"All things will be changed!"
When it comes to the notion of an "apocalypse now", then the promise of of emancipation, right at the heart of the European "enlightenment", is also a promise of change.
And "change" is at the heart of the European millenarian movements of the so-called "middle" ages. Samir Amin, whose groundbreaking work on "eurocentrism", raises a question on the matter of this timeline, a sequence where the "classic" ages of classical antiquity are followed by the so-called "dark" (or un-enlightened, as in little evidence of textual documentation) and the "middle" ages. Amin contends, as does McLuhan, that these "middle ages" were in fact entirely classical in their cultural forms and ways of thinking, and operating, and serving, in an economic, political system of power, going back to classical antiquity, he designates as "tributary". This involves a cultural, political and economic society that, when it comes to the reality of power;
power is made VISIBLE in the political theatre of being seen to make tribute.
This tributary system gives way in the so-called Renaissance, that is NO kind of re-birth at all, but does involve the birth of something else, capitalism, where the actual relations of power are obscured, INVISIBLE, and rendered only at a level of abstraction, and of course, in double entry book keeping.
The Prussian homage
The Prussian Homage is an oil on canvas painting by Polish painter Jan Matejko painted between 1879 and 1882 in Kraków (then part of Austria-Hungary). The painting depicts the "Prussian Homage," a significant political event from the time of the Renaissance in Poland in which Albrecht of Hohenzollern, the Duke of Prussia, paid tribute and swore allegiance to Matejko the Old in Kraków's market square on 10 April 1525. Matejko depicted over thirty important figures of the Polish Renaissance period, taking the liberty of including several who were not actually present at the event. This nineteenth century Polish artwork captures a moment, one among many in the Renaissance period, when the witness of an act of homage was to prove to be an empty show.
The painting glorifies this event in Poland's past and its culture, and the majesty of its kings. At the same time, the painting has darker undertones, reflecting the troubled times that befell Poland in the late eighteenth century, for the Kingdom of Prussia would become one of the partitioning powers that ended the independence of Poland. The painting was seen by some as anti-Prussian, foretelling its perceived betrayal of Poland; others have noted it is also critical of Poland, as Matejko included signs that signify this seemingly triumphant moment was a hollow, wasted victory. Matejko created his painting to remind others about the history of the no-longer-independent country he loved, and about the changing fates of history.This is a "Shakespearean" moment. In the second act of Hamlet, Shakespeare's eponymous character calls into question the difference between "seeming" and "being" after his mother dismisses Hamlet’s mourning of his father:
“Seem, madam? Nay it is. I know not ‘seems’” and goes on to say “These indeed ‘seem’,/ For they are actions that a man might play;/ But I have that within which passeth show—/ These but the trappings and the suits of woe” (1.2.75-86).
When Gertrude says that the death of Hamlet’s father seems to affect Hamlet personally, he picks apart her rhetoric and calls into question the difference between seeming and being. This again loops back to the idea of deceit.Especially in this play with Hamlet’s internal turmoil, Shakespeare is asking us to question what it means to appear one way and feel another way on the inside. Shakespeare calls into question what it means to truly know somebody, not just “know” their appearance.The heightening of the visual sense, that for McLuhan arrives with the Gutenberg Galaxy, the age of the printing press, at the expense of a multi-sensory "feeling" about what was essential and integral, led to myriad confusions in the general perception of what was real and what was an illusion.
And everything was to change!
According to John Milios' Marx’s Inquiry into the Birth of Capitalism: Why Does It Matter?
By the end of the fourteenth century, Venice emerged as a capitalist social formation, practically introducing capitalism in Europe.
The economic upswing of Venice never had as its “prime mover” the “private initiative” of certain ingenious merchants or any other “self-made” and “risk-taking” individuals. The “instigator” of Venice’s economic rise was the collectivity of a patrician class, having organized itself from the onset of the eleventh century as a militarized naval state which functioned as both coordinator and main undertaker of a multiplicity of money-begetting “ventures”: trade, piracy, plunder, slave trade, war. Venice remained a pre-capitalist economy and society under the economic, political and social rule of a class of pre-capitalist merchants, shipowners and directors of state-owned manufactures until the fourteenth century. The money-begetting activities of the Venetian ruling class constituted an unsettled process of original accumulation, in Marx’s context of the term. One pole of the process, the Venetian money-owners and their state, had already attained the clearly-defined characteristics of a spurious bourgeoisie. The other pole, however, the propertyless proletarian, had not yet emerged, and this is precisely why the bourgeoisie remained spurious. The wage-remunerated poor still participated in the ownership of the means of production through forms of “association” mediated by the very fact of their being wage-earners.
