Loose Living (12 page)

B
ECAUSE OF
the exhibition of photographs of men's genitalia (among other subjects) by the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and the publication of
Love Cries
, Australia's first anthology of erotica, I was assigned by the Montaigne Clinic for Civilised Disorders to prepare a report on the state of Decadence in Australia. The Duc, as Regent of the Clinic, urged that I go. He was, I think, hoping to see if his tutelage of me in the arts of decadence had suitably prepared me for such a mission.

I have to say it was an assignment which brought additional burdens to my already groaning back—having only recently investigated Decadence in twelve other countries and having my own end to keep up.

From mingling incognito in the arts bars and radical clubs after my arrival back in Australia, I discovered my first curiosity—confusion about transgression and art.

Given the wider perplexity over sexuality in our awry, shy and edgy country during this poor, sexually blighted Age, it is not surprising that sometimes we forget how erotica and much art is, in its delivery, mode and intention, conservative, not radical—that is, much erotica and art is intended to delight, to confirm, to meet the cultural needs of, and to stabilise, those who choose to involve themselves with art and with erotica. It is not there to shock people.

But a good part of the Australian literary and artistic life clings to a blow-your-house-down radical and transgressive image of itself.

Regarding the Mapplethorpe exhibition, I read that ‘…if, people in being over-libertarian in their discussions drain images of their velocity and contestation, they also miss the point…'

I became excited by this idea and cabled back to the Montaigne Clinic. This was a new notion. Maybe the ‘over-libertarian' person whom ‘nothing can shock' is a post-modern type? Or perhaps this was a new disorder, in reviewers especially.

How can transgression ever be effective when it finds an audience which ‘nothing can shock'?

At the racecourse (now referred to as ‘the track' by many who frequent it) and in the parents' groups and radical clubs which I visited in the course of my investigation, I found Australians teetering among a few flimsily held positions about erotica.

Some want to be people holding the ‘tough' position, those whom nothing can shock; on the other hand, others like to see themselves as having a sense of ‘when things have gone too far'. Others, loudly, like to see it as ‘more sad than shocking'.

The Talking Tough can't-be-shocked position is an attempt to drain the works of their power over that person. But it is whether or not and how you enjoy ‘being shocked' that tells.

There is another position which holds that anything to do with the expression of sexuality has first to be theoretically tested to determine if it is transgressing prevailing progressive ideological sensitivities (called ‘debasing' or ‘ trivialising').

To transgress against these progressive sensitivities is not to be confused with transgressing against mainstream mores or sensitivities, which is considered acceptable.

The radical tradition, the transgressive attitude in the arts, is held by people who feel that they hold a truth or have created something which will shock, offend or, preferably, instruct someone else against their will.

This, I was to learn, is also known as the ‘in your face' attitude. A most inviting term.

Most artists do not like to think that they are primarily serving and reinforcing their own distinctive sub-community.

But I rush to argue that to fulfil this role of serving and reinforcing does not diminish the arts.

There is a civilising
trickle up
effect or, in the case of erotica, as bon vivant Peter Blazey says, a ‘tickle up' effect.

The reverberations and influence of art within a society are sinuous, unpredictable and indispensable.

‘Early western pornography was linked to freethinking and heresy, to science and natural philosophy and to attacks on absolutist political authority,' says Lynn Hunt in her book
The Invention of Pornography
(1993).

It still is, and along with freethinking, philosophy, science and attacks on absolutist political authority, is still rather cliquey.

I found, at the racecourse and so on, that people generally do not read or expose themselves to that which fails to delight, fails to stabilise, fails to meet their cultural needs.

I did not consider this unnatural. On the other hand, I do have a slight problem with little jockeys in silk garments sitting on large horses galloping around a circle.

Which leads me to another curio, which runs against the supposed effect of transgression: the distinction between what is ‘enjoyed' and the social position of the viewer who is doing the ‘enjoying'.

A study by two female researchers found that women who read romance novels involving the rape of a younger
woman by an older man, followed by love between this older man and this younger woman, tended to hold liberal or feminist views on social issues (quoted by Philip Weiss in
Harpers
magazine, March 1993).

Other evidence also makes it very unclear what the effect is, if any, of witnessing and enjoying material which ‘transgresses' one's beliefs.

Even committed decadents such as myself do not, as the Australian media tend to think, have a steady diet of Decadence. For example, I have a bad knee which tends to interfere with the more complicated positions at times.

We too have to take our clothing to the dry cleaners. It may come as a surprise to some, but in any given week we may be decadent for only a few hours.

It does, however, change one's outlook for the rest of the week. We find.

But to return to the rather secretive nature of erotica and the rather reclusive nature of much art.

Paradoxically, it is the news media which tries to treat the world as a single public space, as a single large room where we are all gathered to be ‘shocked'.

I find that it is the news media which believes (but cannot practise) that all that is available to sight, and all people, all activities, all conduct—that is, wherever a reporter can reach—must then be brought back and dumped into the most public of arenas: into
the news.

But after dragging everything into the public arena of the news, the media then behave like the youth quoted by Montaigne (see above), and begin its castration.

They do not acknowledge that some art is more akin to the Nightclub, the Cabaret and the Secret Society than it is to public life. That it is not meant for everyone. This includes erotica.

When the media drags erotica into the ‘living room' of the ‘average' family they do so only in a deleterious and incomplete way. They never do it for fun.

The
Australian Weekend Magazine
tried to discuss the Mapplethorpe exhibition but dodged what it saw as the most controversial images—that of ‘explicit' (?) ‘shots he took of very young children … whose innocence he both elevated and exploited, and about which the biggest question mark must hang'.

