"We've Warned You About this Man" - A goodbye to Jess Franco, one of the titans of Exploitation Cinema

The Marquis de Sade wrote ceaselessly during his long, ten year incarceration in Paris's infamous Bastille prison, and when as a punishment his writing implements were confiscated, de Sade turned to writing on his sheets in red wine, then escalated to using his blood and finally wrote on the walls of his cell using his excrement. Such was his mania for committing his thoughts to words.

Jess Franco, who died today, the 2nd April 2013, aged 83, was a filmmaker in much the same vein as de Sade was a writer, a man so obsessed with film that he would secretly film a secondary feature while shooting a commissioned work, a man who in his later years would shoot almost nonsensical 'films' in his front room, seemingly happy so long as he had a camera in his hand and could see a woman through the lens.

Prolific to the point of absurdity Franco's prodigious output varied from the truly creative, Succubus, Vampyros Lesbos, to the fabulously exploitative, Female Vampire, The Demons, Justine, through to the tedious, Esmeralda Bay, Snakewoman, to the virtually unwatchable, Paula-Paula, Al Pereira vs the Alligator Women et al. Yet Franco's place in exploitation cinema's pantheon of heroes is deserved, not for his prodigious output, but for the passion with which he made his films, for like de Sade, Franco would, if he had to, have filmed in his own blood and shit.

Franco, was in many ways, a more accomplished film director than the impression given by some of his lesser films, and had he perhaps remembered the wise saying that sometimes less is more might have concentrated on making one good film rather than ten bad ones. For when Franco got it right, as he did with titles like Justine, Succubus and Virgin Among the Living Dead, he showed a real creative and artistic flair coupled with moments of surreal brilliance. This was a man who, like his contemporary Jean Rollin, was his own worst enemy.

His reputation progressing from minor critical acclaim, to accusations of misogyny for titles like Exorcism and its later reincarnation, The Sadist of Notre Dame, through to dislike and pariah status as the sadism of films like Sadomania and Woman Behind Bars alienated genre critics, mainstream horror fans and pushed Franco more and more into the ghetto of sadistic pornography. Indeed, by the late nineteen seventies and early eighties Franco was effectively finished as a commercial film director and this should, as he was now in his fifties, have heralded either a slow exit, a career change, or retirement, and this is perhaps where Franco's obsessional film making and the precarious nature of the film business, merged. 

For the film industry has no pensions, no retirement plans and attracts mavericks and dreamers, and exploitation and sexploitation cinema, attracts more than most. All Franco could do was make films, and like Jean Rollin, Lucio Fulci and others, they were his life and without them he was creatively castrated and financially barren. That, plus his at times detrimental and obsessional need to make films, meant that Franco could not fade gracefully into the sunset but rather he lingered in the wings long after the curtains had closed, a bit like a guest at a cocktail party that refuses to take the hint that its time to go after all the other guests had left. 

When I eventually met Franco he greeted me with something along the lines of 'thank god for Redemption', not because Redemption is particularly wonderful, but because, as we had with Rollin and other directors, by releasing and bringing their films to a new audience for the first time since their cinema release we were reinvigorating their careers.

Yet in Franco's case it almost didn't happen. Twenty years ago Redemption Films released Succubus and I received a written warning from the British Board of Film Classification, that Jess Franco was a director whose films the BBFC regarded as bordering on criminal. I was told that were I to attempt to release other films by him or to bring them into the country there would be consequences… A year later I submitted Demoniac and Sadomania and both were categorically banned with the implicit threat that by pushing the work of Jess Franco I was, indirectly, championing criminal sexual material and that if I continued I too would face not civil, but criminal proceedings. I mention this for the first time because I want to get across just how much of a pariah Jess Franco was considered to be.

These are two quotes from the BBFC to my solicitors which show just how close to having criminal proceedings issued against Redemption we were for trying to champion Jess Franco:

SADOMANIA: … "it is grossly unsuitable for viewing in the home. Few, if any, of the sex scenes are consenting,… women that persistently refuse to succumb to the sadistic prison regime are systematically tortured, humiliated or degraded, often for the purpose of arousing the impotent male governor and through him the male viewer of the video work. … There is no doubt in our minds that the erotic presentation of such scenes would be found depraving and corrupting by a British jury".

DEMONIAC: …  "The Board has never granted a BBFC certificate to any film or video which seeks to encourage sexual sadism, and this film is clearly sadistic in that it seems "to have no purpose or justification other than to reinforce or sell the idea that it can be highly pleasurable to inflict injury, pain or humiliation (often in a sexual context) on others" (Home Office Report on Obscenity and Film Censorship, Williams, HMSO, 1979)…. 

…The work of this particular film maker has often fallen well outside the parameters of BBFC standards because of the manner in which it presents scenes of vicious sexual violence or of violence to women in a sexually arousing context, offering little pleasure to the viewer other than a conscious vicarious gratification of misogyny. Where such emotions focus on the harming of others, the Board must always consider drawing a line, as we have in refusing a video certificate to DEMONIAC".