However, historical contingencies such as the Venetian-Genoese wars, the crises in the Venetian colonial system, and the plague, led to the prevalence of the capitalist mode of production in the second half of the fourteenth century in the Venetian social formation. These conditions led to the formation of huge, state-owned manufactures organized on the basis of the capital—wage-labour relation. The encounter of the propertyless proletarian with the collective money-owner of the Venetian Commune clearly took hold in these manufactures. In parallel, all non-salaried sources of income of the majority of seamen were drastically restricted, creating a proletariat of wage-earning mariners. In this case as well, money-owners auctioning off state-owned fleets, and shipowners commanding private ships, became capitalists, as “the confrontation of, and the contact between” them and the emerging proletariat took hold.
In all instances where a lack of “free labour” existed, forms of coerced labour, and above all the money-begetting slave mode of production, reappeared as a “necessary” manifestation of “entrepreneurship.”
Finally, in order to support the wars, a huge internal public debt was created, which on the one hand nurtured both advanced budgetary management and fiscal policies, and on the other created and greatly expanded capitalist finance. By the end of the fourteenth century, Venice emerged as a capitalist social formation, practically introducing capitalism in Europe.
Double-entry bookkeeping
In pre-modern Europe, double-entry bookkeeping had theological and cosmological connotations, recalling "both the scales of justice and the symmetry of God's world".
The earliest extant accounting records that follow the modern double-entry system in Europe come from Amatino Manucci, a Florentine merchant at the end of the 13th century. Manucci was employed by the Farolfi firm and the firm's ledger of 1299–1300 evidences full double-entry bookkeeping. Giovannino Farolfi & Company, a firm of Florentine merchants headquartered in Nîmes, acted as moneylenders to the Archbishop of Arles, their most important customer. Some suggest that Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici introduced this method for the Medici bank in the 14th century.
The double entry system began to propagate for practice in Italian merchant cities during the 14th century. Before this there may have been systems of accounting records on multiple books which, however, do not yet have the formal and methodical rigor necessary to control the business economy. In the course of the 16th century, Venice produced the theoretical accounting science by the writings of Luca Pacioli, Domenico Manzoni, Bartolomeo Fontana, the accountant Alvise Casanova and the erudite Giovanni Antonio Tagliente.
Hidden figures?
Is she a courtesan or a respectable member of the ruling elite of Venice in the 16th century?
In the 16th century, Venice, with a population of 150,000, had some 20,000 prostitutes. They were openly tolerated as a means of avoiding seduction or attacks against "honest women," and because the taxes generated by the sex industry were enough to run a dozen warships. Courtesans were the top end of this market, recognized as the city's greatest luxury item. Their apartments were decorated in the latest fashions and became the subject of many travellers' tales. The most famous in English was written by Thomas Coryat in 1608.
His hostess, Margarita Emiliana, was "decked with many chaines of gold and orient pearle like a second Cleopatra"; her walls were adorned with tapestries and gilt leather, and musical instruments, often a sign of debauchery, were scattered about. The bedroom, normally the most private part of a house, was not private in prostitutes' quarters. In Margarita Emiliana's, Coryat marvelled over such luxuries as minutely embroidered and perfumed textiles. The manufacture of luxury textiles, such as silk, was central to an Italian Renaissance economy based on status and conspicuous consumption. All over Europe, silk was a mark of wealth and power. In Venice, silk was worn by ecclesiastical figures, doges and other government officials, as well as wealthy patricians who wished to convey their status in society. The wealthiest members of society would not only strive to clad themselves in different silks, but also furnish their homes with items made from silk.
Wearers of silk also had to take into consideration what message their choice of clothing was conveying, as it “actually mattered whether your clothing was made of wool or silk, and precisely what grade of silk fabric you wore as well as the expense and appropriateness of the colour.”
There was a problem, however, when it came to the clarity of the message in the wearing of silk. The wearer of silk, whether from the wealthy elite of Venetian society, or the "high class" courtesan, or "low" prostitute, would not necessarily have had the resources to purchase such costly attire at their disposal. Capitalism has one of its foundational sources in the business of hiring out such luxury items. Anyone who could afford the cost of renting luxury silk garments, regardless of their social situation.
And Venice was famed for its many elaborately dressed and coiffed courtesans, and where foreign visitors marvelled at their opulent jewels and use of abundant cosmetics. Meanwhile, civic authorities, when not enlisting them as a deterrent to the scourge of sodomy, decried the courtesans' deliberately misleading resemblance to "honest women". Capitalizing on their popularity, the enterprising Pietro Bertelli published a series of prints of courtesans, each with a flap that lifted to reveal, below a seemingly innocent exterior, a glimpse of the carnal pleasures for which Venice was famed by its admirers and reviled by its detractors.
Here, the flap is the skirt, that can be lifted to display the courtesan's undergarments and chopines.These clever and amusing works appropriate the conceit of voyeurism prevalent in erotic imagery and prose. Here, the voyeur is not merely a passive observer but a physically engaged participant whose intervention is required for the salacious content to be exposed.
Chopines - platform shoes?
These chopines were over fifty centimetres tall, platform shoes that Venetian ladies ostensibly wore to keep their feet dry in the perpetually damp lagoon city. They couldn’t walk in these shoes, but stood in them enabling a public display of their virtues.
The second-hand trade in Venice was well established, with clothing and furniture regularly borrowed and rented. For special events whole rooms were furnished and decorated with rented goods, with the dealers acting as interior designers. An inventory of the goods of Henry Wotton, English Ambassador, listed a number of rented items: a billiards table, gondola, beds, sheets, awnings and firearms.
Second-hand dealers also acted as pawnbrokers, and in desperate circumstances desperate measures were taken to raise money. There are even records of wives and children being pawned.
Trade guilds, like that of the second-hand dealers, were an essential part of Renaissance town life. They regulated the supply of goods, mediated in disputes and supported members financially, spiritually and socially.
Contemporary accounts suggest that this trade was used to lure women into prostitution. They were tempted by beautiful garments and then, finding no way to pay off their debts, were forced to prostitute themselves.
Let's go to an ORGY!!
This erotic comic book illustration is by the British illustrator and comic book artist Robin Ray who has worked under the pseudonym Erich von Götha as an alter ego. Robin Ray has gained a reputation with his erotic and, above all, sadomasochist content. The illustrations above, and below are from the fourth album of his most famous work, The Troubles of Janice, set in Venice, and contemporaneous with the life of Marquis de Sade.
"And be assured, they're all the best of society!"
But don't you believe them!
According to Joanne M. Ferraro in Making a Living: The Sex Trade in Early Modern Venice (06 February 2018), in Venice the tenor of state regulation of prostitution differed from the usual situation where the state lifted prostitutes’ legal protections and attempted to place them, together with all other women, under the normative rules of patriarchy, restricting female sexuality exclusively to marital relations.
Sex workers exercising agency and entrepreneurship were then regarded as criminals. In both cases, market trends encouraged some degree of female independence from patriarchal control, despite moral injunctions against the commodification of sex and changes in state regulations.
But in Venice sex workers were never the legal subjects of their fathers or husbands. Nonetheless, some were exploited as family assets just the same. However, the state often targeted mothers rather than fathers as the socially constructed criminals selling children into prostitution. The state also criminalised procurers and procuresses. Despite these measures, many women continued to work in their own domestic and matrimonial venues, the most successful enjoying close links with the business community.Perhaps it was the social relationships in the Venetian setting that best explains the proliferation of the sex trade and the failures of top-down patriarchal regulation. In Venice that trade was largely under the supervision of women. As managers, they operated as actors rather than as victims, ignoring the stigma associated with organizing and selling sex, and taking advantage of the opportunities that came their way. They were not simply impoverished women passively trapped in an economy of fluctuating crises. Some exercised autonomy, making the entertainment and port economies operate for them and deploying successful strategies of survival and improvement. They moved astutely into the deregulated marketplace of an early modern commercial and entertainment mecca and engaged in complex negotiations with clients, neighbours, landlords, shopkeepers, and the authorities of church and state. This is significant testimony to their ability to make choices and to exert their own agency in a commercially oriented cultural environment.
There were recognised and designated areas, a "red light district" in Venice but there were also courtesans who were less obvious.
