Transgression for the Sake of Trangression: Brief Critical Remarks on the Prattler, LVXXVII, No. 5. more

Brief Critical Remarks on the Prattler, LVXXVII, No. 5. It is difficult to experience the latest issue of the student produced and university funded Prattler without rushing to pronounce a judgement. It demands of its reader either the affirmation of its “artistic” transgressions, or the affirmation of the morality that would condemn it out of hand. Criticism of the Prattler could be done along either line, but such is the problem with criticism. The critique of the Prattler should avoid criticism if for no other reason than that is what its producers demand of us. Critique is not polemic, in other words, nor is it self-expression. On can also critique the issue in as many ways as there are reader, but certainly any critique of it would establish the importance of the context in which this cultural artifact appeared. A critique would also suggest not only the obvious negative aspects, but also the range of affirmations crystallized in the images, the text, and the transgression itself. The issue not only potentially offends and transgresses, it also serves as a means to affirm the larger structures that make it possible, and to which it owes everything. In this sense, we are all implicated in the Prattler's celebration of transgression. An image in the Prattler and the the 17th Century microscopist Antonii Leeuwenhoek might not seem a first glance to share much in common, but there is a wonderful continuity between them. As scientists like Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke began to explore microscopic life, the experience was for them no less than the awe felt by the first eyes to use a telescope. Leeuwenhoek's work in particular is noted still as one of the origins of modern microbiology and embryology. Given that scientific knowledge is as much about Man as it is about Nature ---and often about understanding the Nature of Man--- Leeuwenhoek of course turned his microscope upon what he thought to be the “seed” of Man, the sperm cell. He illustrated and described what he saw: the sperm cell was an "animalcule” in the head of which he could observe all the nerves and vessels of the mature animal. This supported a common belief in the “homunculus,” a miniature version of a adult human resting in the head of each sperm cell. Leeuwenheok to be sure was careful to say that he only saw the blood and nerves, and not a fully formed homunculus. Others were not so reluctant, as the notion of “preformism” was accepted by science and common sense. The term, homunculus after all had come from the alchemist Paraceleus, who sough to create his “little man” in a heated glass vessel. Now the coincidence of these images could be passed off but for the context of both. The homunculus is the preformed person, it will be what it is already, its life being just the playing out of an already determined sequence. If Leeuwenhoek was cautious, and others less so, what might one say in relation to the Prattler image of a homunculus in a condom? The accompanying article in the Prattler does allow the possibility of nurture having a role (and of course, this nurturing is assumed to be the woman's sole responsibility), but really only to dismiss it. Preformist science provided a ground for the construction of some very influential scientific concepts of human variety, such as race and the theory that the races constitute separate and unequal species, each with its own set of characteristics. It should not surprise anyone in this, the 250th anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, that one species in particular was deemed naturally superior and another naturally born to slavery. So the image of the homunculus is not so unrelated to that of the baby minstrel on the bike. Indeed, the association of the savage with the child and the woman, and the three contrasted with the naturally superior European male, has a long history. The male child could at least, if properly disciplined, continue their development into maturity as a natural ruler, but the woman, the girl, and the savage could never hope to do so. The savage, like the ape it was said to closely resemble, could never exercise the self-discipline and might never, even utter the tutelage of his Master, develop the necessary intelligence to be truly civilized. The savage is only valuable as a source of labor, entertainment, or experimental subjects. It is worth noting in passing what Mackay says in his Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841): “...an American actor introduced a vile song called “Jim Crow.” The singer sang his verses in appropriate costume, with grotesque gesticulation, and a sudden whirl of his body at the close of each verse. It took the taste of the town immediately, and for months the ears of orderly people were stunned by the senseless chorus: Turn about and wheel about and do just so--Turn about and wheel about, And jump, Jim Crow!” Street-minstrels blackened their faces in order to give proper effect to the verses; and fatherless urchins, who had to choose between thieving and singing for their livelihood, took to the later course, as likely to be more profitable, as long as the public taste remained in their directions. The uncouth dance, its accompaniment, might be seen in its full perfection on market-nights in any great thoroughfare; and the words of the song might be heard,piercing above all the din and buzz of the ever-moving multitude. Mackay goes on to caustically speculate that someone suddenly dropped into his London