the fabulous New York Playboy Club, enjoy the glamorous and

exciting aura of show business, and have an opportunity to travel to

other Playboy clubs throughout the world. Whether serving drinks,

snapping pictures, or greeting guests at the door, the Playboy Club is

the stage—the Bunnies are the stars.

A quick observance of the rhetoric is enough to know that the writer aims only to titillate without generating any reasonable thought. The word glamorous appears twice, and throughout the essay Steinem observes the employees, higher ranking employees, continually employ this term to describe what turns out in fact to be nothing more than a stressful nightmare. Every word in the first sentence is capitalized (a trick that should be restricted to the field of literature for it accomplishes nothing in non-fiction prose) followed by a short snippet that sounds as if it was manufactured in a cheap snake oil salesman’s limited imagination. Followed by the invitation to consider the employment, we’re introduced to a promise of significant pay (even by today’s standards) and then the suggestion that employment at this establishment will allow a young woman the opportunity to be become world traveled. Best of all is the final remark in which the word glamorous haunts the reader yet again as it indicates “Bunnies are the stars.” My god who does not wish to be a bunny? To a young and impressionable mind that does not yet understand the concept of “the sales pitch” this advertisement would seem to appear to be an invitation to a kind of immortality. Achieving the position of “Bunny” then, is not only an affirmation of beauty (take note “attractive young girls,” there’s always thatcatch) but also a stepping stone or rite of passage ushering oneself into the position of woman. The desire to be recognized and admired is a recurring human weakness brought about by the power structure of society. Young women (and young men, I was going to be a rock star till I discovered I had no musical talent or real ambition) desire attention, because popularity has been demonstrated by our culture to indicate worth.

But let us return to Ms Steinem(get it…because she helped found Ms Magazine?…oh forget you that’s funny). The language employed within the essay is as well crafted and demonstrates a real satirist wit for it knows exactly when and where to offer the right information. Upon receiving the job she tells us that she is given a book referred to as “The Playboy Bible.” She samples a few pages from the text for us and the impression we get from the actual Bunny-customer relationship speaks volumes.

There is a problem in being “friendly” and “pampering” the customer while refusing to go out with him or even give him your last name. The manual makes it abundantly clear that Bunnies must never go out with anyone met in the club—customer or employee—and adds that a detective agency called Willmark Service systems, Inc., has been employed make sure that they don’t. (“Of course, you can never tell when you are being checked out by a Willmark Service representative.”) The explanation written for the bunnies is simple: “Men are very excited about being in the company of Elizabeth Taylor,
but they know they can’t paw or position her. The moment they felt they could become familiar with her, she would not have the aura of glamor that surrounds her, the same must be true of Bunnies”

Yet again that word glamor appears. I forewarned in a previous essay about the phrase, “let us consider the definition” but for the sake of this argument let us at least concern the etymology. Glamorous is rooted back to a Scottish word gramarye, which roughly translated amounts to “magic, enchantment, or spell.” Hopefully you should see where this is going. The Playboy Corporation continually advertised the glamor and myth of the Playboy universe to both men and women, but we observe that once women have entered into the system the myth alters. Steinem further reports to us

If the idea of being merchandised isn’t enough to unnerve a prospective Bunny, there are other directives that may. Willmark representatives are to check girls for heels that are too low, runs in their hose, jewelry, underwear that shows, crooked or unmatched ears, dirty costumes, absence of name tags, and “tails in good order.” Further: “When a show is on, check to see if Bunnies are reacting to the performers. When a comic is on, they are supposed to laugh. Big Brother Willmark is watching you.

The lat line is Steinem’s and demonstrates her ability as a dissenter as well as an excellent journalist. The allusion to Orwell’s text 1984 does not miss the mark at all for it becomes clear that should a woman decide to become a Bunny, rather than achieve the glamor spell and enjoy the perks derived from it, they find themselves prisoners to it. Much as Winston Smith, the gloomy anti-hero of the Orwellian Nightmare, is not free from the ever-present eyes of Big Brother, so it appears a Bunny is not free from the cronies of their employer. They must be on guard constantly, desperate for the maintenance of their physical appearance, but most odious of all is the thought crime aspect. Bunnies must react to performers, in accordance with the mass mood. A woman in this position is already too concerned whether her tail is clean, whether her seems are straight, or whether she has worn the right heels with the correct costume. What business does this woman have trying to follow a stage presence? It becomes clear that the Playboy club is managing a miniature totalitarian state designed to please only the male customers hungry for the spell of “glamor.”

