kagablog

western4.33 - ciinematography by wiro felix

Nothing is too vulgar for the magazine world’s Marquis de Sade, Terry Richardson, whose full-frontal photographs of supple body parts, often in orgiastic orchestration, can really grab ya. His uncompromising style has left a trail of sticky magazine pages from here to down there and inspired a generation of photographers to keep it real. Taken with an old Instamatic, Richardson’s body of work has become one of fashion’s most instantly recognizable, and sought after; his sizzling images have appeared in the pages of i-D, French Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as campaigns for Gucci, Sisley and Armani Exchange.

The product of an unconventional childhood—divided between New York and Los Angeles, where his father, the eccentric 60s fashion photographer Bob Richardson, lives—Richardson continues to occupy a space in between, blending a New York fashion sense with L.A. street cred. Richardson sat down with LEE CARTER to reveal his soft spots for cinema, cars and naked skateboarding.

Lee Carter: Is Terry Richardson a New Yorker or a So. Cal. kind of guy?

Terry Richardson: I think it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you are, and right now I’m in New York. I feel like a New Yorker.

LC: Do you have another place in New York, or do you call this studio home?

TR: This is it—home, everything. I like how you refer to it as the studio. The French call it le studio. A lot’s gone on this couch, let me tell you.

LC: Uh, should I get up?

TR: No. Just kidding. Sort of.

LC: Do you still skateboard?

TR: The last time I went skateboarding I was hit by a cab. I got a bruised hip and my face was cut up. I realized I shouldn’t be skating around the streets of New York City. Safety first. Now I have an indoor skateboard.

LC: You skate in here?

TR: Yeah, on my little skateboard, the best $6 I ever spent in a thrift store. We have naked skateboarding contests. That’ll be the concept for a future ad campaign, naked skateboarding.

LC: Naked skateboarding would be one of your tamer concepts. Has there been a time when you felt you’d gone too far? Too explicit?

TR: No, but there are a lot of pictures that have never run.

LC: I was thinking on the way over here that you would be ideal as a celebrity photographer for Playboy. Or something raunchier like Penthouse.

TR: Well, I’m working on some top secret stuff out in LA.

LC: But you can tell me, of course.

TR: Let’s just say I get a lot of offers. But I like putting sexual images in mainstream magazines, not porn magazines. With porn mags, you’ll see penetration and people fucking and fucking, but it all looks the same after a while. Fashion can look the same, too. I like to be subversive, to push images as far as I can and still get them run. It’s a challenge to see what I can slip in.

LC: Pun intended?

TR: I like to explore sexuality and people instead of just showing cum shots, fist fucking and whatever to shock people.

LC: Does that make you an artist?

TR: Maybe.

LC: I saw an art show of yours at Alleged gallery a while back. And the soundtrack was the sound of really vitriolic phone messages, but no one knew who it was. I found out later they were between you and your father.

TR: Actually, it was just my father. He bombarded me one afternoon.

LC: What provoked it?

TR: Who knows? It goes deep. Everyone needs to vent sometimes.

LC: Is he still taking photos?

TR: Don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in about a year. He’s still kicking. He’s a strong fucker.

LC: I’m waiting for your quote about how he still gets a hard-on every morning. I’ve read that everywhere.

TR: Do I say that a lot? He says it all the time to me.

LC: The first time I read it, he was 70 and still getting a hard-on, the second time he was 71, then he was 74. He’ll be 100 and still getting boners. That libido must run in the family.

TR: Yep, it’s in the genes.

LC: Pun intended again? Maybe you can do what Ted William’s son is trying to do and cryogenically freeze your dad’s body. There’s something in his DNA that needs to be preserved.

TR: Yes and no. [laughs] He’s one-of-a-kind. He can’t be duplicated.

LC: Not even in you?

TR: A bit. That’s what I’m working on in therapy, not to repeat the same patterns.

LC: Do you want to have kids?

TR: Yes. Kids are amazing, I think the best conversations I’ve had in the last six months have been with 3-year-olds. They’re so direct and honest. They don’t know about too much stuff yet.

LC: Think you’ll be a good dad?

TR: I think so. But I’m still just an eligible bachelor right now. It’s kind of nice. I can do whatever I want. I like the freedom and the time to myself.

LC: What’s a typically date like with Terry Richardson?

TR: [yells out to assistants] Hey, what’s a typical date like with Terry Richardson, as I refer to myself in the third person?

TR: Nothing wrong with fantasy.

LC: Do girls throw themselves at you?

TR: Sometime, but the sleazy photographer thing is cliché.

LC: Can I see the famous instamatic? You have two, right?

TR: Oh, boy. [gets cameras] They’re old, they don’t make them anymore.

LC: Have you ever used a digital camera?

TR: No. [Editor’s note: Terry later used a digital camera to take his self-portrait seen on the first page, the first time he’d taken a digital photo.] I like the idea of having negatives and making prints, but I’m not against digital. We just learned how to scan, actually. It’s very exciting, we can send people pictures. We had the scanner for 2 years, but never did anything. We finally had somebody come over last week to show us how to use it. We needed to know so we can start building my website, www.terryrichardson.com, which should be up and running later this summer.

LC: You’ll be the master of your own domain name. What else are you working on?

TR: A book for Taschen. I’ve done three books before, but this one is more of a retrospective art thing. I guess it’s a coffeetable book. That’s such a cheap term for a book, so vulgar. Whoever invented that should be shot. It sounds like there should be a little holder for a coffee mug and an ashtray. So I’m doing that, editorials, ad campaigns and just taking tons of picture. I’m also taking off across the country this summer in my car, a suped up black ‘87 Buick. I love cars. They’re beautiful, like art objects.

LC: Sexual, too.

TR: Exactly. My car is called Mandingo, like the old pulp novel about a Southern plantation that would castrate the male slaves, but they’d also have a breeder, the stud, that the white women would all want to fuck, too. It was made into a film in the 70s with Ken Norton, who played Mandingo, James Mason, Perry King and Susan George. It’s excellent, like an exploitation of Gone With the Wind.

LC: Sounds like you’re a movie buff.

TR: Yeah, I’m in the midst of writing a screenplay, too. I have to submit it in December. I’m still putting ideas on paper. They want a European art house thing, with lots of sex.

LC: You’re just the man for the job. What’s the first film you saw that really impressed you?

TR: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge, Out of the Blue, Over the Edge. And early Nicholson. My dad took me to see all that great 70s American cinema, like Godfather. And I like all those Jerry Shatzberg films with their bleak, unhappy endings that started with Midnight Cowboy. They’re anti-heroes because they’re criminals, and they die in the end.

LC: Which was a new thing at the time, not wrapping things up neatly at the end.

TR: Oh, totally. Have you read Easy Riders, Raging Bull? It’s about all those guys making those realistic films of the 70s.

LC: Which is, in a sense, exactly what you’re doing.

TR: Yeah. Keeping it real, that’s what the kids say.

LC: You’re one of few photographers who can marry art and commerce. You can bring a lot of sexuality to a brand like Sisley and it seems right.

TR: My best pictures are improvisational. It’s all about casting, especially with Sisley. If the cast is wrong, the whole thing is fucked. If you get people who know what’s going on, who are into it, then you just let them go, let them get into their characters.

LC: How much do you have to prod them?

TR: A little, but the casting is where I do the big grill session to see who’s comfortable. A lot of people are exhibitionists once you get them going. I’ve had people fuck on set, and suck, and fuck some more. And guys fucking, girls fucking, guys and girls, penetration. Sometimes I’ll cast a couple if I want them to do it, but strangers have done it, too. That’s why casting is so important. I can’t make magic with just anyone! But I’m not going to connect with everybody. I’ve walked off sets a couple of times. I said I was going out for coffee, then I’d leave.