would think that the English so adore “the unhappy brethren of Africa... that you love to have a memento of them continually in your sight.... Jim Crow is the representative of that injured race, and as such is the idol of your populace! See how they all sing his praises! How they imitate his peculiarities! How they repeat his name in their moments of leisure and relaxation! They even carve images of his to adorn their hearths, that his cause and his sufferings may never be forgotten! Oh, philanthropic England, oh vanguard of civilization!” The recognition contained in the image is not that of blackness, but of a blackness that is aspired to at the same time it is reviled. The image of the child savage/minstrel obscures not the true face of blackness, but the face of those who construct such images of blackness. The actual color of those that circulate such images makes no difference, they are simply producers of the cultural artifacts that mark us, and this image is one of those artifacts. They are not depicting others, they are depicting themselves. Perhaps the producers of the Prattler have done a great and unintentional service in presenting themselves as perhaps a truer face of Pratt than any on the website. Women, as noted, were also long assumed to be held back by the extraordinary demands and dangers of childbirth. The tone of instruction that the writers take towards women is not a mere echo or ironic mention of this belief, it is the affirmation of it in the clearest terms. One need only to compare the advice of the What to Expect series to find the same all-knowing stance of superiority. Like the minstrel, the woman depicted on the cover serves as a thin disguise of imperial might (the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus) and of the constant service Art provides for the extension of that power. The biker and the cover illustration bring together in a comfortable way the fear generated by our society. They deliver to us in a non-threatening way that which frightens us most: not the savage in society, but the savagery of society. Civilization rests on a savagery that it must constantly repress, but that finds outlet in the rule of law and the Work of Art. In just this respect, the cover presents us with women as simply the veneer that conceals power itself. Not the power that is attributed to women, but the imperial power that the cover pretends to mock while the issue proceeds to clearly lay out. That is not even a representation of a human on the cover, it is the status quo that offers up images like these for consumption. Of course, it will be said that the function of Art is to transgress, and that the producers of the Prattler have done just that. No doubt, too, will come the liberal view that while one might prudishly object to the material, the right to transgress should be affirmed and all the more so because we are in an Art School. If there is any real irony expressed in this issue, it is in the use and romanticization of transgression as an instrument for the maintenance of the status quo. If Art has a social function, then the producers of the Prattler have expressed it quite well: the ideal of transgression is becomes a technique for the affirmation of the established relations of power. In this way, the Prattler issue is justified not only as entertainment, but as advertising. Transgression functions as a great myth of Art producers and consumers. It serves to justify as well as valorize Art to the point of becoming an essence of Art: transgression establishes the value of Art in the market. It is a myth of transgression obscures the essential link between Art and power that the Athenians taught us. If one can say that transgression marks Art and even helps to distinguish it from other cultural artifacts, then it is here in a training academy for Art producers, that transgression becomes technique. Transgression is absorbed into training. So transgression is not something incidental or outside of the instruction here, but as a part of it. It is something expected of you, so you must learn to do it correctly. Those who learn this technique best are those who will perform best in the world of corporate or authoritarian Art. Perhaps there is an element of embarrassment at confronting the Prattler as a sort of stick-figure drawing of transgressions to come in which the technique is revealed through its still amateur use. In doing critical work on the Prattler, the context of the images, and the context of the transgression should be central. In the case of the former, the context is our own history of making such images at the same time we visit the violence of the image as real violence on the living. In the latter, it is the context of learning the techniques of cultural production. What these two contexts share is that they are two sides of the same affirmation of a society in which these images, the business of producing them, and the everyday terrorism that makes them seem normal. These are everyday images and ideologies produced by the usual imperatives of entertainment. This more than the images and text will provoke some to rush to reactionary judgments for or against it, not because the images and text are so reactionary or transgressive, but because they are so everyday and normal. The Prattler reveals our form of authority and the affirmation of that authority by the producers of Art. It marks the continuity between the romantic ideal of the artist, the valorization of Art, the business of training its producers, and authority. Ric Brown Associate Professor of Cultural Studies