Pseudo Punk Pseudo Racism (?) and Mishima's Head

As you probably know, Mishima commited seppuku after a kind of failed coup. Life immitated art - he acted out in the lifeworld what he had created in 'Yukoku'. Here are some snivelling shits singing about him for light(ish) relief.

Mishima Conducting... Madame Butterfly?

There is nutty footage of Mishima conducting some kind of marching music. I'd like to slow down the footage and put it over that of a dying Butterfly.



The footage of him waking up could also be spliced in and used.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF YUKIO MISHIMA!

We could look at the kabuki plays of Mishima. If you don't know his work, please look him up. I have been attracted to him due to the very explicit relationship between masculinity and masochism that much of his work demonstrates. I have attached the final scene of his film 'Yukoku' almsot as the antithesis of Madame B. I love blood in a black and white film. The marks on the floor are very interesting too - the black blood as ink, the raised Noh stage as a white canvas.

Butterflies

What about many butterflies dying? I like the idea of the death happening continually through a short film. A film about endings. Very simple. The use of many different female opera singers sining the death scene, all of their arias brought together in a cacophany could be very beautiful and overwhelming. There is something about the unrelenting, accusatory, unfinished, finger pointing final note in the opera that moves me enormously. It ties in to the use of classical music in short films made by arty fags in the 60s and 70s that I personally adore.

Another Butterfly Dies

I love the staging in this end scene - not sure about the puppet boy! The use of the 'invisible' stage hands is apparent here too. Again the bloody death is enormously dramatic and stylised. The removal of red material from her obi (symbolising blood) is very similar to the revealation in the hikinuki.

Madama Butterfly

I apologise for blog hogging, but I assume everyone else is very busy. Since I am on a holiday, of sorts, my mind has been busy gathering ideas etc for the collaboration.

Whilst thinking about the theme of japonisme I started looking at the final hari kiri or seppuka scene from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Because I have been thinking about the emptiness of the signs of gender/sexuality/race, and their stylisations and how they can be temporarily occupied by the subject, the final scene of Butterfly's death - due to her Western 'husband's' absence and the loss of her child - I began to see enormous parallels between the stripping away of one costume for another (one character to reveal the 'true' character in the hikinuki), and the ceremonial death of a character/subject - their disemboweling.

The final scene of the opera is always very dramatic, and the directors use many different ways to symbolise her death, different ways of showing the blood pouring out of her. The relationship between the hikinuki and the bloody death are very closely related here, ESPECIALLY the stage hands removing the cloths:

Sharon Kinsella's Research on Ganguro

This may be tangential, but it is a fascinating article. I am corresponding with her. She teaches at Manchester University.

http://www.kinsellaresearch.com/new/faces.pdf

- AK

Japonisme, the 'aesthete' and contemporary criticism and parody.

Looking for a better version of this. But the lyrics relate to ideas of artifice, the avant-garde, faking the fake, with a love of all things Japanese. Of course, Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Mikado' was pure Japonism/Japonisme, even although they seem to be sneering at the fad here. The character singing is called Bunthorne and is a bit of a sham homosexualist...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_(opera)

Pierrot in Turquoise - Kemp

Lindsay Kemp's Onnagata

Bowie and Kabuki

Bowie was trained to 'dance' and mime by Lindsay Kemp - who worked at the Glasgow Citizen's theatre and was well-versed in kabuki - making many works that reference the art form. He made choreography for Derek Jarman's films.

Ganguro

A fetishisation of the fetish for blacking up, thus revealing the problem through an application of concealer (to the lips, obviously!)

These are stills from the make-up (off stage) process. When the character puts on her own make-up IN the film, we do not see the eyes being pulled back or the prosthetic eye piece that flattens her eye-lid being applied.

Ms Maclaine as Yoko Mori - 1

In order to not be 'found out' Maclaine wears dark brown contacts in the film to confuse her husband. When he is looking at the rushes and processing the film he sees the film for a brief second in the negative, and notices that her eyes look blue. Through seeing the negative (lie) he understands the positive (truth). She is found out.

I am collecting quotes (possibly as fodder for a voice over?)

Whilst looking up dazzle images I found this classic:

'No one would believe that I should be cleaning toilets but here in the West with talent like this, I'm an Artist. Yes, the entrepreneurial spirit infects the ambitious, the driven the savant, even the dissolute. As a morality tale, Razzle Dazzle Sea Scape works to deliver a sense of wonder while grounded to the rhyme of history and the rhythm of the brush strokes. Finding Chi in a meditation of light and shadow is the essence of communication, the meaning of life, it's what makes me look to the next work that makes me so spiritual.' - Randal

I've been looking at the film 'My Geisha' staring Shirley Maclaine, where a western actress 'blacks up' by wearing the white make-up of a geisha to fool her husband (a film director) to put her in his version of 'Madame Butterfly'. The quotes are fantastic ('Deception was never so much fun!' - on the poster). I also came across a short Russian version of the film and a few other weird versions - one where someone is filming the screen as the dvd plays, in order to sell it. Creates beautiful, extreme colour effects.

This also lead me to the pheneomena of 'blacking up'/'black face' in Japanese culture, specifically, the subculture called 'Ganguro' ('face black' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro). It is said to have started with an obsession with Michael Jackson and Naomi Campbell (!), who blurred the race divide and flirted with 'being white', (suposedly).

I am immediatley drawn to such blurrings, misconceptions, crossings, scenes of revealation and concealment, where all that is usually revealed (through a specific employment of an aesthetic) is an ethical dilema, yes, but usually (and more worryingly) a kind of racist stereotype and caricature based on a mis-understanding and mis-portrayal of the 'other'.

I can't yet figure out to move images about in these posts so will post them separatley.

- Alex

Rrrrrrr

http://web.archive.org/web/20041010234846/http://hine-digital-art.com/hypogee/r.html

Lily Pond Table, Attributed to Duncan Grant, The Omega Workshops, 1913.