LC: Are magazines very controlling? Or do they let you do what you want since you’re Terry Richardson?

TR: There’s more freedom with magazines than advertising. But even European mags are worried about advertisers now. You can’t work with a glossy and bring in all new girls. They want the big names. It makes it harder for new people to break in. Like I’ve always said, it’s not who you know, it’s who you blow. I don’t have a hole in my jeans for nothing.

LC: How long have you been shooting the Sisley campaigns?

TR: About five years.

LC: What’s the inspiration behind the fall campaign?

TR: It was the first time we went into the studio. We just wanted to do a shiny black thing. Next time we’re going back on location, for atmosphere. I think we’re going to shoot the next one in LA again.

LC: They’re the most sexually-charged ads I think I’ve ever seen.

TR: Yeah, we tried to put a picture of a girl with little pompoms over her tits on a Sisley poster in Soho. This one [points at the catalog]. They said no because a little of her areola was showing.

LC: Or, as I like to say, hairy-ola.

TR: [laughs] I like that word. They said it was too sexy and it would be too close to a church and a school. It’s all so silly and conservative.

LC: I didn’t realize until recently that i-D runs an exclusive Sisley ad of you with each new campaign.

TR: We give them my self-portrait each season. It’s not even in the catalog, just in i-D. I always look forward to it. Humor is good. I love to make people laugh from a photograph. I think that’s the best compliment.

LC: Sex and comedy mixed together. You’re sort of the Woody Allen of photography.

TR: Annie Hall and Manhattan are my two favorite films ever. To me, photographs are more about people than clothes. I’m not one of those photographers who says, “Ooh, that dress is just making me crazy.”

LC: Think Woody ever went to rehab?

TR: What?

LC: I have to ask about rehab.

TR: Oh my god, where do you get the goods?

LC: I don’t think it’s embarrassing. It’s common knowledge.

TR: Really?

LC: Sort of. Better to air it. Everyone’s doing rehab these days anyway.

TR: Oh, I know, it’s chic. I know so many people doing it.

LC: Silver Hill?

TR: No, somewhere in Pasadena. It was my first time. It really changed my life, made me really look at myself. It brings it all right down to simple things. It’s nice to put your life on pause. Life is a beautiful thing. Before rehab I wanted to feel good all the time. “All things in moderation,” as my mother always says. But a little excess can be good every once in a while.

this interview was originally published on hintmag.com

lil princezzakameg’s Blurbs
About me:
i began messing with men when i was in high school, though sadly, they began messing with me earlier than that. i was raped at nine, though not legally, since fingers and a hand were used for penetration, not the officially requsite penis. that ended up in my hand as he twisted and contorted with a physical omniprescence that pinned me and manipulated me at the same time. my breasts were burned with lit cigarettes. my husband beat my legs with a wooden beam so that i couldnt walk. 7 year old taylor “thats nice. i like your crown too.” 8 year old brandy: “did your mom teach you that?” 8 year old tessa: “will you stand up and show them your pretty dress? thats very lovely.” 8 year old brooke: “can you show me that wave again?” Read about my life at Sexwrecks

Who I’d like to meet:
chuck dodson, fentanyl dealerz in tha park, joe dellasandro, ian an myra, peeple who will let me xploit demz on videotape, babyfacez, chile super models, chile super starz, crispin glover, shady doktorz, anasteisologistz, reel circus clown, sumwun 2 make me famus, terrible plassic surgeons, meg ryans new lips, paris hilton, plassic surgery disasters, gg, michael jakson, black older brother aborted circa 1969, sleaze, creeps, perverts, pedophiles.

lil princezzakameg’s Interests
General inscest, child exploitation, serial killers, hanging out outsyde tha methadone clinic, celebrities, famous, cutting, jews, drugz, videotaping, stun gunz, coping with ocd, mumbling, clowns, fentanyl, botched plastic surgery, prison, tabloids, blood, ded animalz, gauze, cum, my dad (in no particular order)

Music
gg, tatu

Movies
bully, holy mountain, salo, ciao manhattan, bone, bad santa, shakes the clown, gg allin hated, forbidden zone, what is it, scorpio rising, martin, manaic, trash.

Television
nikkole ritchie an paris hiltin move 2 da souff on a farm an nikkole ritchie sellz her precious pussay hair 2 buy junk wiff an paris an tyra bankz have pussay farting contest.

contact lil princezzakameg here

more of francoise duvivier’s dolls here

This short film made in 1991 by Aryan Kaganof, still called Ian Kerkhof at the time, is a great film, gentle and provocative at the same time. It lasts for only 3 minutes but is nevertheless very powerful. Its text could be the subject of a whole critique – it was written by Henry Rollins, the ex-rock star who has worked many times with Kaganof and Richard Kern. I had the honour of presenting this film the 27th November 2003 in Paris, in front of its director.
During an orgy implied by the soundtrack, (the first part of the film being a black screen), we hear the cries of satisfaction from men. There is no background music during this first part but the “drunken” voices are very melodic. We hear no sign of female voices among these satisfied cries. When these voices stop, another “hard” voice starts, shouting the words of a song without music, repeating the title of the film as the chorus; “Men Are Pigs”. This song tells girls to castrate their lovers after fellatio, as the singer shouts, “Rapists, we’ll get you!” The song seems to be against machismo. The screen remains black. This is the second part of the film. A few seconds later a painting of an armed young woman appears. We hear a pistol shot, and it’s over. The formal work of the filmmaker’s images is very strong and very inventive. What is the message that Kaganof is trying to convey? It is pure poetry with no need of woolly interpretations. What would be the point in interpreting this tender “provocation?” (in the best sense of the word). Furthermore, the film is not direct – it makes its suggestions indirectly. It is worth noting that Kaganof has already indirectly and metaphorically criticised machismo – a characteristic example would be his film “Kyodai Makes The Big Time”, made in the same year. The eponymous hero of the film sees lots of women all through the film but is killed in a motorbike accident. This scene has to be a reference to Kenneth Anger and his “Scorpio Rising” of 1963. MEN ARE PIGS is a poem of the streets and inner cities.

By Dionysos ANDRONIS
March 11, 2006

translated from the french by lucy lyall grant

Nikhil Singh is nou al vir jare amper-bekend vir die donker-eksotika van
sy visuele skeppings. Ondermeer verandwoordelik vir die oog-terg oorspronklikheid van sy ‘graphic novel’ wat destydse Constructus Corporation se ‘the Ziggurat’ album begelei het, duik sy altyd interessante illustrasies hier en daar in onverwagte plekke op. Nikhil is ook ‘n uitstekende skrywer. En nou – Pop sanger?

‘Pressed up Black’ se musiek herroep die los, eksentrieke 80′erjare Pop groepe soos Talking Heads en Duran Duran. Die album bestaan uit klein, eenvoudige melodiee, met elke snit sy eie eiland van instrumente en styl – van Pop-erige Clash na Waitsian tipsy tango, reenerige middernag saxofoon, tot middeleeuse folksmusiek. Singh klink baie gemaklik agter die mikrofoon, sy effe Britse aksent bind gemaklik die subtiele verskeidenheid van style op die album saam.
Soos met sy visuele werk, le die mooi reg langsaan, of sommer so tussen-deur, die lemme – en in ‘Pressed up Black’ le die lemme in die lirieke.
Singh se visuele aestetika vind daar stem: Singh is nog altyd gefassineer deur, en bewonder, die verskeie spannings wat onderliggend, en bepalend, van die Natuur en die werklikheid is. Sy sagtste, vroulikste ink-vroue bars onverwags met lemme en androiiede intrusies, sy vraaiste klein marmotjie ontvorm in ‘n kwylende ondier in. In ‘n onlangse onderhoud met Mail & Guardian som Singh dit op deur te se dat ‘n tier se pragtigheid bloed-in-aar loop met sy gevaarlikheid, die twee aspekte is inter-afhanklik.

