A Jobseeker's Agreement

"Within the system of debt, the individualization of Welfare State policies is no longer solely disci­plinary, since it entails a detailed analysis of the ability to "repay," which is repeatedly assessed on an individual basis. It always implies a "moral" evaluation of the individual's actions and modes of life. Repayment will be made not in money but through the debtor's constant efforts to maximize his employability, to take a proactive role in his integration into the work or social environment, to be available and flexible on the job market. Debt repayment is part of a standardization of behavior that requires conformity to the life norms dictated by the institution. This "subjec­tive" relation between the public sector worker and the public assistance recipient, rather than moving beyond fetishism by reestablishing the "relation of man to man" spoken of by Marx, reveals itself instead as the source and height of the cynicism and hypocrisy of our "financialized" society. Continuous cynicism and hypocrisy not only in relations between bankers and customers, but also in relations between the State and the users of social services. In the same way as credit turns trust into distrust, the Welfare State suspects all users, and especially the poorest, of being cheats, of living at society's expense by taking advantage of public assistance instead of working. Under the conditions of ubiquitous distrust created by neoliberal policies, hypocrisy and cynicism now form the content of social relations."

Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of Indebted Man

Hollow Men

The image of the gangster began to undergo changes in the late 1980s: the salt-of-the-earth crims popular in the 60s and 70s were no longer viable, perhaps because the class antagonisms which favoured these working class boys made alright wasn't as potent anymore. Kenneth Noye was possibly the most indicative big-time gangster of this era, involved in theft, protection, and the nascent market of smuggling ecstasy into the country. Implicated in cop-killing and murders, Noye gained notoriety when he murdered a bystander on the M25 in a “road rage incident”, although this more likely revealed the nature of Noye’s life underneath his skin. There was also Terry Adams who “made the Krays look like clowns”, involved in drug importation and numerous murders. The point could be made that more characteristic were dozens of faceless individuals quietly setting up the coming tragedy of the 80s-90s heroin and crack epidemics, making no waves, quietly trousering the profits and moving on. The British depiction of the gangster subsequently faltered and retreated into nostalgia (the Kemp brothers starring The Krays).  America would be hit harder by this wave of nostalgia for good old-fashioned criminality: retro Mafioso in Goodfellas; central casting gothic villains in Silence of the Lambs. More indicative was the 1986 arrest of ‘Ice Man’ Richard Kuklinski, a mafia-hired serial killer able to shift easily from unconflicted murder and torture to family barbecues and Christmas mornings with the kids. Unlike the Mafioso caricatures Kuklinski is an eerily dead and empty presence, calmly and factually explaining that day’s brutality, rather like the Six O’clock news.

A bit like the heritage politics being kicked around at the moment by people concerned about legacy and this that and the other, the “community gangster” has a tendency to come back. The popularity of the Krays was a warped sort of sense of working class solidarity. The popularity of the lad gangster movies of Guy Ritchie were to a degree getting to the heart of this change: actual class experience became cultural experience. Irony, knowingness, the whole Loaded-era mess that marked out how regressive the 1990s were becoming. Not to say the Krays actually were a positive class-based thing: much like the Spirit of 45 crowd the attachment to heritage politics is dubious (oil talk: the possibility of postwar reform was guaranteed by the backing Attlee gave to toppling Mossadegh in Iran and crushing the political movement, therefor securing Britain’s colonial holdings in the Iranian oilfields). The East End of London was “a much nicer, safer place”, in the words of Kray friend and BNP supporter Eileen Sheridan-Price. Simpler times.

The film Gangster No. 1 (2000) directed by Paul McGuigan is a worthwhile examination of what gangsterism and the brutal mentality necessary to sustain neoliberalism/capitalism are related. Behind every Cheery Cockney or Jack-the-Lad there awaits a Kenneth Noye to erupt in anger, a Richard Kuklinski prepared to core-out their humanity. It contradicts much of what follows in the wave of Pulp Fiction: gangsters, retro-shit, and irony are not cool. The characters in Gangster No. 1 are either cruelly blunt about their ambition or refreshingly sincere about their romance. The retroscape is something sick (the final scene of the film takes place in a room hermetically preserved with late 60s, the last preserve of a damaged and dangerous personality). Gangsterism is analogous with what lies beneath fun funny neoliberalism: cold hatred and ambition.

Gangster No. 1 (2000) tells the story of a low-level hood who rises to the top of the London underworld by gradually taking over his old boss's territory. Gangster No. 1 is a contradiction in terms of the British gangster film. The 1990s wave of Pulp Fiction-inspired  British filmaking was driven by cool and funny characters; 60s, 70s, and 80s, gangsters were similarly honourable, hard-done-by, and honest, rarely purely monsters. Gangster No. 1 presents the audience with a gangster character divorced of any personality, expect cruelty and ambition: so anonymous is the film's main character he is never referred to by name, credited only as Gangster. Gangster (played in 1999 by Malcolm McDowell and Paul Bettany in 60s/70s flashback sequences) is a tall, thin, young man who begins anonymously dressed in denims and long-hair until he is contacted by career criminal Freddie Mays (David Thewlis). Gangsters only ambition at this point is to undergo a metamorphosis into a Mod through copying Mays' fine-cut Italian suits and tie-pins singling him out as a somebody (transforming from proletarian drudgery to proto-tycoon chic). After demonstrating his usefulness as a 'business associate' Gangster decks himself out in the sort of clothing then adorning The Who, giving him a faint resemblance to Sting in Quadrophenia. From there on Gangster puts in his time with the usual set-pieces of British gangsterdom: debt collecting, dangling people off tower-blocks, dropping a car on somebody's head.

What Gangster is really after, and the goal he is working towards, is the total consumption of Freddie Mays: his clothes, his flat, his empire, his girlfriend. Mays is depicted as having a suaveness and openness that Gangster will never have: Mays visits fancy clubs and eats haute-cuisine; Gangster is repulsed by Mays' joking about the homosexual insinuation of two men dining alone, misogynistic towards most women he meets, and seethes with racist abuse when murdering a black associate. Gangster learns that Mays is about to be murdered and does nothing about it: Mays and his girlfriend Karen are cut down by rivals whilst Gangster watches from afar with plain relish as Mays is shot down and Karen’s throat is slashed. Gangster subsumes Mays’ empire, symbolizing this total absorption by occupying Mays’ flat and wearing his favourite tie-pin gifted to him by Mays. Not only does Gangster take up Mays’ criminal empire but also begins to take on his hobbies; Gangster becomes a keen player of horses and finishes the horse fresco Mays starts but was unable to finish before going to prison.

               

Later in the film Gangster, an aged Malcolm McDowell, learns that Freddie Mays has been released from prison, poor but contented, still with Karen and now possessing an art degree. Gangster invites him to his (Mays) flat, completely unchanged since Gangster took it over in the 60s. Gangster interrogates Mays on what it is that he’s got that Gangster hasn’t: Mays fails to be impressed with the expensive clothes, decor, and artwork on display. Gangster is infuriated and gives Mays a gun, ordering him to kill him and end his misery: Mays resists the temptation and walks out of the flat. Later, Gangster stands atop his block of flats, tosses a cloud of money into the air, and leaps into the night, unable to accept that he can’t imitate his way into feeling like a success.

How Gangster No. 1 subverts cultural trends is in its depiction of maleness and criminality. Laddish Guy Ritchie-ism and ironic distance are suggested to be a thin cover over deeply held sexism. It is no coincidence that Malcolm McDowell returns to play a gangster here; McDowell played a similar character once before in Our Friends in the North (1996). The character of Benny Barrett is somewhere between the Krays-style community villain and the Noyes/Kuklinski psychopath spectre. Barrett looks after his people, spends lavishly in Soho, and acts in a decent manner; there is the suggestion that without Barrett more violent gangs would drift into the Soho vice game. Through close cooperation with the police he even becomes a pillar of the community sort of figure. However in scenes with his accomplice Geordie he reveals a deep cynicism and loathing towards women; he tells Geordie that he is not bothered when he finds he has been having an affair with his girlfriend: “Women are shit, Geordie.”

As Paul Bettany, Gangster reveals his deep loathing of women when he and Mays meet Mays’ future girlfriend Karen (Saffron Burrows) in a club. Mays’ homosexual jibes have already unsettled Gangster’s sense of masculinity: he is harsh and abusive when the club owner sends over Karen and another woman to provide company. He has no interest in playing the flirting games that Mays and Karen engage in once they’ve hit it off, after a brief misunderstanding that allowed Gangster to pretend to Karen he was Mays. In later encounters there is a definite sinister vibe projected towards Karen as she takes more and more of Mays’ time away from Gangster. A repressed homosexuality angle could be read into this (the Krays’ sexuality was not clear-cut either) but a consumerist reading perhaps works better. Karen interferes with the consumption of Mays and his lifestyle as Gangster No. 1: the erotic charge Gangster has for Mays is in his consumable image of sharp suits and smart interior decorating. The prime industry of McDowell’s previous gangster Benny Barrett is in pornography, where the thrill for the watcher is to imagine themselves performing the acts they are witnessing. Gangster is hanging around with Mays like a porn addict with a shelf of rancid VHS: unlike the porn watcher however, Gangster knows he has the stamina and smarts to stop imagining and step in-front of the camera and become the performer. 

Beyond readily consumable images of capitalist porno, sexuality and eroticism become sickening and horrific. It has already been established that Gangster regards women and romantic relationships as something inherently detestable. Two of the film’s most powerful scenes are distortions of sexual and romantic encounters that further the point that hateful sexism and capitalist porno gangsterism go hand-in-hand. Mays and Karen are heading down the street towards a taxi; Gangsters knows that rival criminal Lennie Taylor is about to ambush them. He watches with barely contained glee as Lennie and his men corner the couple and shoot down Mays: he is forced to watch while Karen’s throat is cut in front of him. They crawl into each other’s embrace under the street lights. When Mays encounters Gangster in 1999 he is mocked over his love for her and his wounded gesture. Gangster does make a case that Mays was a love rival who deserved what he had coming, but the way in which he describes Karen is as a collection of body parts, eyes, hair, mouth, belly, blood, like when he describes the way Mays’ suit is tailored earlier in the film. There is no real love here: romance when conceived of is something biological and categorical and commodified.

(a sub-point: two British cultural figures of the era who are evoked in the film are J.G. Ballard and Francis Bacon. Ballard is less strongly felt but large, modernist tower blocks and motorways make up a lot of the screen locations. A mechanic is forcefully introduced into congress with his car when it is dropped on his head. Also a sense that the luxury flat where Mays and then Gangster rule their empires becomes a cell, as Ballard’s characters tended to find high-rise living problematic, although really Ballard was all about how this liberated people so the point is maybe a bit too laboured. The retro use of tower blocks is interesting in terms of retro comparing its bleakness to the All Your Favourite Sweets, Records, and Haircuts route of Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes.  Francis Bacon is evoked in one particular way: at points in the movie the picture becomes distorted and Gangster is screaming to himself, mouth hideously agape. The tortured screech appears unheard by his fellow characters and Gangster reverts to ‘normal’ as if it were a sudden intrusion of something dark and evil. It resembles particularly Bacon’s 1954 painting Figure with Meat. Bacon appears concerned with the inner putrescence of daily living and all human behaviour, something rotten and horrific beneath the skin-line. Bacon was also a resident of Soho.)

The films second perverse scene comes as Gangster breaks into the flat of rival gangster Lenny Taylor, who has just near-fatally wounded Mays and Karen. He is shot down by Gangster and is left immobile on the floor leering and making come-ons at Gangster (“Finish it now you bastard!”). Gangster slowly removes his clothing, piece by piece, leaving it neatly folded on a table. He loving lays out his tools. He strips down to his vest and underwear and sets to work slowly mutilating Taylor with a knife. There is a queasy erotic charge to the scene as Gangster hovers over Taylor penetrating with him, making confessional small-talk, passionately arguing with him. Only in this intimate state can Gangster speak candidly and emotionally with someone. Taylor after a long ordeal is dispatched and Gangster collapses covered in blood (repeating Mays’ bloodied gesture of crawling to his stricken girlfriend leaving a trail “like a snail” as it is later put).

Further charge is added to the scene when it is considered Taylor is played by Jamie Foreman, son of Freddy Foreman, helpfully on-hand to dispose of Reggie Kray’s victim Jack McVitie. That this link to the community gangster is so brutally, thoroughly, and humiliatingly dispatched suggests the film is well aware that one ideal has been crushed by another. Much like the myth of the gangster, by 2000 there was little doubt several years into New Labour that culturally one trend had beaten another. The cynical obsessive view has become a dominant one and the country (remarkably so in the past month or so) has become a harsher less-caring place. Gangster is a warped and grotesque shadow-image of the consumer. Gangsterism is the default mode of the country’s swindling politicians, bankers, coppers, and reporters.

“'93. Maggie’s children suffer the effects of the 80s. Do we fuck! Business is as good as ever.”

As good as ever.

Loose Connections

State of Play (2004) is an isolated, functionalist, view of 21st century Britain. The characters of State of Play are reporters, editors, politicians, police, PR executives, and their families. Only a few characters not of this political-media world are depicted: a family of, in the view of the characters, mostly irrational annoyances; or an ex-soldier and hired assassin. These characters only appear when they are being investigated for crimes or raw journalistic material (and raw focus group material in real world terms). All of these elements, police, politicians, and journalists, are part of one holistic system of government that keeps the mass of the population at arms length.

Consider the character of the MP Stephen Collins and G.B.H.'s Michael Murray. One of the first scenes Murray appears in he is being applauded by his supporters, but Collins' are never seen. We learn about Murray's past and previous occupations, but Collins, like many post-Blair politicians, is impossible to see as having a background, or at least a background comparable to Murray's working class origins (even his name doesn't call back to anything, whereas Murray's is suggestive of a) his father, a prominent socialist, who shared the name, and b) his Irish immigrant background). Collins' world is also a very close one that demonstrates the fluidity of the new corporate order: it is is the death of his researcher that alerts the journalist Cal McAffrey to the story, McAffrey being his former campaign manager, and Collins' wife Anne being somebody he met on his political campaign.

Functionally State of Play is about the smooth operation of the political-media-police infrastructure that administrates Britain: it is sophisticated in that regard that it acknowledges many thing once though extraordinary are now systematic. A teenager is executed on the streets of London; a conspiracy to tailor government policy to the requirements of energy companies (Edge of Darkness symmetry). All of these events are unremarkable. In one of the stranger details the gunman is cornered a shot dead by police without warning: nothing is ever made of this for the rest of the drama.

