A small detail — a very very small detail indeed — in one of Mike Golby’s recent entries nonetheless made me quite angry. The entry’s title, What Intrigues Me…, segues into a sentence that constitutes the entry together with interspersed illustrations: “What Intrigues Me… …is The Way the Bayonets… ….shown in this picture… …come to dominate… …the people… …and their ‘protectors’. I ask you. Who are we to assume that is we who face the bayonet?”
Nothing wrong with the question, or with the choice of imagery: Goya’s “One Can’t Look” first, followed by contemporary photographs of soldiers and civilians. This is the Goya, which I also referenced in an entry on May 12:
But why oh why does the sentence fragment “…shown in this picture…” link to Caravaggio’s late 16th century depiction of Judith Beheading Holofernes?
That’s the detail that set me off. Am I correct in sensing a comment on the culpability of women in the exercise of torture? My apologies if I’m mistaken, but in my naturally heightened alert of feminist consciousness, I detected a nasty Madonna-Whore dichotomy swipe of unresolved feelings toward the female sex in that particular pointer: coming at the viewer without the context of Caravaggio’s other works or of Caravaggio’s sexual orientation, I detect in this choice — again, my apologies if I’m wrong — more than a slight hint of male castration anxiety. But Judith was no “castrating bitch” (and in past emails I’ve vented privately against decontextualised uses of the Lorena Bobbit story). Judith was a heroine who endangered herself to save her people; she happened to use sexual wiles to lull an overly-confident Holofernes, but her action can in no way be compared to Lynndie England’s, for example.
And it is Lynndie we’re talking about, isn’t it?
It seems to me that what’s getting left out by the reference to Judith, an oblique out-of-context reference that strikes me as an off-the-cuff judgement of women on the basis of old stereotypes, is class analysis.
Caravaggio’s Judith is not exactly fearsome or irrational or castrating: she is an individual whose conflicted consciousness is written — or painted — on her face. Judith’s maid is resolutely ghastly, but Judith is extremely troubled, her face expressing pain and revulsion, exactly like David in this version of Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath:
In both subjects, we see a complex battle of scruple, duty, and destiny playing out in the characters’ faces. If, in the final analysis, David has more complexity than Judith, it’s probably due to Caravaggio’s own homosexual politics, too. In this version of David (Caravaggio painted at least 3), Caravaggio painted his own self-portrait as the head of Goliath, while one of Caravaggio’s typically beautiful and seductive Bacchus-type lads holds the head. This time, however, the boy, if heartbreakingly rueful, is armed and dangerous: Judith couldn’t compete with Bacchus-David for Caravaggio’s most in-depth devoted scrutiny precisely because she was a woman, not a boy.
But back to Lynndie.
What was that about class analysis?
If you want a fitting comparison in painting for Lynndie England, my suggestion is to look no further than Goya’s Maya, both the clothed and the nude versions. First, the Clothed Maja from about 1800:
And the Nude Maja, which Goya painted perhaps sometime later:
Why do I think Goya’s Majas have anything to do with Lynndie England or the other salt-of-the-earth “good old girls” caught with their hands dirty? It has nothing to do with any essential nature of women (I don’t subscribe to nonsense like that), nor with any dualistic notions of “good girls/ bad girls” (I reject dualisms as social constructions which humans “solve” in order to flatter themselves), but with how class position structures parameters within which you act, and with how genders and classes will be reified by pundits and imagerists (actually, I prefer to think that Goya, far from reifying “majaism,” was commenting on it in a very astute and critical way). Some enlightened people of Goya’s time wanted to enjoy “majaism” as consumable and fashionable folklore (they dressed up as majas and majos, which has some resonance with the way white middle class people consume hiphop fashion or trailer trash style) and they wanted to believe that with enlightenment, the Maja would benefit from the coming modern age’s reforms. Bzzzzt! Wrong, which is what drove Goya practically mad. Just as Lynndie proved to be a very ordinary nasty good ol’ girl whose deep, poor roots gave her no protection against sinking into barbarism, the majos turned out to be torturing brutes who gave as good as they got in the vicious bloodbath known as the Peninsular War. Judith? Forget it, she was of a completely different class acting for completely different reasons. Goya’s Maja, on the other hand, that is the illusion of natural (class) nobility laid bare.
{ 16 comments }
Em… no Yule, it actually hearkened back to my previously, possibly poorly expressed comment on the symbolic beheading of the ‘western viper’ by Iraq as portrayed by al-Zarqawi (was it he?), the alleged murderer of Nicholas Berg. I think that fits the story of Judith somewhat better, although I would not presume to liken her to al-Zarqawi. Perhaps Dr. Omed‘s Fair and Balanced explication conveys the idea far better than I.
PS: Please don’t be too harsh on this artistic illiterate. I really appreciate your knowledge of classical art and thoroughly enjoy your clear articulation of its intent and worth. Slowly, slowly does it nicely as they say. I’ll learn… some day 🙂
Quick addition… The underlying idea of the post, which had been meandering about my head with the graphics for a couple of days, was that the bayonet cuts both ways, and then repeats the process. (I tried to practise this in earlier posts where, for example, mass-media, for-profit pornography links to background graphics of an ugly nature.) Hence the link to the reproduction in the bacground rather than up front. Where I can, I play with ideas. Needless to say, it’s mostly for my own pleasure or edification as most people don’t bother with the links or their titles. But, what the hell, it’s blogging :).
You’re hardly artistically illiterate, Mike, and besides, I’m just a homeschooling mom. Was I harsh? Sheesh, I guess it comes naturally to me, ’cause I didn’t even notice.
As for Caravaggio, I get a little crazy when anyone uses him because he’s my hero (at least from that epoch). God, could that man paint.
Well, I’m also glad to know that you don’t have any deep lurking impulses toward castration anxiety. To any man who does have that anxiety, I’d have to say, “Get over yourself. What you have is only a penis, not The Phallus.” In other words, there are far more important things to get worried about, to differentiate from and about, etc etc.
The observation about the bayonets cutting both ways is good. Of course it’s also the case that in the Peninsular War, the first guerilla war of its kind (I’ve heard), the peasants generally didn’t have bayonets (sophisticated advanced weaponry) and used the equivalent of slingshots and rocks, which means that one does have to consider the inequality of weaponry. It didn’t stop them from pounding any French soldier they caught into a bloody pulp, stopping only to castrate him while he was still conscious. (Maybe they’re responsible for all that goddamn free-floating castration anxiety?) And the French, with their better modern weapons, were still in possession of the better modern ideas, too (enlightened social attitudes, equality, freedom, republicanism), even if their army turned into bastards of the first torturing order. The Spanish peasants were defending very very bad ideas by fighting on the side of the forces of darkness, namely the Catholic Church, the Inquisition, feudal traditions, backwardness, superstition, oppression of women, etc etc.
Maybe that’s what’s so fascinating about Goya’s Maja: she embodies social contradictions inherent in the Spanish underclass.
Would I fight for her? Nuh-uh. I’d do what Goya did: leave Spain and retire to the French countryside to pursue my idea of interior decoration with so-called “Black Paintings” of Colossi and Witches’ Sabbaths and various Processions, punctuated only by an oversized Milkmaid of Bordeaux. Of course, today some art historians argue that Goya didn’t really paint the so-called Black Paintings for his villa in France, and there goes the idea for interior design.
Nothing’s ever simple, it seems.
Oh, and I just checked out the Dr. O link, and I think he should be spanked. What a nasty misogynist rant!! What a pile of crap dressed as “critique” of assassination, linked sloppily to Berg’s beheading! What was Judith supposed to do? Sit back and let Holofernes’s army slaughter her village, after first raping all the women? Is that what men want and consider justice?
Jesus Christ almighty, how does one spell sexism and castration anxiety? Men really hate a woman of action, don’t they? Well, has he seen Goya’s The Maid of Saragossa? Bet he’d think that was ok, a woman training a cannon on a whole army, ’cause of course that’s so ineffectual. But risking one’s life on a secret mission to kill a man who would savage one’s village, that’s considered below the belt. Gimme a break.
If you want to see what a woman painter, who WAS RAPED and whose rape was considered almost “normal” (i.e., had very little recourse for justice), how that artist painted the beheading of Holofernes, check out the work of Artemisia Gentileschi. There you can see a beheading executed with castrating rancour, but geez, who can blame her? As for Caravaggio’s version, for Dr. O to use it in this way maybe just indicates that he’s got cloth buttons for eyes.
I really don’t know how to spell it, Yule, but I have a big grin on my mug and a desire to bawl at you as we did as kids, “Wah-lah! Gotcha :)!”
Fair and Balanced is as Fair and Balanced does. Mrs. Gump said that. Or something similar. May Dr. Omed rot in Hell. As for Artemesia, with whose predicament I sympathise, i.e. both for the attack on her being and the indifferent babarism to which she was subjected, I reckon her rendition better illustrates the point which was, if I remember, the rape of countries — to which we Westerners (naturally or unthinkingly) attribute the feminine gender.
I won’t detail here my reasons for believing myself qualified to have some understanding of her predicament, but I might share over the weekend a couple of thoughts on the sanctimonious piety of good Church goers and those who benefit from their inexcusable ignorance. Right now, I’m off to find out about this Goy chap. Wasn’t he the one who played Frank, the gay interior decorator in Father of the Bride?
Okay enough frivolity you two.
I just read Mike’s post, Yule. The thing that struck me is this knife thing, this bayonet thing. (This has been much on my mind the past week: a cop’s throat was slit not fifty feet from my front door and I’ve been pondering and brooding heavily not so much on the meaning of the man’s death, but very much regarding the manner of his death.)
Whenever I hold a knife – in the kitchen, usually – I sometimes become aware of a certain power that is within this thing, this object. I usually find it very frightening to be honest. It’s as if the thing has a power over me, a mind of its own. It is as if this thing – call it the bayonet, a military version of the two in one kitchen utensil, it slices, it dices – has the potential to dominate me. (Unlike a gun. Oddly I can hold a rifle, shotgun, even a pistol and this feeling – it’s a kind of terrifying reverence – doesn’t overwhelm me. Granted, I don’t often hold loaded weapons to be clear about it.)
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with castration anxiety or Goya or class delineation or the extensions of man – but I cannot for the life of me make the jump from bayonet to phallus. It just doesn’t cut it for me, said the mohel.
The knife as a weapon is very close to the heart. As a pen is to a writer. A gun, like a typewriter, is closer to the head. To have an extension of the heart at the end of a barrel of gun seems to me to be some sort of symbol – I’ll leave that open for now – but certainly I have to think that there is an certain external power in the metal itself, something outside of ‘us’. A magnetism, a force, a pull. Perhaps there’s a school of alchemical psychology somewhere. Whatever.
But if my mind jumps from the images and words presented by Mike in his post I am naturally led – naturally for me anyway – to two images or ideas: a still from a Luis Buneul film, a razor blade on the eyeball and the scene from a B&W version of Lear, wherein Gloster has his eyes put out. I did not think of the beheading of Goliath, or the decapitation of Nick Berg or the rebel yellow toothed smile of Lyndie England (btw can anyone foresee a Playboy spread or a guest spot with Dennis Miller for the young lass?) or Edward II getting a hot poker shoved up his ass. And who the hell is Judith anyway. (Never mind that I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it)
In the images Mike chose the bayonet is definitely a weapon with a potentiailty. Kinetic weaponry? A distanced hate-on. Not only can I kill you and protect myself at the same time (with this gun) I can maim you and gut you as well.
It’s all very Elizabethan, really. Maybe what we’re going through these days is just a NeoRenaissance.
It’s the fact that it’s a head being cut off, bmo. Symbolically, anxiety over castration supposedly is typically represented via the cutting off of the head. As in, you wouldn’t think of castration if an image showed an arm or a leg being cut off, but when a head is cut off, it tends to strike that particular anxiety for some (many?) men: total loss of power, not a simple death (as if there is such a thing anyway). The eye (or in Bunuel’s case, the eyeball) has a similarly privileged function in the realm of symbols as a locus of control, oversight, overview, and organisation. To go blind, to gouge or cut it is, symbolically, to destroy that control. Georges Bataille (whose father went blind from syphilis) linked it to sexuality in his “Story of the Eye” (from the same epoch as the Bunuel), and in his essay “The Solar Anus,” he linked subversion of the cephalically-rooted eye, which focusses on sex as a rational (pro-creative) economy, in favour of the anus, since anal sex has nothing to do with procreative sex (the latter is economically “good” while the former is an expenditure based on waste and excess). The story ends with allusions to sunspots exploding on the real sun and the blinding explosions of orgasmic blood pulsations behind one’s real eye as the “solar anus” is violated in some weird cosmic to-do.
Guys. What can I say?
But the head / sex connection is quite strong, no doubt because of the control / loss-of-control issues pertaining to “keeping your head” vs. “not being able to keep it in your pants.” Bataille liked it so much (the connection) that he called his magazine Acephale (“headless”), because he thought he could theorise a “wasteful”/excess sexuality (based on various perversions forbidden to good Cath… , no, I’ve picked on those guys enough: ok, forbidden to morally abiding men, prime among them the now all-too common anal orientation — regarding which you can now take how-to workshops, which tells you more about the real ills of our society because (a) some asshole is making money off these “workshops” that “teach” what used to be taboos and (b) sex is work, as in “workshop,” so maybe the Nazis were right and work does make you free? Augh! Anyway, Bataille thought he could theorise a sexuality based on wasteful expenditure as a kind of alternate communistic means for bringing down goal-oriented productive capitalism.
Yawn.
And what about today and all this so-called free and freaky globalised sexuality crap we’re spoon-fed: are we in a NeoRenaissance? Not bloody likely, it’s more like an era of NeoPuritanism because it’s all back to goal-oriented production: run “workshops,” make money, etc. etc. Create slaves, in other words, not free people.
As for knives, I use big (35 cm) and small knives all the time while cooking, and they don’t give me those power vibes, so maybe that’s a personal thing, I don’t know. I have held a gun on a few occasions, and that does, however, freak me out. Just putting my hand on an Uzi was enough to make me not want to pick it up. Firing a regular pistol also was not attractive in any way for me. I guess it depends on what you’re used to, and if you use knives or guns a lot, they’re just tools.
As for Caravaggio and Artemisia and Judith and beheadings: I just get bent out of shape when I sense even the tiniest smidgen of the “we all know what women are like” trope, especially if it involves misunderstandings of Caravaggio, who was one of the greatest portrayers of the human condition ever. I mean, look at Judith’s face (or David’s): how can anyone see it and make any generalisations? It’s so specific, so individual, and so common to us all: to have to kill in order to live, with the old woman, who is already much much closer to death and who therefore doesn’t care, expressing the end of the road that awaits all who stop asking themselves why they have to do what they do.
Symbols work on a visceral, prelinguistic level.
I’m suggesting that there is something other than the puerile and time-worn head/groin dichotomy here.
And it has to do with the heart and the guts and metal and weaponry.
Though your argument is strong, Yule, I still find the castration anxiety aspect a little limited and as dead as Sigmund Freud. Are women, historically, the only ones doing the castrating? Why so defensive? What am I missing here? Is the notion of the castrating bitch really that all pervasive, prevalent? And what is this “we all know what women are like” thing? Or should we (men, and I’m speaking for the entire species here) not bring this up for fear of being cut off?
JUST KIDDING!
Still, if the trophy/head can only be seen as a lopped off penis I personally lose a lot of interest in the discussion. There are passions and motivations in human action (and rationalizations and fears) beyond the highly exclusionary sex-based. But I’ll leave that aside. Unless you can somehow contrive an argument convincing me that the rhino head in the game room is essentially and unalterably a compensating bauble for the hunter’s impotence or lack of size. Which then runs to bowling trophies and all other manner of skins and memorabilia and lossed skills and long ago kills.
And that is where the bayonet comes into it, which is where all this began. Specifically, a bayonet on the end of a rifle. Stab and slice.
Jab and eviscerate. It runs to the heart and the guts.
It is likely that he (or she) that has had the bayonet thrust at him (or her)
will do the decapitating. The rational and heartless will lose his head. (feel free to add levels here)
But beyond that, or prior really, there is a hidden power in metals. Cold hard sharp steel. (I would suggest that all pornographers and psychologists and artists have lifted all their imagery from the essentials)
There is an attachment between the heart and metals, precious and otherwise. Men have forever left their castrating bitches (oops sorry) at home in search it. Shaped, flaunted it.. It is not only a symbol of power, it is power.
The phallic aspect is an add on.
That you do not feel life in metal is fine. I know people who feel life in rocks. Or in trees. Or in cats. I don’t but I understand what they’re getting at. It is personal.
