Lo-fi thoughts and Shonky Reflections on 'Fragments of a Punk Opera'

 Working intensely on recording, writing, producing and filming more instalments of the 'Fragments of a Punk Opera', I've been reminded of the DCA exhibition 'Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness' which I attended in 2018, between 2nd and 3rd years of my BA. I recall the show making no impression at all upon me at the time, but it obviously stayed with me as I immediately thought back to it in terms of the form and methodology of that which is loosely-formed, rough, somewhat klunky - yet nonetheless still engaging or, I hope (with regards to my own work), at least entertaining. 

I routinely refer to my music adventures as 'lo-fi' and this is an accurate description, but it is also in keeping with the DIY aesthetic which is a signatory on the original punk manifesto. My method is basic, not by choice but by virtue simply of how it is: with no training in music production, I use basic means to create pretty basic music: the drumkit requires several hundred pounds worth of new skins and cymbals, and the main crash has a 2-inch split in it. Punk did everything it could with the rock 'n roll basics of bass, drums, guitars and vocals - one or two groups even incorporated keys, as I do too, albeit in a faux-jazz idiom which is still, I would claim, of punk heritage, as I have no formal or any other understanding of jazz and associated music theory (if it qualifies as jazz at all then it is genuinely 'shonky jazz', no?).

These jazz-ish moments may owe their inspiration to the classy sophistication of pop-musical geniuses Sparks via the smart-ass lyrics, but the production and attitude is more suggestive of the quirkiness found in early Adam Ant or the Stranglers. The works also reinterpret aspects of two previous (if not in fact still ongoing) bodies of work, 'Weimar' and 'A Punk Trilogy in 4 Parts': decadence, cabaret, dark humour and occasional historical and social references which all bounce around between the other recurring interests and obsessions - narrative, character, relationships, betrayal, heartbreak...and occasionally art, as in this track:

Herein, musical professionals will note missed beats, fluffed notes, flat vocals, hammy performances all round - none of which is done on purpose to simulate crude or raw aesthetics as a shallow raison d'étre, but is simply the results of "doing what I do". Sometimes the fluffs aren't noticed until well into the mixing process, and digital music editing can only fix so much. The Band Aid-patched results are therefore in full concert with the 'shonky' concept: I make music because I love it: it's an affair of the heart, not of the intellect. I do not try to polish the results too much: too-slick production would only highlight the fluffs and clangers even more, and make them sound much worse. A rough, hissy punk demo track can get away with a lot more than an HD production of 'Moonlight Sonata', in which instrumental perfection is expected.  

A recently-recorded track with a Sham 69 vibe, 'I Swear', humorously bleeps out the occasional swear words until the ad lib rant at the end, in which the f-bombs slip past the completely out-of-time censoring devices, thus not only calling into question the authority of the censor (which was wielded as hamfistedly during the original punk era as much as any guitar in the hands of countless young would-be upstarts), but also celebrating the subversive punk voice itself: despite all attempts to shut us up, we are still shouting:

For we know three chords, and we therefore are a band. 

As a working-class phenomenon, punk highlighted the élitism of the music world of its day, and levelled the playing field of musicianship (going on to inform various subsequent waves, and Grunge, in later decades). My body of work does not shun the economic divisions of society. The two main characters start off penniless, and possibly end that way, too (assuming they even survive). And does the millionaire gangster sit beneath a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II for reasons other than mere affection? Economic concerns are writ large across the 'Fragments' project, starting out from the reality of my need to replenish an entire drumkit and invest in a recording microphone (rather than merely yelling at the laptop), to the desperate situation of the two main characters, Steff and Jen. However, the levelling and liberating tendencies of technology, which originally allowed punk to flourish at street-level, have permitted this artist to realise their creative endeavours in a tangible form, in the same way that cheap Xeroxing technologies of the 1970s allowed fans and writers to publish and distribute their own 'zines, and no longer had to rely upon the stuffy music papers of the day for opinion and information.

'Hardwired' Public Screening and 'Bad Money' Continues...

 As expected, my presentation of 'Hardwired' at DJCAD last Wednesday (26th) went splendidly well. Working with only a couple of sketchy notes, I managed to speak for 45 minutes around the 20-minute screening, thanks to a very engaged and talkative audience. As my first ever solo presentation/exhibition, I found it a very rewarding and exciting experience, and hope to do more of the same soon. 

Here is the full presentation, plus Q & A:

The layout of the event was exactly as I had first imagined it back in the Springtime - incorporating the sculptural Medusa work, printed flyers, and me presenting in character as Em in a snake print dress, which reflects the serpentine aspect of Medusa's myth. The feedback and discussion points surrounding the characters inspired me to push on with the nascent 'punk opera' concept ('Bad Money'), and a few days later I had a good demo song 'Madame Melodie Melody' recorded, from which grew a big musical production number and some semi-improvised narrative working around the slim storyline to date:

"I am the one, I am the law and the word. I am the beginning and the end. I take what I want and I get what I need At a profitable, comfortable dividend... You got a problem with that? You better go speak to the Lord, honey. He's the only one who's gonna save your godamn sorry ass now... 'Cos I am only a dame (But what a helluva dame) And while this world's my oyster, I will eat pearls and I'll poop caviar... We were put on this earth to do the best we can, and London town's my cloister And if you want a share, then you better beware 'Cos I'm (she's) a mean mutilator like Robespierre You said it boy, I'm the fellah's biggest fan I'm (she's) gonna get you any way I (she) can... So don't mess around with the Big Bad Melodie Ma'am... That's what I am."

Spot the Harry S Truman reference above...

This clip, filmed in part of the family house, involves me portraying 4 characters, stretching the concept of multiplicity of persona, and may be the most ambitious indoor musical video work to date, as a result. Synchronicity, a recurring theme within much of my creative work going back three decades now, resurfaces when reflecting upon the retro aspect of the Madame's interior decor and style (antique, Royalist, jazz) versus the younger, brasher youthful protagonists (contemporary, poor, punk). The flip.comes when we discover that Melodie is a furious atheist, as a result of Jen's blabbing about her devotion to prayer to resolve their economic situation. Intentional deadpan comedy now also infuses the work, as a means of propping up the stock/cliché character types (musical theatre, after all, isn't renowned for its depth of characterization), and one of the redeeming qualities of original punk was its cheeky and subversive sense of humour and occasional lapses into the elder generation's sphere of music hall and other popular forms (e.g. the piano singalong interlude in the Cockney Rejects' single 'The Greatest Cockney Rip-Off'). The movie musical has therefore some features in common with the porn film: neither can possess narratives or characters that are too deep or layered, due to the need to pack in sufficient 'crowd pleasing' scenes - both genres, too, tend to assume some level of 'audience participation' to be considered truly engaging. 

The whole artifice itself is attractive to me, in terms of my growing methodology with increased exposure - even celebration - of the limitations inherent in making works like this alone with no assistance. I would be interested in presenting some of the musical material live one day, perhaps as part of a multi-media exhibition of the punk cycle. Might the 'book' of such an opera be traditional, or radically rethought - whether in a Brechtian mode or some other alternative or subversive means? The libretti displayed as works in themselves which stand alongside, rather than being subservient to, the musical aspects?

Rather than constructing an entire genuine musical film out of these interludes, this body of material is now being dubbed 'Fragments from a Punk Opera', with fragmentation itself a recurring theme and methodology in my recent work (cf. 'Fragments of Amazonia' (2018), 'Fragments, Intermediaries', my MFAAH final exhibition in 2021, and as a subtext in the 2022 film 'Hardwired') wherein what is included is as relevant as the idea of what is not, or what is shown versus what is not shown. Which sections, stories, characters, from the over-arching narrative are deserving of having a song and dance made about them, and which ones not? Furthermore, the concept of connectedness itself can become the responsibility of the viewer, the audience, if the 'book' - i.e., the over-arching storyline, is left deliberately ambiguous, or even non-existent, providing only the libretti of each individual song. The old punk methodology of DIY - from printing and distribution (photocopied cut 'n pasted fanzines) to the music itself ('learn 3 chords, form your own band') - can therefore be applied not only to me as creator, actor, composer, musician, but to the audience who are invited to create their own beginning, middle and end from the selection of musical and other materials on offer. A 'random access' musical. Who are the villains and who the heroes? Why? True anarchy - make up the story that you want to see, not the one that is fed to you... (perhaps for this concept to fully work, some more ambiguity of character and motivation may need to be applied. But, as it stands - are Steff and Jen truly blameless? Is Melodie really irredeemable, if she regularly decapitates other gangsters, and furthermore, respects the Queen? Who's to say that Mr. Hookz won't let Steff & Jen 'off the hook' out of personal sympathy?) Furthermore, are there any links to my previous works - such as the similarity between the Melodie persona, and my work of a year ago, 'A/Object' and 'Untitled Sculptural Objects'?

There is potential for the humour to get blacker, and the art to become more artistic, in reference to one of my favourite films of all time: Peter Greenaway's 'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover', which also deals with themes of crime, betrayal, and revenge, concepts which have already begun to swirl around some of the newly developed lyrical ideas.  

'Bad Money' and Good Vibes

So much of my art practice seems to revolve around recurring 'meta' narratives that I've long since assumed that my subconscious sense of creativity really does have some sort of master plan for a seemingly disparate collection of works produced over a number of years (or else, I'm really just lacking in originality...)

Reworking and recording an old punk number written as part of a 'rock opera' which had been written some years ago (and then promptly forgotten about), and now given new visual life in the form of a music video, made me realise - though only after watching the video back a few times - that it seems to represent a stage in the 'further adventures' of Em and Jay, the main characters from my film 'Hardwired'.

The concept of bringing my interest in music-making (albeit of a crummy, lo-fi form) into the forefront of my practice is probably long overdue. Original scores did feature in all three of my 'major' (i.e., over 10 minutes' length) films of the last few years - 'The Wanderer and the Wish-maid', 'Solstice' and 'Hardwired'. But making music into a main focus, for all its roughness (which itself could be a personal methodology, and is indeed a deliberate aesthetic used in various genres) is something I will be exploring in more depth - featuring, as it does in this case, character and narrative, which have always been my main driving forces. 

My enthusiasm for punk as a social, cultural and musical movement has already been documented in my 4-part performance poetry cycle, which can hardly be called nostalgia as I was barely a conscious entity when the first wave began to fizzle*, but I do have a long history of living and breathing various aspects of the ethos, especially the 'DIY' concept of making (comix, zines - including my forthcoming 'A/Object' zine, which includes a few punk-inspired images among the other X-rated material), production (especially music - I play all instruments, to varying standards), and distribution. 

A few other tracks with narrative (or at least artistic potential) include pieces which exist, at present, only as titles, like 'Acne Empire', 'What a Load of Crap', 'So I'm Married to a Drag Queen' and 'I ****ing Swear'. How might this body of work develop? With my public exhibition of 'Hardwired' only a week away, I'm expecting to channel some feedback from that experience in this new direction. Perhaps Em and Jay will become a pair of recurring universal heroes in a whole series of works, popping up in multiple genres and/or places. 

Keeping with the musical theme, I also had the following cartoon published in a recent zine by Coin Operated Press:

(Whilst writing this, I've just been reminded of another commission illustration - for a book by David Kerekes - which I made some years ago, entitled 'Gob' - featuring a spotty punk vocalist doing just that, the very antisocial activity (namely, spitting, in British slang) which became a trademark activity for the UK press to accuse all punks of being guilty of as yet another signifier that The End of Civilization was night. Except that, at that time, many people spat in public. To the extent that I can still remember as a tiny kid, on the old Dundee buses with my mother, seeing signs which read 'No Spitting'.)

*I usually refer to it as a 'celebration', covering as it does the 6 year period of British history from 1976 to the Falklands War of 1982.

Weimar Poetry Cycle: all 4 Parts

 

Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop all had their Berlin phases - and I think I've just concluded mine. Or at least one of mine. The concept has hung around for quite some time, although it has only been realised (and realisable) in recent months*.

This is the 'movie' edition incorporating the pieces 'Berliner Girlz', 'Marlene and Me' and 'Die Freudlosse Gass', with extra opening footage to give the whole work a cyclical feel, and the fourth 'satyr' segment, 'Weimar, Schmeimar...' which concludes the story on a bittersweet, but still light-hearted, note. I'm still seeking the opportunity to perform the whole sequence live some day, somewhere...though probably not on a smoky backlit stage.

There's a nice physical (as well as the obvious thematic) link to an earlier live work, my Brexit-inspired take on a couple of 'Cabaret' classics - in that both this and 'Berliner Girlz' uses the same prop chair.

*The first segment, 'Berlin Girlz', was actually first written some years ago, and incorporated as part of a one-act play within the text of my one professionally-published novel to date - whose very title shows that my Berlin phase has been in progress for some time, as well as its inescapable connection to retro erotica, as the novel is set in an establishment which dates from the Weimar period.

'Weimar, Schmeimar...'

Fell in love with a Berlin girl so many years ago

Strange to think how many things since then have come and quickly gone.

As Mr Hitler warred, and went,

and everyone was left quite bent

so out of shape, we thought we’d never

even write poetry again.

Yet, here we are.

A people scattered – we refugees.

We left the city on its knees

and fled, like all the lucky ones

Across the sea – all hail Manhattan.

Then one day, some day

I saw her, somewhere

Standing on a smoky backlit stage

She was on the path to self destruct,

I mean, man – she was really fucked

I grabbed her and I took her home with me.

She told me of the path she’d wandered

Prostitution, drugs, time squandered

How she almost ended up impaled

or, so she says...in vague detail

like a butterfly, in some entomologist’s case.

But it’s 1952, and – hey!

We’re in the land of opportunity

And every night, we dance together

To those old songs that brought us hither

And knock back whiskey, telling tales

of the nymphs and satyrs of the Domino house

Just down the road from the old White Mouse.

But all those days have gone, my friend

And while I hate to come across as picky -

The fun has fizzled, liberty’s been redefined -

The only mouse around here is Mickey.

Prosit.

(MB, September 2022)

Writer's note: while the Domino is a fictional establishment, the White Mouse is not, and was a hive of extremely liberal performance art in its day. I first found it referenced in Donald Spoto's biography of Marlene Dietrich back in the late 90s, and the reference has kicked around my head for all that time. Maybe my next Berlin-themed venture will be to try to replicate some of the more risqué acts from that period, like those made notorious by Anita Berber.

To Have and Have Not: Penises, Faces, and Other Bodily Bits

 Is the phallus still the single, most stable, identifiable gender definer: by its presence, or by its absence? In this world view (which I have seen personally expressed in many ways online - here's a screenshot of one single forum thread on the art and community website DeviantArt, posted in May 2022), wherein presence of a penis = male. Absence = female. The end.

Even taking into account the feasibility of mere trolling in the above (note the deliberate nazi references in the OP), the point is inescapable that these views are pervasive, and cross multiple territories (a number of DA forum regulars are not Anglo-American and do not have English as a first language). An advocate who believes that transwomen with penises can be classified as women is unlikely to argue the opposite "for lolz". We are returned to the nasty old-fashioned Freudian binary: that those who have, have the privilege of masculinity and maleness (whether they want it or not), and those who don't, don't. Again, the end. Only full GRS can remove this stigma, assuming it also comes with full legal and social acceptance of the newly-assigned gender.

One text (thanks to Dr. Angela Jones for recommending it) which has become fundamental to my background reading is 'Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach' by Kessler & McKenna. Thus:

            "Penises and vaginas are the criteria by which gender is assigned at birth. Penis means ‘‘male” and labia and vagina means “ female,” and that, except in the most ambiguous cases, is all that is necessary to determine the neonate’s gender. There is some question as to whether the formula is really labia and vagina = fem ale, or whether it is instead no penis = female, since at birth there is no search (i.e., internal examination) for a vagina or clitoris." - Kessler & McKenna, p. 58.

The privileging of the masculine by patriarchal surgical, medical and surrounding discourse (which is also discussed at length by Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling ('Sexing the Body', passim)) - is again iterated:

            "[...] in a case where a mother amputated the penis of her 15-month-old son, the medical team made the decision to keep him “ male,” despite the fact that he no longer had a penis (Westman and Zarwell, 1975). The medical basis of this decision seems to have been that reassigning him as female, and perform ing the necessary surgery, would have necessitated castration and thus rendered this individual sterile. A fertile male without a penis was seen as preferable to a sterile female with a vagina." (ibid.)

In which case, we are reminded of the sociological purpose of women as 'child bearers', and the recent Irish political designation of spinsters as "redundant women".

But this blog deals with more than genitalia, and Kessler and McKenna note the external details which are used, at first glance, to gender individuals: 

            "Our purpose in soliciting reasons was not to catalog them, detailing stages in cognitive development. Ample evidence has already been collected (e.g., Kohlberg, 1966; Katcher, 1955; Thompson and Bentler, 1971) which shows that young children cite hair length and clothing as gender cues and that adults use biological signs. The reasons that the youngest children gave suggest that they have not yet learned that any reason is not enough; it must be a “ good reason.” That is, it must be placed within a gender “ appropriate” context. For example, both preschool and adult participants frequently gave body parts as reasons. While pre-schoolers, for the most part, merely named the body part (“ Why is this a picture of a boy?” "His hands” or “ His face” ), the adults characterized the features in a particular way ("Because of the aggressive expression on his face ” or “Because his arms are in an athletic pose” )." - P.105

This feeds handily into recent research I've been doing on the physiognomy of gender, about which I've so far been unable to find many general studies. There are, however, a couple of interesting papers on the relations between gender, social power and dominance. 

            "Traits associated with physical maturity and strength may have acquired a signaling function for dominance among humans as they have, in an analogous fashion, among other species. For example, individuals with prominent, square jaws may appear "dominant" because jaw growth indicates maturing dentition and fully developed teeth are used for intimidation among many primates (Guthrie, 1970). " (Caroline F. Keating, Social Psychology Quarterly 985, Vol. 48, NO. 1, 61-70, Gender and the Physiognomy of Dominance and Attractiveness, p. 62.)

Given the historical place of women in traditionally submissive or non-dominant roles, this has some bearing on the modern stereotype of lesbians as commonly having 'butch' or 'masculine' facial attributes. Whether the mere possession of such attributes contributes to making one eventually become gay (due to repeated rejection by stereotypically-minded members of the opposing sex) is another matter, and one that's well beyond my scope of research.

Keating goes on:

            "Morphological cues of nondominance [...] have received more attention than those of dominance, perhaps because of the Lorenzian notion of the "cute response" (see Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1975:400). Lorenz (1943) postulated that certain infantile features evolved their appealing nature because they operated as cues for caretaking responses. Consistent with Lorenz's notion, several investigators found that the babyishness of cephalic shape determined perceived cuteness for schematic drawings (Alley, 1981; Brooks and Haebberg, 1960; Hildebrandt and Fitzged, 1979). Preferences for photographs of infant rather than adult faces of both human and non-human species were reported for post-pubescent human males and females (Fullard and Re-, 1976). Sternglanz et al. (1977) collected "attractiveness" ratings from college students who viewed schematized baby faces with systematically varied features (e.g., chin size, eye shape, iris size, etc.). Feature variations which produced the highest attractiveness ratings were consistent with Lorenz's proposals (Sternglanz et al., 1977). " (p.62)

            "From a sociobiological perspective, likely dominance cues are traits associated with physiognomic characteristics, such as jaw prominence, that promote successful intraspecific competition. Identi-Kit faces with prominent, square jaws were therefore hypothesized to appear more dominant than those with more rounded ones. Dominance cues are also likely to involve traits that accompany status differentiators such as age. The amount of facial hair increases following puberty (especially in males), and so faces with bushy or thick eyebrows were expected to appear dominant relative to those with thin eyebrows (Guthrie, 1970). Large eyes, another juvenile trait, were predicted to look nondominant relative to small eyes (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1975: Guthrie, 1790; Lorenz, 1943: Sternglanz et a]., 1977). Thick or pudgy lips are also characteristic of babies and were expected to diminish dominance ratings for adult faces (Keating et a]., 1981 b). Dominance cues were expected to be associated with attractiveness for male faces but not for females. Nondominance cues were predicted to correspond with perceived attractiveness for female faces and make male faces less attractive. 

            "For both male and female faces, the combination of brows, eyes, lips and jaw designed to look adultlike rather than childlike boosted dominance ratings, as predicted. Furthermore, variations in eye size or lip thickness alone were reliable dominance cues. These findings are consistent with the sociobiological arguments guiding the selection of trait manipulations. Dominance was conveyed by the relatively small eyes and thin lips associated with adult development. Nondominance was signalled by the large eyes and thick lips associated with the prepubescent young of our species. 

            "In general, traits that served as dominance cues for male faces made female faces look less attractive and male faces look more attractive. Female faces were perceived as attractive when displaying traits that made male faces appear submissive (a "Tootsie Effect") and unattractive (Keating, forthcoming). Perhaps the neotenous traits displayed by females of nonhuman species are analogous to the human situation. The notion that perceptions of dominance and attractiveness are differently related for males and females implies that the basis of attraction may rest. in part, on perceptions of dominance. When a woman looks too "masculine" or a man too "feminine" perhaps what is violated is not only a gender distinction but a dominance or status distinction as well. "Feminine" or nondominant characteristics may make males look weak but make females look appealing." (p. 69)

Keating sums up the pervasiveness of all of this in our culture:

            "These arguments are supported by common observations of feminine beauty techniques. The typical prescription for "beauty" in Western culture includes making eyes look larger and brows thinner and arched. These techniques could be viewed as a sort of culturally prescribed neoteny (Guthrie. 1970). The present study suggests that such interpersonal perceptions are not arbitrary, cultural inventions but are patterned by primate evolution." (ibid.)

We can see, then, that industries such as the beauty and glamour worlds, and popular media such as men's magazines, comics, video games, etc., all strictly adhere to, rather than deviate from, these repetitive social/evolutionary cues in which strong, aggressive and dominant men, and non-aggressive, non-dominant women, are the norm (even in media in which women are portrayed as "tough" or aggressive, they also must typically still be rendered "sexy" - a tough female character who is also aggressive and rendered physically unattractive (by the conventional means described above) will very likely be a lesbian, trans*, a villain, or some combination thereof. The action/aggression aspects of characters such as Lara Croft, then, are in no way incompatible with the physical representation of the character for the target demographic: eye candy for the male gamer, while they carry on with the traditional male, aggressive, dominant behaviour of fighting/exploring/winning/kicking ass in general. The character does not, physically (oversized tits, hourglass physique) or physiognomically (big eyes and lips, small chin), present herself as inherently aggressive or dominant. That feature is only accessible via the actual gameplay, which, of course, the male gamer has full control of (more of this kind of discussion in my previous blog post, here).

Of similar interest is another paper authored by Eva G. Krumhuber, Xijing Wang and Ana Guinote, 'The powerful self: How social power and gender infuence face perception' (Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02798. Accepted: 26 January 2022):

            "Of particular importance is facial dominance, associated with characteristics such as a prominent jawline, pronounced eyebrows, and thin lips (Van-Vugt & Grabo, 2015). Those who look strong and dominant are favored as leaders and attain higher ranks in organizational settings. For example, people with dominant facial features are more likely to reach higher military rankings, achieve business success, and receive more votes in political campaigns (e.g., Alrajih & Ward, 2014; Little et al., 2007; Mueller & Mazur, 1996)." (p.2)

            "Whilst social power is something desirable for men, it may create a backlash against women who risk negative social reactions (Eagly & Karau, 2002). In line with this argument, female power holders are often described as ‘iron maiden’ and ‘ice-queens’ (Heilman et al., 2004), with the effect that they are judged as more hostile (e.g., devious, bitter; Heilman et al., 1995). They experience criticism and penalization from both men and women (Rudman, 1998), and are viewed as less socially skilled and feminine than their male counterparts (Rudman & Glick, 1999; Wang et al., 2018). Also, dominant behavior and appearance fail to increase the perceived attractiveness of women, whereas they do so in men (Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008; Sadalla et al., 1987). In fact, female faces are rated as attractive the more submissive/immature features they contain such as a round face, large eyes, and a small chin (Keating, 1985). (p. 3)

            "Traits that serve as dominance cues for men (i.e., masculine facial features) may therefore not be appealing to women (Sutherland et al., 2015) because they violate conventions of appropriate female behavior (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Instead, socially shared expectations that link women with submissiveness may constitute the preferred point of view (Bailey & Kelly, 2015). This could lead to the visual representation of own faces in which the self is predominantly aligned with perceptions of low power/dominance. As women come to internalize gender-stereotypic roles, submissive traits and appearances related to the self may appear more typical and desirable. As such, women’s submissive self-face schemas as shown in this research could have a self-perpetuating function that may prevent them from taking on power-related roles*. In contrast, dominant self-face schemas held by men may be automatically activated when opportunities arise to acquire or maintain power (Wellington et al., 2003). These self-selection processes then complement environmental pressures and social discrimination (Meyerson & Fletcher, 2000)." (p. 11)

*My italics. A relevant point in relation to the perpetuation of male-to-female trans* stereotypes and the need for, f'rexample, facial feminization surgery and such.

Of interest within this paper is the use of computer-generated facial images, tending along a spectrum of most dominant -> most submissive (for male and female - although, only Caucasian - subjects), which is similar in line to the proposed work I'm undertaking (via the https://metahuman.unrealengine.com/ digital face generator) for preparing a spectrum of gendered physiognomies, in an attempt to locate the point - for a general consensus of viewers - at which clear and explicit gender breaks down, and ambiguity is introduced:

The character is based on 'Frankie', the non-binary lead and narrator of my graphic novel series 'Sinister Rouge' (2019-20), and its development in this virtual environment has direct links to my own personal aesthetics of physiognomy, as well as the feedback I have received over the years in that regard. As it stands, the project is to define a female character that is universally declared to "look female", and then tweak her features increasingly until questions, confusion and - ultimately - accusations of "maleness" or "trans-ness" creep into the responses. How I will enable this research to be conducted is for further down the line however, and something that will need to be discussed at length.

Moving back to the issues of 'reading' a person's characteristics from their facial structure (shades of the phrenology pseudo-science, and the recent Stanford University 'gay face' study), I wonder if the perceived femininity (and, ultimately, the attractiveness thereof) of a face is determined by that face's apparent submissiveness. If big eyes on a girl or woman are deemed attractive - because big eyes look innocent, childlike, and (relatively) non-aggressive, non-threatening - then clearly, in opposition, narrow eyes on a woman ought to indicate the reverse? Japanese culture, via manga and anime, explicitly refers to these tropes (the characteristic large, often very detailed, eyes of anime characters are derived from 1960s Disney creatures) with 'boy eyes' and 'girl eyes'. 

Power and dominance over an individual seems to be a driving force behind what is perceived as attractiveness. Narrow eyes and a stern chin will make some viewers uncomfortable if they are juxtaposed with a stereotypically 'sexy' physiology (a major part of my own drawing practice) and therefore the normative/cis-het dominant male viewer would reject such a representation. This, I suspect, is part of the driving force behind a lot of male-to-female transphobia - that the attractive, submissive elements of traditional womanhood are offset by too manly a facial structure (in some cases) which then perturbs, disrupts, the initial lust response once a closer, second look has been taken, and the viewer wonders if the person they liked the look of at first sight, may turn out to be just as dominant or aggressive as they themselves? A case of hitting too close to home, perhaps?

Recent Developments and New Works, Plans, and Things

'Marlene and Me' dress rehearsal video still for Dundee Fringe Festival, '22

The last 6 weeks have been challenging, with all sorts of things happening: mostly good, but the Solstice was spent being hit by a chest infection as well as the need for emergency eye surgery. However, back on track again and to summarize everything:

21st May: Scottish TransPride in Paisley, Scotland:

June ('til present): submitting work (prose poem entitled 'Ravensong') to Cthulhu Books anthology call-out: Making Kin - Institute for Postnatural Studies The work is inspired by my studies of Old Norse and Old English literature, mythology and poetry.

1st June: a last-minute support slot at the Hunter S Thompson saw me premiering live one of my early 'lockdown poems', as well as an old standard:

15th June: performing brand new spoken word piece 'Stevie Nicks' (again at the Hunter S) which was directly inspired by the raw, emotional and very personal work of the headline act on the 1st of June:

18th June: public presentation of 'Welcome?', a BRAW Bursary recipient (in collaboration with ShaperCaper) in Dundee. My work consisted of a printed poster and 3 A5 flyers discussing international trans rights.

8th July: Presented paper 'Pornographics as Queer Method : Using Adult Online Entertainment as a Strategy for Developing Non-Binary Gender and Being' at the SGSAH 'Prospectives 22' online symposium. I'd planned to be away in Manchester that weekend hence the pre-recorded talk, but elected to stay home to better monitor my eye health, which allowed me to take part in the live Q & A:

In between all this action I was also able to rehearse and record the second instalment of my three-part 'Weimar Cycle', a tribute to the decadent era of German art of 100 years ago, as well as the cabaret tradition and the general air of sexual and gender liberation which flourished at that time. This is 'Marlene and Me':

I have submitted proposals to perform this cycle live at both Buzzcut '23 in Glasgow, and (as a 2-part work in progress) at the upcoming Dundee Fringe in September. I've also submitted a handful of films to the 'Queer Art Now' open call in London. 

Public Works: BRAW Bursary Presentation, 'Welcome?'

 

The  past few weeks have seen me focusing on producing materials for this upcoming event, organised between Dundee dance company ShaperCaper and Dundee Pride, on Saturday June 18th:

BRAW Bursary Recipients — Shaper/Caper (shapercaper.com)

It's been very exciting and rewarding to have the chance to present public work which not only fits my current wider research (social and political attitudes to trans/non-gender normative persons) as well raise awareness of wider internation trans rights (or lack thereof). The work entails one poster (A3) plus 3 A5 flyers, in which trans characters from Iran, Russia and Colombia discuss the realities of living under their respective social and legal conditions. The project is an extension of a piece I had planned during my MFA in 2020, but due to lockdown, it wasn't able to happen. This opportunity has allowed me to expand the original project from a single flyer (focusing on Russia) to three in total.

The project is entitled "Welcome!" and also invites us to consider which nations around the world are more welcoming to trans and LGBTQ+ visitors than others.

Following the event, I wrote up this report:

Thesis Chapter: John Howard & Annie Sprinkle - introductory sketch

 Not much blogging has been done of late, mainly because I've been beating the first chapter of the thesis into shape. I know I have a working complete first draft of around 5k words, of which this is the opening/introductory section. The chapter discusses the work of two artists I interviewed recently and their relevance to this study - namely, their recognition of, and interactions with, non-normative bodies and types of people.

1.0 Alternative Legacies: Contextualizing the Careers of Annie Sprinkle PhD. and John Howard

 Since the sexual and other revolutions of the 1960s, there has been a tendency for social mores to oscillate between increasing liberalism and staunch conservatism, and possibly in no genre more explicitly than in the representation of adult sexual material. The 1970s – 1990s saw significant political, socio-cultural schisms develop in what were labelled ‘the Culture Wars’ and the ‘Porn Wars’, splitting feminist, legal and general media opinion throughout the aggressively reactionary Reagan era (1980-1988) in the US and the growing ‘political correctness’ movement. It was against this backdrop of cultural change, of increasing conservatism challenged by resistant libertarianism (exemplified most extremely, perhaps, by the $145million lawsuit brought by Andrea Dworkin against Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine), that the subjects of this chapter would emerge.

 The importance of both Annie Sprinkle and John Howard to the wider scope of this research is not just the radical and anti-normative work they have produced over a number of years, but the similarities between them and their careers:

-          both worked with and celebrated ‘alternative bodies’ at a time when society tended to view such non-normative and marginalized corporealities as offensive, legally obscene[1] and troublesome;

-          both had high-profile careers in the adult entertainment industry, meaning that their work would be seen by many, not a small number in some ‘underground’ scene;

-          both have been able to live within the timeframe of social change, where recognition of trans* and non-binary bodies has become far wider and more accepted, and witness the analogue -> digital revolution;

-          both grew up and worked in areas which were regarded as very liberal with regard to sex and diversity, meaning they did not have to overcome resistance and prejudice from peer groups, religious and other social conservative bodies, but were more easily able to pursue their own interests.

All of the above, including my own practice, may clearly represent the ‘post-porn’ movement, summarized thus by Amy E. Forrest in her unpublished Master’s dissertation:

“Post-porn modernism involves cultural end products (post-porn) such as performances, literature, photographs, videos, montages, installations, films, and interventions in the public sphere (Soto 2013: 22). It has a political dimension that explicitly contests the repression and dismissal of the sexualities of social minorities […] Indeed, it often queers sex by rejecting the validity of hegemonic gender roles […] Furthermore, […] post-porn actively exposes the performance and social construction that is sexual representation. By disconcerting the spectator and attempting to make them self-aware, post-porn can encourage a greater understanding of normalised attitudes and systems of oppression[2].”

This appropriation of a highly problematic medium for personal, subversive and socio-political ends is a cornerstone of my practice-led work. Though it often presents ambiguity in favour of explicitness, it refers to (and subverts) familiar tropes, poses, and performative gestures. Where graphic depictions are presented in physiological terms, they are juxtaposed with other elements (physiognomical, sartorial, etc.) which may result in “disconcerting” incongruity.

Whilst both AS and JH are cisgender creators operating within the mainstream of a male-dominated “profit-driven industry that strives for maximal exploitation of labor, in this case primarily women[3]”, an analysis of their work will discover that as artists, they have often operated outside the cis-het normative aesthetic which tends to celebrate male dominance and female subjection: Howard, by depicting aggressively dominant female and transfemale comic-book characters, Sprinkle by performing with “dwarfs, burn victims, transsexuals, persons with AIDS, and amputees […] as sources of erotic desire and pleasure […][4]” and later, embracing her own form of lesbian-focused ‘ecosexuality’[5].

Of mainstream porn, Laura Kipnis writes (following Thomas Laquer): “[…] it seems like a fantasy of a one-gender world, a world in which male and female sexuality is completely commensurable […] composed of two sexes but one gender…[6]” This notion of the malleability of the gendered pornographic corps (and its potential for liberating non-binary bodies and performers from social and biological straitjackets) will be returned to, but the pornographic realm which is the focus of this study is not the mainstream: it is that which is created by, and/or includes, queer, subversive, trans and/or other radical elements whether in its themes or its subjects, although it does of course have roots in, and intersections with, mainstream adult media. The purpose is to investigate the reclamation and colonization of the pornographic form by historically marginalized types, and their attempts to celebrate Otherness as desirable (as, for example, in the classically-influenced portraiture of Joel-Peter Witkin): “As with transvestite porn and fat porn, pornography can provide a home for those narratives exiled from sanctioned speech and mainstream political discourse, making pornography, in essence, an oppositional political form[7].”

If the non-standard body (and thereby the person in possession of it) is a text, then it is a text which needs to be interpreted; which, as the wide range of terms applied to myself during my webcam activities have shown, provides a whole spectrum of ‘readings’[8]. In the world of queered art and experience, heteronormative constructions soon dissolve.

 

---

[1] On trans* pornography’s legality, Laura Kipnis writes: “Why does a fully dressed man – albeit one fully dressed as a woman – fall under the heading of “pornography”? […] In Chicago, there’s a tacit understanding on the part of most local porn businesses that carrying transvestite porn will get them raided by the local vice squad, working under the direction of the state attorney’s office.” (L. Kipnis, ‘Bound & Gagged’, p. 67). In a similar vein, in the UK, ‘Operation Spanner’ targeted members of the gay male BDSM underground in a period of renewed hostility to homosexuality “The year that Operation Spanner was launched, a British Social Attitudes Survey found that 75% of the population believed that homosexual activity was always or mostly wrong. At the Conservative Party Conference the same year, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned against children being taught that they had a right to be gay. The following year, Section 28 was introduced which banned local authorities from “promoting” homosexuality. It was in this climate that Operation Spanner operated.” (G. Hollmann, ‘Operation Spanner’, at ‘Herts Memories: Gateway To Hertfordshire's Community Archive Network, https://www.hertsmemories.org.uk/content/herts-history/people/lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender/lgbtq-history-month-2022/protest-and-progress/operation-spanner - last accesses 8/4/22.)

[2] A. Forrest, ‘Leave no Normative Code Intact’: Subverting Socio-cultural Norms in Post-porn’, unpublished, 2013. Online at: https://www.academia.edu/28179836/FORREST_Amy_E._unpublished_MA_dissertation_English_translation_2013_Leave_no_normative_code_intact_Subverting_Socio-cultural_Norms_in_Post-porn - last accessed 30/4/22.

[3] ‘Pornography & Media: Toward a More Critical Analysis’ by G. Dines & R. Jensen, in Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors & Society, eds. M. Kimmel & R. F. Plante, OUP, New York, 2004, p.371.

[4] 'The Erotic Anatomies of Charles Estienne and Annie Sprinkle', Meghan Chandler, Porn Studies, p. 395

[5] Sprinkle’s own ‘Feminist Art Statement’ runs like a mantra: “Because I love and adore women (including trans-women, trans-men, gender queer, intersexed, etc.) I want the very best for them […] Because I love and adore women, I fight to decriminalize and de- stigmatize prostitution and other sex work.” (A. Sprinkle, ‘Brooklyn Museum Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art’, webpage: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/about/feminist_art_base/annie-sprinkle - last accessed 8/4/22).

[6] L. Kipnis, ‘Bound & Gagged’, p. 200

[7] L. Kipnis, ‘Bound & Gagged’, p. 123

[8] As discussed in my blog: M. Black , ‘Naming Names: Taxonomies of Ownership, or, Why You Need to Call Me That’, posted November 12, 2021, at https://phiz-phys.blogspot.com/2021/11/naming-names-taxonomies-of-ownership-or.html: ”“sexy babe”, “slutty little bitch”, “beauty”, “bitchboi”, “sissy”, “sissy faggot”, “sissy boi”, “my queen”, “man”, “hot bitch”, “mistress”, “adorable princess”, “naughty bedroom girl”, “beautiful princess”, “girlfriend”, “goddess”, “my slut”, “my whore”, “cougar” and “my woman”.” The difficulty of coherently expressing my (or anybody else’s) androgynous gender is well observed by Pacteau: “Discussions of androgyny... come up against a resistance... from language itself.. . Any attempt to define androgyny.. . takes us to the limits of language.. . such definitions ask for their own dépassement” – F. Pacteau, “The Impossible Referent: Representations of the Androgyne,” in Formations of Fantasy, edited by Victor Burgin, James Donald and Cora Kaplan, (London: Metheun, 1986), quoted in A. & M. Kroker, ‘Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America’, p. 161.

“All Your Women Look Like Trannies”…Or, Why I'm Here Right Now, Writing This

I've drawn comics (and 'comix') for over forty years. Comic-book art was a large part of my original art school submission folio in 2016, though my distaste for the more obvious elements of the mainstream comics world has only deepened in recent times.

The image of the powerful, ass-kicking (super)heroine in mainstream comic-book art may, at first sight, suggest to laypersons viewing such material that strong, independent, feisty females are a staple of such material, and therefore encouraging signs of gender equality in popular media. Whether they truly do or not is largely due to the writers, since the artists (whether individuals or penciller/inker teams) will likely be the same. However, the aesthetic ‘phiz/phys’ code, when examined, suggests nothing more than skimpiest lip-service to the Women's Movement, and nothing less than patriarchy-as-usual. Shall we break down the aesthetic attributes of all the so-called 'powerful' female characters in mega-selling, mainstream comics (not, please note, 'comix' – which by their very nature tend to be radical, subversive, and challenging)?

  l) Age (apparent): young. Late teens to early, mid-20s at most. Anything older is a mother, a granny, or a bitchy, probably sexually-frustrated boss-type. Superheroes, aliens etc. may in reality be much older, but they still don’t look a day over 24 ½ .

 2) Vitalstatistics: Barbie, or one of her numerous sisters, daughters or grand-daughters. Hip:waist ratio and bust size are vital considerations. Bared or exposed flesh is virtually a must, whether it's cleavage, thigh, abdomen, or all of the above (or more besides) as evidenced in, say, Lara Croft. (Speaking of which, I recently came across this BBC broadcast on the subject: Evil Genius with Russell Kane - Lara Croft, Tomb Raider - BBC Sounds )

 3) Physiognomy: eyes, nose and mouth set according to standard principles in line with l) above – small nose, small babyish chin, big eyes. Individuality, quirkiness, character and age-lines are deficient/non-existent, unless the bitchy bad boss or granny-type needs emphasizing just how utterly unattractive she is, and how redundant to the male viewer's fantasy world as a result.

4) Height: variable. Can be small and petite or tall and leggy in killer heels without damaging the viewer's feelings: the former more likely to be the 'cute/good girl' type, the latter the deadly/femme fatale assassin/hooker-with-a-switchblade/villainess variety.

5) Dress: Skimpy, exposing skin, or if all over, then spray-on skin-tight (nudity by proxy). Boots and high heels of at least 4” often in evidence, no matter the circumstances, terrain, weather or location.

Okay, so the above list is neither entirely serious, or free from stereotypical generalization either. But, as most mainstream comic book artists are male, they not only draw what they like to see, but what is demanded to be seen: the scopophilia of their majority readership ensures few variations on the above coded formulae and sometimes the styles can be almost interchangeable. Some artists do indeed seem to have a single, specific, female type (or personal archetype). Here are examples of completely different characters drawn by Brazilian artist Al Rio, all of whom look not only identical facially, but are carbon copies down to the very hairstyle and expressions:

We can turn now to an industry manual, written by a leading professional, for budding comic artists on how to draw awesome women characters, a title named “Incredible Comic Book Women with Tom Nguyen: TheKick-Ass Guide to Drawing Hot Babes!”

Herein I cite a secondary source rather than the book itself, as I consider the reviewer’s enthusiastic comments to be as worthy of discussion as the book under review. Thus

“Lets face it, if you’re going to become a comic book artist, learning how to draw a hot leggy blond is a must!”

Really? There’s no point then in asking if the blond in question may be black or Asian – they (well, obviously she) will be white. From the samples of Nguyen’s art provided, I saw immediate comparisons with the figure drawing manuals of Andrew Loomis, an artist so influential now that his name is still spoken of reverently in illustration circles, and who is frequently cited as a major inspiration for many of today’s leading professionals. That Loomis had a ‘type’ of woman as much as Rio cited above is evident – they are all young, beautiful, slim, naked (possibly the same model) and often drawn in high heels, with the fetishistic undertones now expected of an artist who understands his intended audience (as does Nguyen, evidenced later). Studying texts like this in my early illustration career (early 2000s) left me conflicted – here was a revered expert, giving sage advice to new artists, yet thoroughly entrenched in its time. In later years, I found Linda Neade’s survey of traditional artists’ drawing manuals to be very reminiscent of Loomis (‘The Female Nude’, pp. 46-55), and things have not changed in the 2l^st century when we consider Nguyen’s ‘how-to’ bible, with his bikini-clad babes guaranteed to maintain the youthful (psychologically, if not physically) male reader’s attention as much as Loomis’ flexible, and utterly traditional, nudes:

Curiously, Al Rio actually includes a re-draw of one of Loomis' costumed models in what purports to be a 'how to draw' class booklet of is own - though it's unclear if Loomis receives credit, it's very easy to see the influence:

Later in the review, the writer of the review of Nguyen’s book does cite diversification:

 “One of the cooler sections I enjoyed reading about was how to capture a specific woman’s likeness for a character, and how to draw ethnic groups that aren’t your own. His number one rule? Avoid stereotypes! It should go without saying, but it seems harder to do than it sounds.”

