Monday, October 29, 2012

Vamp lit: Vampire quickie review 2

The Stress of Her Regard is a triumph of suspended disbelief. Tim Powers is the master of the seamless interface between the fictional and the non-fictional, the supernatural and the real. In Stress, Byron and Shelley become vampire hunters, desperately trying to rid themselves of the vamps that curse them and their families and bless them with the gift of poesy.



Source: Amazon.ca
 With style and magnificent attention to detail, Powers recreates and reimagines historical reality. It is as if he is literally telling us a secret history of the Romantic poets.

Powers uses the poetry of Byron, Shelley and Keats (another afflicted poet) as proof of the encounter with the supernatural. And real events from the poets' lives are given a vampy twist. So believable. So well done. Unlike so many faddy tales, vamp hunting is not tagged onto a famous life as a gimmicky story line. It is an essential detail of the biographies of Shelley, Keats and Byron. It explains them. It gives reasons for their doom.

Powers' redo of the vamp tale is based on the Biblical myth of the Nephilim. The horrifying and alluring offspring of the angels that mated with humans. The Nephilim are strange multiple identitied beings with special protective connections to certain families and love-hate relationships with particular humans. They are also very jealous. Killing anyone too close to their kin and mates. Moreover, their attention is seductive, alluring and addictive. And they have a host of groupies/servants called 'neffies'.

Stress details the involved and convoluted (in a wonderful way) struggles of Byron, Shelley and their allies with their preternatural muses/lovers/killers. It is a fantastic story. One of the best vamp tales I've ever read. Powers draws you in like a Nephilim. Read it. Not only will you believe it. You will become a 'neffie' and lust for more...

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Vamp lit: pre-Halloween quickie reviews 1

October is vampire month. Well. It should be. It just feels like the undead are stalking us right now. Some thing is watching. Some thing is following. Some thing is calling us. To our doom. You can hear and feel it in the chilly wind. The swirling of dry leaves. The swishing of the decaying vegetation. The smell of the hunt...

Yes, it is time to celebrate vampires. However you want to conceive them. Sultry seductive gods and goddesses of the dark. Evil decadent elegant villains and villainesses. Supernatural heroes. Misunderstood anti-heroes. Even silly eternal teen wannabes. So many different kinds and kinks! That is the joy of vampires.

And what better way to celebrate vampire month than through vamp lit...

Over the past three months, I've read 5 vamp novels (that's not bragging, that's evidence of my non-life). So I'm offering 5 quickie reviews over the next few weeks as prep work for Halloween.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite



This is the Goth novel. It has everything. Dark teen discovers he is a vampire. Named 'Nothing.' Beautiful and deadly supernatural fiends. Bauhaus. Bauhaus. Bauhaus. Black magic. Smoking dope in a graveyard. Intense, morbid relationships. Moody rock in atmospheric dives. Evil sexy twins. New Orleans. Every dark cliche you can think of...

So, it left me a little ambivalent. If I'd had the luck to discover this book as an alienated teen (and I don't know why I didn't), I probably would have loved it. It is like a textbook guide to being a Goth. As an adult, it doesn't read so well. I realize Brite invented the formula but it is still so obviously formulaic.

Lots of gratuitous sex. Which isn't a bad thing. Even though I've read better. A complex and troubling account of rape, which is also a central event in the story. But still, the female characters are disposable and 'bewitched' to strong male characters. And the novel is all about the male characters and male relationships. Which is ok sorta, but rather than really explore gay relationships Brite's portrayal seems too sensationally self-conscious to be really transgressive. She wants to offend or seduce. And over twenty years later...meh...

Her writing style is vastly superior to Anne Rice's (soooo boring...how many vamp biographies do we really need?). But she is still strapped and trapped in purple prose. There are just too many eye-rolling moments. Sigh.

