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| Source: Shrine Store |
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| Source: Shrine Store |
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| Source: Shrine Store |
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| Source: Shrine Store |
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| Source: Shrine Store |
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| Source: wikipedia |
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:
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:
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:
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| Source: Mother of London |
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| Source: Mother of London |
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| Source: Mother of London |
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| Source: Mother of London |
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| Source: Mother of London |
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| 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:
and this one:
and one last one:
...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?
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.
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?
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 |
 |
| Source: Vampire Freaks |
 |
| Source: Vampire Freaks |
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 |
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?
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| 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.
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.
 |
| 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.
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