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ratherhavetheblues · 5 years

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CLAIRE DENIS’ ‘BEAU TRAVAIL’ “This is the rhythm of my life…”

We live at a time when athletic prowess abounds. Remarkable physical health races all about us, to our amazement. Such a state of affairs has been remarkably investigated by filmmaker, Claire Denis, in her film, Beau Travail[Good Work; Nice Going] (1999).

Here, however, we find neither specimens of professional athletes, nor amateur devotees of the limber and the inexhaustible. Instead, we find—in the very small-market presence of Djibouti, once known as French Somali land, during the decade (the 90’s) when tempers were unsporting—a unit of the French Foreign Legion busting their butts in training for quelling hostilities. Whereas the contemporary athletes and devotees, mentioned above, stood a chance to live, at some level, that topspin of frisson at the heart of human swiftness, the folks we get to know here seem frozen in such an interminable training routine which they present as nearly cloistral agents of squelching mundane squabbling, heavily, thereby, invested in a form of pedantry. They go so far as to, once in a while, a sort of th’i chi slow dance, fighting strategy with hands converging in the style of prayer to a fussy (pedantic) divinity. Way too much brain, and not nearly enough bravery.

How does athleticism—acrobatics—sour like that? Look no farther than Ingmar Bergman’s, Fanny and Alexander (1982), the compass, as it happens, of Denis’ odd war story which does so much more than enforce the status quo, while, paradoxically being (as with, Fanny and Alexander) a revelation of massive devotion to crushing, not merely the Horn of Africa, but everything in sight that might have real depth, which is to say, a purchase upon “the big world.”

Just as the Bergman film has its fanatical, murderous bishop, along with one, Gustav, a wealthy polemicist for the sake of “the little world,” there is in our film today a medley touching upon both wings of the distemper, namely, fanatical, murderous Sergeant Galoup, the sheep-dog of the soldiers’ sheep being tasked to put everything right, and the polemical agency of the French Foreign Legion itself, ensuring that the hegemony of “the little world” will always be the winner, regardless of the conflict and regardless of derring-do. Therefore, these paragons of action do not introduce themselves going flat-out, but rather, fluttering in the midst of young Arabic women at a dark and intermittently light-flooding dance club. The women clearly take pleasure in their audacity about abrogating their family mores of modesty. The troopers establish a contrasting propriety, allowing themselves to maintain a hushed decorum, neither joyous nor morose. The participants are mainly shown in extreme close-up of their faces, or parts of faces, looming in and out in the darkness punctuated by lightning flashes in the generally slow swirl. Their signature of the moment, initiated by one of the self-impressed natives, is blowing a kiss on the ridge of the up-beats. Especially getting into that grove is a young acolyte about to be central to our study of what more there is to be said than what Bergman said, in Fanny and Alexander, about a nearly bloodless massacre.

Introducing Sergeant Galoup as a malignant fanatic, however, on the order of Bishop Vergerus, does not quite reach the sensibility at the core of this masterful film. (Nor, in fact, does that idea fully cover Vergerus.) In addition to Denis’ own motives bearing fruit, there will be our protagonist peppered by other Bergman films during this trek, for the sake of bringing to bear considerations which transcend that supernal prototype’s significant measure of fatalism in face of a planetary outrage, far more formidable than simple natives getting restless. There is, about Bergman’s incisiveness, a sheen and eloquence being secret and exulting in face of a perceived hopelessness. Denis’ more muscular touch upon war—her taking seriously that world religion, world humanitarianism (part and parcel of the former force) and world science, being rotting from within, triumphs notwithstanding—has discovered a critical mass of skepticism (however confused). The villainous fanatic, Galoup, therefore, whose story we hear, functions—as with “the little world” breaking hearts in Fanny and Alexander—as a disclosure of vectors possibly leading to a “truth” (a problematic key word, in the aforementioned film), requiring courage and wit to find ways to counter mob coercion.