Redemption Films challenged the banning of these films, along with Bare Behind Bars legally, and lost. We then sought and won leave to judicially review the BBFC's entire operation, a massive undertaking and one which would, had we pursued it, opened up all the machinations of the BBFC's internal workings to public scrutiny. However, we ran out of money and had to wait until our battle over pornography several years later to finally oust the BBFC chairman James Ferman which in turn heralded in a period of more liberal censorship.

We did though release two more Jess Franco films in this period, She Killed in Ecstasy and, most memorably, Vampyros Lesbos, which became a massive seller, sales ironically not driven by the films visual content, but by its soundtrack. Released as Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party, Franco's work was suddenly trendy in a new way, attracting a whole new audience among Europe's burgeoning dance and club scene. 

Now Jess Franco is rightly something of a legend and for all his contradictions, successes and failures, accusations of sadism, and inability to produce anything of real worth for the last twenty or so years, Franco was, and is, a true hero of exploitation cinema.  A man who loved, ate and slept film. A man who, despite the BBFC's vicious accusation that he was a misogynistic sadist, loved and enjoyed women, as anyone who saw his puppy like devotion to Lina Romay over nearly 40 years would know, and who in his heart was an artist and like most artists he had his flaws and weaknesses but ultimately what made him an artist was that he could do nothing else but make films. He may have used a camera rather than a paintbrush and film instead of a canvas, but that was because film was his blood, and he only stopped filming when his blood stopped flowing and his heart, like his camera, finally stopped. 

Jess Franco, reunited with Lina Romay, for one last kiss. 

Fade to black.

© Nigel Wingrove 2013

FROM' ISLES OF WONDER' TO 'ISLES OF PLUNDER': THE OLYMPICS MULTICULTURAL LEGACY

No one can deny the success of the Olympic games 2012, or the often moving and emotional prowess of the world's sportsmen and women as they strove for victory in their chosen field. Nor could, or should one, lessen or besmirch a competitors achievement  because of their race or religion, which would be churlish, spiteful and petty, rather one should praise, admire and honour their skill with medals and cheering, as the people of London did with such gusto during each day of the games. 

What one can be weary of though is the politicisation of that euphoria and the enshrining and elevation of what many see as the driving force behind our Olympic success, that is 'multiculturalism', into a kind of  Zeus-like deity, where, surrounded by grateful Olympians, the UK's populace bows in awe-struck acquiescence to the triumphant new gods of political correctness, racial diversity and inclusivity.

Welcome to the our brave new world where post Olympic blues are banished by massive doses of multicultural opiates, coupled and enforced by democracies legions of public sector multicultural thought-police, who, invigorated by mass exposure to Danny Bolye's Bolly-Britannia dance routines and high on diversity sing-alongs, can now enforce racial and religious tolerance with all the zealotry  of the Taliban. Now multicultural dissenters are not only 'racists', but anti-Olympians as well, worse they undermine societies rekindled social cohesion and like medieval heretics, must be silenced and cast out from decent society. 

Indeed, multiculturalism's faithful now scent victory in every gold medal and raucous cheer. Having initially seen the Olympics as a sponsored, exercise in physical elitism, the legions of diversity enforcers suddenly saw the light as the people of England. long derided as racist, cheered on athletes regardless of their colour or religion for the sheer joy of it. Now that natural euphoria is to be claimed and named, for, though the people didn't know it at the time, they weren't just cheering Mo Farah or Laura Trott, they were cheering Multicultural Britain! Hurrah!

Twelve months ago multicultural Britain was burning down buildings throughout London, looting shops, trying to kill the police, and mugging and robbing with impunity. Nine months ago multiculturalism's burgeoning population was threatening to overwhelm our housing stock, health service, schools and welfare state, six months ago our prisons were full of multiculturalism's criminal underclass, three months ago multiculturalism's finest were planning new ways to carry out terrorist attacks and kill as many members of the UK's wonderfully diverse society as they could and now, today multiculturalism is triumphant and omnipotent. 

Dissent is now nigh impossible. Tweeters and bloggers are policed and racial wrongdoers dragged from their homes and hauled before the courts in days, their foolish indiscretions punished by custodial sentences. Indeed critics of our new post-Olympics multicultural nirvana are few and far between, with those who dare question immigration seen not just as racists, but as borderline Breivik's. To be 'right-wing' is now in itself tainted with the blood of Norway's dead and carries with it the threat of being ostracised and branded a 'racist' or 'nazi'. In fact, in this new born again, super, goldmedal winning, cultural Bolly-Britannia we must all, at the very least, aspire to be diversity-lite, Islamoclappy, hug-a-hijab loving citizens, or else.

Indeed the UK's democracy is now a three-party, one-party state in which liberalism, socialism and conservatism,  have fused into a centrist, harmonious cabal in which, aside from minor differences, there is little to differentiate one party from another. All support multiculturalism, religious, sexual and cultural diversity, and all the other scared totems deemed necessary to create an ethnic and sexually inclusive utopia funded by unlimited Quantitive Easing, supported by a benevolent welfare state and aided by a public sector empowered to crush dissent. 

