From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

A handsome reward is offered for the Everett True films.

Pérák, the Spring Man was an urban legend originating from the Czechoslovakian city of Prague during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in the midst of World War II. In the decades following the war, Pérák has also been portrayed as a Czech superhero. [...] The 14-minute Czech animated cartoon Pérák a SS (The Springer and the SS, also released in English-speaking markets as Jumping Jack and the SS, The Spring-Man and the SS Men and The Chimneysweep), which was released in 1946, portrayed the ‘Springer’ as a heroic and mischievous black-clad chimney sweep, with a mask fashioned out of a sock. He was capable of performing fantastic leaps due to having couch springs attached to his shoes. This cartoon, created by the renowned Czech animator Jiří Trnka and film-maker Jiří Brdečka, featured Pérák taunting the German army sentries and the Gestapo before escaping in a surrealistic, slapstick chase across the darkened city. Trnka’s postwar interpretation of Pérák as a quasi-superhero, defying the curfew and the authority of the German occupying forces, formed the basis for sporadic revivals of the character in Czech science fiction and comic book stories.

Pérák a SS at youtube

With thanks to Cosmodromium.

OVO: What is the main source for the information that you publish?

VALE: We never tire of saying that our main influences were surrealism and situationism, and surrealism as you know placed a great deal of influence on objective chance and randomness and insanity and systems for deciphering the world that are a-logical systems We will admit that a lot of it is just purely chance. But of course through the years we have friends and our friends really help us. For example, the film book [Re/Search #10 Incredibly Strange Films] which was actually the first book that broke out of our small industrial music underground audience, that was done just because we got a letter from Jim Morton, who had been collecting these incredible films all his life but particularly since the advent of VCR. He wrote us, and then we went over to his house every Saturday night for years and watched two or three of four movies there and ate popcorn. It took four or five years he guest-edited the Incredibly Strange Films book and we put it out. We wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t known Jim Morton, let’s face it.

OVO: What is the purpose of Re/Search?

VALE: The surrealists had a slogan, something like “Matter Over Mind,” but what it meant was it is a mistake just to assume that one proceeds from the idea to the material reality. Very often its just the opposite. You might say the material reality suggests the theory, shall we say, and frankly I got started publishing back in ’77 because of punk rock. Of course it wasn’t called that then but it was very exciting, as undifferentiated and undefined and unlimited as it appeared to be because it was revolt, it was the youth revolt or revolution (if you dare to use that word) of the ’70s. And I was involved right from the very beginning before it had become codified and more or less set in amber. And so for me it was like a vehicle, it was an opportunity to… I don’t know, I just did it. My main motivation was kind of anger at the status quo. I’d always been angry at the status quo anyway, but, you know, what do you do? A lot of people just become criminals or whatever, or drug addicts, or they just can’t cope for a lot of good reasons. Society gives us all plenty of reasons but it also provides the narcotics in the form of television and actual narcotics so that we can “adapt,” shall we say.  And so yes, it’s definitely a struggle against mind control, against conditioning, against banal information.  We were born with the birthright of curiosity and there’s nothing more natural than to be curious, but of course this faculty is extinguished early in life.  It seems like society does everything it can to either extinguish this faculty or to channel it only along channels of consumption rather than you yourself doing something creative on your own, something creative and original and obsessive and unique on your own.  I don’t think society can really handle that, because it’s too destabilizing.  It’s like we’re in a vast consumption machine, we’re part of it, and society would function (it thinks) better if we would just go along with the programs.  And so obviously anyone who is a lover of freedom is going to go against that in all its manifestations.  And yet it’s not just enough to fight, whatever that means.  You have to eventually start doing something.  And in our case we more or less accidentally discovered that we could do something and sort of realize our own identities and destinies by becoming publishers.  Re/Search however is not the same as Search and Destroy.  Re/Search happened when I met Andrea [Juno] back in 1980, after we’d been very depressed for a year by what we thought was the death of punk rock.  It was certainly the death of punk rock as we knew it, that is as a viable underground, a microcosmos of society.  We were depressed for a year but then realized that this shouldn’t be the end of publishing.

OVO: Are the Re/Search archives open to the public?

Vale: No, because we’re not public figures.  If all we were to do were to run a library we’d never get any work done, and obviously our work comes first.  It’s hard enough as it is right now just to deal with all the business aspects let alone function as some sort of archive.  It so happens that we’ve been attacked by Jesse Helms [R-NC] and Dana Rohrabacher [R-CA] and entered into the Congressional Record because they don’t like our book Modern Primitives, which is yet another Re/Search publication which is advocating a certain theory of self-liberation or exploration.  That’s all it was intended to do, provide theory for this kind of activity, but apparently the powers that be would like to have this kind of theory and information repressed.

OVO: What kind of trouble have they been giving you?

VALE: Actually we should context this in a much wider overview that obviously America right now is under (thanks to less than probably one-tenth of one percent of the population) which is these very organized fundamentalist Christian fascists who have nothing to do with their lives but write letters all day to their congressman and call up advertisers threatening to boycott things like The Simpsons.  In other words, a minority group trying to pretend and camouflaging themselves as some kind of vox populi majority, which they are not. They’re mostly these very ignorant people in the South, people who have long since shut off any creative potential in their lives.  They’re just consumed by envy and they want to control all the rest of the population, who might be having more fun than them in some way. The Reagan agenda was to turn the country back to the McCarthy ’50s, since he was an informer for McCarthy, and to take away all the gains of the ’60s.  That complex agenda is still being realized. Every day there’s some new article in the paper on page 40 how 160 stores in the deep South took away Playboy Magazine from their stands. Little things like that don’t even get reported here on the West Coast. Thing like that are happening all the time but the more you find out about it the scarier it gets.

OVO: Yesterday a group called AIDS Response Knoxville had their office fire bombed. I just found out about that this morning.

VALE: If you could send me the clipping… see, that was not in our paper today. It doesn’t surprise me. So what you have now is a great deal of information containment going on. We’re living in the illusion that all the information is available, that were living in a global village and all that, but most people get their information from TV news, which is of course extremely compressed and bowdlerized and operates by omission. We should all be subscribing to our own little clipping services I suppose to get the kind of news such as the incident you told me about just now.

OVO: I didn’t find out about it from the paper. I found out about it from a friend and he said there’s only a tiny article about it.

VALE: That’s perfect, that’s exactly the way things happen and are happening. The propaganda techniques which Hitler initiated in terms of mass media control of the population, they‘re real good now. Helms is a master of negative campaigning, in which life gets simplified down to whether you’re for child pornography and obscenity or… Helms’ voting record is incredible, he’s a madman, the total enemy of liberty. But even when Helms is gone there‘ll always be someone to take his place. This kind of control mentality will apparently always be with us but yet we’re trying to do a small campaign so that all the minority papers across the country will at least have a copy of his voting record and also start to get a larger overview of all these isolated little incidents that’ve been happening, which together paint an extremely depressing picture of the abridgment of our freedoms.

OVO: Have there been specific incidents of you having trouble with Modern Primitives?

VALE: Knock on wood, no. We had two art shows based on the book, and that‘s how it started. If you don’t have any information on this I’ll send it to you.

OVO: No, I don’t have any.

VALE: Okay, I’ll send you the whole little press packet on that, with all the articles that’ve come out. See, that’s what l mean, someone as relatively hip and aware as you don’t know. Multiply this by about a thousand for all the little environmental groups all over. Their little news things never get reported. I just found out today that all the searches that the FBI did of all these Earth First houses, the people involved with Earth First because of two people blown up by a bomb, the FBI keeps reporting to the news that they blew themselves up rather than what they should be doing which is trying to find out who really did it. I didn’t realize until I read the paper today that all the searches the FBI did of people who deal with Earth First were all warrantless. To me that is really frightening. Did you know that? Do you think that means anything? And we only found out because our good friend Jock Sturges, a photographer, got busted recently. We’ve known Jock for years. For the last twenty years he has specifically focused on, shall we say, beautiful adolescent girls who are developing. But they are not pornography, he’s not the head of a kiddie porn ring by any means. He’s got the most incredibly beautiful negatives you’ve ever seen, eight by ten inch view camera negatives blown up to twenty by twenty-four inch prints that have a million gray tones in them. And we only found out from him that basically the First and Fourth Amendments are dead. The Fourth Amendment is unreasonable searches and seizures. Because the FBI just busted into his house without a search warrant. And this was all done, as Burroughs has kept us appraised of and warned us against all these years, in the name of fighting the “drug problem.” Because here’s what they can say now: they can come in because (a) they have a reason to believe you are about to destroy evidence and (b) they have a right to watch you because they have reason to believe you might try to commit suicide or commit harm to yourself. Isn’t that nice?

OVO: They’ve certainly got our best interests in mind.

VALE: Yes, of course.

OVO: How do you prevent Re/Search from becoming a part of the process of -

VALE: – co-option and assimilation? You’re dealing with what McLuhan called a very cool medium (or is it hot, I can never get that straight), but you’re dealing with a medium that is a book, and do you realize how few people read anymore? The numbers are incredible, how much reading has declined even though the population has doubled. When people do read, what do they read? They mostly lead these airport kind of books. It’s really frightening. The reason most people avoid books is because, let’s face it, there’s only a minority that reads any more, almost everyone else watches television and gets their information from TV. And in order to read effectively I find that l must have complete silence, as much as possible, and this is not the modem way. A lot of people these days, it’s like a conspiracy to keep them from thinking. As soon as they get up in the morning they have their radio blaring or put on a tape or something. We’ve all known people who’ve had the TV on eight hours a day. Of course we don’t know people like that any more, but they’re out there, like zombies or something. And so I still think that if you’re putting something out in a book you have more of a chance of making it with some kind of integrity. Because books aren’t you, Re/Search is not me or Andrea; it’s on its own. And if it has some ideas that light up your brain and catalyze in some way, which is the best that one can hope for… the books really do have a life of their own. And we’re just putting out a combination of information, images and ideas, hopefully, as well as trying to direct people to other books, which continue the same kind of inspiration.

Re/Search
20 Romolo Street #B
San Franslsco CA 94133 USA
http://researchpubs.com/

from OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)

Update, February 2011
Jim Morton writes about films, pop culture, and advertising.
http://popvoid.blogspot.com/

Boyd Rice was formerly credited as guest editor for Re/Search #10 Incredibly Strange Films.
http://www.boydrice.com/

Andrea Juno founded Juno Books.
http://twitter.com/AnimaJuno

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. died in 2008.

Dana Tyron Rohrabacher is the U.S. Representative for California’s 46th Congressional district.

AIDS Response Knoxville served at least between 1987 and 1999 and may still exist.

Jock Sturges’ studio was the subject of an FBI raid on 25 April 1990. Accused of child pornography, a Grand Jury did not bring an indictment against him.

Wikipedia, Judi Bari Car Bombing:

In 1990, a bomb exploded in Judi Bari’s car, shattering her pelvis and also injuring fellow activist Darryl Cherney. Bari and Cherney were later arrested after police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation suspected that they had been transporting the bomb when it accidentally exploded. The case against them was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. Bari died in 1997 of cancer, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland, California police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million. Eighty percent of the damages were for violation of their First Amendment rights by the FBI and police trying to discredit them in the media as violent extremists despite ample evidence to the contrary. The bombing remains unsolved.

I know that you don’t like to think this, but we are much like humans. We are subject to the human frailties. We forget. We get slip-shod. We fall short of our disciplines. You have selected me to be the family coordinator and I agreed to be, at least until someone better comes along. So that’s why I’m now reminding you of some of our basic principles for handling slaves.

Our slaves can get bored easily. When bored, they get restless. They start thinking, and questioning order. Therefore it is necessary for us to direct their thinking into areas which keep them dependent on our leadership. We must make them feel dependent on society for all their needs. Make them feel important to the Great Whole to which they belong. Keep them too deep in debt to have any spare time to experiment with principles of self-sufficiency, or even just getting out of hole.

A few of the slaves who refuse to conform are squatting in various places and planting their apple seeds, plum pits, grape seeds, avocado pits, orange seeds, nuts of all kinds and vegetables. They are not using our hybrid seeds. They found organic natural seeds more productive. They are creating Gardens of Eden, with free food, no rent and and acceptance of the Golden Rule instead of Government. So far, only a few of the smarter nonconformists are doing this. This gets them off our case; however, we must not give them any publicity, as it might encourage more our workers to not conform.

The family came up with a great innovation when they first decided to “allow” the peons to “own” land. Ownership gives them roots ties them down and makes it a easier to find them. It also gives us a classification of slave known as landlords. They serve us by forcing people to pay them rent in order to have a space to sleep on this planet. Thus they all work for us for the rest of their lives. We must always make them think that this is normal and that everyone has always had to pay rent and that they always will.

If the slaves deviate from present thought patterns, they might think it strange that they “agree” to work for us for 30 years to buy a place to sleep. They might wonder why some “primitive” people are able to build their homes from the material at hand in a couple of weeks and have no mortgage to pay. They might even find it simpler, more enjoyable and even more adventuresome to walk to where they wish to go instead of working for us to earn money to make perpetual car payments to us, so that they can get to a job to make the money to make their car payments. To say nothing of the car maintenance costs and depreciation. We must constantly entice them to buy. They make much better workers if are always in debt.

If we allow them space to think, they may question the vehicle with which they are killing themselves: 50,800 persons dead and 1,900,000 disabled in 1981 in the United States alone.They may see how machines and their present manufacturing processes are destroying their life-support system. They may see that all the processed junk food we’re selling them is making them sick and costing them more; see that their boring, unsatisfying jobs are driving many of them crazy. They might even discover the simplest unprocessed foods which are cheap and healthful.

As it is recorded in our family archives, one of our forefathers, Galus Julius Caesaer once sald: “Give them breed and circuses, to keep them from rebelling.” It is a simple matter to give them food, but it takes a little more imagination to give them circuses. I guess this is the creative part of being slave masters – to create diversions to keep their gullible little minds busy.

Our Watergate Scandal was a fine circus. It kept them thinking and talking along safe lines for years. We are still getting some mileage out of the Kennedy Assassination and they still aren’t sure whether we shot the real Kennedy, his double or a dummy. We have fine show going on Central America and in the Middle East, some still lingering in Germany, others in Vietnam, the USSR and China.

We may use the recent invasion to start another World War. It will be a challenge to attempt to involve our sheep in another big war, so soon after the last one. However, we may be able to pull it off, to get them angry enough to fight. We wouldn’t need to use the older nuclear bombs, as they could be dangerous to our families’ health. We might use a few of our cleaner H-Bombs. It will be a creative, fun time for us. Wars are truly the sport of kings. They are more fun to stage and run than chess games, or are hum-drum activities of production or politics.

Creating straw men for slaves to knock down is one of our best numbers. We set it up and let them tear it down. It diverts much of their creative energy. We create another excellent diversion by resisting their efforts to tear it down.

We learned long ago that people can think only one thought line at a time. We feed them thoughts and they either fight them or go along with them.

Music has always been an effective tool for setting their moods, their pace and leading their thoughts. While dancing they learn to step to the beat of our drummer and keep the pace we set. This teaches them to obey orders. The drum has always been useful for this. We let them touch each other during the dance. They seem to enjoy touching and they feel successful when they keep in step, so this training process becomes self-perpetuating. It also serves as an excellent distraction.

They must occupy their minds with keeping in step to the beat and with how they are going to entice their partners to deb. If they are constantly bombarded with distractions they will have no time to do any real thinking. They will only be aware of that which we make them aware.

Our closest guarded secret is the fact that slavery still exists in every country on this planet.

Laborers, farmers, traders, professionals, managers, directors and presidents – all take pay, so they must obey our orders. They are not aware of their bondage. Some are vaguely aware of the idea that “big money” runs everything. But they are unable to relate to the idea that they are part of that “everything.”

They think that they are free people, making all their own decisions We allow them to make the unimportant ones. The important ones we cover in their laws, and in their customs and religious and moral codes. We have even trained them to punish their own kind when they do not conform.

We have been masters for a long, long, time. We teach kids how to work, to be submissive and to obey orders. These kids grow up to he good slaves, like their parents. Most of the parents even go so far as to break their own kid’s spirits. So by the time they are of work age, them are docile, gullible and easy to manipulate.

Through all our media, including books, we give them a substitute for living. For example, we encourage them to live vicariously through the exciting adventures of fiction. This puts their fantasy life through an exciting energy drain which seems to satisfy some of their emotional hunger.

This substitute fills one of those spaces in time which they might have used to go out and experience life first-hand. Distractions keep them from discovering the bondage they are in. We must continue to titillate them to want to watch television and movies, to read newspapers, magazines and books to listen to radio and music.

We use the mass media not only for a distraction but also to help create their basic beliefs and expectations. Of course, the schools and churches serve this purpose too, as do popular songs and music. We use the media to create the desire to buy. In this way we motivate them to work for us.

They continue to administer to our needs as they did to Caeser’s and as they did for the priests in the time of the great pyamids. Our ancestors really knew how to handle people! As slaves get more education it takes a little more finesse to keep on top of them; however, it’s basically the same even today. Keep them fearful; fearful of death, fearful of pain, fearful of each other. Always encourage competition: it’s like fighting, separates people and keeps them fearful of losing.

We have made them afraid of death by telling them that they have spirits which live on after their death. If they obey our rules, which we tell them were inspired by God, their spirits will be assured entrance into Heaven or reincarnated into a better existence, depending on which of our religions they have chosen. This makes them afraid to die, because they know they haven’t obeyed all the rules (which we deliberately made too difficult to always be obeyed). If they can be kept afraid they are more easy to manage. Then they look to us for guidance and protection.

Promoting fear of pain is another distraction we have always used. We must not give them time to discover that pain is their body’s method of alerting them to the fact that they are doing something wrong to it. So before they can check out the reason for the pain, we channel them to a doctor who will attempt to numb the pain. The doctor will take up time and money doing so. It creates a great diversion, and debt. Some people talk about their pain constantly. The patients’ pain will usually return (sometimes to a different part of their body) after their cure. Doctors usually don’t remove the cause of pains. This would put them out of business.

We hire some of the slaves to act as police and soldiers so that we can threaten to inflict pain and imprisonment on the others. They literally enforce their own slavery when they take jobs in law enforcement and the military. We keep them too busy and too broke to realize this.

Sports and gambling have always been good spectacle. Sex may rate second place, drugs third. We have achieved a sort mass hypnosis by using movies, TV and music, with which we have been able to implant suggestions and beliefs without their being aware of it.

We may need to give our ecology program front page coverage again soon. It can take up the Slack to hold their attention in case it is untimely to start a war now.

Remember, the Warbucks family has ruled on this planet for six thousand years, so it is our right and destiny to continue doing so. Keep up the good work and if you have any problems, contract Alexandria or Ernest, as I’m taking a little vacation.

- Cleopatra Warbucks

from OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)

See also:
OVO 2 (1987)

Let us examine the consequences of irrationalism [...] The irrationalist insists that emotions and passions rather than reason are the mainsprings of human action. To the rationalist’s reply that, though this may be so, we should do what we can to remedy it, and should try to make reason play as large a part as it possibly can, the irrationalist would rejoin (if he condescends to a discussion) that this attitude is hopelessly unrealistic. For it does not consider the weakness of ‘human nature,’ the feeble intellectual endowment of most men and their obvious dependence upon emotions and passions.

It is my firm conviction that this irrational emphasis upon emotion and passion leads ultimately to what I can only describe as crime. One reason for this opinion is that this attitude, which is at best one of resignation towards the irrational nature of human beings, at worst one of scorn for human reason, must lead to an appeal to violence and brutal force as the ultimate arbiter in any dispute. For if a dispute arises, then this means that those more constructive emotions and passions which might in principle help to get over it, reverence, love, devotion to a common cause, etc., have shown themselves incapable of solving the problem. But if that is so, then what is left to the irrationalist except the appeal to other and less constructive emotions and passions, to fear, hatred, envy, and ultimately, to violence? This tendency is very much strengthened by another and perhaps even more important attitude which also is in my opinion inherent in irrationalism, namely, the stress on the inequality of men.

It cannot, of course, be denied that human individuals are, like all other things in our world, in very many respects very unequal. Nor can it be doubted that this inequality is of great importance and even in many respects highly desirable. (The fear that the development of mass production and collectivization may react upon men by destroying their inequality or individuality is one of the nightmares of our times.) But all this simply has no bearing upon the question whether or not we should decide to treat men, especially in political issues, as equals, or as much like equals as is possible; that is to say, as possessing equal rights, and equal claims to equal treatment; and it has no bearing upon the question whether we ought to construct political institutions accordingly. ‘Equality before the law’ is not a fact but a political demand based upon a moral decision; and it is quite independent of the theory – which is probably false – that ‘all men are born equal.’ Now I do not intend to say that the adoption of this humanitarian attitude of impartiality is a direct consequence of a decision in favour of rationalism. But a tendency towards impartiality is closely related to rationalism, and can hardly be excluded from the rationalist creed. Again, I do not intend to say that an irrationalist could not consistently adopt an equalitarian or impartial attitude; and even if he could not do so consistently, he is not bound to be consistent. But I do wish to stress the fact that the irrationalist attitude can hardly avoid becoming entangled with the attitude that is opposed to equalitarianism. This fact is connected with its emphasis upon emotions and passions; for we cannot feel the same emotions towards everybody. Emotionally, we all divide men into those who are near to us, and those who are far from us. The division of mankind into friend and foe is a most obvious emotional division; and this division is even recognized in the Christian commandment, ‘Love thy enemies!’ Even the best Christian who really lives up to this commandment (there are not many, as is shown by the attitude of the average good Christian towards ‘materialists’ and ‘atheists’), even he cannot feel equal love for all men. We cannot really love ‘in the abstract;’ we can love only those whom we know. Thus the appeal even to our best emotions, love and compassion, can only tend to divide mankind into different categories. And this will be more true if the appeal is made to lesser emotions and passions. Our ‘natural’ reaction will be to divide mankind into friend and foe; into those who belong to our tribe, to our emotional community, and those who stand outside it; into believers and unbelievers; into compatriots and aliens; into class comrades and class enemies; and into leaders and led.

From The Open Society and its Enemies Volume 2. Princeton University Press 1966

Heralding the multiple murderer is a support system of mayhem fetishists and media. This is not an exposure of deviants but a warning about what is to become as “normal” as any slasher movie, comic book or pornography.

Anyone seeking to understand the roots and effects of modern alienation would do well to study multiple murderers. There is a wealth of information about multiple murder in the mainstream and alternative press that has not been assimilated into an anti-authoritarian critique. This issue is offered as a summation of research into multiple murder from a variety of perspectives, as a contribution to the struggle against the apocalypse culture.

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

The Skin Horse
1982
Written by Nigel Evans and Nabil Shaban
Featuring Nabil Shaban with Nick Finden, Tony Gerrard, Tina Leslie, Kathleen Venner

Documentaries on the disabled can be difficult to watch. Not in the sense of such films being ugly. Documentaries on the disabled can be difficult to watch because one simply can’t find them. Frederick Wiseman shot Titicut Follies in 1967. The film depicts the lives of inmates at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Their lives were made up of being bullied, forced feed, sprayed with a high-pressure water hose and confined in unlit windowless rooms. In 1968 the film was removed from distribution and all copies were ordered destroyed by Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Harry Kalus.  Judge Kalus said he acted in the interest of the privacy of the inmates. The following year in that the film was allowed to be shown but only to health care professionals. Wiseman appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which declined to review the case. According to Wikipedia, “the dispute marked the first known instance in the history of the American film industry that a film was banned from general distribution for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security.” Superior Court Judge Andrew Meyer lifted the ban on the film in 1991, on the condition “a brief explanation shall be included in the film that changes and improvements have taken place at Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater since 1966.” Today you can buy a copy of Titicut Follies from Zipporah Films, Inc.

No such luck for The Skin Horse. Channel 4 (formerly Central Television) commissioned the 1982 film but does not sell it. No one sells it, not legally. Worldcat does not list it as existing in the interlibrary loan system.  Exactly one private library has it in their collection. If you are exceptionally fortunate you may have seen it one of the few times it has been broadcast on television. The documentary isn’t banned, it is merely unavailable.

The Skin Horse is a documentary by and about disabled people and their sex lives. Not their secret longing and private thoughts, although these are part of the film. This is a documentary about sex, sex among the disabled, sex between the disabled and the able.

Co-author and narrator Nabil Shaban does not skirt around the issue. The Skin Horse is an adult film, made by and for adults able to speak most clearly about themselves. Perhaps mere suggestiveness would not have succeeded in this film. Perhaps like the Last Poets or Valarie Solanas, the time for subtlty ended long ago for Shaban. When a person is just a little different from the norm, suggestiveness and being coy are more common. When we find a birthmark or personality quirk in a partner it stands out for a moment and then is gone. When one or one’s partner isn’t even considered fully human by some people, the time to beat around the bush ends. The average life span of the disabled is shorter than that of the non-disabled. The average screen time of the disabled is measured in minutes-per-decade compared to the screen time of the non-disabled. A wink and a nod just isn’t going to cut it. These are stories told once, and there’s no follow-up special presentation later on. The Skin Horse is honest in a way most sex documentaries only aspire to be honest.

The honesty begins with a discussion of beauty.  In antiquity philosophers claimed physical beauty was a virtue, like honesty or courage. Deviation from the form was either a punishment or a moral weakness. The etymology of the word monster is that of a beast sent by the gods as a warning. In the 21st Century other theories of beauty predominate. The Skin Horse speaks of four theories of beauty.  All quotes are from The Skin Horse.

Is beauty like the sun, radiating from a center and growing cold with distance? Some sections of The Skin Horse support this classic idea. Nabil: “Most disabled or deformed people I met at special school, sheltered workshop or crip college couldn’t wait to go to bed with an able-bodied person. I know that to be true of me.”

Is beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps disability does not matter. Those who are left handed tend towards mental illness, higher rates of suicide and imprisonment and shorter life spans. But being left handed is not seen as a disability. Nor are glasses on a person with a slight vision problem. Perhaps what we see as beauty or as a disability is arbitrary, a frame of reference we are free to modify or reject. This was the thinking behind the founding of the Outsiders in 1979. The Outsiders “is a vibrant social and peer support network of disabled people. We are many different things to our many members. [...] Whenever possible, Outsiders works together with other groups to campaign for the acceptance of disabled people as sexual partners.” The Skin Horse includes interviews with a founder of The Outsiders: “If I’d thought about it before I started I don’t think I would have ever dared to do it because I never really thought it would work.  Everyone said it wouldn’t work. But actually, however disabled you are you are still able to love somebody and be loved. So the most amazing marriages and… parings… have taken place. Dispite the fact that they might not only be disabled but also homosexual. Goodness knows, they’re just like anybody else.” The Skin Horse also includes interviews with a member of Outsiders, Jack: “Everyone’s got ability and disability.”

Is beauty a spiritual force? Is beauty to the body as the mind is to the brain? Perhaps beauty and disability are not part of us at all, but a shadow cast by an inner light. Most of the speakers in The Skin Horse hold this theory of beauty. Nabil is a keen researcher into the paranormal, psychic powers, UFOs and utopian politics. Open the gates to a single taboo and the rest come marching in. Nabil: “From childhood we learn that there is always more than meets the eye, that external appearances are misleading, that what exists within us all is always greater than the sum of the parts. [...] To admit love is to admit there is more to appearances. And to admit that we all have to work much harder at being human. We have to consider not only the body but also the soul.” Another man speaks of sex as a spiritual experience rather than a physical one: “I know the joy, the contentment, the feeling of spirituality, the utter relief from the limitations of my body which comes from sex. Just calling it sex is a very limiting word. It’s far more than people think with just one word. My body is very limiting but in sex I feel complete freedom.” Tina Leslie talks about the difference between her body and her self. “Sometimes I eat in front of a mirror to see the mask as other people see me. And try to see their feelings.  But this is what they see. It’s got nothing to do with me, the real me, a lover sees that, the real me. But I still never quite, quite believe it. But my god, I’d rather this than some celibate martyrdom. [...] Some people see me as an ugly thing. They can’t see me as a being, and as a sexual person, never. Christ, I don’t mind being seen like that. What’s the point of militant feminism? I like men. I don’t want to take refuge in something disabled women use as an excuse suppress their sexuality.”

Is beauty a fetish? Are some beautiful because they are different? Thousands of gigabytes of disability pornography are shuttled about the globe every day, lending some weight to this theory. Nearly thirty years earlier, The Skin Horse made the connection between acceptable fetishes (weight lifters and surgical beauty queens) and unacceptable fetishes (in a word, freaks). Nabil: “Perfection becomes an imperfection, a curiosity, a handicap, and the handicap when taken to its physical extremes becomes an end in itself. Hence, King Size [magazine]. Jonny the Wad. Chesty Morgan. King Dong. Big Bum. And all those freaks we have learned to love and loathe. And some people lust after.” Freaks have their place, but it is a well proscribed place. Nabil: “In the world of sexuality, there are three genders: female, male and disabled. And what is more, traditionally, in the disabled group, we are categorized into monsters or children. Children, eh? So we’re either monsters or children. We’re either abused or patronized. We’re either a fetish or sexless. Never in between. [...] It seem we need freaks not only to reassure ourselves of our own normality but more importantly to help us rediscover something. Perhaps that’s why we create our own freaks in myths, legends, fairy stories, literature and films. Perhaps that’s why we impart a certain humanity in them, and allow them to love and be loved. But of course only in fiction.” Here The Skin Horse shows some of the approved and fictional couplings between able bodied persons and freaks, such as Leda and swan, a maid and a minotaur, Kala and Charleton Heston.

If the disabled are (or would like to be) similar to anyone else in their sex lives, are they similar in their loneliness? One man in The Skin Horse says so: “The problem of exploring one’s own sexuality is a problem that everyone has.”  But no matter how we sees ourselves, the challenge in starting and maintaining a relationship (or getting laid) is in how others see us.  One woman in The Skin Horse describes her everyday life at the home for incurables for the past 34 years: “Washed, dressed, put in my chair. [...] Sometimes I ache for the human contact that I’ve been denied. For a new face that isn’t a nurse or another incurable. [...] It’s this sense of waste that I resent most of all. It’s as if people like me are somehow supposed to live our lives beyond frustration. As if part of accepting our lot should include the complete denial of any emotional life at all.” Hey! you’ve got to hide your love away…

Getting off for the disabled can mean breaking laws as well as breaking taboo. One man talks about when his personal assistant brought him to a prostitute: “She was really sort of a bit freaked out by the fact that this guy carried me up the stairs and plunked me on the bed and said ‘there he is.’ I stayed there for about three or four hours. One hears so many terrible things said about prostitutes and I believe it’s still illegal and all that but in that case in point the lady who I saw fulfilled a very useful purpose and I’m eternally grateful to her. [...] The events leading on from [hiring a prostitute] did make me much more relaxed and more self confident in myself as a sexy person, to meet other people, to make relationships, and I suppose over the last few years that has been growing and it’s still growing.”

The men and women in The Skin Horse are largely still with us.  Comedian Tony Gerrard continues to perform. The Outsiders still exists, and is the only place I’ve found that has The Skin Horse in its library. The Skin Horse was where I first learned of Nabil Shaban, and I hope that this review can draw more attention to this singular work. But Shaban has done much more, prior to and since The Skin Horse. He has many stage, film and television credits to his name, some of which are listed below. He was part of the CRASS Collective and in 1980 co-founded the Graeae Theater. Shaban is an artist, an author, an animator, a director, an actor and a musician. He is a father.  How uncomfortable he must feel to know he’s been such a positive influence on my life and the lives of so many others.  Sorry, friend, you’re a hero.

Shaban offers many of his works online at YouTube and elsewhere. If I Decide to Commit Suicide, You Need Hands and The Fifth Gospel include Tina Leslie, also seen in The Skin Horse. If I Decide to Commit Suicide is a video for Shaban’s poem of the same name. It quotes from Eraserhead by David Lynch, just as The Skin Horse quotes from Lynch’s Elephant Man. You Need Hands is a dark music video. The Fifth Gospel describes Christianity as ‘body fascist’ and shows Shaban and Leslie being patronized during a trip to the non-healing fountains of Lourdes. Morticia is available as a video on demand from amazon.com. Morticia is about a girl who wants to become a vampire. A third party has posted The Strangest Viking online. This is a documentary narrated by Shaban on Ivar the Boneless, a viking who conquered much of England. An excerpt from The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds is online. In The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds, Shaban shows that for all his fire and thunder he can make fun of himself. Shaban is a believer in the paranormal, but is aware of how such beliefs can look to non-believers. Shaban is an advocate of the outsider, but it not immune from gawking when he meets a fellow outsider. Shaban is his body, but his body is also a source of pain. Alien includes a film within a film, and this film is again one of his poems set to music and video. For all his success in the theater, Shaban has experienced one significant setback. He secured money for a production of his play The First to Go when England joined the war against Iraq. The First to Go is a play about the fate of the disabled under the T4 program in wartime Germany. Shaban returned the government’s ‘blood money’ in protest and the play has yet to find another backer.

Nabil Shaban has successfully scattered the ash circle that kept able and disabled actors apart. He is a man who can be judged on his talents.  Shaban recently turned fifty and has many years of innovation and experimentation ahead of him. Thank you to Nabil Shaban for opening many doors, taking many risks and thumbing your nose at heresy.

Nabil Shaban (selected works)

Stage:

• Godspell (1987)
• The Emperor (1987)
• Hamlet (1988)
• Iranian Nights (1989)
• Measure for Measure (1990)
• Imagine Drowning (1991)
• Fleshfly (1996)
• DARE (1997) [vimeo] [youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3]
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1998) [wikipedia]
• The Little Lamp (1999)
• Portadown Blues (2000)
• I am the Walrus (2001)
• Knocknashee (2002)
• Jasmine Road (2003)
• Threepenny Opera (2005) [youtube][dailymotion]
• One Hour Before Sunrise (2006)
• Endgame (2007) [youtube]
• The First to Go (2008)
• Marat/Sade (?)

Film:

• Born of Fire (1983) [imbd]
• If I Decide to Commit Suicide (1990) [vimeo] [youtube][dailymotion]
• City of Joy (1992) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Wittgenstein (1993) [imbd] [wikipedia] [youtube]
• Skallagrigg (1994) [imbd][wikipedia][youtube]
• Another World (1995) [amazon]
• Gaias Born (1998) [imbd]
• Children of Men (2006) [imbd] [wikipedia][youtube]
• Crip Triptych (2006) [youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3][youtube 4][youtube 5]
• Trouble Sleeping (2008) [imbd]
• Morticia (2009) [imbd][youtube][amazon]

Television:

• Walter (1982) [imbd] [wikipedia] [channel 4]
• Walter and June (1983) [imbd] [wikipedia] [channel 4]
• The Skin Horse (1983) [imbd]
• Dr. Who, Vengeance on Varos (1985) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Dr. Who, Trial of a Time Lord (1986) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Blue Peter (1986) [imbd]
• Raspberry Ripple (1986) [imbd]
• Billy’s Christmas Angel (1986) [imbd]
• The Fifth Gospel (1990) [youtube][dailymotion]
• Deptford Graffiti (1991) [imbd] [youtube]
• Inmates (1992)
• Age of Treason (1993) [imbd]
• Slave of Dreams (1995) [imbd] [wikipedia]
• Sorry About Last Night (1995) [imbd]
• Supercrips and Rejects (1996)
• The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds (1997) [imbd][youtube 1] [youtube 2]
• The Strangest Viking (2003) [imbd] [wikipedia][youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3][youtube 4][youtube 5][channel 4] [guardian]
• The Story of Dr. Who (2003) [imbd]

Radio

• The Ramayana (1994)
• Treasure Island (1995)

Books:

• DARE (2002)
• Dreams My Father Sold Me (2005)[amazon]
• The First to Go (2007) [vimeo] [youtube 1][youtube 2][youtube 3][youtube 4][dailymotion 1][dailymotion 2][dailymotion 3][amazon]
• The Ripper Code (2008) [amazon][dailymotion]

Internet:

• itunes: From Little Acorns
• dailymotion: [ScabNabs]
• facebook: [Nabil Shaban]
• geocities: [archive]
• media muppet: [Nabil Shaban]
• twin vision: [Nabil Shaban]
• vimeo: [Nabil Shaban]
• webby talents: [ScabNabs]
• youtube: [ScabNabs][DoctorNabsTalkPSI]

Trevor Blake is a sign language interpreter who lives in Portland, Oregon USA.

Perhaps predictably, the Landmarks Commission hearing today to consider landmark status for 45 Park Place, the proposed site of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque overlooking Ground Zero, was about much more than just whether the building at 45 Park Place merited landmark status or not. It quickly became a public forum on Islam, Muslims in America, and the appropriateness of a huge mosque at Ground Zero. [...] I spoke. I started by saying that I shared the view that some others had already enunciated, that this was supposed to be a hearing on the landmark status of 45 Park Place, not about what good citizens Muslims were and how much New York needed an Islamic “interfaith” center. But since that discussion had not been stopped and was thus apparently deemed relevant, it was also relevant that the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the mega-mosque project, was pro-Sharia — a system of law that mandated discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and extinguished the freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. It was also relevant, I said, that he had been dishonest about his funding sources, saying in English that the mosque would be funded by American Muslims, and saying in Arabic that funding would come from Muslim nations. It was further relevant that he had declined to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization, and that he had helped fund the jihad flotilla that was trying to take arms into Israel. I closed by pointing out that Riddle had said that the building had no unique historical value, but that it did, because it was the only building into which part of a 9/11 plane had crashed, and as such should be a war memorial. A Communist (really! At the Staten Island mosque hearing he actually shouted, “Workers of the world, unite!”) started shouting that I was a bigot, to which I responded that it was not bigotry to point out dishonesty and subversion, and that the Commission should consider carefully whether or not it was being lied to by the mosque proponents.

CNN: Burqa Ban Passes French Lower House Overwhelmingly

France’s lower house of parliament Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a ban on any veils that cover the face – including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women. The vote was 335 to 1. The measure must still go to the French Senate before it becomes law. The Senate is expected to vote on it in the week of September 20.

Abigail Pesta: An American Honor Killing

Around the sprawling, sunbaked campus of Dysart High School in El Mirage, Arizona, not many people knew about the double life of a pretty, dark-haired girl named Noor Almaleki. At school, she was known as a fun-loving student who made friends easily. She played tennis in a T-shirt emblazoned with the school mascot — a baby demon in a diaper. She liked to watch Heroes and eat at Chipotle. Sometimes she talked in a goofy Keanu Reeves voice. She wore dark jeans, jeweled sandals, and flowy tops from Forever 21. She texted constantly and called her friends “dude.” In other words, she was an American girl much like any other.

But at home, Noor inhabited a darker world. She lived a life of subservience, often left to care for her six younger siblings. Noor’s father, 49-year-old Faleh Almaleki, was strict and domineering, deeming it inappropriate for her to socialize with guys, wear jeans, or post snapshots of herself on MySpace. Her responsibility was to follow orders, or to risk a beating. From her father’s perspective, the only time Noor’s life would ever change would be when she married a man he selected for her — back in his homeland of Iraq. Noor, however, had a different vision for herself. Having lived in the U.S. for 16 years, she held dreams of becoming a teacher, of marrying a man she loved, and, most importantly, of making her own choices.

On a cloudless, breezy afternoon in late October 2009, her father set out to end those dreams. As Noor walked across a suburban parking lot to a Mexican restaurant with a friend – a 43-year-old woman named Amal Khalaf – Faleh Almaleki gunned the engine of his Jeep Grand Cherokee and bore down on his 20-year-old daughter and her companion. The women took off running but were no match for the SUV, already traveling close to 30 miles per hour. Suddenly Amal turned, held up her hands in a futile attempt to stop the Jeep, and froze. Moments later, the vehicle struck the women, tossing them into the air. Amal hit the pavement; Noor landed on a raised median, in a patch of pebbly landscaping. Faleh wasn’t done, though. Swerving onto the median, he ran over his daughter as she lay bleeding, fracturing her face and spine. Then, he reversed and sped away.

Passersby heard the roar of the engine, screams, the impact of the bodies as they hit the Jeep’s grill. They saw the women lying on the ground, their sandals scattered across the lot. A witness called 911, and emergency vehicles converged. Amal’s condition was stable; Noor was comatose. Local police characterized the incident as an attempted “honor killing” — the murder of a woman for behaving in a way that “shames” her family. It’s a practice with deep, tenacious roots in the tribal traditions of the Middle East and Asia. (The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women die annually from such crimes.) Women are stoned, stabbed, and, in the recent case of a teenage girl in Turkey, tied up and buried alive. But honor killings in America are a chilling new trend. In Texas, teen sisters Amina and Sarah Said were shot dead in 2008, allegedly by their father, because they had boyfriends. That same year in Georgia, 25-year-old Sandeela Kanwal was allegedly strangled by her father for wanting to leave an arranged marriage. Last year in New York, Aasiya Hassan, 37, was murdered in perhaps the most gruesome way imaginable: She was beheaded, allegedly by her husband, for reportedly seeking a divorce. And this past spring, 19-year-old Tawana Thompson’s husband gunned her down in Illinois, reportedly following arguments about her American-style clothing.

