A naked man in Berlin
Jun. 17th, 2006 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHere's an image, shot from a Berlin S-Bahn carriage, of a billboard advertising daily newspaper Die Zeit, currently running a series of articles entitled "What is manly?" You can see it in the context of the newspaper here. The naked male model is splashed across the front page, his pose Michelangelesque, a few teasing millimeters of penis visible in the chink between his legs.
In case I gave the impression, in my Trussed thrust piece the other day, that I have something against expressions of male sexuality, I want to say that I find the Zeit image a much more positive one than the O2 image of the mobile phone user making a fist-thrust gesture while watching soccer highlights on his "handy". Here's a list of reasons why I prefer the Zeit image:
1. There's no football involved.
2. The guy's a passive object, put there for our aesthetic contemplation.
3. Absence of "aggressive normality" in the Zeit image.
4. It seems to be part of a feminist project: that the objectification of women as sexual objects (which, let's face it, is not going to go away) would be a lot more acceptable if men were also objectified as sexual objects. Feminism, broadly speaking, has two projects: making women equal to men, and deconstructing patriarchy. This second project, it seems to me, is the more radical one, and has been neglected.
5. This is a recognizably European image, and I mean continental Europe: an image from Italian, French or German advertising of the last 30 years. (It could also be Scandinavian.) The UK and US, though, are still a bit puritan when it comes to naked men showing a chink of penis on billboards. This is the kind of image that says to an American tourist "You've arrived in another cultural zone".
6. There's a strong nudism-naturism component in German culture. A hundred years ago, the Berlin Expressionists of the Brucke school were heading out to the lakes surrounding this city and painting the naked people they found there in canvasses like Bathers by Otto Mueller and Bathers at Moritzburgm by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (himself, I think, rather a beautiful man, and a big hero of mine when I was younger; a photo of him appears on the sleeve of the first Momus EP). This is still a country where children play naked in city parks. The UK, to put it mildly, is not.
7. Unlike the O2 image, the Zeit image avoids what I call "Dionysus in the throne of Apollo" Syndrome; the encouragement of laddish, selfish, druggy, irresponsible behavior in consumers. I reject this because those authorities who encourage us to be Dionysian -- to lose control, but in a controlled way, strapped into planes or herded into football stadiums -- are not Dionysian themselves: they simply want to keep the control element, the rationality which underlies power, to themselves rather than see it spread through the population. Authorities who encourage us to be irresponsible (within limits, and in conformist ways) are contradicting the basic Existentialist message that we should each be responsible for our own actions, and control our own lives.
8. I persist in thinking there's something usefully Utopian in images of nakedness. I think there's a correlation between positive images of nakedness and humanism. I do think there will eventually be cities where we all walk naked, but I think it's at least a hundred years in the future, and it depends on humans liking humans more than they currently do, and accepting themselves better. We all need to become happier with -- and in -- our own skins.
In case I gave the impression, in my Trussed thrust piece the other day, that I have something against expressions of male sexuality, I want to say that I find the Zeit image a much more positive one than the O2 image of the mobile phone user making a fist-thrust gesture while watching soccer highlights on his "handy". Here's a list of reasons why I prefer the Zeit image:
1. There's no football involved.
2. The guy's a passive object, put there for our aesthetic contemplation.
3. Absence of "aggressive normality" in the Zeit image.
4. It seems to be part of a feminist project: that the objectification of women as sexual objects (which, let's face it, is not going to go away) would be a lot more acceptable if men were also objectified as sexual objects. Feminism, broadly speaking, has two projects: making women equal to men, and deconstructing patriarchy. This second project, it seems to me, is the more radical one, and has been neglected.
5. This is a recognizably European image, and I mean continental Europe: an image from Italian, French or German advertising of the last 30 years. (It could also be Scandinavian.) The UK and US, though, are still a bit puritan when it comes to naked men showing a chink of penis on billboards. This is the kind of image that says to an American tourist "You've arrived in another cultural zone".
6. There's a strong nudism-naturism component in German culture. A hundred years ago, the Berlin Expressionists of the Brucke school were heading out to the lakes surrounding this city and painting the naked people they found there in canvasses like Bathers by Otto Mueller and Bathers at Moritzburgm by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (himself, I think, rather a beautiful man, and a big hero of mine when I was younger; a photo of him appears on the sleeve of the first Momus EP). This is still a country where children play naked in city parks. The UK, to put it mildly, is not.
7. Unlike the O2 image, the Zeit image avoids what I call "Dionysus in the throne of Apollo" Syndrome; the encouragement of laddish, selfish, druggy, irresponsible behavior in consumers. I reject this because those authorities who encourage us to be Dionysian -- to lose control, but in a controlled way, strapped into planes or herded into football stadiums -- are not Dionysian themselves: they simply want to keep the control element, the rationality which underlies power, to themselves rather than see it spread through the population. Authorities who encourage us to be irresponsible (within limits, and in conformist ways) are contradicting the basic Existentialist message that we should each be responsible for our own actions, and control our own lives.