The Olympics should be hailed and praised for the great achievement they were, including even Danny Boyle's utopian vision of our recent history, but to equate them as a panacea for all our ills and as an endorsement of all things multicultural is wrong and to cheapen the achievements of Farah and co. Equally wrong is the usurping of an athletes skin colour by the champions of multiculturalism for their own cause, all the while screaming 'racist' hysterically at anyone who dares question their remit and motivation for doing so. Those that oppose multiculturalism and unchecked immigration for the dangerously flawed experiments they are have to fight back. The first step, in what will be a long road, is to take back the political will from the useless collective of political parties that currently misrule the UK, and who, if not stopped, will misappropriate and destroy our country as well, by which time no number of gold medals or collective Mobotting will save the day.

AS THE CROWDS GRUMBLE, SO THE EDIFICE BEGINS TO CRUMBLE

The great democracies of europe have betrayed their people. Firstly, they embarked on a truly gigantic feast, with a menu whose star courses included the denigration of the individual European nation states and their subjection to an unelected super-bureaucracy in Brussels. Secondly, for their main course, they undermined Europe's indigenous peoples by instigating a policy of uncontrolled immigration in a social experiment called multiculturalism, and, finally, to hammer home the message that the old nation state was no more, for desert, the diners replaced their countries traditional currencies with a new currency, the Euro, which would be controlled, like everything else in the new Europe, by unelected officials and bankers operating out of Brussels and the IMF. 

There was one more catch, when the heads of Europe finally finished dining and were presented with the bill for their massive feast they found that their couldn't afford to pay for it. So, instead, they borrowed huge amounts from their people's banks and then printed up thousands more Euros to pay the banks back with. They even printed up enough to leave a very large tip. 

For a while everyone was happy in the new Euroland. The banks were still full of this new Euro money, and if they needed additional funds, their new friends just gave them more and more. In fact, their new friends said spread the money around as there's no point saving it because we've got more than we need. So, in turn, the peoples of Europe had their own feast and, like their leaders, they marvelled at the wonderful new world their friends in Brussels were creating. 

Now people could retire early, take two or three holidays a year, no one had to worry about being ill because there were hospitals everywhere and they were full of people administering things so that the doctors knew what to do. In fact, even with all the strange new people arriving with their strange beliefs and large families, there was still plenty of money to go around. Everyone could have a new house, education was for all and everyone was allowed to participate, because discrimination was wicked and in the new Euroland, inclusivity and diversity were the new magic words as they attracted Euros in large numbers.

Then, one terrible day, the banks realised that they had lent and spent an awful lot of this Euro money, so much in fact, that even with all the money they were getting from their friends in Brussels, they still didn't have enough to pay for everything. When they heard this, the men in Brussels were worried and tried to print more Euros, but that didn't work for the banks had spent so much money that, even printing millions more Euro's wasn't enough. 

In the end the leaders decided that they had to give the people the bill for their feast, and the people didn't like it. Plus, they now had to stop partying and feasting, and as they looked around they saw that Europe was full of  strangers who were still eating and spending money, and worse, who had arrived at the party without bringing a bottle or contributing in any way. So the people of Europe were upset and angry, so angry in fact that when some people suggested kicking out the strangers who were eating their food quite a few of their friends joined in with cheers. The whole atmosphere was getting a bit heated and volatile, so much so that many of the European leaders worried that the people might blame them for their woes and try an unravel all of their hard work and they decided could never be allowed to happen…

What is happening in reality is that, without Euroland being subsidised by borrowing, lending and Quantitive Easing, our leaders experiment with unchecked immigration and the creation of a welfare utopia is looking like a simmering fuse next to a powder keg. 

Already Greece and Italy are ruled by unelected financial bureaucrats who appeal more to the financial markets than the people they are supposed to represent. Indeed the people of Greece will over the coming weeks be subjected to an unprecedented level of outside pressure to vote for a party that will adhere to the European ideal and accept austerity 

in return for more Euros. The fact that, like Iceland,  Greece might actually be better off outside the Euro with its own currency is irrelevant as Greece's exit threatens the whole Euroland experiment.

In fact, what is becoming very apparent during this new phase of the financial and european crisis, is just how entrenched the new Euroland supporters are, and how committed they are, whether of the left or right, to maintaining the european ideal no matter what the cost. In this our political leaders are backed up by the forces of the Media who sup at the same multicultural altar and who control peoples access to information, and more importantly the way that information is presented and conveyed. That media also savages, smears and destroys any politician, political party, individual or movement that challenges their preferred Establishment. Indeed while dissent is tolerated as otherwise the Establishment couldn't praise and champion our 'democracy', but that dissent is only allowed within parameters that have been quietly and tacitly sanctioned by democracies new, discrete and shadowy dictators.

This unaccountable, unelectable and ultimate antithesis of democracy now rules as a vicious, clandestine cabal with two aims; clinging on to power and maintaining its chosen political orthodoxy. Nothing else will be tolerated and under the guise of maintaining the hegemony of a multicultural utopia within a welfare wonderland this politically correct politburo continues to rule and in doing so to suck the life blood, capital and cultural life-force from out of the soul of the people it claims to represent.

The political, economic and social disaster enfolding in Greece could herald the end of the Euroland experiment and hasten the breakup and collapse of the Euro or equally Greece could be pressured to hang on in there, its people virtually enslaved to bankers and eurocrats whose only interest is maintaining the new order on any terms. Equally perhaps the faceless rulers in Brussels and their acolytes in governments across europe could that find that, as in the old proverb, that after the feast comes the reckoning...

© Nigel Wingrove 2012

Britain's Got Cultural Stockholm Syndrome

For some time I've wondered how the UK's tolerant, inclusivity loving, diversity embracing, multiculturally aware, sexually outreaching and intolerant of intolerance establishment would deal with the inextricable march of Islamic fundamentalism and all that comes with it? Would our new enlightened leaders finally stand up to Islam's inherent homophobia or challenge its attitude to women's rights, or even, occasionally speak out against its treatment of animals, arranged marriages, female circumcision or criticise this politicised religion in anyway? 

The answer of course is not just no, but is, in fact, a much more sinister form of creeping cultural appeasement in which our establishment, (by establishment I mean everyone from politicians, to the police, councils and councillors, the Civil Service, educators at schools and universities, the mainstream media and those whose powers, when combined, effectively control what we say, read, and ultimately think), is nolonger just accommodating fundamentalist Islam, but is slowly being absorbed into it. This is the same way a hostage comes to care for, and eventually ally themselves with their captors; a paradoxical psychological process or phenomenon known as the Stockholm Syndrome.

This process of cultural, spiritual and political acquiescence has been slowly evolving over the last twenty five years and I think probably began, not with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, but with the fatwa issued against the UK author Salman Rushdie in 1989 by Iran's Revolutionary leader, the charismatic and media-savvy, Ayatollah Khomeini. For while the sight of Muslim demonstrators in London, Bradford and other English cities burning copies of Rushdie's book, the Satanic Verses, shocked and upset many on the soft left of the UK's then establishment, there were also many, even then, who for political expediency refused to directly condemn either the fatwa or the book burnings. Indeed some of the most notable deniers of all were the then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Roy Hattersley and, Labour's then Shadow Foreign Secretary, Gerald Kaufman who are typical of those who have been championing multiculturalism since its inception.

Hattersley, a rather pompous man who has ironically re-invented himself as a man of letters and all-round bon viveur since leaving politics in 1992, though unfortunately having neither the intelligence or wit necessary to pull this off, tried to court the Muslims and find favour with Rushdie and his supporters at the same time. Firstly in a sop to his mainly Muslim constituents he called on Rushdie to cancel the paperback edition of the Satanic Verses as this would 'signify his regret for the offence, and assuage Muslim anger'. To make sure he won the most votes in the next election Hattersley further stated that "we might even have to support Islam's right to declare a fatwa against offending infidels". 


Secondly, remembering that he was also in the process of being reborn as an literary intellectual Hattersley added that a "free society does not ban books and nor does in allow writers and publishers to be blackmailed and intimidated" before going on to demonstrate that he was both intimidated and prepared to ban the paperback edition. 

The singularly unpleasant and caustic Gerald Kaufman was even more direct in his defence of the protesting Muslims as he immediately linked criticism of their protests as an attack on the emerging holy of holies, multiculturalism. By doing so, Kaufman demonstrated how in future, criticism of racially, sexually or religiously sensitive topics could be deflected or nullified by terming any such attacks 'racist', 'sexist', 'homophobic' or Islamophobic and if those terms didn't apply then in an emergency criticism could simply be branded as hate speech or incitement or extremism.

However, in 1989 this form of cultural censorship and politically correct trickery was in its infancy which makes Kaufman's early use of deflective guilt-speech all the more impressive:

"Britain has to decide if the freedom that we so value is consistent with attempts to suppress the religious practices of the county's fastest-growing faith. The fact that most of us do not share their beliefs (and some of us have no beliefs at all) is irrelevant. Only primitive people want to destroy everything they do not like or understand. The civilised, and sensible, approach is to welcome diversity as a stimulus to renewed vitality'.

Gerald Kaufman then went on to chastise and belittle English culture, its religion, education and values, which he saw, and still sees, as a threat to the greater good of multicultural and religious diversity. For Kaufman and other champions of multiculturalism, the immigrant is an almost revolutionary force that will firstly weaken, and then utterly transform the host nation. For Kaufman's defence of Islam and diversification is seething with class hatred and a barely concealed yearning to radically alter the then middle-class and Christian based society in which he was writing into an envisaged multicultural nirvana:

"the attack on multiculturalism is no more than a refined, middle-class version of "Paki-bashing". Yet people who ought to know better have joined in the chorus of intolerance. To demand that Muslims abandon their way of life - what they eat, how they dress, which way they choose their husbands and wives - is to make a frontal assault upon their faith. Islam is a total religion. People who go to church on Christmas Eve and think that makes them Christians may not realise that devout Muslims believe that the Qur'an should inform their whole lives. Britain has to decide if the freedom that we so value is consistent with attempts to suppress the religious practices of the country's fastest-growing faith."

