Madonna's motivation, like most of these body sculptors, is probably entirely conventional; she simply wants to look younger and more beautiful. Rationalising the surgeons' failure to achieve that end as Madonna's intended 'provocation' is to over-theorise her hubris. All this surgical modification does open the door to eugenics though. God help the ugly babies of the future!
I absolutely love Virilio’s writings. People find him opaque but to me he seems crystal clear. I am so happy you are bringing this writer to a wider audience.
I assume the French artist Virilio was talking about was Orlan. She looked so bizarre and synthetic to me in the 90's. Now, googling photos of her, she looks like every other surgeried-up aging star, every post-FFS male. I found this quote from her so interesting:
"My work is a struggle against the innate, the inexorable, the programmed, Nature, DNA (which is our direct rival as far as artists of representation are concerned), and God!".
The struggle against the inexorable seems to fail, as all who struggle by going under the knife end up with the same face. Turns out the doctors with their knives are programmed too.
Such an interesting article! Also weirdly reminiscent of stories like the pygmalion effect, but instead of Aphrodite giving the sculpture life, the ‘ideal’ woman can be carved and imprinted and given life via cosmetics
All this body sculpture as the new eugenics could also be phrased in somewhat retro language: aggression turned against the self which girls/women have been prone to do. Border line psychosis. The fact that mental illness is the companion to techno experimentation or go by its new name is the very definition of current progressivism which seems to offer the bodies of the psychotics for experimentation. It is the lobotomy of the body as art.
This also reminds me of a scene in Sorrentino's The Great Beauty of an "artist" using her body in a vapid attempt at dialectical exchange (and that's a generous interpretation).
The examples of surgical disfigurement reinforce my view that we in the west are in a battle for nature against the reductionism of nihilism and philosophical materialism. We have abandoned the transcendent and are left with the deconstruction of humans remaking themselves according to the self-referential no longer anchored in goodness, truth and beauty. The death of God has brought with it the death of the image of God in mankind. If humans are nothing more than the detritus product of chance in a purposeless universe, why be concerned with the rearranging of the accidents in part or wholesale?
Part of me wonders how much of this was prefigured by the viral “contouring” makeup trends of the 2010s--using makeup in certain ways to put a completely different face shape on yourself. For what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with makeup (to a point) but it seemed like the extremes of it led to some toxic places where self-hatred was put into the market for thousands of strangers online and increased unrealistic social pressures on women. I can’t be the only woman in the world who feels pressured that her face isn’t good enough, that it has to be made to be someone else’s, or to fit in with whatever trend for faces is going on at the moment.
This whole thing is very Clive Barker. My question is this a symptom of the psychopathic dark side of culture and how do we counter it? My instinct is through challenging art but it doesn't feel like the counter movement is strong enough yet.
Superhuman? The future? MM and FF look, um, sorrA, hideous. Madonna looks like she learned nothing from cabala. Mulvaney? He (no, I didn't forget the S) looks like the worst kind of caricature of a female. This is not the future. This is the culmination of the pathologies of the past, and doomed like all such alienated from nature...
- Why do you accept the true nature of how bad men can be and are so okay with it easily? How did you make peace with believing men being superior and more capable+better at doing more things than women and how unfair it is?
- Why do men only love women who give up power, autonomy and their whole self to them, hence the demand for obedient and submissive females to date only? Is it worth giving up for an average man to have more power over you?
- why can men only love a woman who gives him power over her, hence their saying "only love her if she submissive" quote? Isn't that kind of "true" love conditional?
- how can you be so scared of men and yet want to leech power and protection and their usability/labour off of them by LARPing as "please take me as eligible for the boys club" or "NLOG antifeminist"?
- how can you only admit the true nature of men in regards to trans women being rapey and violent yet claim that "men can be good and self controlled if we comply & submit" and "not all men"? Why not obey the trans women who are Assigned Male At Birth too?
I am reminded of feeling so very sad upon watching a recent interview with Dolly Parton, thinking "What a beautiful old woman's face she could have had." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffo9b6HgaBw
Madonna's motivation, like most of these body sculptors, is probably entirely conventional; she simply wants to look younger and more beautiful. Rationalising the surgeons' failure to achieve that end as Madonna's intended 'provocation' is to over-theorise her hubris. All this surgical modification does open the door to eugenics though. God help the ugly babies of the future!
I absolutely love Virilio’s writings. People find him opaque but to me he seems crystal clear. I am so happy you are bringing this writer to a wider audience.
I assume the French artist Virilio was talking about was Orlan. She looked so bizarre and synthetic to me in the 90's. Now, googling photos of her, she looks like every other surgeried-up aging star, every post-FFS male. I found this quote from her so interesting:
"My work is a struggle against the innate, the inexorable, the programmed, Nature, DNA (which is our direct rival as far as artists of representation are concerned), and God!".
The struggle against the inexorable seems to fail, as all who struggle by going under the knife end up with the same face. Turns out the doctors with their knives are programmed too.
Such an interesting article! Also weirdly reminiscent of stories like the pygmalion effect, but instead of Aphrodite giving the sculpture life, the ‘ideal’ woman can be carved and imprinted and given life via cosmetics
All this body sculpture as the new eugenics could also be phrased in somewhat retro language: aggression turned against the self which girls/women have been prone to do. Border line psychosis. The fact that mental illness is the companion to techno experimentation or go by its new name is the very definition of current progressivism which seems to offer the bodies of the psychotics for experimentation. It is the lobotomy of the body as art.
One needs a strong stomach to endure the nausea induced by these horrifying plastic flesh sculptures.
This also reminds me of a scene in Sorrentino's The Great Beauty of an "artist" using her body in a vapid attempt at dialectical exchange (and that's a generous interpretation).
The examples of surgical disfigurement reinforce my view that we in the west are in a battle for nature against the reductionism of nihilism and philosophical materialism. We have abandoned the transcendent and are left with the deconstruction of humans remaking themselves according to the self-referential no longer anchored in goodness, truth and beauty. The death of God has brought with it the death of the image of God in mankind. If humans are nothing more than the detritus product of chance in a purposeless universe, why be concerned with the rearranging of the accidents in part or wholesale?
Part of me wonders how much of this was prefigured by the viral “contouring” makeup trends of the 2010s--using makeup in certain ways to put a completely different face shape on yourself. For what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with makeup (to a point) but it seemed like the extremes of it led to some toxic places where self-hatred was put into the market for thousands of strangers online and increased unrealistic social pressures on women. I can’t be the only woman in the world who feels pressured that her face isn’t good enough, that it has to be made to be someone else’s, or to fit in with whatever trend for faces is going on at the moment.
This whole thing is very Clive Barker. My question is this a symptom of the psychopathic dark side of culture and how do we counter it? My instinct is through challenging art but it doesn't feel like the counter movement is strong enough yet.
Superhuman? The future? MM and FF look, um, sorrA, hideous. Madonna looks like she learned nothing from cabala. Mulvaney? He (no, I didn't forget the S) looks like the worst kind of caricature of a female. This is not the future. This is the culmination of the pathologies of the past, and doomed like all such alienated from nature...
Questions for antifeminist women:
- Why do you accept the true nature of how bad men can be and are so okay with it easily? How did you make peace with believing men being superior and more capable+better at doing more things than women and how unfair it is?
- Why do men only love women who give up power, autonomy and their whole self to them, hence the demand for obedient and submissive females to date only? Is it worth giving up for an average man to have more power over you?
- why can men only love a woman who gives him power over her, hence their saying "only love her if she submissive" quote? Isn't that kind of "true" love conditional?
- how can you be so scared of men and yet want to leech power and protection and their usability/labour off of them by LARPing as "please take me as eligible for the boys club" or "NLOG antifeminist"?
- how can you only admit the true nature of men in regards to trans women being rapey and violent yet claim that "men can be good and self controlled if we comply & submit" and "not all men"? Why not obey the trans women who are Assigned Male At Birth too?
very good article. I like especially the final insight, that all this is about a post-print politics, a politics of our hybrid virtuality.
I am reminded of feeling so very sad upon watching a recent interview with Dolly Parton, thinking "What a beautiful old woman's face she could have had." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffo9b6HgaBw
Virilio, yes!!!
Over the top modifications - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWxyPvcWxVM