What’s your idea of artistic outrage? Eating fresh shit from a dead, aborted foetus used as a plate?
Or mass, after-hours necrophilia in a morgue, watched by a delighted, avant-garde addicted audience? After all, surely the dead – while not yet buried – should have their final, sexual wishes respected too? And heaven knows, it’s so very easy to misread some gorgeous corpse’s rigor mortis glare as a slyly sexual, come-hither stare!
So, does it matter if art – meaning any form of artistic expression – observes any boundaries, and indeed, should there be any expressive limits at all? Surely, in a society choked by increasing surveillance, censorship and control, any radical dissent should be welcomed, like the scathing satires of Swift and Voltaire?
Which brings us neatly to Manchester’s Savoy Books and Records, arguably once the most extreme satirists in England. Never heard of them? Oh, darlings, where have you been? Skimming the contents of toilet bowls in search of tasty treats, and other such lofty pursuits? My advice? Aim higher – instead, let me welcome you to the profoundly disturbing, shockingly provocative mindfucks of Lord Horror, Savoy’s irredeemable anti-hero chronicled in six, utterly transgressive novels.
Sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin – author David Britton’s first Lord Horror novel was subjected to official police book-burning in 1989, and Britton himself jailed, in events reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Believing in total freedom of expression, Britton created Lord Horror, a manically psychopathic, serial killer aristocrat set in an alternative take on World War 2 told from Horror’s perspective.
Yeah, but so what? Haven’t there been thousands of atrocity fictions? Ah, but Horror’s portrayed as a Nazi sympathizer, and author Britton dangerously attempts to deconstruct the foul appeal of Farage/Trump proto-fascism by having Horror shoot smack with and fuck Hitler, complete with watching sex dwarves!
Well, duh, it’s one way to demystify ultimate evil, but the sequel – charmingly titled Motherfuckers – introduces us to Meng, an ape-like transsexual with triple-F tits and a sex-drive straight out of Royston Vasey! Screwing straights, gays and in-betweenies indiscriminately, he’s used, by Britton, as a Tourette’s assault on political correctness, spraying out offensiveness in a Tarantino blizzard of unacceptable slurs!
Sigh. I guess – in mitigation – Britton’s exploring the path pioneered by Lenny Bruce, the long-deceased but acclaimed, late 1950s alternative comedian. Clumsily, Bruce tried to puncture the mystique of the taboos surrounding slurs, to negate and erase their power by constant, casual repetition, making them unremarkable, sting-free ordinary speech. Did it work? Did it fuck! See, vicious slurs directed from a platform of white power privilege are always offensive, utterly different from their colloquial use within minority groups!
Sure, as prose, Motherfuckers is seductively synaesthetic, and the delicate stench of simmering cunts and hair-trigger cocks perfumes every nuance of Britton’s gorgeously baroque, verbal cluster-fucks. But, the imagery’s far too irresponsible, and although sexually ridiculing Hitler is always good news, and Meng’s multi-sexual escapades adventurously legitimize gay desir. Casual, shot-gun slurs completely shipwreck any genuine attempt at creating significant, worthwhile art.
Which brings us, aptly, to a reconsideration of Andy Warhol’s notorious Death and Disasters series. In particular, his Fallen Body: Suicide (Left), a silk-screened blow-up of the aftermath of Evelyn McHale’s fatal, 1947 leap from the Empire State Building. She’s been called ‘the most beautiful suicide in history’ with good reason. Almost, her languid, inviting posture remains an open, twistedly imaginative invitation to rampant necrophiliacs, then and now.
So, was Warhol an amoral, sick-fuck user? On balance, yes – it’s possible that Warhol’s passive-aggressive voyeurism catalyzed many future deaths in the cast of misfits and deviants he’d shamelessly exploit in his movies. Coldly psychopathic, Warhol was indifferent to the consequences of his manipulations, but hey, karma’s a bitch – Andy’s fiercest critic, Valerie Solanas, shot him! When art’s a marketplace, the customer is always right!