There is enough here to further observe the dehumanization of women by the ever recurring moniker of “bunny” rather than human, but let me continue a little further before we get to this point. Following her actual employment at the Playboy club she informs her reader that she was required as a waitress, pay especial note to that part, to have a physical examination including a Wasserman Test. For those who do not know what this is, it is a test for syphilis. Steinem attends the appointment and asks the point of such an exam.

“This is the part all the girls hate,” said the doctor, and took blood from my arm for the Wasserman test. I told him that testing for venereal disease seemed a little ominous. “Don’t be silly,” he said, “all the employees have to do it. You’ll know everyone in the club is clean.” I said that their being clean didn’t really effect me and that I objected to being put through these tests. Silence. He asked me to stand to “see if your legs are straight.” “Okay,” I said, “I have to have a Wassermann. But what about the internal examination? Is that required of waitresses in New York State?”

“What do you care?” he said. “It’s free and it’s for everybody’s good.”

Once more the veil of glamor begins to fade. It seems, as the essay goes on, that what Playboy is most afraid of is vaginas. What difference should it make that a woman is unfortunate enough to have a venereal disease, if the Bible of the organization prohibits Bunnies from fornicating with the customers, and there is an established security Gestapo ensuring such behavior is banned, then what good could possibly be derived by having women’s lady parts checked out? Once again we return to the idea of glamor and sexual politics. There is no good reason. Playboy’s directions (erection puns spring to mind and I have an outstanding limerick for this but I shall abstain for now) demonstrate only an effort to sell the myth of sex where there is none. The female employees of the Playboy club are lured in by a promise of opportunity and excitement receiving only corns, back problems, self-esteem nightmares, and barely enough cash-in-hand to pay a taxi let alone pay for a plane ticket to travel the world. In short the entire system is a mockery, a spell designed to entrap any that may come close enough, and indeed, the Playboy presented seems to posses the ravenous strategy of an angler fish luring its prey with its bioluminescent headpiece before devouring it whole.

Steinem’s essay is an essential piece of literature for, like Animal Farm, it is a warning against idealism, and much like Johnathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it’s a scathing satire against bullshit. Much like the animals on Manor Farm, numerous young women bought into the Playboy myth hoping to become something more than themselves.  Much like the Irish selling their children to be devoured by the English so were many girls, for lack of a better phrase, devoured by the myth of Playboy and the ravenous men that flocked to it hoping to get laid. A lifetime of anonymity in the mundane is enough to drive even the most intelligent of people into positions in which they may compromise their virtue and integrity simply for the sake of celebrity.

This leads me to another young woman, who took a step further than Gloria Steinem, though not for the same reasons.

Isabella St. James is a model and actress that was born on the wrong side of the Post-World War II Europe. Her family emigrated from Poland arriving in Canada before eventually reaching the United States. Her memoir Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion will most likely never be considered astounding literature, but it should survive as an important social-sexual document for finally debunking the Playboy myth. St. James may be “blond and stacked” as the contemporary adjectives fit, but reading this book it becomes clear that the woman possesses a firm intelligence and character(she also holds a law degree from Pepperdine University). Through her memoir she paints a clear and unapologetic picture of the modern Playboy system that women find themselves in. The Playboy club has ceased to become a cultural hub in our lifetime, and instead the perceived hotbed of hedonistic bliss is the Playboy mansion.  This haunt(the ghosts of Hefners dignity and sexual ability may spring to mind when this verb is employed) serves a s a retreat in which celebrity of every make, creed, color, and class distinction frolics to in hopes of scoring some of the glamorous “vibes”. The mansion then captures a certain wonder in every man’s mind but St. James unravels it quickly.