But it is an easy read. And it will help set the proper tone and atmosphere for Halloween.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A new incarnation of the Eternal Champion

Apparently, there is a film project out there based on Elric of Melnibone, only the greatest fantasy antihero of all time. If it's still on, then they couldn't find a better White Wolf than supermodel Perish. He is the contemporary version of the Kinslayer. Just look at him:

Source: Shrine Store
Source: Shrine Store
Source: Shrine Store
Source: Shrine Store
Source: Shrine Store
BTW...if you've never read anything in the Elric saga, the obvious place to start is--Elric: The Stealer of Souls, Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melnibone: Volume 1...Elric is dark fantasy at its darkest. Full of decadent horror, Elric is explicitly beyond good and evil. Created by anarchist Michael Moorcock, the multiverse of Elric is dominated by the eternal war between Law and Chaos. Moorcock even invented the infamous symbol of Chaos so ubiquitous now:
Source: wikipedia
BTW2...all the pics of Perish are from Shrine of Hollywood. A bit goth-in-a-box. A more glammy version of Goth fashion stalwarts Lip Service. But still...some darkly wonderful pieces and spooky beautiful fabrics.  



Death of the Endless

Lacy Soto is Death...Her pics for phantasmagorical uber-Goth fashion house Mother of London prove it:

Source: Mother of London
Source: Mother of London
Source: Mother of London
Source: Mother of London
Source: Mother of London
Source: Mother of London

Monday, August 13, 2012

The Passion of Lovers: Goth and the death drive

Goth has a "romantic" relationship with death. Goth is obsessed with the beauty of decay. The dark poignancy of loss and lack and absence. The haunting specter of blackest desire.

Goths understand the sexiness of death. Arguably, the whole subculture is built around the link between sexuality and death. That is the essence of the morbid fascination with death. Why else do so many cute bois and grrls where cute skulls and bones? As evidenced by...

this image:
Source: Vampire Freaks
and this one:

Source: Vampire Freaks
and one last one:

Source: Vampire Freaks
...and I could go on and on. Sex linked with death is ubiquitous in the Goth subculture. Death is sexy. Sex is deadly. But why is that?

From the Goth perspective first, Goth scholar Catherine Spooner writes that Goth is about 'the production of pleasurable fear (p. 30).' In music, art, fashion and literature, Goth is about the thrilling chill, the frisson that shimmers and shivers across the skin and brain like a love bite just on the edge of pain. 'Pleasurable fear' works on the body because it doesn't de-claw and de-fang death, even as it makes it more consumable in the symbolic form of vampires, erotically charged wasting illnesses, scantily clad zombies, handsome dark demon lovers, etc. But the 'pleasurable fear' isn't just in the ciphers but also in death itself which we find deliciously seductive. 

Why do we take this pleasure in fear? In pain? In death? Just why does death haunt us like the specter of sexuality always there in the background from puberty onwards?

Death and the Maiden by Travis Louie Source: Roq La Rue Gallery
  



The death drive may provide at least a partial answer--are there any other kinds?--to the puzzling sexiness of death. The death drive is the life-confounding impulse to return to the original state--before birth which is just like death--the state of non-existence, of infinitude, of oblivion. It manifests itself in and complicates life in multitudinous ways. Sigmund Freud first witnessed the death drive while watching children and patients continuously and compulsively relive traumatic experiences. Rather than avoid obviously painful events, memories or fantasies, they returned to them again and again and again. This led Freud to conceptualize a death drive as a self-destructive urge and inherent masochism tainting even the most positive and life-affirming aspects of human life. Like sexuality.

The 'inherent masochism' of the death drive reveals a lot. What if masochism is about more than spanking? What if sex is inherently masochistic? Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips makes this startling argument: 'What masochism makes possible is the pleasure in pain [not startling yet]; or rather what masochism reveals is the capacity to bear, the capacity to desire the ultimately overwhelming intensities of feeling that we are subject to [in sexuality]. In this sense the masochistic is the sexual, the only way we can sustain the intensity, the restlessness, the ranging of desire (p. 94).' The individual self is a weak creature structured by boundaries. Sex breaks those boundaries in every possible way. Sex is about the destruction of the self. Sex is painful. The desire for sex is the desire for pain--for the death of the self. Sex is linked with death because in Phillips' words sex is 'death-in-life' (p. 95)!

