Nana The Surgeon Mary
[an interview with Nana Rapeblossom}
Friday, January 15, 2010
They Don't Have a Name for it vol. 9
"When does art become crime? The line between fashion and porn is thinner than a single strand of bleached hair these days. In this fascinating vortex of techrotica, neo-hentai, torture porn, burlesque revival and post Suicide Girls fallout you will see the oiled nymphs, walking that bleached hair tightrope over an abyss of biblical debauchery. The immediacy of social networking systems and new communications technologies have utterly dissolved the safety nets. They have also made it easier for individuals to market themselves, dispelling the stranglehold of ad exec spin doctors and creating miniature vortices of panic in previously omnipotent industries. The Bacchanalian splendor of various entertainment technologies and emerging maverick fashion trends have invented a meat market of excess: An arena where it has become far easier to act on fantasies and push the boundary of acceptable experience due to these push-button technological advances. And so the rudder falls back to its original setting: impeccable taste. After years of having taste dictated to us by established media founts, we are now confronted by a host of self-invented individuals who are redefining the perimeters of dictated taste. Those who have a true sense of urgency about their tastes and a bibliophile’s obsessiveness have clarified the boundaries between those who pretend to knowledge and those who have earned the title through a slow accumulation of knowledge and experience. The average joe is learning about discernment from the fringe lunatic and carnival barker breaking the ’spell of sell’ brick by brick. And this radical redefinition has led to an intense expansion and exploration of subjects which the industries have always dubbed taboo. So when does exploration become violation? The final frontier for this question, however one cuts it, has always been either murder or rape - in their various forms. But these two cul-de-sacs lead to very different dead ends in the dark forest of social taboo. Murder is always defined by a death, and therefore has a material anchor. It’s easy to understand murder as an act. Rape, on the other hand, can be blurred and sometimes even deleted from memory. But the effects are always permanent. So lets now run a finger along the candy glazed razor’s edge of rape as a fashion statement."
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2 comments:
Till now I've only read about this gal through you. Fascinating interview.
Not sure I entirely agree with everything she says but a lot of it seems pretty fuckin spot on. Admittedly, I know way less about the cultural things she speaks of than she does - I've seen Joe Coleman's and Terry Richardson's work but I'm not really "aware" of them because I've a terribly memory for one thing, and I've not sought out their work and digested it. I've also been aware of the "act" of Sasha Grey since I first saw her, yet in spite of her "fuck me fuck me"/existentialist pornstar routine, she still says and does some things that are pretty extreme, and well, turn me on. I mean queefing and looking back at the dude and saying "you hear my pussy talking to you now?" heheh, I can't help but think that's impromptu, and pretty awesome.
Still, it's pretty blatantly obvious that they are totally not in the same category and I appreciate her anger at being compared.
Everything getting watered down is about the sum of the neighborhood I live in; the last ten to fifteen years have seen rampant gentrification and lots of trendy douchebags moving in. It's terribly upsetting, and even more so because it is happening in just about every major big city in America: Portland, Seattle, and New York come to mind readily. I saw an article in The Seattle Stranger that a once beloved block of cool small mom-and-pop businesses were moved using eminent domain to make room for condos. Fucking yuppies are everywhere now, and the great part is they're taking half of their style from the douchy downtown club scene and half from supposed hipsters who've always been cut-rate trendy scenesters.
I'm not sure how that part happened, when I moved into this neighborhood years ago, hipster wasn't a bad word. In fact, it was something you didn't call each other because no one would want the lofty praise of being publicly held up as an example of "cool"; I think mostly because no one thought they could possibly be that cool. There seemed to be a restraint in the crowd that used to hang out around these parts, whereas much of the new jacks seem to think(in their dress and act) that they are just the bee's fucking knees. I hate these assholes a lot, just like I hate most people - so the fact that "their" culture has been tapped is pretty fucking awesome in some ways. There's a few honestly cool people I've met from the new crop, but cultural exploitation and gentrification is nothing new, it happened to indie rock and grunge before it, and shit, metal before it as you well know.
I've been trying hard to let go of my feelings about things like this for quite some time, and it's only recently that I've begun to have small success. It's just terribly hard to watch every nook and cranny be strip mined and ass raped by the big Mr. Marcus dick of the corporate machine and it's shills. And with the new power of the internet(and I'm sure the help of some goatwhore recent-college-grad, blog-reading youth-culture-experts), it's even easier to find and exploit whatever new shit is on the rise...And sell our fat asses back to us at $20 a bar.
Shit, my resolution to let this stuff go on full display :D Fuck all that angry shit, Nana Rapeblossom sounds like one hell of a smart little firecracker and smacks of the same streak as the true individualists of the world. In a pinch, she sounds like she's made of awesome.
yeah i don't agree with everything Madam Rapeblossom says (Sasha Grey is #1 in my spank bank), but i understand her confrontational attitude when she gets mentioned in the same breath as a porn star when there really isn't anything blatantly sexual about Nana's photos. Nana's photos are genuinely artistic, and are only pornographic in the eye of the beholder, where as Sasha Grey (with very minimal exception) is pornography no matter how you slice it. nothing wrong with that, but it's two different worlds.
i agree with you about everything being watered down. that's why i'm always looking for people and things that "push the boundaries" so to speak. even the so-called "underground" feels artificial and manufactured.
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