The prelude, to that line dance by the rebel-women and the tamed soldiers, installs another instance of the series of Denis’ thematically radioactive, naive tableaus, in this case, “heroic” troopers on a ridge (reminding us of silhouettes stemming from the Dance of Death, in The Seventh Seal [1957]) beneath a scarlet sky. And they, coming to life, sort of, piously, operatically, melodramatically, stupidly, pule “Under the burning, African sun, a mighty phalanx hoisted up our banners! Cochin-China, Madagascar… Its motto, ‘Honor and Valor,’ makes for brave soldiers. Its flag, that of France, is a sign of glory!’” With subsequent aspects better held back than adding to confusion here, the second step of that prayer proceeds with a male chorus remarkably both old and obsolete, and yet uncanny, accompanied by long, black shadows (cast by humbugs) on the sandy terrain. Panning from there, the song without words accompanies flecks of light playing upon the sea near the military post. (Here the aural does some harm to the visual.) There is, after that, the imagery of an ink-well based pen, recording a saga of the “burning African sun” which elicits even more volume from a remembered chorus. On a balcony in Marseilles (following quick cuts showing our protagonist and the puff kiss night owl), Galoup tells us, “I have time to kill now… I screwed up from a certain point of view… Angels of attack…My story is simple. That of a man who left France too long… a soldier who left the army as a sergeant. Galoup… that’s me. Unfit for life. Unfit for civil life.”

Though the parallel of the bishop and the sergeant is far from close, we should pause here to secure the concomitants which Denis finds to be compelling. First and foremost is their grim delight in belonging to a venerable and powerful institution, confirming some kind of sagacity in having enlisted into an outlook being “absolute truth” in a punishing jurisdiction. The best, it seems which life affords. Moreover, both of them find nothing amiss about borrowing the fundamental findings of others—many of those others having been terrorized by bloodthirsty and cowardly idiots—and never attempting to measure alone what their specific sensibility has in store. So convinced that a very large sample of the world cannot be in error about the limits of couth, their (desperately manufactured) zeal could be such that murdering an infidel would seem perfectly valid. Vergerus barely avoids murdering Alexander and would have killed Isak, if not for his sister’s being marginally balanced. That brings us to “a man who left France [and its treasures of audacity and creative beauty] too long,” and would have killed “the young acolyte,” Sentain, an infidel, or a witch (in the sergeant’s eyes)—like the witch in The Seventh Seal—without a mock-Spielberg rescue by a herd of camel-powered nomads. (You’ll recall the smell of Spielberg in Isak’s nonsensical rescue mission, in Fanny and Alexander.) Galoup, in fact, assuming he has killed his enemy, and becoming driven out of his dream job. The run-up to his wild revenge is the stuff Denis relishes. “We all have a trashcan deep within. That’s my theory.” Some of us, anyway, have “deep within,” something else, which is the gist of this brave and brilliant film.

Whereas Bergman stages wonders of dramatic literature, our helms-woman here trusts a somewhat different register of emotion, if not alone, then nearly alone. The outcome is double trouble; but the uncanny rush opens tinctures of grand fascination. (As if the Djibouti domain were not bemusing enough [its wasteland being corded by the bishop’s lunar, coal-dust, ascetic interiors], we have Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down [2001], an adjacent smashup, to add to a dead-end, a frenzy of athleticism; not entirely in vain.) The moment of Sentain’s arrival at the vigorous spa—shown quite a while after he blew those kisses—affords a study of Galoup’s disastrous migration from melodrama to improve. “I noticed one of those who stuck out. He was thin. Distant. He had no reason to be with us in the Legion. That’s what I thought… I felt something vague and menacing take hold of me. Gilles Sentain was his name. The name he gave to the Legion.” (Our protagonist’s finding a new wrinkle to his piety, shows him needing more firepower. Compare that to Vergerus’ being confronted by an overtly insulting Alexander, who goes so far as to spreading the lie that he was informed, by the ghost of the bishop’s first wife, that the holy man had locked up the wife and two daughters, which resulted in their death in trying to leap to freedom from a high window.) Here we cut back to the recent civilian in Marseilles pruning a plane tree in his yard. He reflects, “Maybe freedom begins with remorse… I heard that somewhere… [That both freedom and remorse occur to him place the largely disappointing warrior into a region of notability. Vergerus’ facile bromides concerning unholy error fail to be more than ceremonial.] My muscles are rusty, eaten away by acid.” Cut to a training program whereby the non-rusty recruits negotiate under a field of low-lying ropes. One of them crawls under the obstacles with remarkable panache, a veritable crocodile. Does he feel elated in his fluidity? No kudos from the taskmaster who seems in some kind of need of a heaven due to his lacking any joy on Earth. Here, too, the “mighty phalanx” chant returns (angelic choristers trumping earthy moves), along with the Sergeant’s glaring at the supposed rebel in the form of Sentain. “What counts above all,” he advises us, “is discipline in the Legion. Loving one’s superior, obeying him. That’s the essence of our tradition.” (This in voice-over, while the “tradition” hurls itself over harsh procedures, to mixed outcomes.) Onwards, then, to a structure of cement forms with no content. The overseer leads the lads in some maneuvers straight out of Hollywood—“I heard [and saw] that somewhere”—but only Galoup’s actions show any commitment. His construct invasion, electric in its stealth and alacrity, seems to derive from a sense of enemy committing slovenly, and therefore, terrorist, deeds. (The youngsters, perhaps worn out by the Olympian demands a short while before, go along, of course, but the difference is palpable in this filmic passage where everything comes down to a “foreignness” of the palpable. The cool, semi-automatic weaponry—“a sign of glory” beyond the French tricolor—becomes both operative and inoperative.) The camera draws back to reveal bemused native women taking in the show, and showing how unstable a phenomenon glory can be.

So characteristic, and both thrilling and amusing, then, the camera finds a repair man in the wilderness at the top of a high ladder, attending to electrical needs. Smarts, and perhaps more. And perhaps less, as the scene changes to the warriors ironing their shirts. The instance of pedantry being at the heart ofWild Strawberries, and rebranded as “the little world,” in, Fanny and Alexander. (For the sake of somewhat bolstering Galoup’s long-shot endeavor here, we should note that the little world of Bergman’s nightmare has been reconsidered by filmmaker, Leos Carax, in his film, Holy Motors [2012]. Not only that, however, but the protagonist there is played by none-other than Denis Lavant, who portrays Galoup and his better moments. Carax’s format comes to us as the domain of an ancestor haunting the precinct of a theater, the range of which includes Lavant’s actions in the name of “Mr. Oscar,” a banker, instead of the artistic director of a concern to touch “the big world.” However, it is Oscar’s moonlighting which rattles off a spate of dramatics which intriguingly involves sensual initiatives somewhat closing the door on our helms-woman’s much earlier concentration upon undemonstrative resilience. Oscar’s unfortunate final word concerning his surreal reality is, “For the beauty of the gesture.”) In the midst of such divided initiatives, we should recognize as another beacon, to accompany the lineman and his ladder, a wrecked tank on the base. In Bergman’s film, The Silence [1961], an impressionable young boy watches from his train a series of flatcars sending tanks, like the one in the desert, to the front. He, and the adults with him, are at a loss to comprehend the language of their situation. Could Galoup, packing all those negatives, bring this matter to light in order to distinguish our guide’s own hard-won fluency. On the heels of this instance of murderous wobble, the power of cheapness and the power of care stage a little dance. The town near the base has a market where women of the hinterland sell their vividly colored rugs. As if a curtain of a stage emerges and opens within the noisy transactions, one of the craftswomen enters a doorway framed by posters of two popular products: Coke and Sprite. The grotty and the pristine. Or: out of overreaching, and balancing. Couched in this challenge, the concerns of advantage take over. “13 stripes, it’s a tradition [of the weaving in view]… Prices went up during the celebration…”/ “I made mine myself.” [the prospective client disappoints]/ Quick, “Oh!”

Also aware of the commerce is Galoup, more involved in tradition than money. His thoughts have taken on a more urgent coloration in the face of his pedantry aiming for the good old days. His reverie centers upon his superior officer, the Commandant. “Bruno Forestier… I feel so alone when I think of my superior. [This reflection occurs while our protagonist hangs up his socks on a clothesline, pointedly different from the electrical wiring not long ago.] I respect him… My Commandant…[Here we see a photo of the great man when a young soldier] … after the Algerian War… [Now he’s on camera as a flabby, slightly suspicious, sedentary blob] He never confided in me. He said he was a man without ideals, a soldier without ambition. [One with a protracted commitment to the little world.] I adored him without knowing why. He said he was the perfect Legionnaire and didn’t give a damn…” [Here we can’t help hearing influential and significant and superficial Gustav, in Fanny and Alexander. Body language letting the good times roll and being a charming rogue. Where, however, did anal Galoup win his undying respect? We’ll have to wait until the very end of our story to understand such a mystery.] After this credo, he fishes into a drawer and brings to life a bracelet with the word, “Bruno,” on it. This profile of the piece of work in the far boonies concludes with the Sergeant’s voice-over indicating the woman who supplies the drugs to the chief who can’t do without staying pretty-much brain-dead. “Ali brought him his qat. Night after night, Forestier chewed on it, alone.” (Here we could imagine Helena, the cynical matriarch of the family on that hot seat for fucking around with littleness, in, Fanny and Alexander. Her domain is chock-a-block with plants and she always has a strong drink close by. She’s beloved by many; but she’s appallingly overrated. One of the many juggernauts goring those who take life seriously in loving its perilous beauties. Does Galoup (an athlete of impressive strength and equilibrium in leading those drills) constitute both willing victim and willing perpetrator? “I never touched those leaves. I liked to stay on edge…”

I hope, by now, you’ll be on to this film as a war with oneself, and only in a minor way a story of a war in Africa in the 1990’s. Before we accompany any more close encounters of Galoup’s tribulation, why don’t we specifically appreciate the wit of Claire Denis’ visual and aural panache, as so richly accompanying this odd and powerfully lucid endeavor? As Galoup succumbs to his catalyst (in Sentain), there occurs a spate of troopers, including himself, wearing pill-box semi-top-hat head gear. There we recall, in the Bergman film, The Seventh Seal, the knight, named Block, on a mad, uncontrollable mission to live forever, the resort to farce. The little world, making, unfortunately, the world go round. Something else, way off in the mix, is the operatic infusion here. Composer, Benjamin Britten’s, Billy Budd, chronicles a ship’s officer and psychopath intent on murdering a young man having attended to an impressive level of disinterestedness. But the lack of disinterestedness in the howling of its melodrama, and the posing of its dance in the training, spells something off the rails, which turns the troopers in their exertions to be stuffed-shirts, notwithstanding their being bare from the waist up. Thereby, much has been made of the film as involving a high-water level of queer observances. And thereby Denis, with much more than Britten on her mind—Bergman, for instance—takes a little shot at another essentially closed menace. (It is, I am convinced, when Time Magazine feels obliged to anoint a video game wiz as one of the most notable people on earth, to become a tad less obscure than our honey of a woman giant.) Playing with the Coke/ Sprite doorway, the film, with the “little world” coagulating by the minute, we find a doorway named, “Bar des Alps.” Galoup ventures up and, in a short while, comes back down. Gustov, in our twinned movie, bringing off a “quickie” with his wife on Christmas Eve, after having spent a long time with Maj, a servant of the house. Ever the naïf, the Sergeant declares, “There was something so strange that night, a sort of harbinger of things to come, of the circumstances that sent me far from the Red Sea and Djibouti.”