Since then the Establishments cultural appeasement has continued unabated and witnessed everything from checkout girls refusing to handle wine purchases because it 'offends their religion', to, most recently, the London Metropolitan University deciding that in order to be more 'culturally sensitive' to Muslim students that it should ban alcohol. But beyond these ridiculous and almost daily examples of non Muslims self-abasing themselves before our would be conquerors, we are also beginning to see the slow realignment of the left's traditional political values when those values potentially clash with Islam.

Ken Livingstone, once the darling of the radical left and a champion of gay rights, has noticeably changed tact during his recent Lord Mayoral campaigning where Muslim votes now carry far more clout that the pink block. The Conservative Party, Livingstone declared in language more suited to the page of Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer, was 'riddled with people indulging in homosexuality' and further, that some Labour MPs only got their jobs because they were gay.  

Then, to further emphasise that he knows which side his bread is now buttered, at a speech delivered at the hardline North Central Mosque, Livingstone stated that he would make London 'A beacon of Islam', saying that if elected Mayor he would:

"…educate the mass of Londoners about Islam….I want to spend the next four years making sure that every non-Muslim in London knows and understands Islam's words and message. That will help to cement our city as a beacon that demonstrates the meaning of the words of the Prophet."

Not to be outdone, George Galloway, the milk-lapping, ex-Labour MP and founder of new political party Respect, who successfully campaigned and won the Bradford West by-election with Muslim support, is not only aggressively pro-Islam, but aggressively boasted of his teetotalism. He was also uncharacteristically quiet on where he stands on gay rights when challenged by activists. 

This is a new phase in our slow subjection to Islam and one that could finally wake up the mass of people to the threat posed by it to their cherished liberal democracy. However, for most people criticism of Islam is, as Gerald Kaufman so effectively said twenty years ago, a form of Paki-bashing and as such is still an anathema. Also people generally opt for a quite life and are more likely to begin accommodating their lifestyles with the changes creeping Islamification brings in its wake rather than manning the barricades or going on EDL marches. 

We can expect to see more politicians becoming apologists and converts to Islam, more shops and public meeting places becoming Islam-lite as they seek, not just the Islamic pound, but more importantly, Islamic approval. Equally interesting will be the shift of alignment as gay issues begin to lose their political kudos and the language of women's rights changes, as it already is. Recently the hijab has been described as 'liberating' and 'empowering' by female journalists trying to understand its growing use by female converts, further some Western commentators have said that arranged marriages work and that genital mutilation should not only be referred to as genital augmentation to avoid giving offence, but that clitoridectomies should be performed on the NHS as they would be done anyway. 

Apologism will be the new radicalism and, as demonstrated by the words of the Marxist activist and multicultural champion Tariq Ali which he wrote in the days immediately following the London tube bombings, fighting these views will soon be akin to heresy and probably just as dangerous. The alternative is, as with Stockholm Syndrome, that we come to love our oppressors... 

'In the face of terror attacks Anglo-Saxon politicians mouth the same rhetoric. One sentence in particular--shrouded in layers of untruth--is constantly repeated: 'We shall not permit these attacks to change our way of life.' It is a multi-purpose mantra. The first aim is to convince the public that the terrorists are crazed Muslims who are bombing modernity/democracy/freedom/ 'our values', etc. This is the first lie…'

Tariq Ali, after the London tube bombings in which 48 innocent Londoners were murdered and dozens more maimed and injured.

THE DEATH OF A BARE BREASTED COUNTESS

Jennifer Anderson, or Tiffany Tarantula as she named herself during the period when she reincarnated her band The Nuns after relocating from California to New York, died of breast and liver cancer age 54 on the 16th December 2011. She died, so I understand, alone and without treatment preferring instead to rely on herbal remedies and at the same time cut herself off from the world. A truly sad end for anyone and especially someone as beautiful and charismatic as Jennifer, yet given that Jennifer's mental state was in many ways as fragile as her health I was not totally surprised when I heard this for she was very much, for good or bad, her own person.

I first met Jennifer online after a colleague who was dating a New York girl at the time mentioned that I'd really like this goth girl band he'd seen perform at New York's Limelight club, the band were The Nuns, and he was right I loved their brand of trashy, gothy, bad girl, SM pop and decided there and then that Redemption Films had to make contact. At that time, I think 2000 or 2001, the nucleus of the Satanic Sluts as a concept was gelling in my mind and I was also looking at forming a record label, Triple Silence, so The Nuns just seemed perfect. 

Jennifer in turn was extraordinarily fast in taking on a topic or an idea so that if one suggested something and she liked the idea then she was on it immediately, so when I had decided to take the plunge and release The Nuns album she agreed straight away. Then she was suddenly commissioning photoshoots, booking a top producer for a new song, White Slave',  and, most alarmingly of all, booking herself into hospital to have her breasts enlarged.

I should also say at this point that Jennifer had become fixated with me and talked constantly in her emails and on the phone, partly in fun and partly with a real sense of passion, of me. She had also read in an interview that I liked women with pale skin and large white blue-vained breasts which I do and therefore set about having hers suitably enhanced. At this time I hadn't seen Jennifer in the flesh but I knew that she was at least six foot tall, with long white blond hair and an almost amazonian figure so I knew that any surgery was a pretty extreme course of action and started trying very hard to distant myself from Jennifer in the sense that I really had no interest in her as a potential girlfriend. It was on this weird basis that our relationship developed over the years and which meant that some of our encounters were often a bit strange, sometimes strained and occasionally bizarre.

I first met Jennifer in the flesh when I arranged for the Nuns to come over to London to perform at the private members club, Home House, for their Halloween party. The Nuns at this time consisted of Jennifer and her long term colleague guitarist Jeff Olener plus the 6' 2" beauty, Kris, a wild girl and erstwhile model, who wore very little and gyrated around stage like a fetishised, sado-masochistic nazi vampire. On this occasion there was one more 'nun' on stage, the lovely and petite Emily Booth who at that time worked for Redemption and had as a big favour agreed to be a novice nun, and wearing as little as was decent, gyrated around on the cramped stage with her big sisters and put on a great show.

The next day I took Jennifer with me to visit a friend who lived in the countryside as she very much wanted to see 'olde' England. My friend had a big house, a couple of cute children, a lovely wife and some dogs and as it happened a piano and at some time during the day Jennifer started playing on it, I don't remember what piece it was but it was classical and very beautiful and to my untutored ear she played it very well. I mention this because this was a side of Jennifer that I had never seen before or saw again. Here for a moment was the Jennifer that could have been, the conventional, abet glamorous, wife in her nice home living another life, a life that Jennifer seemed to aspire to but would never have.

A few years later Jennifer came back to London with the Nuns again, this time to perform at the Marquee Club, and again for Halloween. She was also booked to play at Madame Jo Jo's where my club Black Mass was launching the first issue of the revamped and redesigned satanic magazine Rule Satannia. This time Jennifer not only brought Jeff and Kris over but also the gorgeous Satanic Slut Darenzia, plus by this time, 2004, with the Satanic Sluts out in force there were numerous other standee 'nuns' willing to join in on stage.

Jennifer had also had her breasts enlarged again, this time to truly enormous proportions, on top of this she had had her breasts tattooed so that they resembled nothing less than two highly decorative gothic orbs. In fact when I first arrived at the Marquee and went back stage to say hello to Jennifer I was greeted with "Nigel, darlink do you like my new breasts?". At Black Mass these 'new' breasts were out on display everywhere with Jennifer taking to the stage in nothing but a veil and covered in blood in what was to be one of The Nuns best ever shows. It also happened on the same night that a real black mass had been performed, one of the Satanic Sluts had almost died, the police and ambulance crews had been called with the film of the near death  'incident'  confiscated as evidence. No wonder that by the time Jennifer flounced off stage that Madame Jo Jo's had banned the Black Mass club for good.

That was the last time I saw Jennifer though we kept in touch and worked on the DVD release of her MTV and Osbournes inspired project New York Vampires in which Jennifer filmed herself, Jeff and Kris and numerous drunken and half naked goth girls behaving badly in and around New York. The DVD project also allowed us to include footage of The Nuns performance at the Marquee and Black Mass and for Jennifer to catalogue all the press clippings and paraphernalia that had characterised The Nuns chequered existence over the last twenty five years. The result was a DVD that is as shambolic as its subject but which is in a way a fitting record of Jennifer's and The Nuns history. 

Then, a few months after the DVDs release, news came through that Kris, Jennifer's drug-addled sidekick for many years had been murdered in a sleazy hotel and although Kris had never been an active part of the Nuns musically her death seemed to herald the demise of The Nuns as an active creative force. After that Jennifer dabbled in various projects like her recent stage play  "The Rock Star Ghost"  which was performed by her in April 2011 and described in the flyers thus: "A plane crash ends the high life of Nigel, the loveable, yet befuddled British rock star. When he returns as a ghost, he sees the error of his ways, forms a deeper bond with his daughter, and finds hope and faith in the everlasting"...

Yet for all the outrage and scandal of The Nuns Jennifer seemed destined to flirt with glimpses of success on the fringes of the Goth and fetish scene, forever seeing recognition in the distance. She dreamed, like so many, of being a star yet fantasied of a life in the English countryside. Though even this life was pushed into the realms of dreams as she talked of lords and castles and of rich aristocrats who would whisk her off to a life of enchantment and luxury. In the end she died aged just 54 and leaves the world a much duller place because for all of her nonsense and fantasies Jennifer was a real eccentric and in her own way a true star, indeed only a true star or a vampire could walk through the streets of New York and London clad in thigh length boots,a cape and nothing else.

Jennifer, if you're reading this then I hope there's a quiet corner up there with a piano for you to play...

Rest in Peace.

x

THE UGLIFICATION OF BEAUTY

On the 30th December I was walking past the National Portrait Gallery in central London and on a whim popped in to have a look at a new exhibition, The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011, and was taken aback by its obsession with portraying the human body at its most flawed, broken, diseased or infected. This was portraiture as selected by Hieronymus Bosch and styled by Joel Peter Witkins, where stumped limbs vied with pierced genitalia and diseased flesh for our attention, where deformity and perversion are celebrated over beauty and perfection. It is in fact an exhibition not of man’s beauty or even of man’s ability to overcome adversity or of inner beauty but rather it is a celebration of the ugly and the vile and the objectification of the grotesque in the name of diversity and the pursuit of equality, while beauty and the perfection of the physical, is like intelligence, brought down to its most base level.

The celebration of beauty and perfection and even of the human and the human body as an aspirational object is now fraught with danger, with every limb and sinew a minefield of politically correct catechisms. Where once the pinnacle of each race was of a body perceived to have been created in God’s image and that the best and healthiest examples of that body, if not attainable for all, were at least to be aspired to. Now we spurn such perfection as elitist and hurtful of those less fortunate or able bodied. At worst such displays of Greek and God like perfection are seen as Darwinian, fascistic, racist, or as a veiled attack on the disabled or physically handicapped and as such are increasingly taboo. 

Only in the freak show world of trash celebrity is the twisted and mercurial nature of the human body discussed, loathed or aspired to. In this world the celebrity aspirants in a gallery of ‘national portraiture’ would not be chosen for how many boxes they ticked on our ever burgeoning politically correct scales but rather for how many aspirational body segments that male or female celeb rated perfection in. Here, in a world as grotesque as its politically correct counterpart hanging on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, the human body is dissected and scrutinized for each flaw, with each imperfection celebrated as evidence of a celebrities fallibility and vulnerability. In this world scars signify surgical enhancement, large breasts a sure sign that nature has been cheated, fat, a sign of gluttony or sloth, thinness a symptom of anorexia or bulimia, while cellulite and wrinkles show that age, even in celebrity, cannot be stopped. The celebrity body is, like its atrophied counterparts in the National Portrait Gallery, a caricature to be gawked at, fawned over or examined like some exhibit in a Victorian sideshow.

The human body, like the human mind and the skin that encloses them, is being brought down to its lowest level. In picture after picture men and women are shown at their most base. Disease and wounds are nolonger hidden or concealed but in the name of diversity and inclusivity put on display. So a portrait of a couple is rendered somehow more ‘real’ for showing (genital) warts and all, and the picture of a soldier who has lost a leg is somehow made more ‘meaningful’ for showing the actual stump or a cancerous face more pitiable for us being able to see each rotting cell of flesh. 

This is our brave new world, a world in which even beauty is to be tamed and restricted in the name of ascetic egality and visual equality. It was telling that even where real beauty was on display in the Taylor Wessing exhibition in the form of a large photograph of the actress Keira Knightley that the colours had been muted and subdued to the extent that all life had been removed from the picture. This left her flesh tones neither pale and interesting or bright and cheerful but rather dead and lifeless like those of a corpse in a morgue. 

This grey-green hue seemed to pervade almost every image as if the exhibitors, not satisfied with displaying image after image of diseased, wounded and broken bodies, wanted to imbue the whole exhibition with a veneer of death and decay. If this exhibition of British photographic portraiture says anything of our nation and its people it is not, as I am sure the selectors and judges intended, one of hope over adversity or of tenacity over prejudice or sexual diversity triumphant, but rather of misery and squalor, of death over life, of ugliness and egotism, of perversion, pain and penury. This is not a celebration of human life and the human body in all its glory but of human life and the human body at its most vulnerable and miserable. It is a portrait of flesh, cast not in God’s image, but in his shadow.

It is no wonder then that as we enter 2012 and the nation prepares to embrace the Olympics and the human form at its most vigorous and athletic that the UK’s diversity obsessed establishment should have chosen as its mascot not some God-like creature 

whose physical demeanor represented these noble qualities but rather its complete opposite. The 2012 Olympic mascot is in fact the antipathy of the Olympic ideal, a atrophied, limbless, grey, anaemic one-eyed shapeless blob that represents neither the human body, sexuality, intelligence, beauty or skin colour and as such offends none of the totems of multiculturalism, nationhood, gender, religion or able-bodied over disabled. 

The Olympic mascot is the natural culmination of the Establishments quest for a non offensive human form, a shapeless blob. This too is where in a few more years The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait will end up in its striving to offend no one and to subvert beauty. Soon diseased flesh and genitals will not be enough and no doubt excrement and faeces will vie with open sores and corpses as being more real and inclusive. Until one day a one-eyed grey-skinned blob hangs on the wall and we will have achieved perfection...