The glitch occurs when the disconnected, corporate world of modern Britain is exploited by somebody who knows how to play the rules for personal gain. 'Honest' capitalism (or honest governance), or fair play, is what should be paramount. Reactions to the Financial Crisis of 2008 are variously focused on convincing the public that the financial world really is honest. It is interesting to note that if one explores the world of management there is a lot of fear about psychopaths: Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare's Snakes in Suits outlines the variously nightmarish ways a psychopath could be in YOUR company (though there is a tone of admiration throughout the work on psychopaths, after all they do get 'it' done, even if it's at the expense of everyone else in the organization). The character of Stephen Collins finds an assassin to murder an former lover. Whilst the government-energy conspiracy is treated as unremarkable, this personal failing involves a complete breakdown of Collins as a character. He is a threat to the smooth flowing of power.

Charles Stross has an astute analysis of what's gone wrong here. The world of 21st century British politics is a dehumanized, disconnected, alienating institution: in a way this has infected many areas of British society. Underneath the veneer of rational colonist institutions, it becomes clear that the disconnection allows the rot to fester under the shiny surfaces, provided it doesn't become to much of a bother.

Pet Shop Boys and two Welsh miners' choirs at the 1994 Brit Awards - Go West

NSFW: Public Relations

With pwnography's ballooning mainstream presence since the 90s, discussion of it has become a little more nuanced. However, in terms of the 'public arena' the debate has largely boiled down to censorship, family morality or rape - deeply emotive issues that encourage fundamental calls for freedom, regulation or condemnation. By and large, viewer effects - and human sexuality - remain mysterious even to the most attentive researchers. Inequality between the sexes, less so; but to locate it in specific media product is to limit understanding of what representations emerge from. The reproduction, enforcement, and mutation of gender oppression began long before the invention of the internet, film, photography or the printing press. In a sea of imagery and discourse competing for attention, gender oppression is consolidated at every level of culture. There's frequent confusion between 'genre' and 'industry' when discussing pwn - as with de facto arguments that deem it an objectively worse form of exploitation than extracting value from au pairs, farmhands, cleaners, miners, or prison inmates. Sociological and economic research may suggest otherwise. We can't be certain if 'pwn causes rape' any more than we can know if gangsta rap encourages urban crime. We can't be certain if it 'prevents' rape either. However, as something interrelating with the cultural landscape, pwn plays a crucial ideological role; and not necessarily in ways that most assume. That's not to say that I'm 'defending' it - far from it - but I'd like to gratuitously shift focus in a different direction.

As this is (nominally) a blog about the 90s, I'll try and focus on what pwn has been 'about' since the turn of this century; which I'd contend is very different to what it was 'about' in the 70s or 80s. I should add that I'm discussing 'mainstream' pwn here - namely, heterosexual productions featuring 'name' performers, and - of ideological importance - legally marketed from the US by its most powerful brands and distribution networks. Since the 90s, pwn has embedded itself into mainstream culture; but certain kinds remain more mainstream than others - the kind where performers put their names to supplementary merchandise, has its producers interviewed by non-pwnographic outlets; and lurks much closer to 'respectability' (and mainstream sexual representations) than the daunting range of niches pwn caters for. The usual debates about pwn may never be resolved; because what it 'means' as a genre will never be as fixed as many of its critiques assume. The meaning of a genre changes as much as its production, format and marketing does.

If that's confusing, let me offer another example. Not only did 'Dracula' or 'the vampire' mean something very different in the 1990s to what it did to the 1890s; but also the overall meaning of 'horror' as label and metaphor changed, and will continue to do so. Meanings within a story always operate in directions moving outside the story; towards the identifying features of a genre itself, in its role as an intermediary between text, production, industry, audience and society. The varying status and influence (and market share) of genres over time demonstrates this. What horror means (and its value) depends on geographical and historical circumstances as much as anything else. Even non-fiction requires certain motifs, hierarchies, environments, narrative structures, character behaviour (and of course, clichés), to be identified as a genre. It simply puts different energies into disguising its ideological coding - its metaphors, or 'similes' - beneath the narrative. I'm taking it as given that metaphors largely function as ideological coding, however playful or contradictory they may be; and at different levels, they are always present in visual narrative. For example, a straightforward one-hour medical documentary of diagnosis, treatment and recovery is held together by a guiding metaphor negotiating issues of health, family, state, individuality, responsibility, security, work, growth and death. These issues periodically rearrange their perspective, emphasis, urgency, authority - recombine into a different generic meaning - according to ideological shifts over time. The genre of 'medical documentary' is as subject to change as medicine itself. In the context of the genre discussed below, this is relevant to the problem (or appeal) of something so dependent on the 'reality' of what's filmed.

Contra Goebbels, masking ideology beneath ostensibly 'real' imagery has proven to be very powerful in reinforcing cultural hegemony. Social, political, technological and economic conditions - themselves determining a given genre's production, distribution and consumption within society - adapt to 'answer' questions posed to a given audience; or to reproduce further questions, desires, to retain attention. In addition to constant dialogue with its audience and society, a genre engages in dialogue with other genres and in dialogue with itself to adapt, survive, and sustain a certain kind of power. With all these levels of negotiation, the overall genre may eventually synthesize, to represent an entirely different metaphor to that of an earlier stage. It can retain unavoidable traces and influences from previous syntheses (and usually does), but a genre can come to play a very different 'role' within the culture it forms part of. With this in mind (and in the hope I'm making sense!), we'll now consider what pwn has actually represented since the end of the 90s.

At this historical conjecture, within the imperial core of the west, pwn isn't really about sex. Rather, it uses sex as a metaphor. Here’s a standard scenario in mainstream American pwn, the ‘bare bones’ of the genre in its current state: A woman is interrogated by a man (about her background, age, status etc.). The man – and/or the camera – conducts a physical examination of the woman, often with running commentary on her ‘distinguishing’ features; before, during, or after she undresses. This commentary usually goes no further than physical description, without much suggestion of what could be done, will be done, or why it is done. Then, a penis is introduced – in the manner of a protagonist, or rather a hero. It/he is foregrounded by both the camera and the woman, to confirm its central role in the narrative (rarely off-camera, the pwnographic narrative devotes more attention to the penis than anything else). It/he may be commented on in admiration, but hardly interrogated. Then, fellatio – at which point the woman’s dialogue largely ceases; give or take improvised fragments of ‘dirty talk’. Fellatio is often filmed from several angles and/or in different ‘variations’. Then following this (usually protracted) sequence, there is vaginal sex; again from several angles and/or different ‘variations’. This is then followed by anal sex. Not always, but common enough to be normative; if not for the woman, then definitely for the genre. Intervals of fellatio will frequently punctuate penetrative sex. Then to conclude, the man ejaculates; almost always on the woman’s face, with the camera paying upmost attention to the penis until it does so. Before fade out, there will be a (very brief) denouement where the woman (still covered in semen) expresses satisfaction; either verbally, with a silent smile, or an endorsement of her employers. The end.

That’s the basic scaffolding of 21^st century mainstream pwn. To the above can be added a higher ratio of male participants (or less commonly nowadays, female), intensified aggression (of sexual acts, apparatus, dialogue, or pacing; with an emphasis on punishment), varying levels of attention paid to age, race, experience, nationality, body type, or fetishes (close-ups of particular body parts, orifices, objects or clothing); or a slightly more detailed mise en scene and ‘dramatic’ context for activities depicted. This context goes no further than the title, packaging or rudimentary introductions between characters (“I’ve brought my wife”, “I need to check your immigration status”, “What are you doing in the girl’s dorm?” etc). These details may add some initial ‘tension’, but they largely adhere to the standard plot above. Even today’s more ‘elaborate’ pwnographic scenarios devote a bare minimum of attention to the social context of ‘employee’, ‘boss’, ‘guest’ ‘suspect’, ‘babysitter’, ‘teacher’, ‘neighbour’, ‘wife’, and ‘best friend’s’ (my?) ‘mother’ ‘daughter’ or ‘sister’. Compared to how these relationships were ‘explained’ in earlier decades, narratives (and social relations upon which they’re based) are largely ‘expressed’ through sexual acts alone. It’s a process of interview (or exchange), employment (dispossession), performance (ordeal) and 'payment' (ownership). That’s the affective part of the scenario, but it’s also producing something other than profits (or semen). Ideologically, this grotesque caricature of sexual relations represents – and reproduces – surplus desires venturing beyond misogyny.

It’s been widely noted how ‘drama’ in pwn has shrunk to a bare minimum since the 70s. Changes in technology, economics and distribution played a major role; but the drastic reduction in narrative context also suggests an ideological shift (itself affected by technology, economics and distribution). Three hits that put pwn ‘on the map’ in the early 70s – Behind The Green Door, Deep Throat, and The Devil in Miss Jones – were based on very different narrative ‘scaffolds’. This is not just due to running time (contemporary pwn films often run much longer than the above, albeit mostly as ‘compilations’ of unrelated scenes). Nor is it due to changes in sexual practices (although what sex is ‘for’ may change). All three films focused on women moving from restricted, lonely worlds to one of supposed ‘liberation’; a standard plot template that would continue into the 80s, less so by the 90s, and now pretty much non-existent. They would of course conclude with ‘liberation’ (supposedly) conducive to the sexual demands of men, arriving at similar conclusions to the soft-core pantomimes of Russ Meyer, Tinto Brass or Just Jaeckin. Like them, standard pwn stories were variations on a ‘journey’ from one experience of life to another. But that was during a time of great social upheaval and cultural fragmentation. It was also a country still licking wounds from its last war. Lockdown on the field of vision wasn’t as resolute as it is now.

This is not to say the above were ‘sexier’ more ‘realistic’ or ‘progressive’. They weren’t. Notions of a golden age with regards to anything are almost always reactionary nonsense. But however corny, distorted and misogynistic, earlier mainstream pwn films were nominally about sex. Plots up until the 90s were often built around frustration, restlessness, or even love, on the part of men or women. Set-ups leading to sex scenes were based around awkwardness, curiosity, anxiety or farce. ‘Major’ sex scenes accrued meaning in relation to ‘minor’ sex scenes. This could be expressed with music, montage or ‘meanwhiles’. They would include scenes of unsatisfactory sexual activity (for both parties). Jealousy, domestic limitations, separation, adultery, performance anxiety, competition, and social taboos – however clumsily, they were articulated in plot, setting and dialogue. However ugly, offensive or crude it was, mainstream pwn once entertained the basic foundation of drama: Conflict, something that has largely vanished from within pwn’s narrative. In contemporary pwn, there is little suspense as to who will do what and when or how they will do it. With Internet distribution, all acts – and outcomes – are explicitly announced in advance. Its use of sexual activity reproduces a way of seeing. It isn’t about ‘the battle of the sexes’, so much as asymmetrical warfare in microcosm. When one, two, many male performers enter the scene, it’s on condition their full spectrum dominance will be a foregone conclusion. The camera must accord pride of place to their camaraderie and superior equipment. The performance – or mere introduction – of the ‘unquestioned’ penis must be greeted with shock and awe.

Popular pwnographic websites monitor highly organized classifications of operations, resources and personnel: ‘Natural’, ‘nerdy’, ‘ebony’, ‘Asian’, ‘blowjob’, ‘interracial’, ‘anal’, ‘big cock’, ‘milf’, ‘teen’, etc. etc. Activities, appearances, races, uniforms, skills, capacities that can be assessed, filed, exchanged; in order to be efficiently mobilized at the click of a mouse. In addition to this military classification, next to performers’ names (including all aliases) are detailed lists of previous activities; regularly updated like personnel files. Some may even include places and dates of birth, height, measurement, sub-listings of previous employers, and activities they specialize in. Many include links to forums requiring log-ins, where further information and codes are exchanged like classified information: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Jerkoff. Look at security agency websites, newspaper editorials, or dossiers arguing for war – the protracted gobbling of pre-intervention propaganda and selective data, stimulating a solid case for action. Desire is generated, and generated further, to arouse ‘security threats’. It consolidates the efficient, reductive ideological economy. Phrases are repeated like mantras to the rubes: “Evil dictator”, “office gang bang”, “nuclear capabilities”, “first time anal”, “failed state”, “cumshot fiend”, “clear and present danger”, “double penetration”, “humanitarian intervention”. Identify the transgressor. Locate the target. Point your weapon. Splat.

With these eye-catching labels and formats, one link leads to another. And another. Accompanied by adverts demanding further and further attention. Do you 'want' this? We could provide something better, more you. Like the recruitment ads say: Be all you can be. Keep clicking until we get you there, that's a good boy. The viewer’s attention rationalized ever more efficiently; it trains him to desire in a certain way:

The parallel to the scientific management of production is straightforward: the task of watching is broken down according to the specific characteristics of the viewer. The rationalization strategy is based on “the specification and fractionation of the audience,” which leads to “a form of ‘concentrated viewing’ in which there is (from the point of view of advertisers) little wasted watching.

Mark Andrejevic Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched

To ensure “little wasted watching”, the message must be received with a minimum of interference. For mainstream debate, narrow it down to a minimum of ‘talking points’, all arriving at the same consensus. For mainstream pwn, narrow sex down to the unchallenged penetration of three orifices in the ‘right’ order, concluded with ejaculation upon the ‘right’ area. Work to convince young audiences this is ‘what men want’… or what the Free World needs. Micromanage the available paradigms, based on accumulated audience data – target that pwn viewer or patriot. Show them the way to wave their respective flagpoles. Ensure all complementary information - adverts, menus, supplementary entertainment - stay on message. Reproduce further desires accordingly, until the neural routes of ‘sex’ and ‘war’ get hotwired into the slickest of perception machines; generating stimulus with the structure and POV of a drone operation. To masturbate or bomb with maximum productivity, one must know how to look. Ever wondered why Neocons (far to the right of Nixon or Reagan’s moral majorities) raised little more than a whimper in their supposed war against pornography? When clamping down on so many other civil liberties like a ton of bricks? It takes more than Jack Bauer to keep the Homeland vigilant.