They were educated prostitutes who were refined and well dressed and serviced the social elite. Young, beautiful, intelligent, and well-educated courtesans of Renaissance Venice enjoyed privileges far above the rights of ordinary women. They mingled with the elite of the Venetian society such as kings, nobles, cardinals, and ambassadors.The best courtesan could earn in a day and night the equivalent in todays value of $20,000.Venice in the 16th century was a mecca for trade and tourism. People from all corners of the world came into the city to trade for spices, silk, or salt. Many people came to see religious relics. But pilgrims and merchants didn’t come to Venice just to save their souls and make business. They came to have fun. So prostitution boomed, and the always entrepreneurial Venetians legalised this business so that they could tax it.In 1509, there were 11,164 courtesans in Venice. The Venetians even had a catalogue of courtesans that had the names, addresses, and fees of the best courtesans.There were two groups of courtesans in Venice. The first group, the low-rank courtesans, catered to the needs of the middle class. They were called the cortigiane di lume ("courtesan of the light"). They were poor and cheap. They worked near the famous Rialto Bridge.
The Bridge of The Tits
The Republic of Venice restricted prostitution to the area Carampane di Rialto by official decree in 1412. The prostitutes were severely restricted in their movement and behaviour. The buildings of the area had become property of the Republic when the last of the rich Rampani family had died without an heir. A curfew was imposed on them, and they could not leave the area except on Saturdays, when they had to wear a yellow scarf, as opposed to the white scarf of a marriageable woman. They could not work on certain holy days, with transgression of the rules sometimes resulting in flogging.During the 16th century, the prostitutes faced strong competition from homosexuals and formally asked the Doge to help them. The authorities, keen to suppress homosexuality (which was seen as a social problem), allowed the prostitutes to display their breasts from balconies and windows near the bridge to attract business. At night they were permitted to use lanterns to illuminate their breasts. More than this allowance, in order to divert with such an incentive the men from sin against nature, the Republic also paid prostitutes to stand in a line across a particular bridge with breasts exposed. This was the Ponte delle Tette, a small bridge on the rio di san Canciano, taking its name ("Bridge of the Tits") from the use of the bridge by these prostitutes, who were encouraged to stand topless on the bridge, and in nearby windows, supposedly to entice and convert suspected homosexuals. On a practical level the display of breasts also served to exclude transvestite prostitutes.
The display of breasts . . .
This video montage begins with a clip from the trailer for the 1998 American biographical drama film Dangerous Beauty directed by Marshall Herskovitz and based on the non-fiction book The Honest Courtesan by Margaret Rosenthal. The film is about Veronica Franco, a courtesan in sixteenth-century Venice who becomes a hero to her city, but later becomes the target of an inquisition by the Church for witchcraft. She is renowned for her notable clientele, feminist advocacy, literary contributions, and philanthropy. Her humanist education and surviving cultural contributions make Veronica Franco a compelling case study for the accomplishments of Courtesans in the late Venetian Renaissance.
In her notable works, Capitoli in Terze rime and Lettere familiari a diversi ("Familiar Letters to Various People"), Franco uses perceived virtue, reason, and fairness to advise male patricians and other associates. Her writings serve as a display of her intellect and social connections. She was able to exercise greater autonomy in her authorship than other traditional Venetian woman due to her established reputation and influence. Re:LODE Radio recommends The introduction to Eugenio L. Giusti's The Renaissance Courtesan in Words, Letters and Images, Social Amphibology and Moral Framing (A Diachronic Perspective) to gaining an insight into the remarkable intellectual achievement of Veronica Franco.
The public display of Venice's "honest courtesans" and the "courtesans of the light" is coyly represented in the edits from this trailer. By contrast the video montage then plays a short clip, repeated several times, explicitly showing topless prostitutes by the "bridge of the tits", as merchants from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" pass by, gossiping about risky maritime "ventures".
Honest courtesans
The the high-rank courtesans, were called the cortigiane oneste ("honest courtesan") and were admired for their style, education, and intellect. Of course, they were also worthy of sin. Their clientele was the cream of Venetian society. Through their influential lovers, honest courtesans wielded significant political influence and got rich. Being an honest courtesan was a means to secure financial freedom.They exercised other freedoms too in a context where in patriarchy women of the 16th century had, generally, to adhere to strict moral laws and social rules. The Venetian courtesans clearly rebelled against these restrictions by dressing as flamboyant as they could. They wore dresses that displayed bare bellies, low-cut dresses, and corsets that revealed bare breasts. Occasionally, they even wore male breeches. The courtesans went for the most lively colours, silk, and pearls! In most cases, the high-ranking courtesans dressed better than the Venetian noblewomen.
Portrait of a Young Woman by Paris Bordone
The Venetian authorities became concerned that it was impossible to distinguish between courtesans and respectable women. So rules were drawn up in 1543 to determine what courtesans wore. Rather than ban undesirables, Venetians tended to make rules to control how they appeared in public. The general problem went much deeper though, where questions of difference between social classes and the question of seeming and being were at the heart of possible confusions.
Binary sign systems
Finding out what an artwork means requires considering how it is used, interpreted, presented and represented, and this requires some study. Finding out about how the world is now, and its history, artworks can provide many questions but also many revelations, not only in terms of "the facts", but also in terms of the "how" when it comes to the presentation of "the facts", and that includes the fictive as well the factive. The visual arts, as much as the textual, are therefore capable of functioning both as an Apocalypse (revealing) NOW, and as an Apocalypse (revealing) of THEN!
Sacred and Profane Love!
A binary pairing?
The title of the painting by Titian, probably painted in 1514, early in his career, is first recorded in 1693, when it was listed in an inventory as Amor Divino e Amor Profano (Divine love and Profane love). Although "much ink has been spilt by art historians attempting to decipher the iconography of the painting", and some measure of consensus has been achieved, basic aspects of the intended meaning of the painting, including the identity of the central figures, remain disputed.
The painting is presumed to have been commissioned by Niccolò Aurelio, a secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten, whose coat of arms appears on the sarcophagus or fountain, to celebrate his marriage to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. It perhaps depicts a figure representing the bride dressed in white, sitting beside Cupid and accompanied by the goddess Venus.
Two women, one clothed, and the other un-clothed, and who appear to be modelled on the same person, sit on a carved Ancient Roman sarcophagus that has been converted to a water-trough, or a trough made to look like a Roman sarcophagus; the broad ledges here are not found in actual sarcophagi.
How the water enters is unclear, but it leaves through a phallic-looking brass spout between the two women, next to an anachronistic coat of arms in the carving. This belongs to Niccolò Aurelio, whose presence in the picture is probably also represented by the spout.
Between the two women is a small winged boy, who may be Cupid, son and companion of Venus, or merely a putto. He is looking intently into the water, and splashing a hand in it.
The woman on the left is fully and richly dressed; her clothes are now usually recognised as those of a bride, though in the past they have been said to be typical of courtesan wear. In her hair she wears myrtle, both a flower sacred to Venus and one worn by brides.
In contrast, the woman on the right is nude except for a white cloth over her loins and a large red mantle worn over one shoulder. It was generally recognised by the 20th century that, somewhat contrary to a natural first impression, if the painting indeed represented figures along the lines of Sacred and Profane Love, the clothed figure was "profane love", and the nude one "sacred love".
There have been a number of conflicting interpretations of the painting. Their starting point is to identify the purpose of the painting, which most interpretations in recent decades see as commemorating a marriage. Next the figures, who seem physically identical, but with one clothed and the other un-clothed, need to be assigned identities, at which point agreement ends.
While the trend in recent years has been to downplay complicated and obscure explanations of the iconography of paintings by Titian (and other Venetian painters), in this case no straightforward interpretation has been found, and scholars remain more ready to consider allegorical alternatives of some complexity, Titian would probably not have devised a complicated allegorical meaning himself; it has been suggested that the Renaissance humanist scholar Cardinal Pietro Bembo, or a similar figure, may have devised the allegorical scheme. But the identity of any scholar that could be implicated in furnishing a program to Titian remains pure speculation.
Scholars have proposed several identifications of the figures, and analyses and interpretations which largely flow from these. The concept of Geminae Veneres or "Twin Venuses", a dual nature in Venus, was well developed in both classical thought and Renaissance Neoplatonism.
Scholars have proposed several identifications of the figures, and analyses and interpretations which largely flow from these. The concept of Geminae Veneres or "Twin Venuses", a dual nature in Venus, was well developed in both classical thought and Renaissance Neoplatonism.
In 1969 the scholar Erwin Panofsky suggested the two figures were representations of the 'Twin Venuses' with the clothed figure representing the 'earthly' Venus - (Venere Vulgare), while the other was 'celestial' (Venere Celeste).
The Venus of Lust and the Venus of spiritual Love! A binary pairing?
