On the contrary...

I'm pretty open and wiling to step up when it comes to "lengthy" dinner conversations. I can be pretty "flexible." But I appreciate the guts it takes to say "no thanks," and then to document the process. While reading your article, something started to twinge about the title: the "for me" part seems a tad laden.

I personally disagree with you about discretion among non-super-close friends in that such discretion can, when practiced communally, breed a repression of thought and exploration with regard to these issues. If you can't talk about it, all you have left is to try it or not, in silence, alone. No good.

BUT, these issues' place in the media is ripe for argument, and I find I agree with you. Media is something other than community, and combined with the "for me," of "talk dirty," I am alerted to a growing sense, sort of a turn toward voyeurism (almost echoing a sort of Red Light Roman Colliseum) in the media that I don't like at all.

So I guess my feeling is:
Talk about it all you like. Don't ask me to talk about it so you can get off on it.

Well done! I enjoyed the read, and as a result of your writing, I find my own thoughts a bit clearer.

my thanks!
Chris

Gotta luv that last line.

After years of self-consciously trying to purge our Anglo-Saxon anal retentive cultural inheritance, I agree it’s time pop culture gets a sphincter transplant in order to restore some modicum of continence. The proverbial stiff upper lip has some virtues. Too much anal expulsion for its own sake can’t be a good thing!

Fun article.

I wonder how she feels writing about real dirt, like fraud, crime, murder, wars, CN Rail, Terasen, etc.

We all coo and drool over babies, but writing about, or depicting how they got in and out of whatever it is called, is "dirty" and our sainted mothers would never have have done.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

I welcome articles like this one in the Tyee as it most unlikely that someone will cite a neocon conspiracy. It might even give Mr Irwin a needed rest.

Once a local magazine became interested in a story involving a young model who had thrown herself from a roof (and survived) and her mentor a woman with MS who was going blind. The editor of the publication told me to come back as soon as one or the other had died. "That will make a great story," the editor told me. Fortunately I never had a desire to expose the publication or the editor. Some things are better left unwritten. If that makes me a retentive that is just fine. I have a memory of a local writer having written for a city publication about his/her masturbation. Our city has a short memory for this sort of thing.

In a photographic exhibition in my recent past I had two narratives (of 6 photos each) featuring tight portraits of two individual women in the process of achieving auto-induced orgasm. I poured over the contact sheets and picked (a complete guess as we men never really know) some pictures before and after and tried to nail The One. Many of the men who attended the exhibition thought I had photographed women sitting in the toilet. I remember that the Official City Gossip Columnist arrived with a pleasant Portuguese woman who knew exactly what I had on the wall. I told her that I had to guess which photos to chose. She told me, "My men never have to guess, they know." The biggest surprise of the evening for me came when several women I knew showed disappointment in that I had not asked them to pose for me in the act.

Keep an eye on the author while you're at it. She has a history of flaming readers who dissagree with her.

The author of the article or the author of the flame?;-)

Pssst! http://www.beautifulagony.com

how true.

the reason i do not have tv is the proliferation of reality shows.

springer, montel, dr phil, and first and biggest oprah, all make me sick.

likewise; american/canadian gong show, survivor, trump and martha, and screwups, hasbeens, neverweres, and assorted other ego trippers, living in the same house, to be voted out by morons who watch, then pay money to vote.

every one is in it for the money, especially the producers, considering they charge the going rate for their work, and the expenses are infinitesimal compared to an unreality show.

talk ablut the decline of the empire.

talk about the decline, too.

Alex wrote:

If you believe this was art, did you ask any mento do this? Or, like the 'Heroines' series of photos of only women, is there required a specific dynamic that naturally occurs between the sexes which, in essence, is sexual and related to broader issues of power and notions of privilege?

Don't mean to be PC. Just wondering.

Dear Skip,

I never mentioned that anything I had done was art. On the other hand if I choose to take photos for a photographic show (and I am not a politician, teacher, etc) I can shoot and place in that show what I like, be it PC or not. I happen to like and love women. That is why I then photographed and still photograph women. Have a look right here in our Tyee at:
http://www.thetyee.ca/Photo/2004/03/22/Paid_to_See_All/

Which is the same mantra used by the photographer of Heroines while avoiding deeper discussion of the issues his series raised. You show your work in art galleries and it seems you value that context. So I assumed you feel that the image of the woman is art. I'm sure its lovely in any case...and certainly in a "tradition" of sorts.

The link I posted was pulled from a recent news story that raised debate over whether simply depicting the human face during orgasm could be viewed as art or merely a titilatng voyeuristic excercise. It seems several videoclips from the site were used in a videowall collage and put on public display at an "Art Fair". But the site is clearly a pay site with sexual interest. I'm guessing its the level of craft that would "elevate" it to "art".

But then, througout history, art has taken many perverse and titilating detours to escape the kind of puritanical tyranny that is still with us today. The fact that we are saturated with a burst of embarassing (for some) confessional and revealing media concoctions is perhaps a sign that we may be slowly moving to a place where nobody cares what we think or do sexually. And that might be a fine thing.

"As for the other approach, if I'm going to engage in that kind of writing, I intend to get paid the equivalent of what Anais Nin made for writing Delta of Venus AND do it under a pseudonym."

in case anyone was wondering--anais nin got paid $1 per page of erotica by an anonymous patron in the 1940s for the erotica collected in Delta of Venus. most royalties from their eventual publication came after her death in 1977.

So, was this the article on masturbation? Was the editor impressed with your light touch? He's right that a male reporter would have taken an entirely different angle....

Thanks Tyee for printing this perfect example of flaccid journalism. Rupp could have made her point (I think she had a point?) in 200 words rather than wanking on for 1500... I would call this 'bimbo journalism lite'...

Ihooq: I cannot understand the motivation of so many commentators of the Tyee (whose credentials or even their real names we in most cases do not know) who sit on a fence and throw barbs and rotten eggs at writers who write stuff that you would never see in the mainstream media. I happen to know Shannon Rupp as I worked with her (as a photographer) when she wrote for the Globe. Bimbo would be the last word I would use to describe her.

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Shannon’s non-story on masturbation rubbed me the right way, but don’t get a big head over it!

Hi Foley! Good point!

However, this time I will only profusely praise Ms. Rupp's article!
I must admit that I did like the article this time.

On the other hand, what's so bad about the government getting into our bedrooms! Maybe Stephen Harper has some good sex advice, or can hook me up with a good date!
I can see it now..."Stephen Harper's Dating Service For Those Who Believe in Servitude to God and Man (not necessarily in that order)."
or..
"The Christian Guide to Good Sex: the Missionary Position Is Heavenly!"

Kevan Hudson

Shannon, you just keep on writing dirty like that. I say it's great writing and I do encourage you to bring more of this content to Tyee.

Ignore the cheap shots. Most of it is fear based anyway.

Commentary, laced with humour, wins every time with my bookie.

Agreed (allan) - keep it up, Shannon.

That aside, I find it interesting how discussions of sex and/or art on the Left inevitably tailspin into the standard p.c. mantras of ideology & power. I sometimes wonder if the true Left is capable of perceiving art & culture (let alone sexuality) separately from its universal class-race-gender grid that allegedly represents our society's ambient power dynamics.

"Nightbloom" Lovely euphemism! ;-)

The "true" Left? What's that? What "grid"? Those who are educated on "The Right" acknowledges these factors (class/race/gender) in their appreciation or criticism of art and culture. It is not necessarily PC by any stretch. Its a fluid game now.

The demand for artists to replicate ideologically 'correct' messaging and representation almost invariably originates from the Left, whether it's language, visual arts or what have you. If you need examples, we can start with the pillaging of the English Departments and work our way through the entire spectrum of the humanities.

I distinctly remember a cadre of womyn's studies majors in my first-year 'English & Continental Texts' course working their way through the entire syllabus with red markers, highlighting the perceived sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc. that they found in those pages (this was in the heyday of campus political correctness).

The Left is responsible for turning the entire Western Canon into nothing more than a dreary catologue of misogyny, patriarchy, and racism. The Left has yet to develop and integrate into its worldview a mature concept of 'Beauty'.

The only notable exceptions of this pattern that comes to mind occurs when artists tackle religion or male sexuality. For example, the outcry from conservatives against the tax-funded display of an artist's representation of the Virgin Mary using multi-hued shit, or the criticism of Orthodox Rabbis of Disney's immodest representation of 'Tarzan' in its animated film of that name (I had to laugh at that one...apparently Tarzan's loincloth was too short, his loins & thighs overdeveloped, and he was endowed with a modest 'bulge' that hinted at lifelike anatomy beneath the loincloth).

1989 - 1991?