As with (competitive) reality TV, sports broadcasts and videogames, pwn has adapted its format and narrative structure to reproduce war by other means. Arnie or Bruce decapitating terrorists got somewhat passé years ago. Interactivity can bypass fragile suspensions of disbelief. Voting, cheering, betting, shooting, ejaculating - it draws one into the heat of battle more effectively than simple reading, watching or listening. Paul Virilio noted how narrative codes of the moving image emerged with the use of military ordinance and surveillance since the First World War: “The function of the weapon is the function of the eye.” Consider how wars have been fought by western powers since 1989. Compare CNN’s bomber’s-eye view of Gulf War I with the ubiquitous ‘POV facial’. Or compare the news anchor’s admiration for Pentagon hardware to the pwn star’s (and viewer’s) reverence for her partner’s invulnerable tool. Consider pwn’s accelerating efficiency in marketing, classification, consumption, editing, positioning, perspective, decontextualization, dumbed-down ‘rationale’ and the parenthetical asymmetry of its aggression. Keep the story simple: Either with us or against us. Suck it or fuck it. Axis of Evil. Bikini Sluts Gone Wild. No-fly zone. Gone are any pretenses to depicting the push-and-pull of the sexes, or the possibility of legitimate resistance in enemy territory. Character has been superseded by function (by the climactic cumshot, does the remote masturbator remember – or care - if the ‘target’ was born in Los Angeles, Buenos Ares or Prague?). The mechanistic misogynists of the Renaissance get a belated second wind on Porntube: I cum therefore I am.

And that’s just in ‘normal’ pwn scenarios. Over the past decade, mainstream providers have increasingly brushed against the edge of legality – overtly deploying rituals of humiliation, confinement, binding, gagging, deprivation, tools, and stated demands for absolute submission; with her approving smile concluding the narrative as much as it would after ‘vanilla’ activity. The same performer who played that curious mom, daughter or sister last week can be broken down and reconstructed in scenarios of Extraordinary Rendition within dungeon-like settings; a microcosm of the overwhelming force deployed against Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. “Pure cock punishment”, that the ‘accused’ will eventually thank her punisher for (whether said ordeals are staged by pwn directors or NATO). Cheerful reminders that it’s ‘just a movie’ must be included, lest viewers by distracted by the possibility of real suffering (by all means have a “mission accomplished” parade, but sores? Enemas? Streets strewn with mutilated corpses? Bad for morale…). Accentuate the positives in sadism, with a happy disclaimer that abuse was actually invited with open arms. But do pwn performers represent 'soldier' or 'enemy territory'? Female performers could represent both, albeit at different degrees of degradation. It helps if military ideology covers all its bases. In its initiation rituals (break 'em down to build 'em up), militarized subjectivity demands alienation from the self as well as designated enemies. 

As with ‘the Iraqi people’, ventriloquism can be employed to request violation. Like the ‘freedom’ once demanded by the Eastern Bloc, which since the 90s has supplied ever more ‘cannon fodder’ for western pwn markets. Economic shock treatment got the Homeland more bang for its buck. White women paid at Third World rates were the spectacular trophies of globalization. But pwn isn’t racist per se – Black Bros on Blonde Hos teaches us that opportunity awaits Amerikkka’s most marginalized citizens. These wars need all the ‘swinging dicks’ they can mobilize. This is no time for cracker insecurities. Like I said, pwn’s overriding metaphor is no longer about sex, but is it about rape? Like famine or slavery, rape is one of the most ancient weapons of war. Pwn is about war, and war is about rape as much as any other atrocity it entails. Rape isn’t culturally unique to any military campaign. To claim otherwise is to provide Empire with another trusty weapon: Demonizing the sexual depravity of the natives. It’s deeply ironic how Catherine Mackinnon accused pwn of being a “genocidal” incitement to mass rape in Yugoslavia – contributing to a chorus of propaganda eventually used to bomb it to the End of History; paving the way for further US atrocities in the decade that followed (space restricts discussion of Andrea “pwn holocaust” Dworkin’s celebration of Zionist masculinity). We had a responsibility to really fuck Yugoslavia, to protect its peasants from their pwn. Rocco fucked Budapest. Wall St. fucked Warsaw. Slick Willie fucked Belgrade. Money shots all round.

