A Man Looking at A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, A Review — Part 3
Warning: Mature Audiences Only
3. The honest male perspective in my book A Man Looking At Women vs. Hustvedt’s female gaze on women objectification. Hustvedt’s reflections on particular artists with personal biases that affect art, literature, and world judgements.
Here is the first sentence of the first poem in A Man Looking At Women:
“I envision the pussy, its connection to the whole, a long line of arms and legs and a trunk that positions it just outside the direct line of fire,” (Savioni, p. 8).
I would not know how the scientists felt, but I doubt much probing is necessary. As to whether they would get that far, I do not know. A couple of these lines could arouse or simply disturb for many reasons, one of which could be because of the baseness of the so-called poetry. I am talking about women’s anatomy. I end the poem with the line: “For every directional light arcs toward it in the fog of trying to communicate with the gatekeeper, tempting her with answers, imposing on her with questions, all of which have as their motivation to gaze at and to penetrate,” (Savioni, p. 8). A bit of a universal theme, men’s preoccupation with the labial sphere, wet chemical persuasion and yet a high degree of indifference.
Hustvedt said that everyone is affected by science one way or another,… science did not solve the world’s problems and no one is untouched by the community of thinkers or researchers in which he or she lives, (Hustvedt, p. xii-xiii).
While science affects us one way or another, Hustvedt said that art transformed our lives and those effects are not necessarily inferior to science effects since we are all creatures of ideas, (Hustvedt, p.xiii).
She tries to make sense of the plurality of views. In the section of her book entitled “A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women,” there are pieces on particular artists, investigations of personal biases that affect art, literature, and world judgements.
Hustvedt talks about how Kierkegaard’s philosophy lives in his prose style, in its structures, images, and metaphors, (Hustvedt, p. xviii).
That certainly could be said about my work “The Sublime Miss Portman,” as follows:
“Trickster
On a satin cloth
Raceway stripes
her mother’s shoes
The bandanna giving her some age,
She’s next-door’s daughter
In a pearl necklace
Cat-eye stare.
I’ll stop before I get into trouble.
Crossing any one of those lines
Will get you twenty.
I am sure there’s more,” (Savioni, p. 9).
One would hope that in using the first person, a transformation would occur. The writing, I think, is a study in attraction of youthful beauty and abhorrence in return.
Hustvedt said that much is open to question and revision. Books, media, and the Internet speak of decided truths (Hustvedt, p. xx).
Even the glaring eyes of the author speaks of something that if true, at least on one level illustrates something that is true, even if gross. It speaks too of the very process we go through when we reach an age, where our points of view are no longer valid because unaware of our inner persons, we are no longer qualified to appreciate the opposite sex. Women, one would think, appeal on a physical plane. This is how objectification works. The lines are that deep, shallow, and availing of a frail and unwilling observer. Each facial expression is interpreted as if an invitation to be wanted by what has become offensive. We want to shake the observer, “No, this is not what she wants! Wake up man, wake up!”
The philosophy is naive, eternally hopeful, certainly desperate. By this point, the reader feels disgusted and offended.
Hustvedt quotes Max Beckmann, who said that the “Visible world with the inner self provides [a place]…where we seek individuality of our own souls,” (Hustvedt, p. 3).
Picasso’s Link
Hustvedt quotes Picasso, “Art is not an application to the canon of beauty, [but they are] instinct and brain conceptions… When we love a woman, we don’t measure her limbs, we love with desire even though everything has been done to try to apply a canon…to love,” (Hustvedt, p. 3). I think Picasso knows what I am talking about. Something so fluid as a man’s attraction brings us to this place, where his attraction as truth runs counter to the truth of the affect of his attraction on the person to whom he is attracted. He hopes he is not lost to the truth of his feelings and he fights this with all he’s got. His very age invalidates him. Meaning it is contingent upon his being received. And yet, the reception is hopeless, whether he may succeed to seduce, he is lost to the fact that society would and will condemn him.
Finally, I think that a woman, who satisfies him on all levels, will come and she will hush his wanton and futile advances. But, he still wonders if men and women are even compatible. What does she want versus his blatant regard? He really has no other needs, since he has been trained to take care of himself and others. This drive amounts to his reason for being. Take that away and he wanders aimless. For a time, following my angioplasty, whether because of not being able to eat or sleep, I had no sex drive. I could not imagine any reason for living except to see if it returned. I doubt women, or perhaps even other men, have this base limitation, but I am wondering? Anyone else face death only to realize the docility of reality?
Hustvedt said that a work of art has no sex (Hustvedt, p. 6). It is just the grand design of an expression of something. Sure, it is enough that the work affects, just as it tells. On many levels, it provokes disgust, reflects the failures of men, familiar manifestations previously realized, projected upon and no doubt damaging. So many are hurt by this shallow attraction. It has no distance, is fickle, has no moral weight even though it is true. And in time, it will be dealt with, made unacceptable, de-romanticized.
The feelings evoked, as with pleasure, distress, admiration, or confusion, this is how people know the world, according to Hustvedt. I write:
“This woman is more than a dance in sand.
She is the accumulated degradation of ages,
Of lies, of every projected unwanted eye.
The sanctimonious urges pressed against her thigh,” (Savioni, p. 35).
I am trying to write that there is honesty in the objectification, the cloud of chemistry and lines. At points, there is actually reciprocation, but overall, unless a man moves beyond this and plays the role outfitted for him in the context of relationships with women about whom I have no other words, she just wants to be happy and she says it like it is.
Hustvedt says that when she sees a Picasso, it is replicated in herself. It becomes the “Weeping image of one of externalized grief. He presents the link between sexual desire and art and literature about it turns grown-up women into girls,” (Hustvedt, p. 10).
Hustvedt said that Picasso liked cutting up women. She said that women-hating is given muscled, masculine strokes that reflect an inner turmoil, (Hustvedt, p. 10).
Hustvedt says that Koons’ work has no pure sensation, not in feeling pain, nor tasting wine, nor of looking at art, where our perceptions are contextually coded, which becomes a psycho-physiological reality, (Hustvedt, p. 20).
I know that when I write, I am coming from a pure energy, a soft stream of consciousness that is tender because of how a woman is a form, a radiance, an enchantment that makes me feel; she is someone I want to embrace and entangle:
“Beckoning
“I am not interested in the supposition
Of what does not exist.
Manipulations of reality to project some kind
Of intimacy.
“You rob me with the placement of fiction,
Where only reality suffices.
I need the woman and the man
To be together.
Otherwise, she is bigger than life,
Indicative of his impotence.
I am left to see this incarnation
Of longing.
I know his dream,” (Savioni, p. 22).
Hustvedt says that, “Koons’ work is not lively enough to sustain a long relationship,” (Hustvedt, p. 19). I cannot speak for him. His objectifications are sleek baubles, Michael Jackson and a monkey, his wife, the pornographic actress, and “banal objects.” I think, like Jeanette Winterson said in her book Art Objects, we can sit with things because they are things the artist produced, by products of his/her world, they engage a language and while things may not inspire us to words, I have learned that not having a response usually implies ignorance, denial, and this is fine since we have busy lives, but then to blame or diminish is to project non-participation. I feel points of view are valid, if not fashionable. The view of a serial killer speaks to something true about human beings. A woman’s beauty is a fact even if on the surface something she cannot control or even notice because it is on the inside.
The hatred women feel toward goading men is surface-oriented. These women look them up and down and surmise their irrelevance. The attraction is not shared. I once felt this when a gay man looked at me from across the room and I gave him a glare, like “What are you thinking?” He came over to me and scolded me: “No one wants to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with them!” That struck me as equalizing. He was correct. We can’t read other people’s minds initially because we are just looking. We are caught up in our emotional turmoil.
When Hustvedt asks how a personal life can be based on advertisement and media (p. 21), I think of Stacy Hoshino, a former Special Projects Coordinator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who said that the media dictates our culture. This may have been before hoodies became in vogue or at least were a decisive cultural fashion statement and perhaps a survival garment. Baggy pants and women wearing yoga wear, their butts with nothing covering them but a thin layer of synthetic is another non-media effect. Just going to yoga affected the culture because of its physiological outcome. The bodies of women became unimaginatively sublime. The ads are like models we wish to emulate? There is a false line she draws in saying that advertisement and media are impersonal. We look at the whole of what is in front, whether ad or otherwise. The ad, as artists, consumers, is reality, at least in part, something to compare and we can differentiate it as the “good” things and never the bad, which is what an advertiser does, distorts reality. How many people actually need to drink Coke, and how many actually desire the long-term effects?
In only one of my poems do I deal with the media. Another piece merely mentions the title of a movie, but not much about it. In the other, I fake a conversation with Sofia Coppola, who I try to seduce but as dignified as she is, she reminds me of her outreach, how embarrassingly I am coming across. I argue that I am just older and that if she knew me as a younger Italian, she would be attracted and she says it’s not right for older men to look at younger women.