Orgasm isn't called the 'little death' for nothing. Just read the following lines from Samuel Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner':

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-Mare Life-In-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

Ok, so She is called Life-In-Death here. But Life-In-Death, Death-In-Life, what's the difference? This is a literary distillation of cumming in terror. That's what matters. Like the best poetry, as you read it--you feel it! Coleridge gives a perfect sample of sexy Death.

Black Virgin by Sylvia Ji Source: Roq La Rue Gallery
In summary, sex is masochistic to its core reveling as it does in the dissolution of the self. And this masochism is part of the 'inherent masochism' that is essential to the death drive. That urge to engage in self-destructive behavior to find completion in nothingness. Sound familiar? A possible link between sex and death then is the ultimate similarity of the drives behind them. Too simple, yes. But still quite revealing...

And where does Goth fit into this? Well, back to the beginning...Goth is obsessed with death...Goth in all its twisted titillating forms is the existential embodiment of the death drive. Goth bodies, fashion, practices, etc. are the texts that express the death drive. Goth is the death drive. The death drive is Goth.

What more can I say?
Source: The Zed Word

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

In memoriam: Gore Vidal, 1925-2012

Gore Vidal died last night. Vidal was an amazing author, essayist and overall sane representative of everything that is good about the United States of America: freedom, anti-imperialism, rational criticism, democratic localism, rejection of big government whether it's left or right, hostility to militarism and military interventionism--pretty much everything that is outside the mainstream political system and media.
Source: wikipedia

Among his many works, Vidal wrote a series of novels based on the history of the USA as part of a project in outlining the emergence of the American Empire. I only ever read the one. Burr. It is one of my favourite books. The Burr in Burr is Aaron Burr, the third Vice-President of the USA in the early part of the nineteenth century. A typical idiosyncratic choice of topic and protagonist for Vidal, Burr is one of the arch-villains in American history. He killed one of the great official 'heroes', the centralizing authoritarian Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He might have been scheming to lead a coup d'etat. Failing that he might have been planning to take over the mid-western part of the continent. In any case, Burr was a great rascal and a monumental failure: a man of great promise that tragically went unrealized; a sad life, a fantastic story.

But that is all ancient history...the novel is the thing. And it is a stunning near perfect achievement in historical fiction: it has realistic characterization combined with the tactile restoration of the past, that is, punctuated with fully recreated events, scenes and dialogue written in an elegant style. It's most memorable scene is a bone chilling account of the infamous duel. The whole time I read it--and every time I re-read it--my spine was literally tingling and the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. Just wonderful!

Vidal was a master novelist. A genuine individual. A great man. He will be missed.


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Arrested development: the fairy tale world of Vladimir Nabokov

All of Vladimir Nabokov's novels exude delight in the beauty of the perverse. It is no wonder then that he had so many hang-ups.

Nabokov notoriously hated Freudian psychoanalysis ('all my books should be stamped, Freudians keep out'). (Bend Sinister, xviii) He regarded it as a medieval throwback to a dark prerational world inhabited by subterranean monsters and nightmares. And he also detested psychology in general. His was an aesthetic world. Where structure, metaphor and the art of the novel were the thing. And the symbolic a trap for pedants, know-it-alls and grad students.

Non-structural elements in general were out in interpretations of his work. In the introduction to Bend Sinister, he is quite clear that any 'political' interpretation of his novel has completely missed the point. As Nabokov says, the tale is neither Kafkaesque or Orwellian: 'The story in Bend Sinister is not really about life and death in a grotesque police state. My characters are not "types," not carriers of this or that "idea." (Bend Sinister, xiii). No, they dwell on a magical metaphysical level: 'all of them are only absurd mirages, illusions oppressive to Krug [the main character] during his brief spell of being, but harmlessly fading away when I dismiss the cast (xiv).'

And it is the participatory presence of Nabokov that possesses the narration like a tongue-in-cheek deus ex machina. He refers to himself as 'an anthropomorphic deity impersonated by me (xviii).' One who actively interferes in his stories and helps the characters understand that everything is fictional: 'Krug, in a sudden moonburst of madness, understands that he is in good hands: nothing on earth really matters, there is nothing to fear, and death is but a question of style, a mere literary device, a musical resolution (xviii-xix).' Thus the novel ends in nonchalant digression: 'Krug ran towards him, and just a fraction of an instant before another and better bullet hit him, he shouted again: You, you--and the wall vanished, like a rapidly withdrawn slide, and I stretched myself and got up from among the chaos of written and rewritten pages, to investigate the sudden twang that something had made in striking the wire netting of my window (240).' It is all so sudden. Unresolved. Interrupted. Arrested...Magical...