Amazingly, honor killings in the U.S. have been largely ignored by the national media. That’s because these incidents are typically dismissed as “domestic” in nature — a class of crime that rarely makes the headlines. Since the murderer is a member of the woman’s family, there’s no extended investigation to capture the public’s attention. Also, the family of the perpetrator rarely advocates for the victim, due to either fear or a belief that the woman got what she deserved. “From the family’s point of view, if the goal is to end rumors about their female relative, the last thing they want is to have the press talk about the case,” says Rana Husseini, a human-rights activist and author of Murder in the Name of Honor. Still, the lack of media coverage or public outcry cannot erase the evidence: Honor killings have washed up on our shores.

Amie Ferris-Rotman: Russia’s Muslim South Triples Sharia Bride Price

Against the backdrop of a bubbling Islamist insurgency, the revival of Islam in the North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago has brought sharia law to the region, revered by both rebels and ordinary citizens alike. The issue of the ‘kalym’, a price paid by a groom to the family of the woman he chooses to marry, is the latest example of a broader trend that has troubled the Kremlin. [...] Polygamy, illegal under Russian law, is encouraged by local authorities in the region. Last month rights workers blamed police for paintball attacks on Chechen women for not wearing headscarves, and Islamist fighters in Ingushetia have gunned down kiosk workers for selling vodka.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan: Campaign for Iranian Woman Facing Death by Stoning

A 43-year-old Iranian woman is facing death by stoning unless an international campaign launched by her children forces the authorities to quash what her lawyer calls a bogus conviction. In a case that highlights the growing use of the death penalty in a country that has already executed more than 100 people this year, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in May 2006 of conducting an “illicit relationship outside marriage.” Sakineh already endured a sentence of 99 lashes, but her case was re-opened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. She was acquitted, but the adultery charge was reviewed and a death penalty handed down on the basis of “judge’s knowledge” – a loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present. Speaking to the Guardian, her son Sajad, 22, and daughter Farideh, 17, say their mother has been unjustly accused and already punished for something she did not do. “She’s innocent, she’s been there for five years for doing nothing”, Sajad said. He described the imminent execution as barbaric. “Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister for all these years.” Under Iranian sharia law, the sentenced individual is buried up to the neck (or to the waist in the case of men), and those attending the public execution are called upon to throw stones. If the convicted person manages to free themselves from the hole, the death sentence is commuted.

James Gordon Meek and Katie Nelson: Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki Puts ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed’ Cartoonist Molly Norris on Execution Hitlist

A charismatic terror leader linked to the botched Times Square car bomb has placed the Seattle cartoonist who launched “Everybody Draw Muhammed Day” on an execution hit list. Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki – the radical who has also been cited as inspiring the Fort Hood, Tex., massacre and the plot by two New Jersey men to kill U.S. soldiers – singled out artist Molly Norris as a “prime target,” saying her “proper abode is hellfire.” FBI officials have notified Norris and warned her they consider it a “very serious threat.” In an English-language Al Qaeda magazine that calls itself “Inspire,” Awlaki damns Norris and eight others for “blasphemous caricatures” of the Prophet Muhammed. The other cartoonists, authors and journalists in Awlaki’s cross hairs are Swedish, Dutch and British citizens.

Dutch News: Van Gogh Killer Has No Regrets

Six years after murdering film maker Theo van Gogh, his killer Mohammed Bouyeri has no regrets about his action, the AD reports on Friday. The paper has got hold of a letter written by Bouyeri to a Muslim group which turned up in Belgium. In the letter Bouyeri writes that he has ‘no regrets’ about the choices he has made and the road he has traveled, the paper says. ‘Not one second in all these years.’

Persian2English: 26 Year Old Woman Raped and Murdered by Basij Members for “Bad Hijab”

Elnaz Babazadeh, a 26 year old woman was raped and murdered by Basij forces in the city of Tabriz (northwestern Iran) last week. According to the reports, Basij forces stopped Babazadeh in her car for not following the Iranian regime’s dress code. Elnaz resisted and ignored orders given by the Basij forces. Then the Basij forces who had initially stopped her jumped into her car and threatened her with a gun. Two other Basij members joined in and all together they beat and raped her. They murdered Babazadeh and dumped her body close to Emamiyeh cemetery. After local investigation was conducted by HRANA members in Tabriz, it was confirmed at Babazadeh’s funeral that the person who killed her was the son of a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards member.

All articles continue at links. Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] and etc.  It is not the proper role of the State to moderate clothing, but it might be the proper role of the State to make crime and violence more difficult.  A legal ban on the burqa in all circumstances is inappropriate, but a legal compulsion to reveal oneself in some circumstances (banks, airports, during arrests, getting a photo license) might be appropriate.  Hospitals (State and private) should have policies mandating hygienic behavior as a condition for continued employment no matter the religion of the employee.  If washing one’s hands includes revealing one’s hands and is thus against Islam, so much the worse for any would-be Muslim health care worker.  Private businesses are best left to private policies regarding required or forbidden clothing. And having said all that, it is better of courts in France to fine women who wear the burqa than it is for courts in Iran to rape and murder women who no not wear the burqa. These legal and cultural systems are not only different from one another, but one is better than the other. How can I tell? One rapes and murders women who no not wear the burqa, and one does not. The one that doesn’t is better. One culture threatens cartoonists and murders film makers, and one does not. The one that doesn’t is better. One culture has neighborhood stonings of half-buried women as a trial by survival, and one doesn’t.  The one that doesn’t is better.  When individuals from the culture that is worse identify themselves plainly, such as with the burqa, the State of the culture that is better can be tempted to use that easy identifier as a means to preserve itself. But liberty is not easy. Do not ban the burqa. Do not ban Islam.  Existing laws in the West protect freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and protection from violence and intimidation.  Islam is against these laws, but no new anti-Islam laws are needed to keep it at bay.

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.