When reading the article we look for an example of these shots of very young children over which hangs ‘the biggest question mark' but find that we are given no illustration (nor, might I add, did the Anerican book
Culture Wars
, which is a book aimed at fully examining the questions of public funding, censorship and art, including specifically Mapplethorpe's work).

Rupert Murdoch, through his company HarperCollins, published
Love Cries
, which the
Sydney Morning Herald
described as ‘A Vile Book for Mean and Pitiful People'.

The
Sydney Morning Herald
did not publish an extract from the book to illustrate what it was that the literary editor saw as vile. Nor were there photographs of mean and pitiful people.

The news media is unable to
illustrate
what it is that
is being talked about and can only create imaginary monsters and by so doing provoke false discourse.

I return to the Mapplethorpe exhibition.

The curator of the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Bernice Murphy, is reported as saying, ‘The problem with the prurient gaze, however, is that it looks only for sexual content and misses the rest … pornography functions by complete distancing from any sense of personal identification.'

One would hope so. On occasions one is profoundly relieved that one is distanced ‘from any sense of personal identification'.

The new rule seems to be that you shall ‘respond' sexually to persons, animals or artworks, engagements, involvements, escapades or follies, in their entirety as infinite and complex creatures of the universe—or NOT AT ALL.

And only if you are passed as emotionally ‘fit'.

The perverse, the less than savoury, the emotionally imperfect are to be denied their innocent fun, or any lapses into prurience—whatever offence that may be.

At the Clinic we see sexual venture and its extraordinary pathways of behaviour as available to any who wish to try them.

‘Decadence—what is its authority?' I was often asked at the racecourse, in the street and at parents' meetings.

I told them that Decadence incorporates words beginning with ‘R'.
Reversal
of common propriety,
regression
from supposedly correct behaviour,
revenge
for the injustice of simply being alive, and
relief
from the integrity of self.

Puzzled parents often asked me, ‘Why is there so much difference between the way the Decadent tradition treats some forms of pederasty and the way the mass media, social workers and the law treat them?

‘Why are the “Pagan” or the “Decadent” so treasured by Bright Things and why do these traditions see the benign, the delightful, or even the preferable, in what others see as evil?'

I tried to explain, in the parents' groups, to the RSL clubs, and at the racecourses, how philosophical systems, or life views, use different vocabularies to describe the same thing. Or does the existence of different vocabularies show that, whatever it is, it is not the
same thing
?

It just so happens that the Decadent life-approach is a little more embracing and forgiving, and sees some of our social alarm about sexuality as being ill-begotten.

So some would see the Regency Rake or the Femme Fatale as being rather jolly at times (bores at other times, but aren't we all).

Others with a different vocabulary and world view, would see the Regency Rake and the Femme Fatale as pathologically disturbed.

However, I patiently explained that Decadence and erotica, in one of its strongest stances, rejects and avoids explication by ideologies.

It refuses theoretical inclusion (including this one that I am constructing).

It refuses to claim a social role.

Erotica strives to gain release from progressive political theory, for example, so as to extend, through unredeemed effort, a less neat, less categorical, less organic expression of the human condition (see, even here I drag in a humanistic defence—the wider expression of ‘the human condition', etc. I hear the Dadaists of long ago, the French avant garde of long ago, pointing at me with disdain).

The Decadent mission would be imperiled by seeking to redeem itself within the terms offered by humanism, political theory, journalism, law or theology.

To do so would be a surrender of its own claim to be uncredentialled (a chimeric claim, perhaps).

Erotica as an art, at its wildest, is the devoted and perverse application of genius and style to the unredeemable.

It does not argue, cannot argue, that ‘knowing life' will necessarily bring joy or reform or even happy memories. It is a venture of unpredictable outcome. And therefore it is not something for everyone.

I found much interest among the general population in my discourses on erotica, although many chose to politely disagree and found my explanation less than satisfactory.

Some raised questions concerning their own children and I was able to put them at ease by explaining that Germaine Greer documents the far freer and more sensuous physicality of adults with children in nonwestern cultures. ‘Pleasures are taken with children's
bodies that would be defined, in our culture, as abuse or rape,' she says. (Of course as sophisticates we recognise this as the erroneous tribal-cultures-always-get-it-right argument. And its corollary, of course, is that western cultures always get it wrong.) However, we agree that there is a thin line sometimes between being abused and being amused as a child.

They were curious to hear that Donatello's
David
, which is seen as one of the most important and revolutionary works in the history of art, could also be seen as a work of child pornography. (We recognise this as the erroneous Antiquity Legitimisation. If Ovid was dirty-mouthed, it is all right for us to be dirty-mouthed.)

We said quietly but pointedly that some of the young are predisposed to strange paths by the multitudinous factors which create personality. They will find their own sexual ways by venture and by self-discovery. As an adolescent I did not desire my parents' guidance or protection (except, of course, that which came from good manners).

I did appreciate outside suggestions, especially from literature, and in some cases, I appreciated a well-put suggestion.

Mostly, I preferred that Someone Slip Something Into My Drink.

Having understood this, the parents went home, somewhat relieved, and many, I am sure, more confidently left the windows of their children's bedrooms open.

I would like to believe I rose in their estimation because of my frankness and my willingness, as a much-hounded erotic writer, to come out into the world to talk with them, albeit incognito.

Sadly, throughout all my investigations no one tried to Slip Something Into My Drink.

As with everything, there is an absolute categorical distinction between doing something and depicting something. It is decidedly safer, in some cases, just to read about it.