Virgin Suicides
I talk about the Virgin Suicides and my attraction to beauty and diminish the effect of the media, where I say:
“‘No matter how many books, or movies,
We sit up after… and look at ourselves
We cling to…images of youth
…we scratch at the opening
That neither you nor I can escape,’” (Savioni, p. 25).
John Szarkowski writes of Robert Doisneau’s work as having sympathy for, or even interest in, those who are afflicted by their…human frailty. I am dealing with unrequited love. I am not sure the media and advertisements deal with this, because it is a weakness, a blindness, an inherent failure of projection.
For a person to buy expensive art, I doubt personal enhancement would be the motivation. Hustvedt said that, “Someone who buys hugely expensive art always indulges in a fantasy of personal enhancement,” (Hustvedt, p. 21). My book A Man Looking At Women is not expensive. I have left it in cafes on the chair, where I sat and wondered who might have come along and what they thought. Knowing what women are saying these days, I bet they thought it was just another example of the male gaze. Is there an acceptability of men, some who are elites, who exude unfettered expression of their sexual fantasies?
Hustvedt quotes William James’ “‘In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all he CAN call his[:]’’’ A man’s body and psychic powers, clothes, house, wife, children, ancestors, friends, reputation, works, lands, horses, yacht, and bank account; these things give him emotions and may explain why art by men is more expensive. She observes that, “The taint of the feminine and myriad metaphorical associations affect all art, not just visual art,” (Hustvedt, p. 22)
What she is saying, we know, is that the presence of the female form as beautiful, a measurement, the qualifying element in art and the metaphor of women-equals-beauty affects all art. In other words, perhaps, without the female form, whatever it is, it is not art. Women are ultimately its definition?
Hustvedt said investing in art coincides with the market as a whole and thus is no different from pork belly, except that what hangs from the ceiling has traces of creative intent, (Hustvedt, p. 23). I don’t know how this qualifies art except that it has a deeper associative value that touches on what the intention affords, its connectivity, the value and strength of its power to communicate. Whereas pork belly, AKA bacon and Maslow’s physiological needs vs. self-actualization, and so I would agree with her about intent, even as Tolstoy explained in the emotion communicated through art.
Hustvedt said that William James said that a man’s Self is the sum total of all he can call his, (Hustvedt, p. 22).
In terms of my book, A Man Looking At Women, the protagonist, who I guess is me is on a purely objective romp with his impressions of beautiful women standing in front of him. The protagonist, actually is looking at pictures of these women, is really doing nothing more than assessing their figures in terms of his creative imagination, thinking how they might feel in his hands and mouth, how they feel as things/objects in front of him with a seeming interest, but in fact as they are feigning or actually demonstrating an interest in the person for whom they are posing/caught. In this sense, my book represents the true sense of the man or all men perhaps as they are stripped to their true ambitions. She goes on to say, that the things that make up a man’s self, his psychic powers, clothes, house, wife, children, ancestors, friends, reputation, works, lands, horses, yacht, and bank-account give him emotions. Where boundaries of ownership may explain why art by men is more expensive, she also said that there is a “taint of the feminine and its myriad metaphorical associations affect all art, not just visual,” (Hustvedt, p. 22). In terms of men and their buying power as currently demonstrated with the continuing bias towards women as inclined to have babies or somehow seen as unworthy of making the same money as men, who have more money to project their interests upon the art world in influencing what seems to sell. Perhaps women are more interested in things to wear and to adorn their faces?
If my book could be seen as a manifestation of the male gaze and, like all art, should appeal to a kind of truth about men, but for whatever reason, one book store owner, a female, disinclined to house it, one man called it lowbrow. A female, who had been molested by her sister as a child, said she was not offended and the toss of commentary is both pro and con. I wonder about the idea that art by men, even if cheap, gets sold? Those with money usually have both the buying power and, inevitably, the say, as to what is on display. I never argue about tourist spots that sell trinkets. Because I am a local I am obviously not interested. Thus, the nakedness of women blankets the very confines of aestheticism.
Hustvedt alluded to why art is created in the first place: “Louise Bourgeois…used her fear and rage to articulate ferocious dialectic of biting and kissing, slapping and caressing,” (Hustvedt, p. 27). ”
My book A Man Looking At Women is about not getting any. It is saying: “See how basic I am; aren’t I appealing?”
Louise Bourgeois said in an interview according to Hustvedt that “‘Artists are greedy… They want recognition, publicity and other ridiculous[ness],’” (Hustvedt, p. 31), to which I agree. I want those things, because once I start a relationship with a woman, I am going to need those things to support and entertain her.
In my book, A Man Looking At Women, I am not really listening to women. I say if they only knew what we were thinking they might see how simple we are and I would want them to talk back, but I am afraid they aren’t interested. If I can’t listen to them tell me that they don’t like to be stared at, then why do they bother? In most cases, they don’t. Still, a very close friend of mine with a Masters in English Lit, who cammed, escorted and served topless, said that she was absolutely interested in a man who found her appealing physically. She said it turned her on that a man she knew wanted to do a porn with her. This counters all the gruff about women who currently want no attention at all.
“The young woman still thought as desirable sexual object because the young, desirable, fertile body cannot truly be serious, and cannot be the body behind great art,” Hustvedt said (p. 32. I think where Hustvedt is wrong is where she says that a man cares about a woman being behind great art. Men could careless about where desirable women are.
Hustvedt said that that the body of a young man was heroic vs. Bourgeois, who, versus Pollock, was ignored. But, she was just as brilliant, Hustvedt said (p. 32). In terms of my book, the body of a young man is ignored, even loathed, unwelcome, simply understood for what it is, a mechanism for propelling one through the air, an air fogged by attractions to the female. In fact, in every dream is a woman, to a point, as Hustvedt said, “For a woman it is better to be old. The old face does not carry erotic threat,” (Hustvedt, p. 33). Actually, her face is not a threat, but more of a challenge. A challenge to be looked at and respected, to be found interesting and attractive. Yesterday, a woman said, “He was the best I ever found, that’s why I married him.” And so, this is what it is like for men. They look for the best woman they can find.
In both cases, getting old takes you out of the running, unless the dynamic of money is present, then that becomes the variable.
Then Hustvedt said that Heidegger had a “Nazi Taint,” and put forth an “irrational Dasein,” but Dasein means “being there,” which having read Heidegger’s Being and Time and understanding his thesis, he was talking about everything happening at the same time everywhere and being in the awareness of that as much as someone could (Hustvedt, p. 35). He is so far above Nazism that her statement appears laughable. I am currently reading an anthology of articles about whether or not he was pro-Nazi and almost every article denounces that claim and disproves it. But, his “being there” could account for something. What was it like to have been in Germany in those times? To this Pombo i Sallés said that for “Heidegger, even if he had really been a 100% Nazi (which I also doubt as he was trapped in the evil system and thought he could change things by keeping his professor job at the university, which he could only do if he did not resist Nazism), that would not invalidate his genius as a philosopher and poet.”
Heidegger’s book is a masterpiece in that his writing allows you to realize his thesis. His prose style persuades. He is much too smart to be a Nazi. Nazis must have thought in terms of the present and could not foretell that to discard reality, would be to be forced to relive it. Racism is absurd from a logical point of view. Heidegger was not illogical.
Pombo i Sallés responded to the issue of Heidegger as Nazi and Picasso as abusive of women, but who was also an artistic genius:
“As for Heidegger,” Pombo i Sallés said, “even if he had really been a 100% Nazi (which I also doubt as he was trapped in the evil system and thought he could change things by keeping his professor job at the university, which he could only do if he did not resist Nazism), that would not invalidate his genius as a philosopher and poet. As for Picasso, yes, he mistreated women and that is unacceptable, but he was an art genius,”
Hustvedt said that Heidegger also revived Romanticism in 1920s Germany. Where Romanticism deals with inspiration, subjectivity, and primacy of the individual, or having a pipe-dream fantasy, in terms of my book, yes, the male gazes at the female and discards her similarity to him. Distracted by her slightly different lines, her make-up, her chemistry, he writhes and twists in a fantasy of his entwining with her. The protagonist in my book is inspired, truly subjective, and alone as individual within himself looking out and at the object of his desire. But, he does not espouse the “primacy of the individual,” but rather is relegated by his fantasies to a world being alone, because his thoughts are clearly fantastic. The woman he pines for doesn’t even know he exists. She laughs at him because she had no such desire. She is not trapped as he is in the impractical world of unrequited love.
“Even Though
“I want Christina.
I want the panty line
The Softness of her flesh
Uneven in color,
As if she bruises easily,
Lacking iron.
I like that her breast is strange, small, and
Lily-like,” (Savioni, p. 42–43).
Certainly, this is a pipe-dream. Like Lolita, no matter the perceived eloquence, the nightmare of his obsessions permeates the aloneness he exudes. My book is then focused on the trappings of a fetishist.
