Several thoughts on this piece.
First off, I find you are able to draw the audience into your connection of masculine heterosexuality and war. Tied in with our gender discussions, I’ve found it both amusing and annoying that the cultural norm in the states that men must aspire to reflect more or less a sweat drenched wrestler with a gun in one hand and a martini in the other, a combination of rage and cool; which has been tapped into by the current anarcho-libertarian warhawks we have in office in this country. Bush is part Marlboro Man and part Randy “Macho Man” Savage. However, I am, in my viewing of the piece, confident that other connections are there to be made. Whether it is your discussion or not your discussion; I personally feel that making the sex/war connection is not enough in a piece if it hopes to raise consciousness on the issues of war, which are certainly bountiful. However, I got some other things from the work, which may be what I brought to the table on my own, you can let me know.
For one, there’s the obvious homoeroticism in the work. But it gets me to thinking again on the concept of men and their relationship to war as a bonding ritual. Men kill with a pack to release bonding chemicals, as opposed to having sex with one another. Ultimately this connection means to imply that war is a primary social identification for men but only as a result of thinly veiled homosexual urges. Therefore- gay, or at least bisexual relationships, might somehow eliminate a need for war. Or would it reinforce it? Why aren’t women on the battlefield? And why were some of the most ferocious early European armies openly gay?
The connection between war and sex also raises another issue- conceptually, this is some of the same stuff we’ve seen in the “Rub Linda” catastrophe, however, having switched the sexualized gender has neutralized a lot of the resistance I have to the piece. Why is that? Part of me is asking, “Isn’t the sexualization of any act of war at least on some level supporting war through a distortion of sexuality and by the reduction of human beings to portions of their anatomy?” But I think your piece works in a way “Linda” didn’t, just because you took care not to promote an actual sexualized image, instead emphasizing the grotesque nature of sexualized war through the removal of most primary identifying characteristics; faces, etc, as well as the black and white- which, combined with the images of explosions, brings out a really disturbing contrast between the sexualization of individuals and the manner in which body parts are literally torn apart in war. (Also bringing up a notion of women being psychologically at war on a daily basis- having to look not at human beings but human being’s legs, breasts, lips, asses, etc- I wouldn’t be surprised if this is not somewhere a subtle, subconsciously engineered attempt to coerce women into the fear that our culture finds so attractive in them.) Would it be a stretch to say you took some of the “Rub Linda” dialogue into consideration when you were constructing this piece?
Lastly, the piece seems to tap into a castration anxiety. The idea of having an orgasm that blows my penis off into raging flames is not exactly my cup of tea; but you’re also looking at the element of orgasm as “petit morte” and well, war as “petit morte, grande”, though I have a problem keeping French and Spanish separate so I hope that’s right. I think you get the point either way. Species-wise, war is inherently masochistic; war derives its pleasure not only from conquest but also from annihilation and nihilism. There are reports of bezerker behavior from many wars, Vietnam being one of them, where men were overdriven by such hopelessness that it came through in excruciating acts of cruelty towards the enemy- raping wives, pissing in dead soldiers mouths, skullfucking, all elements of human behavior that are brought out as a means of deriving pleasure in the confirmation of total hopelessness and despair, and the pressure that stems from the possibility of death coming at any moment for extended periods of time. But all of this, you’ll notice, is sexual behavior.
I think this piece may be one of the best pieces of war art I’ve seen, but my test for war art is simply, does it make me want to vomit when I think about war? I always go back to Paul Goodman, in “designing pacifist films”:
“Given a film about capital punishment, for instance, a Camus will notice, and be steeled in revulsion by, the mechanism of execution: he will deny the whole thing the right to exist because it is not like us (this is the reaction-formation, denial, that is characteristic of active compassion); but a vulgar audience will identify with the victim, get involved in the suspense, thrill to the horror, and weep with pity. The effect is entertainment, not teaching or therapy; and to be entertained by such a theme is itself damaging.”
I think Goodman puts too much blame on the audience, when the artist is the one who, if s/he is a real artist, makes works that elicit responses, and which emotions that artist chooses to elicit are part of the artistry. In anti war art, nothing can be ethically allowed except for the elicitation of revulsion- to inspire us to “deny the whole thing the right to exist because it is not like us.” Otherwise, we would make art that is tolerant of war, or glorifies it.
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