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A news photograph of F.D. Roosevelt, circulated in 1928, four years before he was first elected as a president, shows a well-dressed man in a confident posture. It is visually demonstrating his ‘good standing’ to the electorate. But otherwise, it could easily pass as an unremarkable photograph among many other official photos of politicians. ‘Candidate with a cane’ could be the generic title as Sally Stein remarks in a recent article (2006).

But on closer inspection, the viewer might discover a well hidden second cane which provides support to Roosevelt’s impaired body. Since 1922, he was not able to stand or walk without external form of help.

Images are very important in electoral campaigns. The ways that leaders and politicians stand in their representations are heavily invested by visual indications, which aim to convince the viewers that they are appropriate to govern. So, this visual manipulation with the hidden support can be understood within the context of U.S. democracy, which has shown little deviation from the theatrical norm of leader: a male, WASP, heterosexual individual with a very sound mind - though religious persuasions are accepted - and very sound body (Sally Stein, 2006).

Such political manipulation of the ‘inappropriate’ body continued long through his political career and involved a series of tactical decisions. For example, he consistently avoided any photographs together with the fellow patients of the polio clinic which he was regularly visiting… His bright steel leg braces, particularly seen when he was seated, were painted black to avoid reflecting in flash photography… He used others to hold him when walking in public, especially his sons, in order to avoid using canes and wanting to appear as walking by himself… He deliberately gave all his public speeches from a standing position, though the podium was appropriately reinforced so that the necessary support was provided…

An endless effort of appearing active and strong, according to the dominant norms, and against the stigma of disability… was met by a cooperative press and a desperate nation wanting to believe in ’strong’ leaders.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt had a successful political career; although many have argued that this was precisely because his impairment and disability was masked. A convenient collaboration between the politician, the media and a nation wishing to believe to fictions of ’strong’ leaders.

As we enter another election period in U.S. with probably another candidate who deviates from the traditional rigid norm, I’m wondering how Barack Obama will deal with this situation and way of his representation. Will he, for example, play down blackness in his images, and if yes, how? And in the end, how obssessed will the electorate be with maintaining the dominant forms of representation, the appearances…

There is one video - linked in my last post - that keeps coming back in my mind. I am talking about that tv clip showing how the sculptor Cosimo Cavallaro got attacked by a representative of a religious group, who in the name of their version of Catholicism and rigid moral order, launched a series of bullying tactics and threatening acts against everyone associated with Cavallaro’s work: a statue of Jesus made by chocolate.

The scandalous point for that religious group was not its chocolate nature of course. It was its anatomically correct representation.

I’m glad that Cosimo Cavallaro has eloquently exposed the morally and conceptually empty stance of his attacker during the TV interview. Yet, if the latter believes that this is “one of the worst assaults against Christian sensibilities ever”, as reported in the news, which he then conveniently uses to justify a wave of violent reactions, should we overlook him with disdain for manipulating reality and ends, or start worrying about the state of our political thought and the undermined role of art?

I am wondering how to perceive this whole incidence. For example, as evidence of some remaining parochial figures which keep providing a source of identification for easily-led authoritarian personalities? Or, given their apparent capacity to terrorise, to threaten with violence or enforce economic boycotts, is this evidence of the continuing political power and effectiveness of extreme right-wing groups and their discourses?

For many, this represents a kind of anachronism within modern society. Certainly, an example of its current contradictions. Many sociologists, such as Giddens, have viewed these groups in terms of modern fundamentalisms. They try to defend tradition but in a way which refuses public dialogue and examination of their ‘truths’. But, as it is asserted, we live in times and places where truths have to be decided. Consequently, these fundamentalist movements of religious, or national and other traditional discourses, can lead to violence.

Violence is in the air, no doubt about it. Although, I would say that this violence arises, not only from the non-dialogic position of such traditional groups (of religion, nation, sexuality, gender, etc), but also from the emotion-based and non-rationally understood reactions of the threatened individuals which comprise them. (In other words, their intolerance might not be responsive to rational approaches).

Now, whether these individuals of fundamentalist groups face real or imaginary threats to their beliefs and identities, could be the next big question. I leave it to everyone to think about it, whether being one of those individuals or not.

I’ll just continue with three relevant visual traces of thought.

a

The religious representative above was trying at some point to explain what finds offensive by evoking a comparative image, which would show the artist’s mother to the public, being naked with her genitals exposed.

What would be offensive or threatening about that?

A photograph entitled Flesh by Japanese artist Manabu Yamanaka (© 1995) comes to my mind.

Yamanaka, who practiced as a nurse among the elderly for years, shows us a photograph of a naked old woman against a white and empty background. Nothing to soften the image, no beautifying techniques or other trycks. Neither the subject makes any attempt to hide her naked bodily existence.

If the viewers feel, however, an emerging emotion of disturbance or embarrassment, contrasting in fact the subject’s comfortable approach, this owes much more to their own problematic attitudes and fears, rather than the photograph itself. Fears of mortality, or chaos, or secret fascination, or whatever else, can and have to be resolved by the viewers themselves, not the subject or the artist. And if for many the photograph comes as a shock, they should probably question our wider culture which makes images of old age rare and invisible, which is obsessed with health and youth, and which associates nude with young female bodies.

b

Let’s go to Vertigo, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most fascinating movies. I remembered a point made by the well known scholar Slavoj Zizek.

In the plot of the movie, Scottie (James Stewart) saves Madeleine (Kim Novak) when she fell into the waters of San Francisco Bay. Later we are back to Scottie’s flat where she has been recovering sleeping in his bed and he is waiting for her to wake up.

In the meantime, the camera zooms around Scottie’s flat and shows us Madeleine’s clothes hanging in the little kitchen room. So it makes clear that Scottie has undressed Madeleine off her wet clothes before placing her to bed. (After all she later wakes up and questions what happened).

But just a moment! If we focus carefully into the picture of those clothes we realise that there is no underwear shown. There is a chance that they are further away, behind the wall, and so not shown in the image, but we can also observe a bizarre piece of clothing hanging there.

Zizek has argued that there was a censorship issue there with a particular ideological twist. It was imperative that no underwear should be shown, (thus they were replaced by some irrelevant old cloth), because the regulators were concerned that the viewers would otherwise assume that Scottie had seen Madeleine naked. The image of underwear hung to dry was seen, in other words, as the signifier of a scandalous act. Its omission was rendered as the appropriate way to avoid evoking such a conclusion into viewers’ mind.

But, of course, someone would simply ask: Since we, the viewers, know that Scottie has undressed Madeleine and thus we know that he has seen her naked why do we need this kind of symbolic protection?

In the same way, if people know that their god was at some point an ‘anatomically correct’ man, in terms of genitalia, then why are the regulators of their public morals go to such effort to make sure that an artifact which shows that must not be produced? What, in the end, are we protected from?

c

The absurdity of modern life often hits us in the face fully-clothed and fully-regulated. Whether it is found in its limits or consists its integral core, and whether it is an issue of collective lies, are not a matter of the image alone.

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven - a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Revelation:12″

This was the introductory quote by Diane Arbus in her unpublished article ‘Bishop’s Charisma’ (1964). It included 3 photographs and text written by her. Here’s part of it.

“On a cliff overlooking the Pacific, in a cemetery in the sun, a small lady in damask robes with hair of a phosphorescent pink holds aloft a styrofoam cross encrusted with smaller crosses and raises her eyes till they pale at the vision of Jesus Christ. She is called Bishop Ethel Predonzan of The Cathedral Of The Creator, Omnipresence, Inc. Christ, she declares, has summoned her there to Santa Barbara, California, all the way from Astoria, Queens, to await His Second Coming on December 4th of this year.

I followed the Bishop across the country to hear her story and to listen to God’s voice on a 45 rpm record, as he says to her: “I appeal to you for the future of this earth to lead the people, my dear. You are their Guiding Star. Do not fail Me now that I stand before you. . .” etc. [...]

“He has a gorgeous voice,” she says. “What a diction. There is no one on this earth that can speak the diction of The Father and Christ.” Sometimes while the Bishop is talking, a strange sound interrupts her speech. This is how Jesus kisses her in the throat, she explains, blissfully, “like a butterfly.” Occasionally, she relates, He tells her: “I am going to fly with you tonight. You must be pure like a glass of water.” And then He comes, she says, His wings like a hurricane, and takes her to the Heavens (”Ooooooh, what a feeling”), to the different planets. “My Lord, my Lord,” she cries out to Him, “I’m going to fall,” but He touches something in the back of her neck and she is no longer afraid.”

Now, I have begun to wonder about something else… Why was this article by Diane Arbus not published?

Untitled photograph (nude 2) by Christos Stavrou © 2008

I wish I could send you a chocolate Jesus, maybe that abandoned one which they failed to exhibit last year in New York… But in the end, I guess you’ll be equally satisfied with few mint chocolates in a box and a photograph of an almost chocolate body… It is my easter present of course. Chocolates and one sudden thought, if my bath is running hot enough, make me realise that you are always around here.

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“How did beauty begin? Earth-cult, suppressing the eye, locks man in the belly of mothers. There is, I insist, nothing beautiful in nature. Nature is primal power, coarse and turbulent. Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.” (from the book Sexual Personae by C. Paglia © 1990).

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Chocolate Jesus by Tom Waits: