In this rather abstract little essay, I’d like to explore Michel Foucault’s writing on Las Meninas (Ladies-in-Waiting) by Diego Velazquez. First, I would like to discuss several aspects of what Foucault has to say, and then I would like to point out a few other salient features of the painting (some of which were suggested by the lengthy article in Wikipedia hypertexted above.)

Foucault refers to the depiction of the King and Queen as “an essential invisibility” and an ordering center – the absent presence around which the entirety of the painting depends. Going further, Foucault discusses the “symbolically sovereign” center as a “superimposition” of three registers: a “triple function”: the model’s gaze, the spectator’s gaze and the gaze of the artist (not the artist’s representation “in” the painting but the artist composing the painting the spectator is viewing). These functions come together outside the painting and are both ideal (representational) and real (material, grounding the painting). Obvious parallels can be drawn to the role of the “divine signifier” (signified?) of God within a structural analysis, the metaphysical entity that grounds the system and provides/ensures ultimate meaning. For Foucault, as for many other post-structuralists, this sovereign presence is absent, is only ever “represented” – an icon in Baudrillard’s sense, the simulacrum which conceals the truth’s absence or nonexistence.

In an interesting way, these triple functions correspond to Laura Mulvey’s concept of the gaze(s) in cinema: the gaze of one character to another, the gaze of the camera and the gaze of the spectator. The Velazquez painting provides a sort of recursive mise en abyme in the realm of fine art; a similar moment in the realm of cinema occurs in the final scene of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. Former silent film star Norma Desmond, now quite mad, descends the stairs of her mansion, confronted by gathered photographers and news cameramen, convinced that this is the climactic scene of her latest film. Her butler, Max, who was once her director, takes over the camera crew and “directs” the coverage. In this scene, we have the gaze of the gathered journalists, the gaze of the cameras (both within the diegetic scene and those actually filming the scene) and the gaze of the audience. Then Norma addresses us, “out there in the dark,” breaking the convention of the fourth wall, returning our gaze. The final frames are filled with her face, gazing (madly) back at us.

Lastly, I’d like to say a few words about the structure of the Velazquez painting. So far, we’ve been looking at it along a depth axis, the gaze reciprocally directed into and out of the picture. But what happens when we look at the grouping of the “characters” along the other axis? We notice several strata of groupings, which the complexity of the canvas makes it difficult to reify with absolute confidence, but which provisionally can be broken down thus: the canvas (within the picture) and the dog (a mastiff, a native breed); the Infanta and her ladies-in-waiting (the eponymous characters); the two dwarfs; the artist; the couple behind the other figures; the reflections of the King and Queen and the figure on the stairs. What do the dwarfs (there, presumably, to be seen, as “exotic” or “illustrative” figures) have to do, or “say,” to the flanking ladies-in-waiting? Is the artist on the same plane as them, or as the shadowy couple behind this grouping? What would this signify about his “standing”? One of the dwarfs is prodding or kicking the mastiff – what narrative weight does this carry? By our account, the real figures of authority here (the royal couple, the chamberlain on the stairs) are the hindmost strata as well as the foremost. Thus not only do they structure the picture by their presence/absence, but they also encompass/enfold the lesser figures – the child, the servants, the artist/servant. What does this say about Velazquez and his relation(s) to authority?

Questions along these lines could be multiplied nearly to infinity. Specific answers can be found in some instances through the contested arena of iconographic analysis. However, none of these answers can ever be ultimate, or can ever totally map the territory of the painting. The work of art remains open, self-reflexive, a mise en abyme (“placing into infinity” or “the abyss,” if you prefer).

Before discussing Argento’s film, it would be illuminating to put it in the context of its source material. It is a widely known fact that Argento drew inspiration for his films (the so-called “Three Mothers” series) from the writings of Thomas De Quincey, in particular his 1845 work Suspiria de Profundis, which contains “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow” – a prose poem describing De Quincey’s opium-fuelled vision of the “Three Mothers” – Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Tenebrarum and Mater Suspiriorum, about whom De Quincey has this to say: “The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum – Our Lady of Sighs…[H]er eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium…She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless.”

This quotation opens up a field of possibilities for reading Argento’s film. First, there is the incomprehensibility of narrative, especially for the viewer attempting to meet a gaze withheld (“no man could read their story”). Why should this be so? Presumably because the tale told by this gaze would be “neither sweet nor subtle” and “filled with perishing dreams” – a semantically ambivalent phrase. Does it refer to dying dreams or dreams of dying? The “wrecks of forgotten delirium” point to De Quincey’s habitual use of opium and, within Argento’s film, to the nameless drug given to the protagonist, Suzy. Our Lady presents a threat to the viewer, offering visions of death, the wrack and ruin of madness and hopelessness, because she is abject.

The Mother in Argento’s film, Helena Markos, is referred to as a “black queen” and a malefic witch by a psychiatric authority (the “last word” on the subject), Dr. Milius. This association with a queen bee is made overt when, near the end of the film, Suzy wanders down a hidden tunnel festooned with flower and vine imagery and marked with inscriptions in Latin, German and Hebrew. Among the words made noticeable by Argento’s framing, we find “Interiora Occultum” (hidden interior), “Metamorphosis,” and in capitals “Apibus” (bees) next to a large red rose. The hidden interior – the center of the labyrinth found via the assistance of Ariadne’s thread (mentioned earlier by Sarah) – is the red rose of the female genitalia, the sweet honey provided by the queen bee, the black witch, Helena Markos. At the end of the tunnel, Suzy witnesses a Black Mass, a parody or inversion of the Eucharist, and discovers her friend’s dead body with pins stuck into her eyes. When Suzy intrudes into Helena Markos’ sanctum, there is a large “eye in the triangle” on the wall. And it is not until Suzy disturbs her from her restive sleep that Helena Markos brings back the dead. This sequence establishes a series of equivalences between sleep, death, being hidden or invisible, and blindness.

It is not coincidental that the witch, the abject Mother, is invisible. For, residing in the center of the labyrinth, she must be considered a monster, a prime example of what Barbara Creed terms “the monstrous-feminine”. It is only when Suzy defeats her by stabbing her through the throat with a peacock’s tail feather/needle emblazoned with the traditional eye that she becomes visible and all her handiwork undone.

It is also notable that, in this film, most of the male characters are side-lined and secondary. The female protagonist defeats the source of evil without the traditional assistance of the active, forceful male presence. In fact, the only male character not almost incidental to the storyline – apart from exposition engines like Frank Mandel and Dr. Milius – is the blind pianist, Daniel. He must be eliminated precisely because he cannot see, and so does not take the illusion of normalcy at face value. Ironically, he is dispatched by his seeing-eye dog, possessed (the viewer is led to believe) by the maleficent force of the witches.

A final word should be said about the presence throughout the film of water imagery – from the heavy rainfall that opens and closes the film to the sequence featuring Suzy and Sarah in the middle of a large pool. The association of water with the unconscious ties these images into the theme of sleep and death that runs throughout the film. The entire body of the film thus becomes a “perishing dream”. The question remains: Does Suzy wake up at its end? What is the precise relation between the falling rain (the unconscious) and the consuming fire (reason or intellect)? Appropriately, Argento does not foreclose any reading. The ending, like the film, remains open and oneiric.

Dates from around 1929.

In an early review (also 1929), Georges Bataille presented his “Psychoanalytic Schema of the Contradictory Representations of the Subject in Dali’s Lugubrious Game,” dividing the painting into four “sections” – the disintegrating figure in the lower center of the picture (A), the effluvia of images rising above it (B), the soiled figure standing in the lower right-hand corner (C) and on the left the figure on the pedestal (D).

Bataille glosses the sections thus:

“A. Representation of the subject at the moment of emasculation. The emasculation is expressed by the laceration of the upper part of the body.

B. The subject’s desires expressed by a winged ascension of the objects of desire. The burlesque and provocative character of this expression indicates the voluntary pursuit of punishment.

C. Representation of the soiled subject escaping emasculation through an ignominious and nauseating posture. The stain is both original cause and remedy.

D. Representation of the subject contemplating with complacency his own emasculation and giving a poetic amplification.”

In the years since Jean Baudrillard’s piece on simulacra and simulations (late 80s), Disney has gone itself one better – they have burst forth from the pure simulacrum of itself that it has long presented, into the “real world”: they built a community near their park in Orlando, a pure simulation of all the “values” of Disney, a simulacrum of 50s purity and nostalgia. They called it Celebration.

As you can imagine – but you don’t have to, Disney has done it for you – the community reveals a demographic distribution that harkens back to the “salad days” of the 50s – it consists of predominantly white, upper income-bracket families. There is the requisite downtown, replete with fountain. The core neighborhoods have low-density housing – expansive green lawns, sprawling houses, a proliferation of azure blue pools. Transportation encourages walking, biking, the use of electric-hybrid vehicles. So, in many senses, it embodies eco-conscious, “progressive,” user-friendly living conditions. But only to those who can afford it – and who can meet the stringent pre-approval process to move in and maintain their homes and exterior lives in accord with the restrictive “homeowners association” codes, which were imposed from the beginning by Disney.

In fact, in recent years, residents of Celebration have been engaged in an ongoing battle with Disney, to wrench control of “their” community away from the corporate giant. Consequently, residency rates were on the decline, though apparently differences have been settled between property owners and Disney, as the company divested most of its political oversight, and residency is now higher than ever.

A film geek’s annotation: This is the painting Werner Herzog references in his remake of Nosferatu, in the scene where Bruno Ganz’s Jonathan Harker travels across eerie landscapes on his journey to meet the Count, played as a sort of existential hero by the always deranged Klaus Kinski.

From LAist:

The Associated Press has claimed that the famous “Hope” portrait of President Barack Obama created by Eastsider Shepard Fairey infringes its copyright in a 2006 photo. The AP is seeking credit and compensation, according to, err, the AP.

Fairey has admitted publicly that his image was based on Garcia’s. The original photo was taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.

Fairey’s legal advisor stated that he believes Fairey’s use of the image is protected by the fair use doctrine under copyright law.

It is unclear whether fair use would act as a complete defense to Fairey’s use. Although the doctrine tends to favor transformative works for the purpose of political comment and parody, courts have held, as in the case against the artist Jeff Koons for “String of Puppies,” Rogers v. Koons, that fair use does not protect artistic copying when there was no clear need to imitate the photo for parody.

The AP and Fairey are reportedly in confidential discussions over the case.

SYDNEY – An Australian traveler was caught with two live pigeons stuffed in his pants following a trip to the Middle East, customs officials said Tuesday. The 23-year-old man was searched after authorities discovered two eggs in a vitamin container in his luggage, said Richard Janeczko, national investigations manager for the Customs Service

They found the pigeons wrapped in padded envelopes and held to each of the man’s legs with a pair of tights, according to a statement released by the agency. Officials also seized seeds in his money belt and an undeclared eggplant.

The alleged bird smuggler, who arrived in Melbourne on Sunday on a flight from Dubai, was being questioned.

Australia has very strict quarantine regulations on the importation of wildlife, plants and food to protect health, agriculture and the environment of the isolated island nation.

Charges of wildlife smuggling — which carry a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of 110,000 Australian dollars ($70,430) — could be brought against the man.

Janeczko said the pigeons were not endangered and that the case — as well as the birds, eggs and seeds — had been turned over to the Quarantine Service to assess the health risk associated with bringing the birds into the country.

The Quarantine Service would not comment on the continuing investigation.

No, wait. Sure I can. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. From Iggy’s “Lust For Life” on Carnival cruise ships to Dylan hawking Pepsi during this year’s Super Bowl, the rock music pantheon are slumming it and selling it. Selling it dearly, as a matter of fact. Up for auction not just their credibility and good name, but their willingness to tear apart their image and sell off the scraps and tatters to the highest bidder. And now along comes another one: Johnny Rotten pitching Country Life Butter.

I’ve had occasion before to speak of the “culture industry” – socio-economic forces representing global capitalism that produce all of our mass-consumed culture. The term derives from critical theory – social philosophy usually of a more or less Marxian bent (coming from Marx’s theory but not necessarily advocating Marx’s political agenda) – and has many obvious uses when analyzing popular culture in its manifold manifestations.

What’s so distressing about both ads is that they use the signifiers (the symbols, slogans, fashion, etc.) of rebellion and social change (the 1960s folk-protest movement and 1970s punk rock, respectively) not only in order to move product, but to reinforce the status quo and to revalue their corporate images so that they come to “represent” these qualities – protest, rebellion, change – regardless of their actual corporate policies and practices.