In Greek mythology Aphrodite Urania was an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, signifying "heavenly" or "spiritual", to distinguish her from her more earthly aspect of Aphrodite Pandemos, "Aphrodite for all the people". The two were used (mostly in literature) to differentiate the more "celestial" love of body and soul from purely physical lust. Plato represented her as a daughter of the Greek god Uranus, conceived and born without a mother. According to Hesiod, she was born from the severed genitals of Uranus and emerged from the sea foam.
Pandemos was originally an extension of the idea of the goddess of family and city life to include the whole people, the political community. Hence the name was supposed to go back to the time of Theseus, the reputed author of the reorganization of Attica and its demes. Aphrodite Pandemos was held in equal regard with Urania; she was called σεμνή semni (holy), and was served by priestesses upon whom strict chastity was enjoined. In time, however, the meaning of the term underwent a change, probably due to the philosophers and moralists, by whom a radical distinction was drawn between Aphrodite Urania and Pandemos.According to Plato, there are two Aphrodites, "the elder, having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite — she is the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione — her we call common." The same distinction is found in Xenophon's Symposium, although the author is doubtful whether there are two goddesses, or whether Urania and Pandemos are two names for the same goddess, just as Zeus, although one and the same, has many titles; but in any case, he says, the ritual of Urania is purer, more serious, than that of Pandemos. The same idea is expressed in the statement that after Solon's time . . .
. . . courtesans were put under the protection of Aphrodite Pandemos.
But there is no doubt that the cult of Aphrodite was on the whole as pure as that of any other divinities, and although a distinction may have existed in later times between the goddess of legal marriage and the goddess of free love, these titles/epithets did not express these later ideas possibly present in the Titian Sacred and Profane Love.The "Twin Venuses" remains the most accepted and convincing interpretation to this day. Others see the clothed figure as representing the bride, as idealized, and not a portrait, which would have been risqué in Venice, and with the nude figure representing Venus.
Although the first record of a version of what is now the usual title is only in an inventory of 1693, it remains possible that the two female figures are indeed intended to be personifications of the Neoplatonic concepts of sacred and profane love. The art historian Walter Friedländer outlined similarities between the painting and Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and proposed that the two figures represented Polia and Venere, the two female characters in the 1499 romance.
This idea that it contrasts two allegorized concepts of beauty or of love dates from the 18th century. However, biographical considerations suggest that the clothed Venus depicts Laura Bagarotto and the naked Venus represents "Truth". A conjectural case is made for the picture containing a coded message of the innocence of Laura's father, Bertuccio (executed in 1509).
When it comes to the mythological, and the "to and the fro", from cliché to archetype, from Mount Olympus to the streets of Paris, then be prepared . . .
. . . to be distracted from distraction by distraction. And all the while;
"only those who are realistic are mythical. This is what is foreseen by our divine reason. What reason is unable to see are the inevitable mistakes, it will lead you to. They will be many!"
The quotation above is taken from the subtitles of the 1969 film Medea by the Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini and based on the ancient myth of Medea. Filmed in Göreme's early Christian churches, Pisa, and the Citadel of Aleppo, it stars opera singer Maria Callas in her only film role.The film is largely a faithful portrayal of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and the events of Euripides' play The Medea concerning the betrayal of Medea by Jason and his eventual demise at her hands. The film does not use the dialogue as written by Euripides but the plot does closely follow the structure of his play. The beginning portions of the film also follow the early life of Jason and his voyage to Colchis where he meets Medea.
In the prologue of the film the centaur Chiron teaches the young boy Jason philosophical truths about the world and tells him about the voyage he will one day embark on to Colchis.
One of many philosophical truths set out in this sequence has a relationship to Barthes' approach to uncovering, unpacking, de-constructing and de-mystifying the world of images and ideas in the spectacle of modern life. Chiron explains to the young Jason that in the lands of Colchis:
"Life there is very realistic! Because only those who are mythical are realistic and only those who are realistic are mythical! This is what is foreseen by our divine reason. What reason is unable to see are the inevitable mistakes, it will lead you to. They will be many!"The next sequence shows Medea and the land of Colchis that houses the Golden Fleece and is home to many bizarre rituals. A human sacrifice is performed in front of hundreds of cheering onlookers.
This is a land where: "Life there is very realistic! Because only those who are mythical are realistic", and if the blood of human sacrifice fertilises the earth and guarantees the future, then that's being realistic!
So, a young man is offered up as a human sacrifice and his organs and blood are sprinkled over the crops in a ritual sparagmos. It is presided over by the Queen Medea.
Chiron's warning: "What reason is unable to see are the inevitable mistakes, it will lead you to."
For a post-Renaissance capitalocene era the fate of the "realistic" is to become "mythical"!
This video montage begins with an advertisement for one of Paco Rabanne's fragrances The fragrance is called Olympéa, a clear reference to Mount Olympus, seat of the gods in ancient Greek mythology, including Aphrodite, the goddess associated with love, beauty, pleasure, passion and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess Venus. Aphrodite's major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The chosen imagery for this advertisement veers towards a kitsch version of Olympus as a palatial CGI generated fitness and beauty spa, with Rabanne's Aphrodite a young goddess on the lookout for hunky young gods and/or mortals.
The montage then cuts to a German language trailer for Pasolini's Medea, a suitable and earthy antidote to the digital hyperreality of the Olympéa ad.
This is followed by a Dior ad that presents dusty, sun-drenched landscapes, accompanied by a performance of the pizzica tarantata, a liberating and spellbinding folk ritual in which a spider’s bite leads to a healing song and dance.
From earth to water and Dior and the actor Charlize Theron enters an echoland of associations with the legendary the birth of Venus. In myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born, already in adult form, from the sea foam (Greek αφρός, aphros) produced by the severed genitals of Caelus-Uranus. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life.
Succeeding scenes from several other Dior ads featuring Charlize Theron in palatial architectural spaces that Re:LODE Radio associates with the quasi-surreal cinematic atmosphere created by Alain Resnais in his L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad), the 1961 with a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet.
A trailer and sequence from this film is followed by two more Dior ads, each with a modern Venus (or Alice), one featuring the spectacular interiors and vistas of Versailles, while the other features a reference to Through the Looking Glass and Jean Cocteau's Orpheus (Orphée), a 1950 French film that is directly quoted in the Dior ad.
Jimmy Choo presents Shimmer in the Dark featuring Cara Delevingne as a version of the earthly and profane Venus Twin, a goddess walking on the streets of the city.The video montage begins with a kitsch version of Aphrodite Urania, an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, signifying "heavenly" or "spiritual", to distinguish her from her more earthly aspect of Aphrodite Pandemos, "Aphrodite for all the people". Cara Delevingne, shimmering in the dark is, perhaps, a version of an "Aphrodite for all the people" and as the montage ends, we encounter another version of this Twin Venus on the streets of Paris in an ad for Louis Vuitton that proved controversial.The binary pairing of the Twin Venuses were used (mostly in literature) to differentiate the more "celestial" love of body and soul from purely physical lust, and in this last excerpt in the montage the result turned out to glamorise prostitution.
From a "celestial" Venus . . .
Lauren Cochrane reported (Thu 28 Mar 2013) for the Guardian, under the headline:
Fashion video sparks outrage amid prostitution allegationsLauren Cochrane writes:
The French fashion house Louis Vuitton has been accused of glamorising prostitution in an advertising campaign video to showcase the label's autumn/winter collection. The video has sparked outrage in France after Libération, the leftwing newspaper, published a letter signed by various high-profile lawyers and intellectuals accusing it of "assimilating luxury with the world's second most profitable criminal activity after drug trafficking". One signatory, Dominique Attias, a lawyer who is outspoken about gender issues in France, called it "an extremely shocking representation of women".In the video, which was also hosted on the Guardian website, models including Georgia Jagger and Cara Delevingne wander through the dark streets of Paris wearing lingerie-inspired clothes, stopping to lean into car doors. The implication appears to be that they are prostitutes.The video was made for Love magazine and styled by Katie Grand, the editor-in-chief and a collaborator of Louis Vuitton's creative director Marc Jacobs. It was directed by James Lima, who has also made films for Prada and Loewe. Speaking to the Guardian, Grand, who is one of the most influential stylists in fashion, apologised "if our film offended anyone", adding: "It certainly wasn't my intention to cause offence." Louis Vuitton has declined to comment on the film.The controversy goes beyond this single issue to the heart of the fashion industry, which is often accused of making light of darker issues. The Libération letter says as much. "Do creators from the universe of luxury realise that they are promoting violence, pornography and sexual slavery?" it asks.The consequence of the images are the images of the consequences!
And so it repeats! Ad nauseam!
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