According to Susan Stewart how has the "grotesque body" and "the trickster" each played a role within different cultures? Define their roles and their societal functions (according to Stewart). For instance, Stewart describes the representation of the grotesque body being the "antithesis of the body as a functional tool or the body as still life." Pg. 105 What examples of the grotesque body or the trickster can you identify in contemporary culture or mass culture today? Offer quotes, links, and images in your post.

I appreciate Susan Stewart’s depiction of the grotesque body in terms of images or representations. For example, the external objects of artwork through costumes, masks and disguises. When the body is paraded to be put on display in time and space, it involves a spectacle and aestheticization, therefore normalizes the grotesque. The direct attention to cultural regulation, within the domain of public space occupied by the grotesque “body in the becoming.” Which is a precedent of seeing bodies as genitals, mouths, anuses, and all of the products of taboo, ambiguity, and pornography. I think a lot about this in my own life and artwork. Where mass attention is being that gender is genitals, or a form of expression through clothing or “costumes.” A good representation of this is Juliana Huxtable, who also has been involved in a Ryan Trecartin piece (we have been shown the videos in class) DJ, writer, performance artist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OW7jDpXVrg 

 On page 117 it states (from Hegel) "The very desire of man (Hegel tells us) is constituted under the sign of mediation, it is the desire to make its desire recognized. Why is this being discussed at this point in the text and how does it relate to objects, human behavior, our imaginations, and other ideas within On Longing? In your discussion offer examples of art/architecture or pop culture phenomena that relates to this relationship between desire and mediation.

Human behavior is far too complicated to be generalized in it “always has a desire to make its desire recognized.” I think that on a base level it is true, we desire so many things love, success, friends, any number of things that attribute individual happiness or therefore the pursuit of. Susan Stewert interprets that even when our basic needs are fulfilled there is always a complex behind this. Such as ordering food at a restaurant and eating it… there is a narrative of who has prepared the food and where the food came from, that often is commodified without that significance. I thought about the desire of being nice or being a good person meditating a subconscious desire of being treated with niceness. Preaching self- love 2020, which is definitely a pop culture phenomena, via Marisa Peer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWKEDKAbQus&t=28s

But also for creative self- assessment and growth this book, really simple. Mediating why your negative habits do not suit your creative body of work and how to re-construct your attitude.

Susan's discussion of desire reminds of surrealism, I think that all the that she is talking about resonates with the psychoanalysis. Here she said " During the mirror phase (state du miroir) the child acquires an imaginary identification of the real, corporeal image as a unified image. In this creation, the unified subject, the self begins to be positioned in the sociality and is available to the further modifications made possible by language and the symbolic" (Susan, 1993). I relate this to the concept of Oedipus complex, the child's state of mind that explored by Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalyses. In search for meaning and truth, the child develops a feeling desire for the opposite-sex parent which sort generates a kind of jealousy and anger toward the same-sex parent.

Egon Shiele used portraits and self-portraits to explore the psyches and sexuality of the models. He also distorted the figures in a grotesque way, expressing his emotions through external exaggeration of the body. Susan said, "The grotesque body thus can be affected by the exaggeration of its internal elements, the turning of the " inside out", the display of orifices and gaps upon the exterior and interior of the body". (Susan 1993) I find this quote as resonance with the works of Egon Shieles and Gustav Klimpts.

Gustav Klimt, Jurisprudence, 1907

Egon Shiele, Self-Portrait, Grimacing, 1910

Stewart talks about the human body in pieces/parts instead of a whole. When I think about the grotesque body, I think about the body parts that got covered up because of social pressure. What is categorized as inside and outside of a body? Things that society believes should remain hidden because these parts suppose to be private. This leads me to think about the act of pixelating images and how this process can end up combining the body with what was meant to be covered. The following are some images from some cartoons that got blurred due to inappropriate content for children. The original idea was to stop kids from seeing inappropriate things that they are too young for, such as smoking and drinking. However, with the blur being put on the images, these “bad habits” became part of the human body and looked even worse.

                       
                                          

   In this sense, this can relate to the idea of trickster mentioned in this chapter as well. I think meme are a good example of trickster in our everyday life.

            

   

  

                

                                                 

                     These are memes for one of the president candidate in Taiwan.

The “grotesque body”, and “the trickster”, violate cultural norms.  They both can be animal and human at the same time.  The grotesque has a “corresponding sense of interchange and disorder”.  Stewart also says that the trickster is “a violator of cultural taboos”.  I feel like she is saying that both “grotesque body”, and “the trickster” are necessary for cultural balance.  For example when she said, “Trickster unleashes the Mississippi, allowing it to flood the land, and thereby makes agriculture possible.”  When Stewart says about the grotesque, "antithesis of the body as functional tool or the body as still life."  I get the same feeling of necessity.

When I think of the “grotesque body” as a functioning tool, I think of medical applications.  The show bodies come to mind.  This is a show that preserves human bodies in order to dissect them for study, and display.

The Grotesque Body and Trickster Reflections

Prompt 1. The grotesque and the trickster

I understand the grotesque, especially through Stewart, as something that is seemingly normal or natural exaggerated or distorted in strange ways. Especially in mass culture or media we are often both intrigued yet repulsed by the grotesque or unnatural.

On page 105 Stewart states “The parading of the grotesque is often the isolation and display of the exaggerated part”, and “In the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century the presentation of the grotesque image in farces, parades, floats, and street entertainments was accompanied by the collection of money and sweets.” Carnivals seem like a union between the grotesque and entertainment. The grotesque through entertainment (or the trickster) might be a way of coping (or mediating) with the distortion of our world.

One example of the grotesque in contemporary culture that comes to mind is Edward Scissorhands in the Tim Burton film. Although I saw this movie really young, I found it to be quite terrifying and tragic. Edward Scissorhands’ character is portrayed with “goth makeup and dangerous hands” but really is a “child of peace”. The tragedy of a misunderstood and ostracized character was too much for my young brain.

Photo by Tom Driggers via Flickr

Prompt 2. 

I had a tough time with this topic and this paragraph. I’m not sure that I quite understand the idea of mediation in this context. Is the text trying to say that the way man (and can we dismiss man and say people or human) mediates or confronts desire is by making their desires known? I appreciate the example in the post below where Chad offers up Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. I think this example of people wanting their stories told is totally relevant to our current culture, especially seen in our addiction to social media and the constant broadcasting of our everyday lives.

The sentence I fixate on in Stewarts page 117 where it says “…no object for a (person’s) desire which is constituted without some sort of mediation – which appears in their most primitive needs: for example, even their food has to be prepared.” This makes me think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The bottom of the pyramid is the basic food, water, warmth, and rest. I see desire as something that might belong to higher-level esteem needs yet totally fundamental to everyone.

Is Instagram culture an example of the relationship between desire and mediation?