Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Honor System


Rock and roll likes to wear its debased status proudly. Fantasies of class imbalance play out in sartorial themes. The Stones are always singing about their torn and frayed coats, how tattered they are. Derelict characters flaunt their thread-bare scenarios. Stained overcoats, ripped jeans. The apotheosis of scuzz. I don’t have the feminist/Freudian firepower to totally excavate this idea, but there’s some kind of connection between thwarted worship of a pure feminine archetype and self-immolating male dissipation exemplified by shoddy duds. The pale white idol is put on a pedestal. The “drunken vagabond” croons after her. Chivalric wet dreams. I read that the Guardian stopped using honorifics last year in their official style guide. It’s something we miss out on here in the states – bogus titles, land-based systems of respect and unjustified privilege. Lords and ladies.(Pictured, "The Lady and the Monkey").

“Lady Geneveve” – The Kinks


“Lady Eleanor” - Lindisfarne


“Lady Jane” – Rolling Stones


3 comments:

anything_with_a_spine said...

Leave it to the Velvet Underground to do the Freudian excavation on this theme with "Lady Godiva's Operation," about a botched sex change that accidentally becomes a lobotomy. Kind of says it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Godiva's_Operation

Anonymous said...

Lov thee AO Spare. "Lay Lady Lay"?

Anonymous said...

the stones win the freudian competition: "lady jane" ain't nothin' but slang for poontang. sir john thomas would be her consort...