8. I persist in thinking there's something usefully Utopian in images of nakedness. I think there's a correlation between positive images of nakedness and humanism. I do think there will eventually be cities where we all walk naked, but I think it's at least a hundred years in the future, and it depends on humans liking humans more than they currently do, and accepting themselves better. We all need to become happier with -- and in -- our own skins.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 08:19 am (UTC)It could be mere meaningless coincidence, but could there also be a trend occurring globally...?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 08:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 08:37 am (UTC)I discussed Marcuse's concept of repressive desublimation in Museums are better than clubs (http://imomus.livejournal.com/113541.html). And in fact I went back to that same museum yesterday... only to find deck chairs set up in the lobby and people watching the fucking football on a huge screen!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 07:45 pm (UTC)get this: football night at OT301 a squat well south of the leidesplein. i showed up on an inaccurate tip that there would be an electroacoustic+dance performance. the scene: friendly-enough "nomad" designer/media art types sitting in an old theatre smoking dope and watching the game. i call that an abuse of what was probably an arts grant funded lcd projector.
the next day, watching the orange garland bedecked fans throng the straats and grachts in the wake of the dutch win, i committed the act libre of chanting hare krishna loudly while marching with the fans. only a single person was sober enough to get it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 09:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 01:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 02:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 01:21 pm (UTC)Do you remember a time when you could have seen such a thing in public? Probably not, since not even Democratic presidents have encouraged such a law. Why do you hate conservatives so much? Is it better to have a series of ideological statements that fit on bumper stickers than to delve so deep into thought that you might never come back to villifying Bush?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 06:23 pm (UTC)However, it is the worth noting that:
A) Conservatives have made themselves the champions of this puritan morality. For example, under Bush's administration, the FCC has leveled record "indecency" fines against radio and television.
B) In America you don't actually need a Democrat (or anyone else, for that matter) to "encourage" a law to make displaying the above image legal. The applicable law is already on the books, and has been since they started up this country.
C) In my experience, most people who hate conservatives do so for one good reason: because conservatives hate them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 06:27 pm (UTC)Very good point
Why do you hate conservatives so much?
Because your leaders are people like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Frist and Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum to name a few.
Because your pundints are people like Ann Coulter, Bill O'Rielly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and oh so many more including many in the mainstream media like Chris Mathews.
These people lie a lot and can't be trusted.
Is it better to have a series of ideological statements that fit on bumper stickers...
The republican party is very good at sound bites. They have a top down management style like a corporation which is why they are so "unified". They all get the same talking points memo at the same time. Very organized.
Democrats are all over the map, unlike a corporation. The whole back of thier car is covered with bumper stickers. One bumper is not enough. (That might make a good bumper sticker). Everything from "The Goddess is Alive and Magic is afoot" to "Impeach Bush". I live in Berkeley. The other thing I see a lot of here are "support the troops" ribbons, American flag stickers - "The Power of Pride".
I visited Arkansas a couple of weeks ago and there was a surprising absence of patriotic stickers and magnets. My brother-in-law, a conservative, said they started disapearing about a month ago. We know support for the war is down but we still support the troops don't we?
We've passed the 2500 dead mark. Tony Snow - "It's a number".
Oh yeah, Tony Snow. He's another rason why we hate you.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 12:14 am (UTC)It's okay, I used to hate a lot of people who I never took the time to understand. Now I try to be more careful.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 12:47 am (UTC)Was. That was a long time ago. People change. (http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/people/chrismatthews)
It's okay, I used to hate a lot of people who I never took the time to understand. Now I try to be more careful.
That's sweet. Good luck with your carefully researched hatred.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 09:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 10:54 am (UTC)Ahhhhhh! a reflection!
or what is that thing in the small "zeit" sign?
i see a woman in leiderhosen with spread legs.
Sorry I didn't get to see you at the Whitney even though I live in NYC (they mysteriously sent me a request for a donation though, even though I've never been there ahhhhh hmmm Momus?)
Alexandre
Date: 2006-06-17 11:38 am (UTC)We are now so intensily bombarded with authoritarian messages of spiritual elevation that seem to spin into conformism in an "anti counter-clockwise" sense.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 01:18 pm (UTC)Feminism, broadly speaking, has two projects: making women equal to men, and deconstructing patriarchy. Feminism's ultimate goal is to supplant male authority by switching roles and subjugating men for the puerile purpose of revenge for "thousands of years of oppression." Especially in the 1990's, feminism sought to give women acheivement at the cost of male acheivement; "equality" was defined as women succeeding and men failing while selectively avoiding the more distatsteful burdens of society like fighting wars or being responsible for one's actions. Today, we're reaping the havest of those bitter seeds as more and more women enter colleges and more men turn to things like crime and fathering illegitimate children.