I guess you skipped the class on the origins of fascism and the role of the Futurists in pre-war Italy. Or you've missed a zillion examples of public art squabbles under the Bush regime in the US. Or...shall I go on?

Why don't you try and define it here (slightly abridged is OK)?

So you're drawing an analogy between European fascism and 'mainstream' Left censoriousness & speech-codes. That's unexpected, but I can see the connection....Gross exceptions do not disprove the norm, however. From the first Jacobin Terror to the slow-motion purge of university faculties in our own time, the Left has always sought to remake society in its own image, one way or another. At its worst (not its best...we can talk about that too) the Left almost seems to want to accomplish (in incremental steps) what the French Revolution sought to do within the space of a few years.

Beauty - it once didn't require definition, only examples. Beauty is what connects us to what is immortal within and around us. It causes a person's inner flame to wax & reflect (for a moment) the unadultered light that gives us meaning.

Good enough?

You'll never find that kind of interpretation on the Left. Much as I sympathize with some of its political goals (redressing systemic inequalities through public policy), it attempts too much when it ventures outside of the political sphere. Art makes great politics, but politics make poor art. The Left seems to have a much harder time accepting this.

By 1941 In Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm was equating (or finding little difference) between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. Hitler "gave" us degenerate art and Shostakovich had his own problems. And yes I have heard from the horse's mouth how Picasso is first judged as a man (a terrible man) and so his art then is inconsequential in some classes at Vancouver's Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.

What scares me more than this argument of political correctness on the left or on the right is that many of of those who write commentaries here equate culture such as opera, dance, ballet, symphony music and theatre as elitist. For them, in their fastness of Prince George, or other cities and towns of the interior, the only culture is the culture that is available to them. This culture/art must therefore come by either satellite or cable, and it is seen on TV or the movie screen. Books don't seem to be part of this "culture". Thus the polarization in art/culture is not a left wing or right wing but one of either elitist (only a few can get it or can be exposed to it) and those who cannot get it.

I don't think class is the impediment to accessing culture.

We no longer perceive it. We've jettisoned any standard for picking it out from the ambient noise. We lack the tools to recognize it, largely because public and university education is now absorbed doing something other than what they were originally intended to do. We're now very susceptible to marketing that sells us shit while convincing us it's good. There's no defence mechanism...except whithering skepticism (another trademark of the Left, I'm afraid) or cultural separatism (the Christian Right).

You're right to focus on the artificial myopic of the small & big screen. The Western Eye began to dim with the arrival of the camera lens, giving us the means of effortlessly capturing what artists from the cave-painters to the Raphaelites could never give us: the literal Perfect Image. It wasn't about the art anymore (someone cue Marshal McLuhan, please). Art was diverted into perverse dead-end adaptations (Dadaism, Cubism, etc.). That alone wasn't enough to do it in though: when technology met mass commercialism, it was Andy Warhol who delivered the coup de grâce to High Art. The advent of motion photography & the rise of the big budget film industry grossly warped consciousness and narrative (not to mention attention spans), and interactive video games are doing them all in while keeping us on a steady addictive stream of dopamine & adrenalin.

I think the loss of a common culture (whatever human flaws that culture may have possessed) is why things have become so schismatic now. Anyone who reached puberty before 1980 can see it (and the difference is even more stark for our parents). It's bewildering. The astonishing proliferation of sub-cultures within mainstream society today has never really been studied as a trend (to my knowledge). We're surrounded by unconsciously-driven "separatist movements" - It's not a Culture War anymore, it's simple anarchy with no common frame of reference, and no dialogue because we've all got our iPods to keep us company.

But I think I've slipped off-topic somewhere...

nightbloom you may have slipped off-topic but it is easy to bring it back. If anything Rupp's article is all about how the repressed good taste of the 19th century and the 20th has been replaced by a rampant sensationalism in which in order to shock we must find subjects that are taboo. Few if any are left in 2005 to write about. Case in point is the beautifully bound copy of Toni Bentley's The Surrender that graces one of my bookshelves. This non fiction explanation of the wonders of anal sex by a former Balanchine ballerina made the NY Times bestseller list and shortly after, Bentley became a regular book reviewer for the NY Times. I offered to review the book for the folks at the Vancouver Sun when it came out. They declined.