Tonight, when you’re energetically chopping zucchini with your 35mm knife I’ll take it at face vaule.
Jeez, how do I get sucked into these things? Both your points are valid. Brian, I get what you’re saying. I too am as fond of knives, steel, stone, etc. ‘scalpelled to perfection’ as I am wary of them. Strangely, and immediately, I associate knives with F1, karate, surfing and most of the individual ‘sport’ forms I vicariously enjoy. Dylan, with his distinct, solitary style and voice, is a knife. With a keen edge, he cuts to the core. And here is where I get to my two bits worth (before I lose it). Where Dylan cuts to the core, or karate to unfettered chi or F1 (or space travel) to the furthest reaches of our technologies, they do so dispassionately. Perhaps, as a person who enjoys a modicum of passion, the allure of the inert metallic object lies in its value to me as a third party; an inanimate extension of ‘me’ made animate. You’ve both said it. A knife holds, whether intrinsically or imparted, great potential power. It’s all about power and, usually, it’s about my desire to exercise all the power I have at my disposal. Hence my understanding of the knife (and in similar vein, the phallus as envisaged by Jung in an early childhood dream) as an instrument of rape. Some months ago I blogged my reading of Conrad’s Victory and my admiration for his depiction of what I termed ‘the rape scene’. The rape was made explicit through Conrad’s style and Victorian rectitude by, among other things, a knife. Rape is an unfettered power trip, probably as misunderstood by the rapist as it is understood by the victim. Like the knife, rape to the rapist is impersonal, detached, dispassionate and indifferent. There is no responsibility involved. Hey, it just happened. It’s just a fucking appendage (sorry). To the victim, it is unadulterated violence, the awful potential of the male penis realised. More often than not, the victim ends up taking responsibility for the actions of the rapist. Somewhere in there is a transfer of power gone wrong. I doubt any rapist would willingly claim ownership of his deed because it means realising that one has committed the equivalent of murder. Hence the accusation that ‘my dick’ (or, in a complete abrogation of responsibility) ‘she’ made me do it. For me at least, therein lies the brutal irony of the actions of a Lorena Bobbit (every feminist’s Lynndie England), the beheading of Holofernes or the overthrow of an oppressor. While it’s up to the formerly oppressed to take ownership of their having turned of the blade on their oppressor, just as few do so and they then become the oppressors. And that’s why I dig these pictures (sorry, Yule, paintings), particularly Artemisia’s. The transfer of power is absolute. She wields the blade. Irony is tempered to cold steel imbued with passion rather than murder. She knows and owns what she is doing and we understand why she is doing it. She will have to live with her actions but, given her earlier ‘death’, what has she to fear? She’ll take what she can get (and I don’t mean revenge–as with a knife there’s balance involved here). A knife is inanimate, beautiful, silent. Like the music we hear in the spaces between notes, or the cold places we see between the stars, it has the potential to give expression to passion (as in chopping zucchini–what the hell is zucchini?) or passion run amok, i.e. transmogrified to naked violence. Like rape, the bayoneting of an ‘other’ is the violent exercise of an individual’s power rather than the illusory power of the object at the end of a rifle. It’s that myth of ‘otherness’ that continues to exert a powerful attraction on us. That’s how we rationalise pre-emptive wars. In war, we believe we suspend responsibility. We don’t. Only fools believe that. As individuals, we’d better learn to accept this lest we end up joining in the rape of Iraq and the unthinking, remorseless brutalisation of others. Okay, damn it, I don’t know how I got here, but here goes…
A zucchini, Mike, is a green, dildo-shaped seed-bearing vegetable, which has a tendency to snap or break, but lends itself very well to slicing and saut
While I guess it is practically impossible to ascribe motive to anybody, dealing with the complex consequences of rape demands generalisations and the apportionment of blame expressed as motive.
For me at least, third-hand experience of rape has led me to a desire to understand, without locking myself into a framework of prescriptive rigidity, a mind that would destroy others (one person is raped, many are affected). When one has to deal with several occurrences in different contexts (rape’s popular in this country and isn’t worth reporting–nothing gets done), locating oneself in a conceptual framework rather than a problem-solving paradigm allows greater acceptance of the practical aftermath and, only thereafter, practical issues such as HIV / AIDS, etc.
Why the need for comfort rather than a cure? Because there are no cures. There is no counselling for most either. As a country, South Africa is indifferent to rape. Of the different types that have directly affected me, I’d hate to say which has been the most difficult for me to deal with, but then I’m speaking only as someone affected by it, not as a perpetrator, direct victim or codependent knight dressed in the shining plastic armour of infinite need.
So, yeah, can we hope to understand the minds of others? Speaking for myself, it doesn’t matter. I could care less whether people adopt a Freudian, Jungian (he didn’t dream of the phallus as an instrument of rape) or New Age pot-pourri approach to opening themselves to the questions that nag, i.e. “Why?” and “How?” Even a futile attempt at understanding these things prevents me and millions of others killing or losing our minds. Life is cold, clear and brutal enough. Understanding promises something more human and humane.
Besides, we humans generalise and conceptualise these things all the time. While it’s sensible to adopt the pragmatic approach, as in “Deal with the fact ‘that’ it happened rather than ‘why’ it happened” (or adopting a ‘Freudian’ as opposed to a ‘Jungian’ approach–who can afford such luxuries?), our needs encompass both the rational and the irrational.
Rape may at times be calculated, but it remains forever irrational and, often, needs to be dealt with irrationally by those affected by it. Let the shrinks hypothesise while I pick up the pieces and get on with my life.
(Coincidentally, I almost found myself decapitated by a rock on my way home from work today. I’m convinced the damned thing was dropped from an overpass before being given impetus by another car. I idly noticed a white (concrete) object ricochet from the vehicle about 200 metres in front of me, soar skywards at high speed until lost to sight, forgot about it (except for a thought cast back to days of Donkey Kong) and the thing shattered my windscreen directly in front of my face. Fortunately, it was rush hour and I was doing about 70 kmh. Nonetheless, it hit my car with the force (and sound) of a rifle shot. Had I been speeding, the result would have been messy. So, if lacking a cold steel blade…)
Life is short. Knives, rape and rocks kill. Concepts comfort. Art heals.
Note: I’m being deliberately (rather than habitually) vague here. And, uh, yes, I haven’t dealt fully with many of these issues. For that reason, I’d ask you to forgive this protracted ramble. As for the Lynndie England analogy, I’d not label either a feminist. A poor attempt at humour :).
Yule, trust me on this, castration anxiety does not exist. Freud was loopy for the most part and this has to be one of his loopier notions. Perhaps it made sense in an age when the female gentialia was forbidden fruit, but by the age of twelve we’ve all seen the films – sex ed, not porn – and a guy’s wonderment and befuddlement at the girl’s lack of a penis is not a mystery. Which is the basis of castration anxiety. A lack of information.
Beheading’s are always politcal acts.
I’m not sure why I was not aware the story of Judith from a childhood spent in Sunday School but having now read the King James Version and numerous interpretations of the story, I really cannot see the beheading in sexual terms. The narrative simply does not allow for it. Judith needed the head primarily as proof of her deed and secondarily though not less importantly as a trophy to be put on display, to strike fear in the hearts of the oppressors. Caravaggio’s depiction of the event may not only be the most aesthetically pleasing, it may also be the most ‘textually correct’ There is no indication in a close reading of the KJ version of the story that Judith actually got naked with Holofernes, as would be implied – implied? never mind that – conveyed in other paintings. Have you seen the Franz Stucco version? Stucco. Seriously.
As for this Caravaggio dude, let’s hear some more. Drunk, rapist, murderer, tennis player. He knows of what he paints.
And please don’t blame CG Jung for the New Age. That’s akin to assigning responsibility to Nietzsche for the action and deeds of Nazis.
Yooohoooo? Where are you?
Are you on summer vacation?
Will you pleeeeeeese write something?
Just a little bit. A tad. A dash.
But more than a dot.
Between a dash and a dollup.
Why, just the other day, as we were bleeding, grunting, sweating, and slapping skeeters, I was telling my hubby about your entry reaccounting your struggle with your nettle hedge and how you lived in a Victorian house and had to work down the long sidewalk, by hand, and I said to him “And she hasn’t written anything in a long, long time … that nettle bush must have eaten her…”
And he said, as he was grunting out the cruise boat-sized length of rope disguising itself as wild rose bush root: “I know the feeling.”
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