‘Pressed up Black’ is goed op alle vlakke, en neem ditself nie te ernstig op nie. Vir almal wat gedink het net Depeche Mode kan Pop musiek met ‘n tikkie Goth inspuit, draai na ‘Pressed up Black’, hier’s ‘n skinkbord vol interessante inspuitings wat wag..

made of 360 post-it memo stickers.
shown on the exhibition De Ironische Wending in Assen.

“Stations Of The Cross”

Ian Kerkhof’s short film made in 1990 is a great film, 11 minutes long. We’ve got into the habit of watching it every year during the Holy Week, in order to have a complete vision of the Passion of Christ: aesthetic, emotional and profane at the same time. Aryan Kaganof transforms the ritual of the crucifixion into an S&M performance, setting the scene with stills of him in the role of Christ. A black executioner and others inflict torture upon him. At times the photos reveal a few demythologising secrets as to the making of the film – some of the actors surrounding the hero (in other words, the director) are wearing contemporary clothes.
However, the most demythologising element is the presence of pins in the clothes the actor is wearing - they belong to our time, not Christ’s. They leave visible traces on his body – even his beard is full of pins, making us think of the Devil. It’s a very symbolic counter-argument because Kerkhof is playing Christ. And so in this film the two contradictory forces coexist symbolically, perfectly “reconciled and wedded” - the same forces that make all the author’s films so resonant.
A monologue in Polish completes the soundtrack, which opens with an Orthodox psalm. The film is dedicated to the memory of the Georgian film-maker Serguei Paradjanov, who was condemned to forced labour during Stalin’s occupation of his country because of his homosexuality.
Some of the films images have been reworked eleven years later to form “It’s The Children”, which we showed as a French premiere the 11/12/05 (see corresponding article), while the original film “Stations of the Cross” had its French premiere at the “Freakzone Festival” in Lille in 1997.

Dionysos ANDRONIS

(Sunday 9th April, 2006, the week before Easter)

translated from the french by lucy lyall grant

draw me nearer to
the sketches of your broken
i
metaphors of the world
upside down

143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put pressures on human beings for the sake of the functioning of the social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society to another. Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution), some are psychological (noise, crowding, forcing humans behavior into the mold that society requires). In the past, human nature has been approximately constant, or at any rate has varied only within certain bounds. Consequently, societies have been able to push people only up to certain limits. When the limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going wrong: rebellion, or crime, or corruption, or evasion of work, or depression and other mental problems, or an elevated death rate, or a declining birth rate or something else, so that either the society breaks down, or its functioning becomes too inefficient and it is (quickly or gradually, through conquest, attrition or evolution) replaced by some more efficient form of society.[25]

144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development of societies. People could be pushed only so far and no farther. But today this may be changing, because modern technology is developing ways of modifying human beings.

145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today’s society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)

146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the methods of controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us look at some of the other methods.

147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, and computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement).[26] Then there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don’t have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get “bored,” i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.

148. Other techniques strike deeper that the foregoing. Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kid’s behind when he doesn’t know his lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child’s development. Sylvan Learning Centers, for example, have had great success in motivating children to study, and psychological techniques are also used with more or less success in many conventional schools. “Parenting” techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable. “Mental health” programs, “intervention” techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are ostensibly designed to benefit individuals, but in practice they usually serve as methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system requires. (There is no contradiction here; an individual whose attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to suffer from stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity.) Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms is disapproved in most if not all cultures. Tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone. But many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is spanking, when used as part of a rational and consistent system of discipline, a form of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of society. In practice, the word “abuse” tends to be interpreted to include any method of child-rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the system. Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious, senseless cruelty, programs for preventing “child abuse” are directed toward the control of human behavior of the system.

149. Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of society that technology is creating. Biological methods probably will have to be used. We have already mentioned the use of drugs in this connection. Neurology may provide other avenues of modifying the human mind. Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur in the form of “gene therapy,” and there is no reason to assume the such methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the body that affect mental functioning.

150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a considerable proportion of the system’s economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won’t study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (e.g., pro-choice vs. pro-life), political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.

151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of mere chance. It can only be a result of the conditions of life that the system imposes on people. (We have argued that the most important of these conditions is disruption of the power process.) If the system succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure its own survival, a new watershed in human history will have passed. Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of societies (as we explained in paragraphs 143, 144), industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.[27]

152. Generally speaking, technological control over human behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a conscious desire to restrict human freedom.[28] Each new step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society, such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study science and engineering. In many cases, there will be humanitarian justification. For example, when a psychiatrist prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed patient, he is clearly doing that individual a favor. It would be inhumane to withhold the drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their children to Sylvan Learning Centers to have them manipulated into becoming enthusiastic about their studies, they do so from concern for their children’s welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one didn’t have to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid didn’t have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But what can they do? They can’t change society, and their child may be unemployable if he doesn’t have certain skills. So they send him to Sylvan.

153. Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a calculated decision of the authorities but through a process of social evolution (RAPID evolution, however). The process will be impossible to resist, because each advance, considered by itself, will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will seem to be less than that which would result from not making it (see paragraph 127). Propaganda for example is used for many good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred. Sex education is obviously useful, yet the effect of sex education (to the extent that it is successful) is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the family and put it into the hands of the state as represented by the public school system.

154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal and suppose some sort of gene therapy can remove this trait.[29] Of course most parents whose children possess the trait will have them undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane to do otherwise, since the child would probably have a miserable life if he grew up to be a criminal. But many or most primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison with that of our society, even though they have neither high-tech methods of child-rearing nor harsh systems of punishment. Since there is no reason to suppose that more modern men than primitive men have innate predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must be due to the pressures that modern conditions put on people, to which many cannot or will not adjust. Thus a treatment designed to remove potential criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of re-engineering people so that they suit the requirements of the system.

155. Our society tends to regard as a “sickness” any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a “cure” for a “sickness” and therefore as good.

156. In paragraph 127 we pointed out that if the use of a new item of technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional, because the new technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology. This applies also to the technology of human behavior. In a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or suppose a biological treatment is discovered that, without undesirable side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be reduced, so that it will be possible for the system to increase the stress-producing pressures. In fact, something like this seems to have happened already with one of our society’s most important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce (or at least temporarily escape from) stress, namely, mass entertainment (see paragraph 147). Our use of mass entertainment is “optional”: No law requires us to watch television, listen to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complains about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches it. A few have kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without using ANY form of mass entertainment. (Yet until quite recently in human history most people got along very nicely with no other entertainment than that which each local community created for itself.) Without the entertainment industry the system probably would not have been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing pressure on us as it does.

157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis. As experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the brain or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation. Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one it clearly is less powerful than the biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate human feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents.

158. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by the authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical problem; a problem of neurons, hormones and complex molecules; the kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in solving technical problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances will be made in the control of human behavior.

159. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public resistance. (See paragraphs 127,132, 153.)

160. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday’s science fiction is today’s fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man’s environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.

Inside the elevator, things have calmed down a bit. The journalist is nursing a bloody lip, staring hatefully at the 3rd Girl. The futuristic little camera dangles around her pale wrist, snapping and flashing on automatic. Mirrors multiply the livid explosions of light out into infinity. On either side like some sort of deathray. The 3rd Girl leans against the opposite mirror-wall, smirking down at her pidgeon-toed needle heels. Jennifer rests her spinning head against the cool mirrors, wincing each time the flash ignites.
“That camera is giving me fucking epilepsy,” she mutters bitterly.
The journalist spits a droplet of blood against the mirror and glares contemptuously down at Jennifer.
“It is hot, new journalistic technique,” The journalist states haughtily. “The camera takes random images, records sound, the whole night.”
She daubs her bloodied mouth against her ruby coloured sleeve, explaining further.
“We splice data into slideshow with sound…like video, only more fractal. Imbed on printed pages of magazine in new magnetic format, you read with compatible scanner. New phones out now with this scanner in portable, you download as you read. We take best images; call it God-photography, all up to fate.”
She spits more blood, talking to her sidelong reflection. She speaks eloquently, but the words come out sounding rehearsed. Like her face is not connected to what she is saying. Like she’s given this same speech in a hundred different elevators from Dallas to Taipei. While her gimmick strobes offensively behind her, collecting snatches like some electronic mosquito.
“…All images downloadable from magazine archives, End of year we splice everything into Zeitgeist shorts for Venice Biennale…”
Jennifer unexpectedly snags the camera, snapping its leash. The journalist bursts into a volley of Italian curses. She launches herself bodily at Jennifer but is pulled short by the 3rd Girl, who pins her spectacled face against the blood soiled mirror, watching it distort with rage. The camera shutters madly as Jennifer fiddles with the controls.
“Well this flash is pretty fucking distracting..” she mumbles as the journalist thrashes against her captor, screaming her lungs out in the boxy space.
“How do you de-activate…”
The journalist suddenly elbows the 3rd Girl across the forehead. The 3rd Girl loses her smile in a flash of white, flagging heavily to the floor. The journalist is upon her in a second. They flail like harpies as the journalist’s ringed fist rains down into tousled auburn hair. Jennifer side-steps on reflex, angling the camera into the mirror. Within a second, the 3rd girl has punched her attacker savagely in the bone of her face. The journalist reels with blood tracing across her throat. The 3rd Girl scrabbles up with all the vitality of adrenalin in her. She rips the journalist’s spectacles from her, crushing her bloody face against the reflective surfaces. A feline yawl escapes the torn lips as the journalist’s face is smashed repeatedly against the glass.
“You broke my smile now you cunt!” the 3rd Girl barks, her arms trammeling back and forth, sweat beading across her blood peppered brow.
“I don’t see how this photographic technique is so fucking great…” Jennifer frowns absently, flicking tiny buttons on the camera’s control panel.
“I’ll have your heads on sticks in New York!” the journalist slurs. “Give me my fucking Oracle!”
Her cheekbone emits a meaty thud as the 3rd girl strikes it heavily against the smeared mirror. They reel against one another while the flash catches white-hot moments. There is a moment of heavy breathing and staggered balance on both sides. The 3rd Girl’s fingers tighten and loosen around hanks of the journalist’s hair, questing for a grip.
“My fucking lip!” the journalist husks stickily into the 3rd Girl’s ear. “Two hundred dollars I paid for a fucking treatment!”
The 3rd Girl chuckles through the blood.
“You cheap little tramp.”
“Don’t want Botox racing round your system…” Jennifer adds, gazing deep into the pixellated camera display.
“Get a collagen job next time,” The 3rd Girl smiles. “Last longer when you get cocky with the help.”
“Suck my dick…” the journalist hisses, pinned helplessly beneath her adversary’s trained arms.
They stagger out into a long, burgundy corridor. Trailing along the walls like malfunctioning androids. Jennifer manages to keep the camera just out of the journalist’s reach.
“Do you have any idea how many neuroses in women can be traced directly back to the magazines you whore for…” Jennifer mutters over her shoulder.
“Who do you think pays for my lip treatments?” the journalist responds in acid tones.
“Not your casting agency, that’s for sure!” the 3rd Girl giggles.
Another skirmish breaks out, captured in snapshots.