There needs to be an equalism movement in which the goal is true equality that doesn't cost either side gains. I believe women should be allowed to fight in wars (their duties being assigned by ability), work contruction and objectify men as sexual objects. A lot of women like the feminist ideal when young, but sour on it when they reach motherhood and find that their sons and husbands are being knocked around by the ideas they used to espouse. It's ironic that it often takes the motherhood that feminists have tried to claim as the ultimate feminist meme to break the illusion of female superiority and impart a true understanding of the need for BOTH genders to succeed.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 01:48 pm (UTC)Such configurations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_complex) of the mind go deeper than the will.There are those who attribute them to chromossomic differences in which the XX pattern is considerably stonger than the XY lending women a more emotional lust for well-being in life and incapabling the mnemonic record of "values"/"morale" as matters of life and death.
Freud's description may spring feminism as a pervertion.
undzbetshardeshtpsihenflamer
Date: 2006-06-17 02:38 pm (UTC)Mo-mi, mommy, MO-mai! My leetle eye patched goon.You missed another reason why those ads upset you, from the few centimeteres of cock shown in the ad which got you all shivers, you naturally expected a jet of pish;LIKE PAPA ! Right on the eye patch! Like a Russian Dj improviser with 8-tracks suddenly who went bankrupt in his animation studio endevour !
How could you have not noticed ? Well never mind, like your absent father, I heft a strong jet of piss on you, just for my little momochan, like the good boy you try to be...ohhhh there it goes, splashing on your face giving you arts...my clever little Nikkolai....such yellow coloured blog your giving.
Re: undzbetshardeshtpsihenflamer
Date: 2006-06-17 03:06 pm (UTC)Apart from that it seems to be business as usual.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 10:47 pm (UTC)Really? Just how do you know that "feminism" wants to "subjugate" men and is "puerile"? [snarky putdown making assumptions about your sexual appeal to women deleted on second, better thought] Christ on a motorbike, the naked (!) paranoia in your first sentence is appalling. As a man who's lived among feminist women for years (and, for what it's worth, doesn't feel at all emasculated or subjugated), I've never once run into that as an expressed goal. (And I lived in Madison, Wisconsin in the mid-eighties...) Even the more blatantly anti-male Andrea Dworkin wing of feminism seemed more about getting away from men than subjugating them. As for "avoiding the more distatsteful [sic] burdens of society like fighting wars or being responsible for one's actions," perhaps you're unaware that many women have agitated for their right to fulfill combat positions in the military, and that women's enrollment in the military has risen dramatically over the years. I think that fact also might address your notion of avoiding responsibility as well - although I'd hate to think fighting wars is the sole, or even a viable, means of shouldering responsibility. --2fs
Alexandre
Date: 2006-06-17 02:33 pm (UTC)Re: Alexandre
Date: 2006-06-17 02:43 pm (UTC)(There's also a new track from "Ocky Milk" on there as well.)
Re: Alexandre
Date: 2006-06-17 09:15 pm (UTC)at last!
Date: 2006-06-17 02:54 pm (UTC)we're soon coming to berlin on a de-catholizing program!!!
And in related news...
Date: 2006-06-17 03:05 pm (UTC)The Naked Guy (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-21-naked-guy-dies_x.htm?csp=34) is dead.
Quite the celebrity in these parts in the early 90's
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 03:15 pm (UTC)This reminds me of a wonderful little exhibition I stumbled upon at the Studio Gallery in Chelsea back in April. The artist, Kristin Copham, did a series of portraits of male artists in the nude (http://kristencopham.com/Nude%20Male%20Artists.htm).
One thing that I find really interesting is the fact that while the nudism/naturism/youth culture was central to the leftist avant-garde die Brucke, it was also used by the Nazis to promote ideas of racial purity and the healthy Aryan body, and a way of connecting themselves to notions of classical beauty.
E.H.
relax
Date: 2006-06-17 03:28 pm (UTC)trevor pan
Animal notes
Date: 2006-06-17 05:15 pm (UTC)Do you know about the Jaybirds, late 60s Californian Wandervogel who published naturist magazines full of contrivedly chaotic antics? As with many other marvels, I came upon them via a stall of discount Taschen books at a Shinagawa flea market. The Jaybirds had precisely this kind of Utopian agenda - at least some of them were aware of it. They were hedonistic hippies. While the Taschen book is a typographic catastrophe, the photos themselves are full of fabulous moments (especially for a vintage porn enthusiast/scan-happy amateur designer). And they show a time when American culture was genuinely out there. By the standards of contemporary nudity in advertising, the Jaybird aesthetic is pretty gritty (of course the Jaybird images are not advertising images so the comparison may be a tad gratuitous). This is the grit that our world seems deficient in.
How about with regard to smell? I think that contemporary perfumes reveal a great deal about nakedness in a wider sense. Most scents these days are more like deodorants (or toilet-duck) than the real-deal classic (mainly French) scents of yore. Most new scents seek to smother the body in a chemical (often harsh green melon-like or pink uncomplicated [banal] baby doll) ozone. I don't hate all of them but almost all of them disappoint with their astonishing conformism and disappointing chemical dry-down. And the ideas these scents seek to represent - seemingly limited to cute, sexy, green, sea, fresh, blue, sassy etc. etc., what about Serbian forests at dawn, aviation, telepathy - I don't know something mildly interesting or ambitious ...
Auden was fearful of the cult of hygiene and the way it masks the animal reality of the body. Maybe I'm just an 'olfactory fogey' (to borrow my boyfriend's phrase - as he is also this and a genuine perfume obsessive) or else a forward thinking Utopian naturist of the future born into the wrong era- bring back the animal notes, put the body back into nakedness. (Or failing that just make porn more like it was in the 70s.)
Re: Animal notes
Date: 2006-06-17 09:04 pm (UTC)Re: Animal notes
Date: 2006-06-18 03:31 am (UTC)Labdanum
Antique clove
Patchouli
Black tobar
Rose concrete
Oak moss
The result is quite spicy and musky. Enjoy.
Re: Animal notes
Date: 2006-06-18 04:33 am (UTC)Thank you sir!
I will try it out. I am mad about clove and oak moss so this accord looks promising!
Also I'll check out Douglas Little - thanks for the tip.
Re: Animal notes
Date: 2007-11-02 06:25 am (UTC)My name is Niktaris Dimitris.
I'm from Sises Rethimno of Crete GREECE.
Sises is a village in northern Crete where there is produced ladanum only of all the world with the following characteristics:
1. Labdanum or ladanum produced from the plan Cistus Creticus.
2. Also produced with an ancient and traditional way.
Labdanum or ladanum from this plan (Cistus Creticus) and with the impressing traditional method of produce has THE BEST quality.
I have made this site :
http://www.labdanum.gr
in English language
http://www.ladanum.gr
in Greek language.
I have collected information for labdanum or ladanum (Cistus Creticus).
I will be pleasant if we have a contact.
My e-mail : ladanum@gmail.com
Niktaris Dimitris.
Sises Rethimno of Crete.
GREECE.
74057.
e-mail: ladanum@gmail.com
Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 05:20 pm (UTC)Master's Tools
Date: 2006-06-17 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-17 07:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 01:05 am (UTC)One other thing: over the years, I've seen countless mid-19c photographs of American men swimming together with no clothing at all. I don't think our country's patchwork of cultures were as uniformly prudish as one might imagine. It's probably far more prudish now than then.
That said, I think clothes say far more about a person than bodies do. "Mask saying more than a face", and all that.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 02:47 am (UTC)Couldn't agree more, btw.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 01:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 04:30 am (UTC)I couldn't have said it better!
it is lovwve but
Date: 2006-06-18 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 03:13 pm (UTC)as for number four, my experience suggests that the deconstruction of patrirachy and the elimination of objectification itself are coextensive. so, while i strongly endorse most tenets of feminism, i find part of that *movement* to be misguided, pre-raph (in all that school's bad ways), and slightly puritanical (or aggressively judeo-christian (even negatively cartesian) in its angry devaluation of the body)). this is a huge can of worms.
while i love the art of kirchner and el greco (and harbor a grudging respect for schiele), i think that their attitude toward the body is, while celebratory, too determined by the idea of subjectivity and confluence to be associated with the use of the body in mass marketing media (if i were moe awake, i might put this more clearly and concisely. sorry). unlike freud, neither kirchner nor el greco (nor schiele) are representational painters. they portray bodies, to my mind, that are registers (sites of registration) of the following: (subjective) perception, interiority/emotion, and the symbiosis (cumbersome word) between the social and the individual. el greco's bodies are god's play-doh. to use von bingen's phrase, they're feathers on the (sometimes scorching) breath of god. the tensility one sees in them *represents* the angst of faith, etc.. hence, el greco's bodies (and kirchner's, in a different way) are highly subjectivized anti-bodies. but you didn't mention el greco. in short, the torque, fluidity, and registrativity (new word) of most painted bodies distinguishes them sharply from the photographed bodies used in ads. (hals (whose bodies tend to register the pleasures of decidedly non-lite ale) and sargent may be different.) - blainerunner
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 03:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-18 09:31 pm (UTC)just like paul delvaux's surrealistic cities populated by naked people...
http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=it-it&q=paul%20delvaux&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi