Now that we’ve got that out of the way, a confession; I unconsciously associate nudity with sex. I’m well aware that this means, like most people, I have a somewhat over-simplified view of naturism.
It also means that I’m intrigued by the tendency of writers of children’s fiction featuring anthropomorphic animals to put their characters au naturelle or only wearing a top – understandable enough in ‘realistic’ works based in our world like Watership Down, Colin Dann’s The Animals Of Farthing Wood, or even The Deptford Mice, but a little confusing in books such as The Welkin Weasels or the Redwall series by the sadly-recently-passed Brian Jacques. Why do his hares wear jackets but nothing else? Why do his mice often wear very little at all? Are these creatures capable of building abbeys, wielding poleaxes and brewing cordials but somehow unable to put on a pair of trousers?
None of the characters even pause mid-battle to lick their own genitals.
It’s only an issue because all of these works, from the Batrachomyomachia onwards, have used the violence that’s an inherent part of survival in nature to explore human concepts of manufactured violence. Redwall, infamously (I was actually surprised by how many of his obituaries noted this fact) held an implicitly vegetarian philosophy, making every single outright carnivore villainous by their very nature, since killing other animals is part of their life. This could, of course, have led to a spin-off in which a heroic nunnery of earthworms battles evil moles from Yorkshire, but that’s beside the point. The rather more complex Farthing Wood played a smart piece of irony by having the carnivorous heroes swear that they wouldn’t eat any other animal…that was already a part of their society. The dumb stuff – such as Disney’s The Lion King – just ignores the issue entirely and blathers on about the Circle of Life.
But none of these books, in the fine old tradition of ‘violence is fine for children; sex isn’t’, really deal with that other issue of animal behaviour. Watership Down’s plot is, in the second half, all driven by sex, but it’s dealt with incredibly obliquely. The does’ situation in, respectively, Woundwort’s warren and their hutches, is made so clearly out to be captivity that the heroes’ actions can be posited as liberation rather than the Rape of the Sabine Women that it really is. Robin Jarvis’ The Oaken Throne (from the Deptford Mice universe) even went so far as to focus on the romance between a bat and a squirrel, but was forced to make them into doomed Romeo-and-Juliet-style lovers in order to avoid dealing with any of the serious questions.
It’s a glossy, unimaginative attitude that reminds me of nothing so much as the popular pop singer Rihanna, and in particular her latest song ‘S & M’, which currently has British mothers fearful that it will end up sexualising their young children. They really needn’t worry, since the image of BDSM that Rihanna presents in her song and accompanying music video is exactly the same image of sex as a whole that she presents in every single one of her videos. That is, that it requires props, multiple costumes, and a cast of thousands. Frankly, parents, in this economy, by the time your little Janey’s saved up for enough shiny leather pants for the forty male strippers to writhe lustily around her, she’ll be forty-three and that outfit simply won’t fit her any more.
The lyrics themselves, so vague as to be meaningless, suggest that Rihanna doesn’t care about S & M any more than George W. Bush cares about black people or Kanye West cares about other people. The point, in fact, is the same as with Christina Aguilera and Madonna before that – to take one of the most philosophically intriguing movements of deviancy and use it to dress up in a bizarro costume. The opposite of a fashion statement. Using a statement to promote yourself, then using the resulting controversy to promote yourself further. Basically, it's the fashion equivalent of the Groupon Superbowl ads.
Rihanna had always seen 'Venus In Furs' as an unconscious rebellion against primitive man's will to power.
With this in mind, I’ve taken the time to prepare Lady Gaga’s next music video, taking the animalian aspects of ‘furry-ism’ and bestiality that simply haven’t been dealt with sufficiently in children’s’ literature, and packaging them in a manner designed towards the fashion-pop philosophy. Because frankly, Isabella Rossellini’s series of videos depicting her having sex with other animals in animal costumes wasn’t nearly tasteless or gratuitous enough. It was educational rather than egotistical and it taught instead of glossing over AND THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH, DAMMIT!
JARRINGLY PASTEL-COLOUR-PAINTED HOTEL ROOM, INT, DAY.
LADY GAGA sits, singing on the phone. She’s wearing a FISH on her CROTCH. The FISH FLAPS ABOUT.
LADY GAGA:
Ooo ooo ooo ooo,
Ooo ooo ooo ooo
Doo doo doo doo-
Ooo ooo doo!
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na!
DELIBERATELY FAKE KITSCH BLUESCREEN CAR ON THE ROAD, INT/EXT, DAY
LADY GAGA is kissing a SMALL DOG. Now she’s wearing a dress made of HIGHLY-AROUSED POSSUMS.
LADY GAGA:
They say he’s hung like a horse
Hung like a horse
Oooh, yeah, he’s hung like a horse.
I'm Lady Gaga.
You know me, I'm Lady Gaga.
Submit to the power
Of the Illuminati.
STUDIO, INT, DAY
TWENTY MALE MODELS in BEAR SUITS grind up against LADY GAGA in such a way that, were they to attempt this during the act of sex, BITS would SNAP OFF. LADY GAGA herself is wearing an all-elk corset. For no reason, a bunch of paparazzi with KITTEN HEADS try and take pictures of her.
Then some more MALE MODELS, on bended knee, offer LADY GAGA a PHALLIC ANACONDA, keeping their gazes averted. She writhes with it for FIVE ENDLESS MINUTES. She also sings some more words but they DON’T REALLY MATTER.
Jon Ware
Fiction Editor