Yet for all that, non-racial stereotypes remain a continual presence, as is evidenced in a further reviewer comment “on how to draw younger women and older women, pointing out key attributes for each. For instance, it’s important to not make your older women look too agile, and contrarily to not make your younger women look too sexy. Both typically aren’t good things.”

Sexualising young females is certainly a short-cut to serious trouble. But seemingly older women must not be allowed to maintain their youth, whether through intensive tai-chi, dance, aerobics or athletics? Pina Bausch may have disagreed as, for that matter, may Tina Turner or Madonna. The “avoid stereotypes” advice is therefore immediately contradicted for the sake of enforcing cultural expectations,  that grannies must be stiff and useless, and also appear to be so. (From a personal recollection of a family holiday in l98l, when I was 8, I met my father’s grandmother – a lady named Margaret Ashby who was born during the reign of Queen Victoria, and was over 90 at the time. Out on a country walk, she continually succeeded in outpacing both my parents, then in their late 30s, admonishing them both to “keep pace!” - a story frequently retold in family conversations for years afterwards).

A reader, enmeyer_r, may have summed up the entire article (and the book) with his brief comment:

We may wonder why we might expect great diversification, and encouragement to go beyond socio-cultural norms, in a text devoted to producing comic art. I would argue that were any so-called “SJW” to accuse the mainstream industry of peddling outdated and degrading characterisations, there would be many fans who would angrily respond with examples of black, queer and other diversifications in recent Marvel and DC titles, as evidence that such accusations are unfair, unfounded and outdated. But the operative word here is recent, and the overwhelming mass of material carries on regardless, suggesting that the diversity is as much an exercise in tokenistic box-ticking to appease (or encourage) the non cisgender/het/white/males out there to buy into their products. We may also recall that the CEO of Marvel comics gave funds to Trump’s 20l6 presidential election campaign and that comics publishers are corporations like any other. While some may choose to dismiss all comic-book material as ‘harmless fun’ and nothing to worry too much about (assuming that comics are only read by kids, who quickly mature and move on to more serious literature – nothing could be further from the truth, if one chooses to peruse for even five minutes some of the comics fandom forums online), the internalization of such material and the coded forms and representations within are what have led directly to me pursuing this PhD research course, writing these words, on this very subject – the publicly-held belief that my drawings were unsuitable for the general audience (the majority) of comics readers, that my characters did not fit their stereotyped rules of where the boundaries between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are supposed to lie, and what features and details of human anatomy are classifiable as specifically gendered (in my case, it was my female characters’ jawlines and chins which were problematic for many – being deemed "too masculine" (?), assumptions which reach far beyond comics aesthetics to the realm of ‘facial feminisation’ treatments for transwomen, or why certain men may be accused of having a “gay face” - both issues I've posted about previously). The result of these comments and criticisms soon transferred themselves to my own sense of being, of genderfluidity, and I saw a correlation between how things are perceived, how people are pigeonholed, and the outgrowths of a monstrously, Lovecraftian rhizomatic entity dedicated to enforcing its binary definitions of the world in every and any area of society, and suppressing or denigrating any attempts to the contrary.

The artist (and viewer) therefore has no interest in an individual, as a woman or a distinct person, but as a type: a basic form which ticks the boxes of how much he would like to have sex with her. Before my readers laugh aloud at this ultra-Freudian blanket assumption, there are reasons why comic-book heroines continue to look as they do (differing fashions and styles through the decades notwithstanding) - they are made to appear to the male cis/het gaze which demands desirability, non-troubling glamour and can be 'read' as a female that the viewer can fantasize about, have sex with in their minds, or even project upon themselves (why do so many male gamers play female characters? - can the realm of 'forced feminization' pornography shed some sinister light on this area?). The male viewer desires a woman they control (or occasionally – desires to become a woman who is controlled, the ultra-submissive D/s fantasy of forced-fem. To elaborate somewhat on Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze as an immutable, monolithic tool of repression – not all men share the same desires and hang-ups; poor gay black men will not respond to a scene the same as a rich, privileged straight white guy, or even a Latin or Asian man – but each will bring his own form of masculinity, whether it is queer, straight, or confused, to bear on the semiotics inherent in any scene or representation, and encode them and interpret them accordingly:

 "Whatever happened to Fay Wray

That delicate satin draped frame
As it clung to her thigh
How I started to cry
Cause I wanted to be dressed just the same..."
        -R. O'Brien, 'Fay Wray', 'Rocky Horror Show'

 But wait, some will object - aren't there violent, aggressive, ass-kicking female characters out there? Surely they would intimidate all but the strongest barbarian bloke, no matter how seductive they might appear? I would argue that the 'ass-kicking' aspect of such characters is virtually irrelevant, when compared to the importance of the aesthetic appeal. Lara Croft gets to be smart, tough and hard because she obligingly exposes the expected assets to her viewers: bulging breastlines, cleavage, strong thighs and of course ultra-kissable lips. Her gun, sword, whip or whatever is just another fetishistic phallic adornment, to draw attention away from her implicit biology and gratify the male viewer by proudly presenting her phallic response to his innermost concerns: she's hot, busty, tough and has a dick - hey, she's perfect! Nguyen’s cover art to his book on drawing ‘hot babes’ shows, ostensibly, a gendered role-reversal scene of heroic, brave female rescuing an embarrassed, topless and underwear-clad male from certain doom at the tentacles of an entity of Lovecraftian proportions, parodying the exploitative lowbrow ‘men’s Adventure’ magazine covers of the l950s and 60s, and more B-movie posters and pulp fiction titles than my poor mind can even calculate. But the cis/het/male viewer isn’t interested in the re-gendering of a classic power fantasy trope – he’ll be too busy gawking at her metric metre of cleavage and exposed skin beneath the spray-on costume (conveniently angled towards the reader for the most revealing viewpoint). To me , the underlying message – and the appeal – of the cover is that once rescued, things will return to business-as-usual – the rescuer/rescued inevitably engage in some form of physical romance, and any traditional comic-book nerd would happily endure the cover character’s peril and humiliation if he got to get it on with such an awesome babe. After all, the cover man is a bulky, square-jawed, muscled-up dude of impressive stature – if not a self-parody of Nguyen himself – and still enforces the power-fantasy macho appeal of traditional comic males, with whom the reader identifies. To truly reverse the scene, he ought to have been depicted as a weedy nerd, clearly as incapable of extricating himself from his predicament as all those helpless stiletto-wearing glamour queens in their strategically-shredded evening dresses – at least, until the tough, bruising hero showed up to whisk her away from the clutches of the bloodthirsty aliens, villainous foreigners (likely one and the same), or savage wild animals. Robert Crumb was drawing himself into such fem-dom sexual fantasies five decades ago, playing upon his own geeky, bespectacled real-life persona, but we are a long way away from that here.

Again and again the reviewer of Nguyen’s book emphasises the ‘sexy’ aspect, as Nguyen himself does – he clearly appreciates young women in bikinis, and his ‘rules’ on what is right/wrong or ‘unattractive’ only help to enforce stereotypical attitudes which extend into other areas of art and representation, and ultimately into other areas of life. As this sort of advice is standard for the industry, I now understand why I was subjected to the sort of negative feedback that I received in my past – from other artists who digested and reproduced such fantasy idealisations of ‘how it needs to be’, as well as ‘how we want it to be’ - the latter which summarises the Comicsgate backlash against non-cis/het/white/male characters and creators.

Comicsgate was a reactionary and recent phenomenon, but the underlying mindset is not. I spent over 9 years as a user of Deviantart.com (2207 – 20l6) and saw many hundreds of comments posted on images of female characters, both original (to the creators) and otherwise (fan-art after copyrighted characters). The strength of emotion behind some of the comments and discussions on even some quite 'PG-rated' works were obvious - the scent of sweat and passion almost palpable. Patriarchy-as-usual polices these representations. The ass-kicking ability, as I've said, is irrelevant - it is a mere sidearm to the bruising gatekeeper of visual attraction, and the pleasure encoded in that representation. I know this because I deliberately fashioned my own drawing style over the years I was on DevArt. The images from Al Rio above are contained in an anthology of that artist's work which I purchased in 2000, when I began my comic book drawing career in earnest, and have referred to his images for specifics (line work specifically in the drawing of eyes) so many times that the book is literally falling apart. This was in my early, naive days when I sought popularity and praise, and felt I had to conform – to a point – to what was “out there”. While I admire his draughtsmanship in specific details I dislike very much his vapid, interchangeable production-line mannequins which bring to mind the fetishistic sculptural female objects of Allen Jones, and the sad, grimy nudes of the later Renoir, utterly devoid of character, personality, or a thinking brain behind the bovine stare. One can enjoy and admire the details of a work or an artistic style without being in any way a fan of that artist or that style (in the same way that one can argue for the right for pornography, as a form of representation, to exist, without in any way condoning the actual extremities, attitudes and degradations to which it most usually stoops).

I refused to change my own ways of phiz/phys representation, and certainly refused to buy into anyone else's. My female characters were tough, ass-kicking, and frequently carried lethal weaponry, too. Sometimes they, too, were busty, sometimes not so - it depended on whether that would suit the character and her background. They were often tall, leggy, and invariably muscular. The costume may or may not be tight or revealing, or not (the former the better to show off that hard muscle tone whilst maintaining dignity - the latter, the better to foster ambiguity). So far, so typical, more or less. They were also evidently older than High School age, and had the lines to prove it. The result?

"All your women look like trannies".

So, we come to the pivot point of this writing: the misreading of my characters by a viewership expecting apples, and complaining when they were being fed bananas (for those who missed it, this metaphor is a cheeky nod to a l972 work by Linda Nochlin. I'm not going to spell it out further.) While I had never any intention of depicting transwomen at the outset - I simply drew women as I saw them, with character, occasional wrinkles, strong or stern facial bone structure after the l9th C. and especially the PRB tendency. The broad frames and heavy musculature came later - when I had become annoyed enough, by late 20l5, to start having fun with my characterizations and drawings, and in line with my own developing and radically evolving notions of gender, both personal, and general – and the fact that I have never enjoyed ‘traditional femininity’ in any form, anyway.  I didn't care by then that people saw them as ugly, as rough, as old. Get over it, I thought: have you ever walked down the street and actually looked at the faces of real women (or, have you only looked at the teenaged ones in the tight skirts)? Do you really expect 50% of the world’s population to confirm to your infantile notions of what you deem your “type” for your sexual and aesthetic satisfaction? Are you seriously trying to tell me that a female character with a defined jawline is inherently therefore, by virtue of that single arbitrary physiognomical feature, a biological man?

These questions are anything but rhetorical – they resonate in me now, because they are the questions I ought to have demanded back in the 20l0s when I received those comments on my artworks. Nobody told me I couldn’t draw. Nobody told me I was rubbish, or should give up art. They did, however, warn me that I needed to learn how to draw women “better” (i.e., more stereotypical, more passive, more curvaceous, more bland, less demanding, less troubling, less biologically indeterminate...more desirable).

I quit DevArt before I gained the socio-political and aesthetic armoury to be able to shove it back at the critics, in spades:

After creating the deliberate mainstream trans superhero spoof 'Super TransFixItGurl' (with a trans friend of mine), I developed my first serious transfemale character, Sonya Smirnova, for the epic Russian-based crime series 'Bloodstains'. (To enhance the pointlessness and arbitrary nature of the negativity I'd encountered, she is in fact - facially at least - referenced from a cisgender female model, while many of the body references are from myself. The character is, therefore, a prototype of the definition of this very blog and research project: the sense of incongruity produced by welding one set of gendered attributes to another):

The logic was simple: she looks like a 'tranny' because she is, and is that a problem, by the way? The question was coded into the character. She wasn't young, nor beautiful, nor especially busty. She was a 6'3 ex-athletics champion, and former police officer in contemporary Russia, who had been kicked out of the force due to her transitioning and forced into sex work to remain alive. She was blonde and white, though, which was nonetheless a small chip off a very large chopping block of social unacceptability (herein I, I later realised, I found myself falling for a much-maligned trope in popular media, the transwoman-as-hooker: but to me the logic was clear. Russia's anti-LGBTQIA+ laws are utterly reprehensible, and my work was informed by much reading of contemporary articles on hate crime in Russia. That such a character would only be able to survive on the underbelly of society was taken as read. It remains a difficult work to categorize, and very recent events have left me wondering if I can even continue it at all):

I refused to present Sonya as too much of a victim, though she is of course a helpless nobody against a brutal and authoritarian state government, and a society hostile to people like her - and her bodyguard and benefactor, the main hero of the piece, who is an ethnic Uzbek; a non-practicing Muslim and hence the other half of a completely anti-mainstream comic book partnership, with whom the traditional cis/het/white power fantasists are not expected to identify in any way. Nor did they, and nor did I want them to, though I gave the series one big final push in 20l8 – just as the Comicsgate and Howard Chaykin ‘Divided States of Hysteria’ débacles burst over the internet. I retired 'Bloodstains' and occasionally returned to it, trying to retool the work to suit my ever-evolving views of intersectionality, trans rights and such. While the series remains unpublished (and now runs to over 70 pages of finished work), Sonya found her way into a spin-off for Russian trans rights, a samizdat which came out as part of my MFAAH in 2020:

 

We’ve seen these socio-cultural eruptions in the past – cf. the angry white male burnings of disco records in the US in the 70s. How dare those queers/blacks/Latinos have their own music, and make it popular! It ain’t what we call rock ‘n roll, dammit! (because rock ‘n roll was – of course – invented by blacks, including at least one black queer – Little Richard – who directly inspired the architect of the noisiest, dirtiest rock and roll ever recorded: Lemmy, of Motorhead).