EROGENOUS ZONES OF POP CULTURE
There is no dictionary definition of eroticism. There are also no clear-cut boundaries, no demarcation lines allowing for a precise separation of the domain of eroticism and neighboring areas of sex, desire, lust, love, or perversion. Eroticism is a truly mysterious and ephemeral sphere, although in contemporary culture, often referred to as “the culture of confession”, there are no more obstacles to speaking, examining and diagnosing eroticism. It is so, because this most guarded temple of human activity has grown to an enormous size and stormed the public space.
Eroticism has been “tamed”, commercialized, it has become a commodity available in the shape of colorful magazines and films dripping with sex. No wonder then that in numerous discourses popular culture is considered to be the greatest enemy of eroticism. Profit-oriented popular culture deprives eroticism of its pristine mystery, transcendence and subtleties. There are, however, two grievous faults in this diagnosis. Firstly, it approaches popular culture as a homogenous production, in which everything is reduced to one pattern. Secondly, it assumes that mass culture plays a role of the one and only contemporary “suffragist”; the assumption that disregards the wider social context concomitant with popular culture. Hence, in this article a different perspective is suggested, from which one does not “accuse” culture, but rather treats it as a “witness”, able to say a lot about moral changes and a difficult situation in which eroticism – this most intimate sphere of human existence – has now come to be.
The flight of Eros
A lot of humanists have tried to approach the mysterious essence of eroticism, among them Georges Bataille, who perceives eroticism as a manifestation of longing for a long gone continuity of human existence. According to Bataille, transition to the state of continuity can take place only through the process of transgression of one’s individual self, the dramatic opening to another person, and finally the junction of both creatures, who together enter the same phase of “melting” (Bataille 1982: 341). The game played by two people involved in an erotic act is transcendent in its character and takes place on three levels: eroticism of the body, eroticism of the heart, and sacrum.
Zygmunt Baumann adopted a little different approach when searching the truth about this mysterious sphere of human relations. In his contemplations, he focused on the interdependencies among sex, eroticism and love. The author of The Postmodern Ethic decided that the moment of birth of eroticism was the moment when sexual experience, and concomitant sexual pleasure in particular, separated from the reproduction of the species, i.e., from sex’s fundamental function (Baumann 1997: 88). Eroticism, inseparably connected to human sexuality, enabled people to transform the excess of energy nature has provided them with, so that it could be transferred and used in a different context. Hence, sex, eroticism and love were three separate spheres interconnected by the net of interdependencies. They existed next to one another, but since each of them leant towards independence, the boundaries between them remained unstable. Consequently, according to different cultural strategies, eroticism was either associated with sex (procreation), in which case its excess was relegated to socially degraded areas of pornography, prostitution and adultery, or it was more identified with love. However, regardless of the dominant strategy, it was always perceived in relation to its companions. Only in the previous century did eroticism abandon its former allies. Having become stronger, it liberated itself from the old net of dependencies. It was only possible because both procreation and love lost their previous value, as in the postmodern world of sensations, searching for pleasure became the one really important task. Still, according to Baumann, before eroticism became an economic factor and turned into a commodity, it must have been “thoroughly remodeled culturally” (Baumann 1997: 91). This process of cultural remodeling consisted of the “dismantling” of a repressive culture, which has been carefully described by Michel Foucault in History of Sexuality (2000).
The collapse of the “panoptic” model of exercising control, together with the sexual revolution, triggered by the emancipation of women after the war, and the invention of a contraception pill in the 50s, which ultimately separated sexual pleasure and sexual function of procreation, all beget a new independent eroticism. This new eroticism, freed from all constraints, became attractive to those who noticed its economic potential. They decided to make it into a product served to a mass customer. It would be a mistake then to claim that popular culture did not support eroticism’s struggle for liberation from the constraints of love or sex. However, popular culture as a suffragist appeared as a result of other processes taking place in social life. It is well explained by Denis de Rougemont. Focusing on the literary fashion in the beginning of the previous century, which allowed authors like Nabokov or Musil go dangerously far with their erotic visions, Rougemont notices: “It is worth mentioning that erotic passion refers to prohibitions and existing taboos only when they start to weaken and their violation admittedly still causes scandal, but not the culprit’s physical or social death” (de Rougemont 1996: 16). Writers, filmmakers or musicians could break certain generally accepted norms and prohibitions, because these norms and prohibitions had been previously undermined also in the public life.
The popular culture of the first half of the twentieth century was not an instrument of resistance or subversion, but a space allowing the meeting of conflicting forces. It is enough to think of the problems encountered by the contemporary film art after the introduction of the famous Hays Code. As a Hollywood censorship institution, the Production Code clearly stated what could and what could not be shown in a film, forbidding, for instance, showing homosexual couples, erotic scenes, and too long kisses. Yet, it could not stop artists from using the tactics that allowed them to realize their controversial ideas at least to some extent. This can be well exemplified by Alfred Hitchcock’s tricks: when he wanted to show a passionately kissing couple, to fool the censorship, he told his actors to kiss several times in a row, making only short breaks for dreamy looks. Otherwise the kiss would have been cut out. Still, such ideas were not so much the result of some particular licentiousness of the artists’ imagination as they were inspired by everyday life. Popular culture carefully recorded all moral changes that appeared at the end of the Victorian era. Moral slackness and women emancipation were constantly reflected in the works of art served to a mass customer. Hence, these works are often an interested record of the history of the changes proceeding in social sphere.
To make this a little enigmatic introduction more intelligible, it is advisable at this point to look at the history of popular music. Much as intellectuals were in the past most biased against this particular manifestation of popular culture, it is a very interesting source of knowledge about the moral changes that affected societies in the previous century.
Musical sensual revolution
History of music can actually be interlaced with history of eroticism. As far back as in antiquity, Plato in his Republic warned against certain kinds of music and their role in evoking erotic visions. Also in antique Hellas, instruments and warm sounds they produced always accompanied sensual dancers and hetaeras. Even before popular music appeared, some outstanding composers were accused of spreading “musical pornography”, Richard Strauss and Dmitrij Szostakowicz among them. The revolution, however, began only in the 1920s due to jazz. Even the name “jazz” was unforgivable as it referred to a slang name for sexual intercourse. Together with this spontaneous music dance floors were entered by new kinds of dances, which shocked the Church authorities and triggered a real flood of brochures warning against dangerous diseases that were to be caused by excessive physical activity. Quick expansion of jazz was also accompanied by profound changes in the spheres of values and behaviors. It was then that a presence of decent ladies in a dance place became natural and a view of a woman smoking and drinking alcohol ceased to cause astonishment (Kuligowski 2003: 182-183). For many, this new music seemed to be a moral virus. No wonder then that an opera maker, Pietro Mascagni, said in an interview: “I consider jazz to be more disastrous and more demoralizing than cocaine or any other narcotic. It is a plague. It has nothing to do with art.” Obviously, Mascagni could not know that this was just a beginning and the real revolution was yet to come in the 1960s, when the “visual” and musical layer of works was joined by equally ”obscene” semantics of lyrics.
In an interesting work Pop Music as a Reflection of Shifts in Societal Views Towards Sex (2004) Jennifer Coyne shows how popular music recorded the changes in the public perception of sex, eroticism, marriage and motherhood. At the beginning of the previous century, when jazz still ruled, there was a tendency to associate sex with love and motherhood, and sexual act taking place beyond this circle was subsumed into prostitution (Coyne 2004: 1). Only in the 50s, together with the invention of the contraception pill, emancipation of women and other changes, sexual pleasure separated from love and marriage, gaining more social acceptance. According to Coyne, the track of these changes is perfectly illustrated by popular music, which should not be treated as an accidental factor influencing moral changes, but rather – a mirror reflecting values and behaviors accepted by societies. Hence basing on her analysis of the lyrics of songs that ruled on American top lists in the second half of the previous century, Coyne draws a history of Eros liberating itself from all constraints.
According to Coyne’s research, in lyrics from the 50s, temptation and lust are still not mentioned and praising love very innocently touches upon physical proximity. Yet, in the 60s the situation changes, the interest in love decreases as emphasis is shifted on physical needs. It is well illustrated by Elvis Presley’s song “It’s now or never”, in which the king of rock and roll sings about uncontrollable physical desire: “It’s now or never/Come hold me tight/Kiss me my darling/Be mine tonight/Tomorrow will be too late/It’s now or never /My love won’t wait.” Reference to physical proximity is still very subtle here and connected to love. Yet, the increase in unequivocal references to sexual behaviors and erotic stimulation continues and only two decades later in Joan Jett and The Blackhearts’ song “I Love Rock’N’Roll” a following confession occurs: “He smiled so I got up and asked for his name/That doesn't matter, he said/‘Cause it's all the same/Said can I take you home where we can be alone/An' next we were movin' on/He was with me, yeah me.” In this case, a close relationship or feelings do not matter, what becomes important is a pure sexual delight. What is also meaningful, is that the desire in this song is expressed by a woman, whose physical needs, so strongly belittled in the past, now appear to be equal to men’s needs.