Relentlessly pounding that pseudo-frontier of known unknowns: Women, foreign territory, the clash of civilizations, lucrative resources, male desire – the only known knowns are profit, imperialism and the reproduction of an ideology required to maintain them. Am I confusing the development of an industry with a genre here? The perspective of the former feeds into the latter, and vise versa. All corners of our increasingly militarized culture energize a self-perpetuating ideology machine. With their wings clipped by the Great Enclosure, future generations line up for enlistment. They may yet have their perspective and desires directed accordingly; reproduced via a landscape of ‘pure entertainment’ that’s left them riddled with frustration. Doubtless there's drill sergeants initiating their young privates with interrogative, relentless demands like a domineering pwn stud. Indeed, he’s likely barking kinky insults redolent of ‘extreme’ pwnographic ordeals. On the battlefield, our boys may finally make sense of that invincible, unquestioned prick that every shot trained them to focus on; like the winning weapon in an X-Box game. Disciplined through every receptive orifice, our ‘heroes’ can stand erect at the centre of the ongoing military spectacle. Penetrated by ideology as virgin territory, they can reify their manhood by penetrating further territory. And we can expect them to penetrate the right territory in the right order, aiming with admirable precision (and mentioning epidemic levels of rape among ‘our' boys would only empower the enemy, so don’t even go there…). Pwn's infernal desire machine bypasses the frontal lobes, heading straight for the groin; reaching the parts that even Goebbels couldn’t (loser). After we dump the last load upon their grateful heads, we can only hope ‘liberated’ nations will smile at the camera to endorse our superior culture. If they don’t, I’m sure news anchors will find a way to tell us they are. At this point, it’s a generic requirement.

Profiting From Depression

It's difficult to comprehend the utter depravity of contemporary global capitalism, until you see something like this, in which a deeply amoral market trader expresses his disbelief at the amorality of the financial system. When the bewildered civilisations of the future look back at us, they will think we make the late Roman Empire look like a particularly austere nunnery.

But hey, voting for Ed Miliband should fix it.

Pyramid Scheme

It is a fascinating spectacle that London, home of the gargantuan Ponzi scheme that is global neoliberal capitalism, is at last to host its first great pyramid, perhaps man's most deeply symbolic form of architecture. Pyramids are diagrammatic manifestations of the basic principles of sacred geometry, in which the apex, the point, represents one or absolute unity, and the base, as a square, represents materialisation - the four sides being the first product of multiplication (2 x 2), as well as the four classical elements (air, earth, fire, water), and the three dimensions of the experienced world, plus time. The lines spanning from the apex to the base represent two, or duality, and the triangular side faces represent the trinity, or The Mother, the triangle as the simplest possible shape being the mother of form. As such, a pyramid expresses how unity passes into manifestation via the principle of creation, and the link between the material realm and the infinite.

Pyramids are a recurring historical motif, from the Ziggurats of the earliest civilisations of Mesopotamia to the Egyptian, Nubian, Chinese and numerous Mesoamerican cultures. Although the overt purpose of these structures is not always known, their purposes are generally agreed to be connected to either astronomy, worship or burial, or some combination of the three. Certainly the great pyramids of Egypt are considered to have been primarily burial mounds, in which the great kings of the Old and New Kingdom dynasties were prepared for their journey to the afterlife. The mummified rulers were buried alongside the tools, instructions and symbolic apparatus considered to be necessary for their journey into the hereafter, and as such we can perhaps consider the pyramids, working "in reverse" from the base to the apex, as being magical machines for the transition from the material to the infinite. That many of the mummified kings were buried with portions of their great wealth offers a tantalising suggestion that no doubt appeals to the contemporary wealthy who often bury themselves in pyramidal mausoleums: that you can take it with you.



As sacred structures, the great pyramids of Giza were based around the golden ratio, 0.618:1, or 1:1.618 (1.618 x 0.618 = 1) - a ratio you can get a visual representation of if you inspect your credit card - and their passageways were aligned with the constellation Orion, which the Egyptians considered to be the home of the god Osiris. The Shard is, however, a Faustian pyramid. Whereas for the Egyptians the sacred was infinite, for we Faustians the infinite is sacred, and rather than The Shard obeying the principles of celestial harmony, it instead obeys the principle of extension. In creating the tallest building in the UK and the EU, architect Renzo Piano has squandered his sex energy in the pointless breaking of records. Like the similarly grandiose Bishopsgate Tower, The Shard has been funded by Qatari petrodollars, the Arab oil states desperate to convert them into something, anything tangible before the collapse of American global hegemony renders their value zero. Sadly, if there's any cultural artefact with even less of a future than the US Dollar, it's the skyscraper; symbol of a future of endless growth, and not of the future of grindingly irreversible decline we're going to experience. What will finish the skyscraper as a viable form is not likely to be its direct energy consumption in an era of depleting energy supplies, but rather the simple fact that an ever-shrinking global economy will not be able to support the giant corporations with their Promethean reach and gluttonous requirement for office space. Similarly, the exotic materials that clad the more recent buildings will not be replaceable when the rareified manufacturing facilities that produce them succumb to the decomplexification that will accompany our long decline. Ironically, it may be the most recent, environmentally friendly buildings that enter redundancy soonest.



In many ways The Shard, like the ancient pyramids an attempt to concretely manifest the eternal, will be a manifestation of the ephemeral. As with the other tall buildings around it, it can perhaps best be seen as a store of useful materials that will not be available for too much longer - a vertical salvage dump. It is believed the white limestone that originally clad the outside of the pyramids at Giza was used to build the mosques of Cairo. Perhaps the treated glass and engineering steel of The Shard will end up supporting the temples of the new savage religions that will arise in its dust.