Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

The Street Offences Act, the victory of Lady C., the naked sensuality of the parks as viewed by Billy Graham, the advertisements at the side of the tube escalators which beckon to a dream-world of bras and panties, the vast, if suddenly declining, number of striptease clubs, which are only arbitrarily fined on legally thin technical grounds, television advertisements with their coy sexual overtones, all are islands in the sea of eroticism around us.

     Thanks to the enterprise of a Frenchman, M. Lo Duca, we have now available to us a chart of these dangerous waters — the Bibliothèque Internationale D’Erotologie. The range of the library can be regarded as extensive, or limited, depending on your viewpoint. Titles included are The History of Eroticism, The Technique of Eroticism, Eroticism in the Cinema, and The Metaphysics of Strip-Tease—the latest to reach this country. They are published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert in Paris, and are distributed here by the Rodney Book Services at about £2 each. M. Lo Duca is the author of the first three books, and M. Denys Chevalier of The Metaphysics of StripTease. M. Lo Duca, a man of literary and other parts, has made a number of documentary films, and has written a variety of books. The latter betray an essentially catholic capacity — the subject matter ranges from Valéry to primitive Roman art and masturbation. He seems eminently suited to introduce the English reader to the sexual world as seen by a European.

     These books are unique in an excellent way. There is almost total subjugation of the text to the illustrations. These do not so much point the text, as invite the text to comment on them. How frequently has the reader not felt, as he picks up his well-loved and well-thumbed copy of Krafft-Ebbing, ‘If only it were illustrated!’ That case of the sausage-maker in Pforzheim in 1841 who was arrested for putting small pieces of his mistress’s corset in his sausages, how alive it would become if there were a photograph of him at work. But our worries are at an end. The Bibliothèque Internationale D’Erotologie has filled this long-felt want. The printed page is sexually alive with action photographs.

     There are three major ways of dealing with the problem of the bifurcation of woman. Complete acceptance of sexual activity as a necessary and fascinating phenomenon, genuflection to the inevitable, and a half-way house between these two. All societies fall into one or other of these categories. It is a mistake, however, to assume that so-called civilized states have a monopoly of restrictive practices with relation to sex. Or on the other hand that the uninhibited savage can indulge himself where and when he will. At least one great civilization, that of India, has evolved a supreme sexual expression in terms of culture. In many primitive societies the relationships between the sexes is hedged around with innumerable restrictions. The sexual regulations existing in a society, and the behaviour associated with them, can be taken as an indication of that society’s sexual morality.

     In England people have rarely doubted their sexual maturity. Boy Scouts and smoking-room jokes have gone hand in hand with a double standard of morals. The Victorian materfamilias high on her childbearing pedestal was neither supposed to receive or give sexual pleasure. The remark, variously attributed to Lucretius and Lord Curzon, that ‘Ladies do not move’ summed up the attitude towards respectable women. For erotic enjoyment there were other women. At the bottom of the scale was the streetwalker, at the top the fashionable demimondaine. You paid for your pleasure and presumably enjoyed it. The mark of the sexually mature man was a large family, and a mistress, If you could not afford the luxury of both you might, as Samuel Butler did, go shares in a mistress. In those happy pre-Freudian days medical opinion assured men that decent women were incapable of orgasm. Only women trained, as it were, for the job could hope to match their partner’s pleasure. Hence the dominance of the professional as the purveyor of erotic enjoyment. The gentleman hurrying home in the early hours, after an evening with his mistress, to the chaste embraces of his wife was singularly free from inhibitions. Or was he?

     One of the extraordinary phenomena which characterized early Victorian sexual behaviour was an obsession with flagellation. Admittedly it was popular all over Europe at the time but as contemporary observers agree it was only in England that it assumed gigantic proportions. What is perhaps most revealing is that facilities existed to gratify the appetites of both men and women. Concentration on a sexual activity of this kind suggests that the Victorian gentleman was not as satisfied as he appeared on the surface. If distressed he could always resort to Mrs Theresa Berkley’s establishment at 28 Charlotte Street in Soho.

     Her instruments of torture were more numerous than those of any other governess. Her supply of birch was extensive, and kept in water, so that it was always green and pliant: she had shafts with a dozen whip thongs on each of them; a dozen different sizes of cat-o’-nine-tails, some with needle points worked into them; various kinds of thin bending canes; leather straps like coach traces; battle-doors, made of thick leather sole, with inch nails run through to docket, and currycomb tough hides rendered callous by many year’s flagellation. Holly brushes, furze brushes, a prickly evergreen, called butcher’s bush; and during the summer, glass and china vases, filled with a constant supply of green nettles with which she often restored the dead to life. Thus, at her shop, whoever went with plenty of money could be birched, whipped, fustigated, scourged, needle-pricked, half - hung, holly-brushed, furze brushed, butcher-brushed, stinging-nettled, curry-combed, phlebotomized, and tortured till he had a belly full.

     So runs a contemporary account of the equipment which Mrs Berkley had at her command. It makes the ladies of the Ladies Directory seem sadly inadequate. The height of refinement reached by this doyenne of Victorian brothel-keepers was The Berkley Horse. This was an adjustable machine, invented for her in 1828, which allowed the human body to assume innumerable positions and exposures of the anatomy. Its uses are obvious and need not be dilated upon. While Mrs Berkley may not have been the toast of the town, as Cora Pearl was at a later date, her business was greatly successful.

     Two major wars, the growth of female employment, the development of woman’s education, the advent of Freud have all played their part in the decline of the double standard of morals, and the creation of sexual emancipation. The notorious Edwardian promenade at the old Empire in Leicester Square disappeared in the first decade of our century. It was more than a common or garden haunt of prostitutes — it was a symbol all over the far-flung empire, and kept many a sweaty exile in the Malayan jungle, surrounded by whisky and ‘native’ women, from throwing off the white man’s burden.

     Now, in the nineteen-sixties, we have achieved sexual freedom, We can read Lady C. without the police breathing down our necks. We can watch Brigitte Bardot. We can succumb to the lure of sexual posters on the ‘telly’ or in the street. We can even watch strip-tease before lunch, but only in Manchester. Wives are no longer on pedestals but sexual partners of our exuberant maleness. Unmarried there is no necessity for recourse to the prostitute when women of one’s own class are easily accessible. Everything would appear to be right in the best of all possible worlds. Unfortunately, M. Lo Duca and Chevalier introduce a note of warning.

     Is our emancipation more apparent than real? In one field, that of advertising — admirably documented in the Technique of Eroticism — there has been a steady and subtle increase in the use of sex as a gimmick to encourage sales. No doubt it began with the exploitation of a potentially sexual commodity such as scent, and continued into feminine underwear. The famous Maiden-Form brassiere advertisements can be regarded as typical. But a different approach almost surrealist, is now apparent. What is to be made of a picture of two mature women clad in brassieres and tight trousers, with cloaks lying loosely on their shoulders serenely drinking coffee in front of a blazing fire? This appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. Do women find this kind of thing irresistible and immediately rush into a shop to equip themselves with the same brassieres? Or is it aimed at their consorts who, fired by the sexual connotations (Lesbianism?), insist that their wives obtain the articles? Presumably the conclusion is that an essentially sexual, if also domestic, article needs sexual advertising.

     No such argument can apply to something as innocuous as tonic water. Nevertheless, a fetching display of the lower half of the female body is used to boost sales. The unwritten caption might read: ‘You, too, if you drink X’s tonic water, can have a woman like this.’ The palm, however, in 1961 must be awarded to the soap which claims on television all the usual things soap claims, only in addition a man appears behind a newly lathered girl who is whispering to soft music: ‘Treat me gently, treat me gently.’ In the United States there is an advertisement of an electric plug with male legs chasing a socket with female legs.

     One interpretation of this sexual exploitation in advertising would be that the contemporary European male is as subject to inhibitions and frustrations of a sexual nature as were his fettered forbears. This is corroborated by the stills from many contemporary films in Eroticism in the Cinema. An obvious example is the steady spate of films dealing with prostitution. The patron clearly enjoys a vicarious experience which is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve in real life. It is rather as if, in the realm of sex, we were becoming supporters instead of players.

     What applies to advertising applies equally well to films. The gracious, semi-nudity of Arletty in Le Jour Se Lève is replaced by the urchin provocativeness of Bardot in Et Dieu créa la femme. The slightly dotty but essentially romantic nature-nakedness of Hedy Lamarr in Extase is replaced by films of nudist colonies. What is responsible for this change in emphasis? Do couples at home cavort in semi-nudity around their television sets? Or is it again part of their fantasy life made reality in the gloom of the cinema? Kinsey records that of the married couples in his sample 59 per cent of those born after 1920 slept in the nude. He added solemnly that there were indications that the number was increasing. Is this true of England? One wonders.

     For readers troubled by esoteric sexual theories and literary analysis it should be noted that Eroticism in the Cinema has hardly any text at all, only a superlative series of stills. What text there is, contains odd bits of information, such as that in France special erotic stills of scenes not in the film are produced for purely advertising purposes. With M. Lo Duca as guide it is possible to trace the history of cleavage on the American screen, as well as the use of fetichism. After reading him, you will pay far greater attention when you next visit the cinema.

     Perhaps the most interesting sexual phenomenon of our times is the success of strip-tease. Concomitants in this situation are worship of the female bust and buttocks. Like much that is good in life, strip-tease originated in the United States in the old burlesque houses. It has come a long way since then and is to be found all over the western world. The value of M. Chevalier’s work lies in the pictorial evidence he presents rather than in the involved text, quoting from all the OK names in both classical and contemporary literature, which varies from the dolled-up obvious to the unintelligible. Yet the book remains the perfect guide to this aspect of sexual behaviour. For example, only true connoisseurs of European night-life would be aware that Fräulein Carolin von Sirowetz, the Marlene Dietrich of the strip world, can infuse a simple instrument like the telephone with unimaginable erotic overtones. Or indeed that lady Phu-Qui-Chô, of mixed American and Viet-Nam parentage, and the goddaughter of Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny, introduces into strip-tease an exoticism which the shedding of mere European clothes cannot hope to equal.

     Strip-tease is the fulfilment of male erotic fantasy. This is what a man would wish his women to do if only they had the figure and the training. To regard it as anything else but deliberate sensual provocation is patently absurd. The law and police may choose for reasons best know to themselves to regard such performances as artistic, but the audience know better. So far the double striptease, that is a woman stripper performing with a man who remains fully clad, has not yet openly reached this country where, however, there are graded categories of performance, for selected and unselected audiences. There are two well known exponents at the Folies Bergères in Paris, Simone Claris and Roger Stéphani, whose performance as studied in M. Chevalier’s book is a reasonable substitute for the real thing.

     In England, the strip-tease club has so far reached only London and Manchester. The rest of the provinces have to be content with artistic posing, strippers unworthy of the name surrounded by inferior variety acts. To watch a stolid Yorkshire audience of men and women comfortably gazing as an elephantine, near-naked woman poses on the stage is to realize the imperviousness of the English to crude titillation. On the other hand, for many a provincial boy this is the first introduction to the nude female form — it may also be his last.

     Stripping, as it is generally practised, can be divided into three major groups —  the straightforward undressing which is typical of London and the provinces at the present time, the employment of fetichistic objects such as ropes, bottles, candles, the telephone, or an abnormally large and furry cache-sex, which is becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and the elaboration of sado-masochistic themes as exemplified in the whipping act of Lucy Fehr and Florian Laurent at the Folies-Pigalle in Paris. All three allow full scope to the current worship of the female bosom and buttocks. These can be, and are, displayed to full advantage by the stripper. If nature fails her, she can employ the most cunning of artificial aids in the form of flesh-coloured inflatable brassiéres and the like.

     Are strip-tease and pornography simply substitutes and compensating mechanisms, or do they offer additive pleasures of a different kind altogether? M. Chevalier, concentrating on the psychology of the stripper and the narcissistic, often Lesbian, exhibitionism of her performance does not tell us. What he does do, at some length, is to produce a series of analogies between the stripper as artist (and surprisingly often as intellectual), and the painter (Gruber, Picasso, Grosz, Guys, Pascin) and poet (from Ovid to Baudelaire) as commentators on similar sexual experiences, actual mythical, or merely imaginary. But there is a profitable line of investigation here which M. Chevalier, for all his Freudian awareness and close study of the erotic impulse, as the arts, including striptease, relive it, has neglected.

     Nevertheless, we should be grateful to M. Lo Duca and his colleagues for providing us with this illustrated guide to the erotic fantasies of our age. They have given us a pictorial image of contemporary sexual wish-fulfilment that is devastating in its completeness. The macabre picture of the enormous half-naked bosom of Madame Carrie, sixtyyear-old veteran of the New York burlesque houses, recently feted at her performances in Paris, takes one some way beyond the curious to the absolutely pathological. Yet, perhaps, when the performers are aesthetically pleasing, as well as skilful practitioners of their craft, they merely add to the exciting categories of art and the drama, one that, if essentially humble, can none the less be entertaining and of some service to the community.