Speaking of the 'arrested development' of Nabokov means speaking thematically, not psychologically. Whatever psychic dynamics motivated Nabokov, his novels revolved around a mythic sense that either came out in the language, the plot, the themes or the characters--or all together in complex combinations and modulations. Like Poe, a kind of eerie and sublime innocence inundates the tales and connects the parts with the whole.

And no story is more full of Poe then Nabokov's most in/famous. Lolita. Despite constant misinterpretations to the contrary, Lolita was not a novel reveling in pedophilia.  Nearly asexual himself, Nabokov took great pleasure in mind-fucking the pervs and rubes. The eponymous nymphet was in the story for aesthetic reasons alone. If anything, Nabokov took monkish pleasure in the revulsion he felt while writing the prepubescent sex scenes.

But Poe is always present. Hovering and fumbling and fluttering about like a funny uncle pretending to misplace his hands and pseudo-absent-mindedly standing too close. The rumours of his attraction to tweens is existential foreshadowing like deja vu and astral projection and dreams of falling falling falling down. The rabbit hole. Another Nabokovian fellow emerges. Another supposed pedophile. Mr. Lewis Carroll. He likes the little girls to sit on his lap and nuzzles and coos while his fingers find the wrong pressure points. And the sitter is left unsettled. Like something important just happened fleetingly beyond the edge of sight...

Lolita is largely a tale of arrested development. Hence the haunting fidgeting figures of the man-children Poe and Carroll. Nabokov's own childhood was also unresolved but interrupted differently by the Russian Revolution and the sacrificial assassination of his beloved father. These twin traumas left Nabokov living a phantom half-life which he reworked and remade in his novels constantly.

Like a human child caught in the land of the fae, Nabokov could never leave the dreamworld nor did he really want to abandon its fraught delights. If the obsession with nymphets means anything it is as 'the return of the repressed'. Of this childhood interrupted. Invested and embodied with the mighty magic of all the could-have-beens submerged within Nabokov's personal tragedies.

Don't worry Vlad. None of that dismisses or psychologizes away the artistic glory of your novels. It only provides the necessary condition for the pseudo-real sense of the almost-was atmosphere that hums a half-world into existence in Lolita, Bend Sinister, The Gift, Pale Fire, etc. etc.

It is this once-upon-a-time-ness that makes a fairy tale. The sinister beauty of lost innocence. Longed for from beyond the interrupting eruption that is puberty and adulthood. Children live in their imaginations in a way that adults just don't no matter how imaginative they are. And it is that imaginary world that haunts the remainder of our lives. And gives us our few and far-between epiphanies.

Nabokov's novels are full of those sublime moments. Even in their most poignantly absurd scenes. Like virtually every line of Pnin. Or the climactic anti-climax of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight:

(forgive the lengthy quotation) She lit a small blue-shaded lamp and left me alone. I had a stupid impulse to draw a cigarette case out of my pocket. My hands still shook, but I felt happy. He was alive. He was peacefully asleep. So it was his heart--was it?--that had let him down...The same as his mother. He was better, there was hope. I would get all the heart specialists in the world to have him saved. His presence in the next room, the faint sound of his breathing, gave me a sense of security, of peace, of wonderful relaxation. And as I sat there and listened, and clasped my hands, I thought of all the years that had passed, of our short, rare meetings and I knew that now, as soon as he could listen to me, I should tell him that whether he liked it or not I would never be far from him any more...Oh, I would tell him thousands of things--I would talk to him about The Prismatic Bezel and Success, and The Funny Mountain, and Albinos in Black, and The Back of the Moon, and Lost Property, and The Doubtful Asphodel,--all these books that I knew as well as if I had written them myself. And he would talk, too. How little I knew of his life! But now I was learning something every instant. That door standing slightly ajar was the best link imaginable. That gentle breathing was telling me more of Sebastian than I had ever known before...

Presently I got up and tiptoed out into the corridor.

"I hope," the nurse said, "you did not disturb hi? It is good that he sleeps."

"Tell me," I asked, "when does Doctor Starov come?"

"Doctor who?" she said. "Oh, the Russian doctor. Non, c'est le docteur Guinet qui le soigne.  You'll find him here tomorrow morning."

"You see," I said, "I'd like to spend the night somewhere here. Do you think that perhaps..."

"You could see Doctor Guinet even now," continued the nurse in her quiet pleasant voice. "He lives next door. So you are the brother, are you? And to-morrow his mother is coming from England, n'est-ce pas?"

"Oh, no," I said, "his mother died years ago. And tell me, how is he during the day, does he talk? does he suffer?"

She frowned and looked at me queerly.

"But..." she said. "I don't understand...What is your name, please?"

"Right," I said. "I haven't explained. We are half-brothers, really. My name is [I mentioned my name]."

"Oh-la-la!" she exclaimed getting very red in the face. "Mon Dieu! The Russian gentleman died yesterday, and you've been visiting Monsieur Kegan..." (202-204)

But even this tragicomic scene is still enchanted. The unnamed narrator concludes:

So I did not see Sebastian after all, or at least I did not see him alive. But those few minutes I spent listening to what I thought was his breathing changed my life as completely as it would have been changed, had Sebastian spoken to me before dying. Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being--not a constant state--that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden(204-205).



Monday, June 18, 2012

Gothing the rural lifestyle: rubber boots

In which the Author predicts the insect apocalypse and advises on the most appropriate rainboots to wade through said disaster

What is the primary Goth fashion dilemma in the spring? How to stay dark and dry--specifically, how to keep your feet dark and dry and delighted--during the monsoons and the accompanying mosquito infestation/invasion. Yes, spring is not just about rain rain rain. Spring is also the season of insects ascendant. From the huge black beetles scuttling and scurrying in the freshly turned soil to the gorgeous Swallowtails waiting hungrily for the lilacs to bloom (tip to Walt Whitman) to the ladybugs like medieval engines of war (tip to Leonardo da Vinci) lurking about the underbelly of the vegetable world to the various shades of grey winged vampires...

Ever since reading The Scar my opinion of mosquitoes and insects in general has gone up. I've become convinced by certain entomological heresies and eschatologies of the superiority of insects. Cockroaches, among others, will survive the  apocalypse like bleak and implacable hoplites of the left behind. Come famine, war, pestilence and death. Insects will inherit the earth. They have exoskeletons! Oh how I adore chitin! And probosces! What's not to love!

China Mieville is the prophet of breaking down barriers between the species. First he did it in the Perdito Street Station with his scarab-headed khepri. Who didn't find the artist Lin fascinating, talented and beautiful?

Source: Justin Oakford

And then you read The Scar and you encounter the anophelii. Scientist/pacifist sphincter-mouthed males and brilliant females tragically mad with blood lust. So poignant. But I digress.

Source: Haberdashery

It is the time of mosquitoes. Not the end times. Even though with the rain rain rain, you might worry you've entered the postapocalyptic world of The Road. But anyway how do you keep your feet spooky but not sopping in the spring? Well, if you're feminine there are no end of options. Masculine...you may have to improvise and compromise.

Goth punk purveyors of whimsical doom and gloom Iron Fist have conjured up some delightfully witchy wet wear. Since San Diego's rainy season is around Xmas, none of these boots are currently in stock at the Iron Fist website. You'll have to search the web for them. Good luck! But here are a few seductive samples...Shoe fetish alert! For real!!!

You could go Old School Goth with skull glam Ruff Rider Rainboots:



Source: brokencherry.com
 Or doll up in these Lolita-esque "Society Cropped" ones:


Source: amazon.co.uk
 Or go all Deathrock/Gothabilly in these Zombie Stompers:


Source: Kaboodle
Just gory-geous!!!

Aside from Iron Fist, the wild web is full of rubber/rain boots for the feminine-inclined. Among others, Chookaboot has a boot for every style...

