Rise Above #4: What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?
Celebrating the body, and explicit discussion about it, ought to not only make us more comfortable with celebrating its natural beauty and functions, but also less squeamish when it comes to seeing the suffering body. I wonder what will happen, as “honest” talk about bodily functions becomes routine even on Cartoon Network? For a culture that fears death and illness and tries to pretend that imperfection is only suitable for freak shows, will easing up on censoring language and image create more compassion or more derision? Do all the commercials for illnesses, pills, and class action law suits now remind us of our common flaws and even odds of having something devastating happen to us, or do they just give us comic relief, the emphasis being on “relief,” that other people are fucked up and deserving derision, and that it isn’t our turn yet? I think that is what drives ridicule culture the most: even while laughing at the obese kid, the “English First” protesters with the misspelled signs, the pregnant teen with one eye or the 2 ton dude, we know that we too are a commodity.
When Warhol talked about everyone’s fifteen, he didn’t consider the difference between the comic and the jester. The comic is a holy, dangerous office, the contrarian, the fearless smartass that exposes the hypocrisy of inflated egos and the absurdity of life in general. The comic offers insight, confrontation with hard truths, catharsis, the comfort of knowing that we aren’t the only one who notices those incongruities. That comfort is the comfort of community, of possibility of change, of the strength to see life as it is, not as we think it is as we passively glide through our day.
The jester also tells the truth, but is not dangerous, because he is on the payroll. Like at a celebrity roast, the jester “speaks truth to power” because he is allowed to, because the king knows that the jester is totally without the power to bring any change along with his rant. His context already reveals his impotence before he even opens his mouth: the silly suit with the jingle bell hat; the angry man who one day talks tough, the next day cashes his checks for the truck commercials he does. If four companies own all media, even the most devastating criticism has to be approved by the board to be aired at all.
So where do you go? How do you feel about it? What joys do you feel when you look at your lover, warts and all? What are you uncomfortable talking about when you stand naked in front of the mirror? Does all that stuff on TV I’m ranting about mean anything? Whitman spoke about those things; so did Marvin Gaye, Van Morrison and, yes, the Fugs and the Mothers who, disguised in sophomoric garb and a fixation on bodily functions, sang with rage and compassion for the body as is, mocking our fears of it and mocking the way we forsake the holiness of it for its use to sell product.
A stretch? Is a song about shitting your pants any more vulgar than talking about wanting to be pampered by toilet paper when you wipe yourself? For me the latter is more offensive because, while using the language of honesty, still makes the body secondary to the product. The point is not people keeping it real, it is about selling the TP. Like porn, the bodies are there to inspire the need that can be fulfilled by spending money. At least raunchy songs like those by Zappa, the Fugs or Blowfly referred matter of factly to the body as the body, absurd and flawed and beset by immature expectations of it, but also of its potential for pleasure and intimacy. The body is as real in them as it is in songs like “Sexual Healing” or “Come Here My Love;” speaking frankly about the body, even about tits and beer, assumes the listener is an adult not afraid to hear such raw descriptions of real life. Cottonelle exposes the body only to show exactly where their product belongs.
I realize that I am writing this during a time when the “Smell and Sniff” Honey Boo-Boo episode and “The man with the 132 pound scrotum” are fouling the air (anyone remember when TLC stood for The Learning Channel?), so I’m not sure if this column is going to state the obvious or not. But just what is the state of satire today? Where is its power when the most watched shows of the week will feature the ability to smell the farts of an obese child or to gander at a guy with another human for balls? John Waters, hell, even Luis Bunuel, wouldn’t have a chance, when the potential objects of derision or righteous outrage are too over the top for parody. In 1971, Waters would probably think that getting a commercial on the air where women talk about how pampered they need to feel when they wipe their asses would be a subversive’s dream come true. Now such a missive is shown during commercials during kid’s shows. Maybe that is the victory of the lowest common denominator: as they defuse provocative art by co-opting it, mass media can now create such squalid content that parody seems more jealousy than outrage. Info-heads are wise to read Thomas Frank for more on this corporate highjack of the edgy and cool, but I’m going on with it anyway. The point is: the powers that be have clued in: we no longer use squalid outrageous images to expose the hidden absurdities of culture: we want that culture, as raw and degrading as an Ad Man can pinch it out.
Maybe it was the satire itself that caused the majority to surrender to trash. Maybe Python, Chevy Chase, Peter Cook, Carlin, Richard Pryor, etc, hit the nail on the head too many times until outrage became cynicism became a taste for the crash and anti-human aspects of American pop. Ted Baxter has replaced Cronkite as role model; Babs Johnson in, Jackie O out.
It is inevitable that in the nursing home someday I’ll still be able to laugh to “Bobby Brown,” “Catholic Girls” and “Coca-cola Douche,” and not care that much younger staff will just think I’m talking the gibberish of a senile old man. If I am dropping those lyrics with any degree of consciousness, I’ll be able to get away with injecting a lot of subversive thought into the daily routine of eating, shitting and wanting to home. God help them if I remember anything by The Fugs or Last Poets!
The Fugs, lead by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, also satirized America, but by meeting its obscenity head-on with even more obscenity, mingled with Visionary poetry and a true Romantic heart. Isn’t that the point of celebrating the body and being open about its realities, good and gory? Having a public language that is course and shrill and profane, yet using it merely to sell products and hate on any dissenting opinion is a disconnect that is soul-sucking if you really think about it. The sarcasm and rage of punk, dark humor, outrage of good satire — the outrage of seeing obscenity accepted and absorbed mindlessly and purchased — inequalities we ignore, propaganda we swallow.
To try and be far more obscene than the obscenity of media, used to draw attention, to shock — Steve Jones saying “fucking wanker” on live TV in ’76 —that strategy is just impotent today.
You could turn off the TV or maybe you could sing your own songs, taking back some of the language of the mud and glory of real life for yourself. Or you could not speak at all, and use your fearlessness of the body as it is to be of use to other people. An extreme but apt example: The Aghori are a Hindu sect whose primary practice is embracing death. They sleep in cemeteries, adorn themselves with bones and ash, drink from skulls, etc. Cannibalism and scatological rituals (and probably mental illness) are among the more tame rumors that surround them. In the last couple decades, though, there has been part of an amazing and profound new dimension to their practice. They have practiced healing and comfort in hospitals, clinics and respite areas for those with AIDS, leprosy and other diseases that make those who suffer from them outcasts and pariahs even in India. Totally comfortable with the body and its decay, Aghori fearlessly provide touch and comfort to those with weeping sores, bleeding orifices and wasted bodies. In their rites they believe they are literally taking on the pollution and disease that afflicts the bodies in front of them, and releasing them of their pain. In their compassion, they are releasing patients from some of the shame and embarrassment of being isolated by bodies no one wants to see. Let’s say, then, that Aghoris “got real about what happens in the bathroom” in ways corporations would never contemplate.
So here we are. What can you say to those toilet paper obsessed women, those poor bastards paraded across TLC? We can show shitting cartoon bears with hanging dingleberries who romp in the fields, lots of crying during divas freakouts on reality shows, but real Pain and Suffering are for abused animal commercials, foreign kids to sponsor or people bombed in lands that hate our freedom. Advertising is seemingly pushing the envelope in the name of getting real, when all it is doing is make us ever more insensitive to the bodies they have so brilliantly convinced us will never be ours.