So many billowing assertions, so little time. But my primary objection to "Nightbloom" is this (essential) nugget:

That's the essence of your postings here: you let "the Right" completely off the hook, forgetting that "the Right" (mainstream, Christian or otherwise) has been using every trick in the book (via the courts, media, educational/religious institutions, language etc.) for ages to do exactly as the big bad left (who uspet you so in one particular phase of university history) did and do.
And sub-cultures have been studied to death. Invariably they are subsumed into the broader culture. Christianity is a good example. And we all know what pure beauty the servants of Christianity created (when not dodging nasty edicts from the church) You sound overwhelmed by modern life, a little adrift without your classical canon to keep you company. Sure. Modern life is overwhelming. People are selfish and indulgent. They abuse their freedoms. But it was always so. And there was never truly a "common culture" here unless you were an Anglo Canadian, by default inheriting the European model. And there was certainly never a meaningful, broad and common interest and dialogue regarding art and culture. Look at most established Canadian painters' work: all romantic, idealized landscapes. "Risk averse" "good taste" art. Ever checked the art collections in most corporate boardrooms in Canada? Its about investment, not beauty. People here only buy safe art rooted in the past. What has the Right ever done for art and beauty? Many misguided but talented artists have dabbled in Marxism and romanticised leftist terror cells or championed the resistance in the Spanish civil war etc. The Futurists were fascists. Mussolini defined the movement as the perfect merger of corporate and government values. So, Nightbloom, please spread your criticism around a little more. The world has always been in a state of anarchy and beauty, art, good taste and "the Right", like everything else, has not mattered a bit in the face of it.

You're wrong on almost all counts, skip.

You're particularly erroneous in your attempt to psychologize my statements on this thread. I am (was) neither 'upset', 'overwhelmed' nor 'adrift'. Not sure what you've been reading... Thanx for the concern tho - you're cute.

I'll grant you this: the 'Western Canon' as such is a contruct - a meme intended to represent an overlapping (and often conflicting) cultural evolution. Of course the notion of a unified "Plato-to-Nato" Western Monolith is pure contingency. For the purposes of a brief discussion, though, the representation is useful to avoid unproductive & lengthy diversions. Suffice to say: there is a hard bundle of uninterrupted cultural threads running straight through history from our Hebraic and Greek origins to the present day.

Having said that, you're just incorrect in your assertion that there was never a common culture in the West. In fact, there still is. The only time there wasn't was when general collapse caused it to retreat into the monasteries (where it was preserved). That doesn't mean there wasn't massive diversity within that tradition however.

The Fascists were populists in league with panicked elites (military and corporate), not Futurists. This varied somewhat from country to country (Vichy France was a clear alliance of military, church and finance; Hitlerite Germany an uneasy alliance of worker/peasant, military, industry and landowners...I've always been struck by the diametric opposition expreseed in the Vichy slogan Travail, Famille, Patrie in answer to the Revolutionary call of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité).

This assertion is puzzling and counter-factual. From Plato's Symposium & Aristotle's On Poety & Style to the frenzied proliferation of blogging communities, the dialogue has been ongoing & non-stop and rigorous, whether you're willing to join it or not.

That's your example? - 'office art' and the Group of Seven? Both reinforce my point. As I said, politics makes for poor art. The use of the Group of Seven in public schools to prop up a manufactured national identity & self-image is misguided. And the banality of 'inoffensive' corporate (and public!) art is also a statement of on the nullifying influence of politics/ideology on artistic expression and common sensitivities.

Your posts, actually. Its obvious you're unhappy with the PC wars at university. I agree with you that it was an ugly thing. You explicitly mentioned "bewiderment" and a sense of feeling "surrounded". Sorry if I took you literally.

In re-reading your posts you assert that there isn't. Make up your mind. Its clear you seem to mourn this "loss" suggesting everything is fragmented to the detriment of our culture as a whole.

Are you telling me the Futurist movement did not initially align itself with these elites? If so, we must have read different history texts.

True. But who is able and willing to join? And the west has dismissed many other culture's models of engaging with the world. Only now do we have a positive "anarchy" and ability to build communications bridges to broaden the dialogue.

Finally, a ray of light. You do see my point after all, only you seem unwilling to concede that the damaging effect can come from "the Right" as well. Or do you believe that "the Right" exists entirely outside of and above the dominant, corporate mindset?

What you need to do, seeing as you refer to "the (capital 'L') Left" is define "the Right."

I was a happy kid at university - I simply disagreed with some of the things that were happening at the time. I was hardly alone in realizing that much of value was being blackwashed. It's simple fact that this effort was originating from a radical and belligerent Left (they were beyond belligerent - and not just at my university). I suppose it was a pendulum-motion that had to occur at that time, but I was relieved when it began to approach a common centre once again.

It's what happens when ideology goes too far and seeks to overthrow the other counterweights in society. There are grievous examples on the Right, but the Right has not adopted this programme as an article of faith. Moreover, it is often other components of the Right which offer the most steadfast resistance (i.e. for example, the Roman Catholic Church in Nazi Germany....media assassinations of Pius XII aside). It has always been present within the hard Left (but not within its Lassallean social democratic wing, which sought to work within the emerging state structures).

There is still a common culture. Sometimes it surfaces with fascinating perversity in pop culture. But it is being obscured, and risks becoming the exclusive hobby-horse of antiquarians.

I am not, nor was ever, an apologist for the Right. When it comes to art, literature & culture however....Who has been repeatedly telling us how to speak, write, think, and act over the last four decades? If it's the Right (it isn't), they haven't done a very good job of it.

You're offering 'office art' as an example of conservative art appreciation? That's funny.

Debating the definition of the Right would make a fascinating thread in itself. Isn't that the great battle now - who gets to define the Right? The Left has made great gains with a blanket misapplication of "neo-conservative". You go first.

By way of addendum, I should probably balance my comments on Fascism by acknowledging that the Left formed the backbone of the resistance to fascism in Europe. That is undeniable, and one of the key reasons for the Right's post-war credibility gap (to understate the matter slightly).

This conversation needs a drink! ;-)

But I'll cherry pick a couple of things here:

It's not for lack of trying, particularly in the U.S.

Actually, having had privileged access to see serious corporate collections in Vancouver, I can assure you the tastes are conservative and rooted in the past. You dislike Warhol. I know of two local companies who've collected his work. One piece is merely a dollar sign in Warhol's trademark style. I recently spoke to one specialist in the transport and handling of fine art works whose clients are local corporate collectors who says the biggest name is still Takao Tanabe. Beautiful work...but not a very contemporary or daring choice. And that beautiful landscape...still unmitigated by the appetites of industry and development.

And all this talk stemming from the subject of masturbation! ;-)

My thoughts exactly. I was actually starting to feel guilty for 'hijacking' the thread away from Shannon's article [sorry Shannon!].

I don't think the conservatives have been nearly as tenacious or effective at this as the Left has been. The Right has been fighting a losing rearguard action for a long time now. Really, the Left has won every major battle in the public sphere in my lifetime. The current attempt by the Evangelical Right to refight lost battles ("intelligent design"...which even the Vatican has sensibly poo-poo'd) shows a certain desperation. The current state of affairs under Bush is transient - it's another pendulum whose schizoid motions must be persevered for the time being.

alexwh made a valiant attempt to restore the original topic to the thread:

Well the repressed "good taste" of the 19th Century also kept nasty scenes of abuse and dysfunction behind closed doors. At least watching episodes of Jerry Springer alert us to...shall we say, a fuller understanding of how demented human relations are in some quarters. Now, hold your nose and repeat after me: "This too shall pass!"

nightbloom -

I haven't read everything you wrote (I read this one

and the next )

but I just want to say I TOTALLLYYY agree with you, and while I know lots of people who won't be dragged into that kind of thinking, I do believe a lot of people do. I am SO glad that someone has said this and described it so much in its entirety.

As to the fascism of the Right, I agree with Skip Tracer and I agree that the Right is messed up in terms of their sexuality, although I'm glad that nightbloom is addressing this issue as well - that is, the problem of the left with sexuality, art, etc.

It is an issue I find even more important because it is about us; what s/he is raising is actually a problem that we can diagnose, a problem immediate to us. In addition to this issue on art there's countless other things (okay, a few), such as the "Christmas" thing in the US right now.

Personally as a Chinese, I find it a little disconcerting sometimes when I agree with "the right" more than the left, even though it has always been minor issues.

It seems like my cousin in the states, who is a Republican, is partially fueled agains the left because of these "minor stupidities" the left makes sometimes, which they then link to the major issues in terms of "leftwing/rightwing tendencies" etc. (though I guess the main thing is still our fundamental disagreement on Iraq) Once I showed him a "Free Speech Zone" article, and while discussing it in email, with him defending Bush's right to segregate the crowd, he wrote to me about Christmas and why the left is wrong about it! Amusing.