From plain old Goth black:


Source: chookaboot
To hardcore dark elegance:

Source: chookaboot

Source: chookaboot
 To cybersnakeskin decadence:

Source: chookaboot

Source: chookaboot
With Gothy gear like these, rainboots may no longer be just for rainy days!

Now for the masculine...hmmm...you will have to look for the weird in the everyday...

Tretorn has some passable rubber boots. Of the understated dark gentleman kind:


Source: Tretorn

Source: Tretorn
Columbia Sportswear has some warmer, wilder boots that would compliment a dark faery or black forest mori or even steampunk look:


Source: Columbia
And finally, Muckboots has rain/work boots that might go with a dark cyber-style:



The Muckmaster
Source: muckboots4sale


Hoser Classic
Source: muckboots4sale
So good luck and stay dark, dry and delightful this spring, my pretties!







Friday, June 8, 2012

Subverting the femme fatale

So was that the last word on the femme fatale? Is she--can she be--nothing more than a tool of male dominance? Well...there's no such thing as last words now is there...?

The femme fatale is ultrawoman in patriarchal ideology. She is 'woman as sex' laid bare in minimalist style. Worse, she is 'woman' completely objectified. Without identity. A zombie predator intent on consuming men. Her sex nothing but a lure like the bright, shiny knob of flesh dangling from an angler fish.

If that's true, then how could the femme fatale be recycled and mobilized against her makers? Against male dominance. If she is ultrawoman is there any way the hyperfeminine can be occupied and used by women? Or is she hopelessly compromised? Any female appropriation a delusion? A visual and sexual gift to male supremacy...?

In Goth Culture, Dunja Brill relates this anecdote:

      Leipzig, June 2003, the annual Wave-Gotik-Treffen festival...I am on my way to the tram station
      to travel to the Agra, the main festival site, when a group of scantily clad girls catches my eye. All
      of them are wearing skimpy black PVC skirts or hot pants, with one even dressed in nothing but a
      skin-tight PVC bodice, torn mesh stockings and extreme high heels. Obviously I am not the only
      one to notice these women; their charms seem anything but lost on the group of male youths
      standing at the tram station, whose outfits mark them out a what Goths tend to call 'townies'. I
      overhear how one of them, a tall guy with a white baseball cap and baggy jeans, tries to talk the
      others into chatting up the girls. They ogle the one in the PVC bodice, making saucy comments
      about her body and dress. Prompted by their obstrusive stares and sexual banter, all of a sudden
      she walks up to them and starts eying the tall guy in a confident, almost aggressive way. I think I
      can even see a slight smile around her eyes. The boys instantly stop their boastful banter and fall
      silent, seeming rather uncomfortable with the situation. The tall one tries hard to avoid the
      woman's gaze and obviously does not feel like showing any more interest in the ample cleavage
      displayed right in front of him. As she walks back to her friends, her subdued smile turns into a
      broad grin--a contagious grin, it seems, as I still have it on my face when the tram finally comes
      (p. 59)

So when the female 'object' becomes an 'actor', the male viewer is no longer in possession of the view. And that inverts the object-objectifier relation. What does that have to do with the hyperfeminine? Or the femme fatale?

In many ways, the hyperfeminine turns the femme fatale on its head. It is a self-reflexive 'masquerade' of the most extreme signs of femininity turned against male-imposed stereotypes. As Brill writes, the 'feminine masquerade...stresses the subversive, disruptive potential of women who reappropriate traditionally feminine clothes with an ironic twist (p. 60).' As the anecdote above illustrates, '[f]launted as a masquerade, such a parodic excess of femininity can work to disrupt the male-defined scopic regimes of voyeuristic and fetishistic looking at women so deeply ingrained in our visual culture...This line of argument suggests that hyperfemininity can be a form of resistance, a strategy for deconstructing the patriarchal ideal of femininity from within rather than from an impossible position outside gender discourse (p. 60).'

As an ironic masquerade, the hyperfeminine walks a fine line between parody and parade. Porn and the male gaze can colonize anything. Feminine goth style can easily degenerate into mere stroke material. The ambiguous nature of the hyperfeminine is pretty clear. So while Joshua Gunn writes, 'gothic women deliberately warp dominant images of the female sex-object as a strategy of empowerment. As the goth female confronts women's traditional role as an object of male fantasy, the subculture helps her to devise ways to gain more control. As the most conspicuous example of resistant femininity found in the goth scene...the female dominatrix takes charge of her objectification by turning the sadistic gaze back upon itself, averaging voyeurism with (consensual) teasing and abuse (p. 52).' Dunja Brill reminds us that goth women self-report that the main reason they choose to dress in hyperfeminine styles is to 'look pretty' (Brill, p. 60). And that in itself could mean many things, some rather positive. Some male-centred and negative. But then that is what ambiguity means.

These very ambiguities, however, can be explored and exploited in a particularly subversive, brilliant and uncanny way by a skilled artist like, say, Emilie Autumn. If the hyperfeminine turns the stereotype of the femme fatale on its head, then Miss Autumn takes on both and twists their heads right off! Her campy eroticism is so ironically aggressive that it is disturbingly antisexual. She takes a stereotype and she takes it just a little too far beyond the sexy. Like a doll doing a lap dance.

For example, she dresses like a deconstructed Victorian school girl in ragged overly skimpy outfits that underline the pedophilia theme behind this whole 'fetish'. The thick clownish-girlish makeup has the same kind of innocence a zombie has when it feasts on its prey. The overall effect is not sexy because it identifies every 'normal' trait of sexiness--revealing clothing, bare skin, come-hither posturing, exaggerrated makeup--and vamps it up so the erotic gloss is ripped off . And 'nudity' becomes true nakedness. Something just a little too real for comfort. Or patriarchal re-appropriation.



Source: Battered Rose


Source: Battered Rose
 Miss Autumn does much the same with other iconic male chauvinist tropes and stereotypes. Each one equally broken down to the leering mocking mask that conceals nothing for desire to latch onto. And thereby defies and confounds the consuming/objectifying lust of the male viewer. There is no understood game here between the audience and the actor. The rules that normally let a man act out his fantasy are not followed. The puppet has cut its strings. And nothing is more terrifying and discomfitting than an autonomous automaton...which Miss Autumn pretty much represents in this image:


Source: Battered Rose
And as for tearing up iconic images, here is Miss Autumn's demented take on the showgirl:

Source: Battered Rose


Source: Kerrang
 And her subversive verion of the sexy woman in an animal costume writhing around as a rat:

Source: Battered Rose

Source: Battered Rose
 Or the sexy woman with an animal burlesque routine...repeated with that mostest sexy animal, the rat!


Source: Bizarre Magazine

Source: Bizarre Magazine
 And from here to the just-not-right scene at the little girl's tea party:


Source: Battered Rose
 Oh, and what about the innocent girl playing with her dolls in her toy room?

Source: Battered Rose
Or that same innocent girl now trapped in a madhouse?


Source: Battered Rose
 Or that most sacred stock character of male romance--the damsel-in-distress?


Source: Battered Rose
 I could continue and show you more and more icons cut up and rewired but the above twists and turns demolish heteronormative sexiness. The semi-nudity is not titillating but aggressive. And anti-sexual. Beyond the sexual. Outside sex. However you want to describe a body that doesn't conform to the dictates of 'sexuality' as we know it.

Common criticisms of burlesque performance do not work here. While it is often true that one person's irony is another's pornography. Miss Autumn's appropriation of male supremacist stereotypes works because her versions are sarcastic, mocking and sardonic takes on the standard pin-up cliches. She demon sings of how she wants her innocence back. Not like a victim. But like a monster avenger. For contained within each of her versions of these sexist cliches is this wicked Joker smile:


Source: Battered Rose

Miss Autumn's performance is about taking back power for women. Power to define their own feminine symbols. Power to present their own aesthetic, social and political agenda. Power to control their own bodies and what they do with them.

And she defines her goal in as Gothy a way as possible. Speaking of women in general, Miss Autumn says in an interview with Curve magazine: 'we can't just sit and wait for our freedom and our right to live without fear to be handed to us by anyone. We need to demand it, and we need to be prepared to fight.

'We need to get scary.'