I just could not understand why Hef did not care as much about the general appearance of the interior of the Mansion as he did about the outside. I suppose he was more focused on the beautiful women surrounding him then he was on his actual surroundings. Maybe it’s because the Playboy Corporation wants to maintain it in its “original” décor, to keep it the way it was during Playboy’s heyday so that after Hef passes, it can become a museum. Hef has said repeatedly in interviews that he would like the Mansion to be purchased by the Playboy foundation and used as a Graceland-type of attraction. He wants to perpetuate the legend and mythology related to Playboy.

The second to last statement revolts me as a passionate fan of Elvis(a great man who died on the can, rhyme intended), but if I can maintain my objectivity, it becomes clear that the mansion as it stands is nothing more today than a shadow of its previous self. As so many things in life the exterior promises more than what is actually capable. Those hunting for hedonistic bliss will instead find only an old house where people used to fuck, a lot. St. James throughout her work carefully paints small portraits of what life is like in the mansion and a few lines stand out in mind.

We asked for darker carpets but we were refused. He liked our rooms to look like little girl rooms, white carpet and pink walls.

As soon as Holly moved in, she began an intense sexual relationship with Hef. She was the only one who had sex with him regularly and replaced his main girlfriend, Tina, in all of the bedroom duties. My guess is that she knew what she had to do to stand out and she did it.

At the beginning of 2002, when I became his steady girlfriend, there were so many girls wanting to become Girlfriends that it was normal for Hef to go out with as many as fifteen girls.

Hef did not allow any Girlfriends to work. I think he did not want us to be independent.

What was strange to me is that Hef would gladly pay for any plastic surgery, necessary or not, but he would not help me with school loans.

Hef created a new persona for himself. This new guy was Hef, the Playboy, the suave magazine founder whom girls loved and was sexually free being. His entire identity is related to the magazine. It had brought him not only his riches but also an active personal life. He says Playboy brought sexual liberation for women because it told the world that nice girls like to have sex too. Hef likes to talk about how Playboy gave women freedom, freed them to be sexual. I think he means that it made it easier for guys to get laid.

Anyone interested can find numerous such passages as these and by the end of the book the “myth” of Playboy is thoroughly dead (The most humorous line in the text though is perhaps the passage in which sexual prowess of the old stud is described as “A cold fish”). Which brings us to the final act.

The tragedy of the Playboy myth is that it accommodates only men. Women may be invited to participate in the “glamor” that rest about this outdated institution like so many cobwebs, but it becomes clear that the institution, and this is most revolting, and even society itself will accommodate only those women deemed attractive enough. Playboy from the very beginning has been an attempt to cast a spell over the idea that sexuality is something equally expressible. Guising itself as sexual liberation, the movement of Playboy reveals only a system in which women are monitored and controlled sexually while men enjoy themselves. I Was a Playboy Bunny will continue to be a crucial document for our culture as long as the sexual politics that are in play continue to eschew favor to one sex over the other. It is not my intent to damn sexual expression, anything but, but observing the testimony of the women leaving the establishment it becomes clear than an authoritarian sentiment governs the entire system.

Playboy possess commandments for their employees, rules and regulations concerning behavior, idealistic invitations that promise opportunity yet offer only domination over independent will, and paltry sustenance to those who seek to enjoy the benefits of an oasis of hedonistic joy.

One last passage from Steinem should bring us to a close

I also learned from the musicians at the piano bar that there was something called “Playboy’s Theme.” These are some of the lyrics:

If you boy’s a Playboy

Loosen your control.

If his eyes meanders,

Sweet Goose your gander’s,

Just one more ornery Critter,

Who goes for the Glitter.

So if you’ve been over-heatin your oven

Just remember that the boy is a Playboy,

And a gal that makes a fireside lovin man of the boy,

Gets him to stay.

Never talks to him but sweetly,

When he plays it indiscreetly,

Never takes the Play completely,

One of the diverse duties of Willmark men is to make sure that this theme is played at the beginning and end of every musical show every evening—like “God Save the Queen.”

One can imagine this paltry tune playing, braying asses sing along to it and Bunnies are forced to smile and hum along while the bones in their feet re-arrange to spiked heels. And at any moment Hefner will stumble in followed by their successors, the “ingeniously” re-named “Girlfriends,” and like Squealer announce that this song is no longer necessary. The revolution has been accomplished.

I can only wonder how much longer the spell of “glamor” will linger before those reaping the rewards find themselves the laughing-stock that they are.