In the 90s, daring references to sex appeared even in the titles, as for example in Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to you”. Lyrics penetrated intimate world of lovers, and since they did not omit details, they soon became more and more obscene: In “That’s the way love goes” Janet Jackson sings: Baby, I've got on what you like/Come closer/Baby closer/Reach out and feel my body/I'm gonna give you all my love/Ooh sugar don't you hurry/You've got me here all night/just close your eyes and hold on tight/Ooh baby/Don't stop, don't stop/Go deeper/Baby deeper/You feel so good I'm gonna cry/Ooh I'm gonna take you there/That's the way love goes.” Women start talking about their needs louder and louder and collecting sexual experiences, in the past excusable only in the case of young men – and even then “unofficially” – turns into a necessary and accepted behavior of both men and women.
Coyne’s analysis shows perfectly to what extent sexual revolution became ingrained in popular music. Obviously, the most popular songs that ruled on the radio and in the TV added to social “moods”, and not only due to their lyrics but also because of rhythmical, pulsating music and visual part of the entertainment. It is enough to think of Elvis Presley’s “rebellious” hip movements. His sensual dance was censored by means of filming him only from waist up. Nowadays, he is not that controversial anymore because being controversial is now a lot more difficult. Liberated eroticism, now a part of a production machine, demands constant trumping and a constantly shocked audience. Hence, revolution does not progress in decades but rushes so fast that its evolution is observable even in one artist’s lifetime. A good example is American singer Britney Spears, who developed from an innocent teenager to a truly feminine vamp. Even the titles of her songs are meaningful; quite ambiguous words: “Born to make you happy” from the beginning of her career, together with Britney’s transformation into a vamp also change into more telling ones like: “I’m a slave for you.” In the case of Britney, as in the case of other leading artists eroticism, comes to be “self-reflective”, i.e., separated from reality, love and its ascribed transcendence, it is self-definable.
Deprived of its emotional component eroticism enters the production process through which it is transformed into a product suitable only for sensual consumption. It must be, however, once again emphasized that this phenomenon applies not only to popular culture. If we take books of such sociologists as Anthony Giddens or Ulrich Beck, we will find that the same phenomenon is observable in the sphere of the private, where sexual pleasure is growing to be one of the most important values and at the same time – a commodity circulating constantly between the partners in a relationship. Despite its strong emancipation dimension and the fact that it easily transgresses one taboo after another, popular culture still stubbornly watches the changes taking place in the sphere of the public and depends on them. Thus, a question arises whether popular culture also records those more and more frequent critical voices, questioning the achievements of the sexual revolution, increasing individualization and eroticism deprived of its emotional component?
The birth of an androgynous narcissus
The answer to this question is affirmative. It seems that popular culture matures in time and, without losing the ability to observe reality, it can also be self-critical. Obviously, it does not apply to the whole of it or all of its products. It is a phenomenon noticeable somewhere in the suburbs of popular culture, where different values, forms and means of expression mix together. There appear artists who resign from the commonly accepted beauty canon, from the races whose motto is: “who will show more”, and instead they leave space for imagination, let the customer enter the interactive, semantic game of meanings. Such features can be found in the output of many young musical groups as, for instance: Placebo, Suede, or a Polish group Cool Kids of Death. Coming from various places, these three representatives of the young generation do not hide that they are embittered towards the omnipresent culture of narcissism. Fear, alienation and the history of struggles of eroticism freed from former dependencies become then obsessive themes of their lyrics. Sex deprived of feelings does not fascinate but rather grows to be a thing exchanged between two people lost in the city landscape (see: Schmidt, 2002: 75-79). Hence, we will not hear the words fit for Mick Jagger’s „I can’t get know satisfaction.” Since what seems to be lacking is not a sexual satisfaction but a profound feeling. In “Stay together” the leader of Suede sings: “Let's stay together/Two hearts under the skyscrapers/Come to my arms tonight/Just you and me together under electric light.” Alienation begets the need for love but the latter seems unobtainable: “Wedding bells ain't gonna chime/With both of us guilty of crime/And both of us sentenced to time/And now we're all alone” (“Protect me from what I want”, Placebo), or, as in another song of the same group, “Without you”: “I seem to lose the power of speech/You're slipping slowly from my reach/You've never seen the lonely me at all/Without you, I'm nothing.” If feeling at all appears it is very ephemeral and ends up in an intense suffering: “Sucker love is having sent you/ Pucker up our passion's spent/My heart’s a tart your body's rent/My body's broken yours is bent” (“Every you, every me”, Placebo). In the world where it is impossible to distinguish between the true and the false, between reality and simulacrum, love seems to be just another show, as in the Cool Kinds of Death’s (“Especially for TV”): “Can you feel the smell of gasoline/Everything here is going to burn in a while/It‘s going to be a great show/I wonder whether I will have scars after you,” or in the same group’s “Be careful”: “You imagine that this is a film you’re playing in/You know who you must know and who avoid/How to pose to look good in front of the camera/People like me have no chance to get you/I try to convince myself that you’re shity and that I don’t care/But I don’t believe it myself.”
Failures of relationships in these texts are visible against the background of contemporary culture, in which money, connections and a good fun are the greatest values. What cannot be found in such texts are ready solutions, an antidote that would be able to cure poisoned souls. They express, however, a clear opposition to the ideals of the musical movements of the last decades. It is especially evident in Placebo’s “20th century boy”: „Twentieth century boy/I wanna be your toy/Friends say it's fine, friends say it's good/Everybody says it's just like Rock'n'roll.” This ironic text shows that popular culture becomes self-critical, since the intertext of the song is the standard motto of the counter-culture: “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”, undermined and deconstructed by a new generation of musicians. Eroticism in the lyrics of Placebo or Suede has nothing to do with sexual pleasure and an affirmation of sexual freedom worshipped by previous artists. When deprived of love, sexual pleasure sooths the pain only for a while and then – escalates it.
A different face of eroticism is visible also in the visual sphere of popular culture. Androgynous creatures whose sex becomes problematic are now replacing masculine macho figures. The best example of this tendency is the leader of Placebo, Brian Molko, who is not afraid of dresses, feminine hair-styles and make-up. Obviously, Molko does not discover anything new but consciously follows the path trodden by older artists, such as his idol David Bowie. It seems, however, that together with the advent of a new generation, a certain paradigm is broken and a meaning of androgyny changes. David Bowie was undoubtedly a visionary, who putting on a character of an alien Ziggiego Stardust , or making use of other disguises, treated identity as something to wear. His numerous disguises were a part of the spectacle whose aim was to make it impossible to his audience to see a real man in an artist (Kowalczyk 2003: 207). For Brian Molko, his style is not a part of a spectacle but, what he often stresses in interviews, a manifestation of his real, bisexual nature. Molko is child of the times when sexes as opposites are questioned. The thing then is not to keep one’s sex ambiguous and, stimulating the audience’s imagination, encourage them to take part in the game. The image of Placebo’s leader is imbued with eroticism but not the kind of eroticism customers got used to due to half-naked bodies of beautiful female singers and boys-band members. It is the sort of eroticism begotten by semantic “understatement” and “indefiniteness.”
The end
The above short analysis of selected works of popular music shows that the twentieth century deconstruction of industrial society took place not only in the public but also in the private. The symptoms indicating the entrance into a brand new era were profound moral changes, individualization, deconstruction of the relations between the sexes and separation of the three spheres of sex, eroticism and love. Everything, which started in social life, was reflected in popular culture. Pop culture has become a sphere of struggle of different forces. Together with the collapse of repressive culture, it has also become an important advocate of new values and norms. However, the increasing in time moral conformism caused new difficulties to, inseparably connected to culture, eroticism. Since it did not trigger the same reactions as in the past, it had to be more and more provocative and brazen (de Rougemont, 1996: 9-10). This led to a split between eroticism presented in the public, and eroticism hidden in the private sphere. The consequences are easily noticeable: deprived of its emotional element self-reflective eroticism, ideal, often computer-aided bodies – all this contributes to the hyper-reality that surrounds us. It does not, however, mean that the divisions that emerged between the real and the artificial, and the public and the private are insuperable. As it was noticed by Marcus in Eros and civilization, there is an element of eroticism that cannot be involved into production process – and that is imagination. It is our imagination that triggers thrills of desire and makes us perceive a particular thing as desirable. The new artists mentioned above are conscious of the fact. Defying general canons of beauty and deconstructing the myth of the liberated Eros, they look for something beyond the possibility of visualizing sex. Groups like Placebo or Suede are focused mainly on the search of the truth, interactive games, and the fantasy of the audience. As they draw a caricature of contemporary culture, their works grow to be the record of the reality. They become the voice of a new generation, which perceives eroticism in a completely different way, and which would rather see the liberated Eros in relationship to sex and love again. The only question is whether what they express is just an innocent claim or a sign of another serious moral change recorded by popular culture.
Wojciech Wiśniewski
Translated by Grażyna Chamielec
The article comes from the quarterly Kultura Popularna issue no. 1 (15) 2006