Happy New Year.

© Nigel Wingrove 2011

RELOCATION, RELOCATION: A MIDDLE CLASS NAME FOR 'WHITE FLIGHT'

The English, and the English middle classes in particular, are well known for their habit of saying one thing and meaning something else entirely. Racism is concealed behind a veneer of niceties and politeness, with prejudice being the hate that dares not speak its name. The liberal elites and sauvignon quaffing professionals who go out of their way to be broadminded and understanding on sexual diversity, race, religion and multiculturalism, would still be privately aghast at the idea of their son or daughter coming out, or marrying into another race, or embracing Islam. They would never say so, rather with British stoicism they would smile and carry on. Yet there is a perceptible change in the air, which since the riots is being driven by fear and a sense that our inner city populations are not the multicultural urban nirvanas that they were once thought to be, that they are in fact, an overflowing melting pot that’s been simmering for too long and is now getting ready to explode. 

The first signs of this coming explosion were August’s riots, but these should be seen not as the actual explosion but rather as the first salvo in what will effectively be a violent realigning and redrawing of English society as future outbreaks of rioting destroy and undermine the social order on which our current way of life is structured. A structure which is being eaten away and weakened by the cancerous effects of being force-fed a relentless diet of multicultural diversity for thirty or more years and is now facing the prospect of being physically attacked as well. In such a fragile state its survival is not guaranteed, and it will need to fight hard to maintain the current status quo between the state and the people, or risk losing and seeing the country slide into anarchistic barbarism or becoming some form of quasi Weimaresque democracy which constantly teeters on the brink of collapse and paving the way for a period of political or military authoritarianism. 

The middle classes know this not because there is an obvious sign but because there are little warning indications everywhere, in the papers, on the street, on the news, on the Net, in school, in colleges, in work, in the shops, and from the people they talk too. Everyday  there are little things and big things all flashing red and those warning signs are all saying that the pot is getting ready to blow.

The journalist Graham Archer writing in the Daily Telegraph this week announced that he was leaving the inner city London borough of Hackney due, in a perfect example of middle class double speak, to a lack of empathy among the ‘separate communities’ and more importantly because of the ‘repellent antisocial behaviour that marks out too many bus journeys’, and specifically he says, ‘we’re leaving because of the summer riots’. He denied that this was about race and went on to castigate and cite the ‘tram lady’, Emma West, whose mouthy and slurred tirade at the world in general and non English whites in particular has made her a hate figure worldwide, seen her children taken into care and extraordinarily imprisoned without trial until January 3rd 2012 ensuring that she spends Christmas in prison. Such is the fate of anyone who dares to get ‘mouthy’ about race or who, in a very non middle class way, speaks their mind honestly. Better for her that she had thought what she meant and spoken what she didn’t. 

Yet Emma West is also a spark, and the state’s brutal overreaction to what were in effect the drunken ramblings of a solitary woman on a tram has ensured that that spark rather than being extinguished will, like so many others, continue to burn. The police are adding their sparks as well by further talking up the doom-laden ante and demanding everything from tear gas, water cannon and new blinding laser lights to deal with future urban disorder. Those with a vested interested in portraying the riots as the cries of an underclass struggling for justice against a wicked, austerity driven world, have given future rioters the veneer of political respectability by reclassifying the rioters as protesters and in the background the silent majority says one thing, thinks another,  dreams of relocating, and carries on.

Yes people are carrying on, but are increasingly nervous, as all the while the red lights keep flashing. Unemployment is rising, crime is rising, production and manufacturing are falling, banks could go bust, Europe is imploding, interest rates will rise soon as and as they rise so will mortgage repayments, and credit, once the driving force behind our reinvented ‘never-had-it-so-good’ culture, is now too in short supply. Nothing, in fact, is as it was, and nothing seemingly, is as it seems. There is a sense as well, that on top of all this the government and the natural cohesion of the people that has held the country together is falling apart. That we are, in fact, nolonger one people and one nation. Indeed, thanks to the wonders of multiculturalism we are now many peoples and many beliefs who have little in common and even more differences.

This frightens the middle classes whose world order is now under real threat. What for them is the purpose of all that cultural diversity and the tolerating and defending of multiple faiths and religious rights if the environment in which they live could be torn apart by the very people they have been supporting? They could, of course, run away to the suburbs or the countryside and relocate like the Daily Telegraph’s Graham Archer thereby escaping the ‘repellent antisocial behaviour’ that is so rampant on the streets of our inner cities, and many, many will.

They may also stay put and continue lying to themselves and each other and pretend that everything is fine and that there is nothing to worry about, or they can heed the warning signs for what they are and take a leaf out of Emma West’s book and say what they mean for once. For multiculturalism has failed totally and rather than relocating and running away the middle classes and the establishment they support needs to say enough is enough and bring an end to this ghastly social experiment before it destroys the country. The time for staying calm and carrying on is over, now is the time for speaking the truth.

© Nigel Wingrove 2011