The cynical drug addict (sort-of) running the show comes to us as Galoup’s war-footing begins to reach a state of affairs where he’ll have lots of time to reflect on his truly urgent malaise. Bruno, in a taxi at night, chats up the driver, “My bastards are good company. They are my family…” The cabbie chips in with, “You are a father looking out for his sons…”/ “Could be,” the self-indulgent one agrees. Then the driver—giving us a moment of Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991), with its bad news for bright motion—tries for cogency by way of the leaden axiom, “If it weren’t for fornication and blood, we wouldn’t be here.” They pass Galoup walking toward the club. They also share the road with many of those pill-boxes, performing a series of lifting a warrior, as if in some kind of triumph-to-come, a state-of-affairs jumping to the sense of heroism (sort of). Next morning, they’re busy with producing the sharpest’s of ironing jobs, perhaps vaguely attentive to a kinetic payoff. Cut, then, to an antithesis of training on high wires—that measure of acrobatics always breathing down their neck, even when totally ignoring it; and being the bane of technology. Here the heavy and graceful lifting of synthesis fails to come about. A group of women hanging up their laundry underlines a “little world” digging in for the duration. Bruno, onscreen, and on some other planet, remarks, “We’re taught elegance, in and under our uniforms… Perfect creases are part of this elegance…. Here I am, Commandant. Like a watch dog… looking after our flock…” (Pause a moment to the mix of sensibility behind this madness.) Bruno, perhaps intuiting that Sentain has more range and poise than the others, asks him why he became a Legionnaire. The youngster (when asked, telling him he’s 22) refers to a homeland—Russia—not being functional. “No money. No work. I fought for Russia. But it’s impossible to fight just for an ideal. An ideal that always changes.” Now, not surprisingly, the supposed leader, asks, “What ideal?” We knew he’d say something to that effect. But how about Sentain and his canvass of “ideals” to join? He remarks about a need to find a means of survival (a “little world”) and somehow cohering with an elusive vision to share with many others. As such, the young notable may not be the dangerous, resonant wunderkind the officers imagine him to be. He has helped along another recruit to learn a smattering of French. But how conversant is he with the thorny matter of “ideals,” which, when coming in the form of a plurality, tends to be a pain in the ass. (In the same stream, we have a program of knife-ready, underwater warfare, continuous with the sharks being on the move.)

We’ll cover the Sergeant’s sharp pathology rather quickly, because the Spielberg aspects (as in, Fanny and Alexander) are not what we need to tarry with. Where we’ve reached in this military narrative is a little romantic sidebar of Galoup’s acquiring at a bazaar a bottle of perfume and bringing it to a local woman as she sleeps. (Even Gary Cooper had his camp follower; and the contrast is there to enjoy.) The Sergeant’s stroking her hair constitutes going AWOL. But seriously AWOL takes far more guts than our dopey playboy could ever muster. (Or, maybe not?) Borrowing a bit of Bergman’s dramatic soliloquy, Denis shows the bishop-like sanitation maniac about to defend his god. “Sentain seduced everyone. People were drawn to his charm. [This while he puts the finishing touches—involving pink-red tablecloths—for a birthday party for one of the “elegant” soldiers.] Deep down, I felt a sort of rancor, a rage brimming. I was jealous…” With shock-effect change of pace (though put in place so tenuously as to cut Spielberg exotica), there is a pink-red bloody sea during a helicopter accident by another Legion unit, with one death, multiple injuries and Sentain overcoming an otherwise second death. During the party, Bruno had been morose and sneering; but he does manage to hand over a medal to the elegant hero. Our far from pleased protagonist tells himself, and us, “That day, something overpowering took hold of my heart. I thought about the end. The end of me… The end of Forestier.” Soon after the medal ceremony, Galoup has a tantrum in his quarters. Continuous with that storm, we have a menacing sergeant circling a medalist looking for a lift by a bona fide “ideal,” perhaps disinterested, but more likely pedantic. Then was the time to watch Bruno and the Sergeant playing a game of chess, and reprising, for the alert that is pedantry, The Seventh Seal, and its blockhead. Galoup can’t avoid telling his thrilling adversary in chess, “He [Sentain] has something up his sleeve. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…” Bruno trots out the lazy litany, “Careful what you’re saying. Backstabbing isn’t in the Legion’s honor code.” Here a cut back to Marseilles has the court-martialed soldier of fortune hearing, in his favorite bar “You’re a rock of the nation. You are the epidemy of the Legion…” Another cut back to the exile, being at his home, has a version of Gustov’s (in Fanny and Alexander) too-little-too-late opening to something big, rather than the beloved little. “I’m sorry I was that man, that narrow-minded Legionnaire.” The unit has decamped to be closer to the “unrest.” It’s Ramadan, and Sentain is on all-night duty with a Muslim recruit who slips out to get some prayer-time. Galoup pounces on this, sentencing the pious runaway to dig by shovel a deep hole in the impacted wasteland where his hands bleed profusely. Sentain’s sentence, for countenancing the abandonment, is a truck ride to the heart of the deadly Danakil Desert, from which he could return, if he were a comic book hero. The hated one comes to a salt flat and a salt lake. Salt all over his face, he lies on the burning sand. He’s rescued by a herd of camel, owned by a singing group as they happily overcome the elements. Before the matinee hero returns (he had told the Sergeant, “See you soon, sir”), to searching for those ideals, Bruno, formulaically, has the officer, who dangerously found fault with low-key, Millennial action (along with his hunger for crude power), sent on his way. “Good riddance,” he pedantically tells Galoup.

But, on the day before he gets his one-way ticket to Marseilles, there is a recovery—not muted but not very pointed either (like the recovery of Emilie [in Fanny and Alexander], screwing up badly and now [after the disaster of religion] giving a shot to art in the form of taking over her first husband’s theatre company.) The figure of the rather dopey matriarch, Helena, always in range of a glass comes into the sightlines of dopey Bruno and his qat. Galoup commences with a display of pedantry in making his bed as fussily—and also impressively—as the greens at the Master’s Golf Tournament. And, then, he’s off to a club where his theme is, “This is the Rhythm of my Life,” running on the same track of Emilie’s first show, Strindberg’s, “A Dream Play,” saying, “Everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist [not the way they’ve been cemented by tradition]. On a flimsy framework of reality the imagination spins, weaving new patterns…” Spins, weaving new patterns are his swan song. Or are they? The soundtrack is by “Cascada” and the cascading by Galoup is far from shabby. (The cheap and hostile assault on the band’s video version is as egregiously stupid as the ways of Louis’ neighbor, in Denis’ The Intruder.) But it’s only a baby step, and time is running out. At least for him. The three volcanos in the nearby ocean at the second venue try to speak to the dialectic as a lifetime lover. “Like sentinels,” someone suggests. Standing there won’t help. Keeping watch might.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grGiq0yTaj4

#claire denis

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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How Mutant Alien Cyborg Beauty is Challenging What it Means to be Human

Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran have 400K followers on their joint Instagram account. The Montreal-based couple, aged 23 and 25 respectively, met in LaSalle College’s fashion design program back in 2014. They connected instantly, each saying they felt immensely understood in a way they hadn’t before their initial meeting.

But rather than the poised bikini shots on far-flung tropical beaches or envy-inducing #couplegoals content you’d expect from social media soulmates, the pair’s popular feed features demonic-looking coloured contacts, feet contorted into stiletto shapes and stripper heels paired with medical neck braces. Under the moniker Fecal Matter (@matieresfecales), Dalton and Bhaskaran are spearheading a new standard of beauty that can only be described as “freaky alien cyborg”—and even that barely begins to capture it.

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Still just an alien couple out and about

A post shared by Fecal Matter (@matieresfecales) on Mar 10, 2018 at 1:52pm PST

Incorporating non-human elements such as reptilian eyes, fleshy horns and braids that resemble antennae, Fecal Matter is part of a growing cohort of people who are swapping smoky eyes for rings of red shadow, concealer for seeping wounds and contouring for straight-up Photoshop. Their unnerving looks, which take up to four hours to craft, come from something inside them that they had previously repressed, the couple write via email. Teetering on the margin of what is socially acceptable, the mutant cyborg aesthetic not only upends the traditional purpose of makeup but also challenges the very concept of what it means to be human.

“I like being a completely unfathomable being,” says Zah, a 24-year-old fashion designer and musician based in New York who paints ancillary eyeballs and gnashing teeth on their face. (Zah uses non-binary pronouns.) “Society typically sees queers and people of colour as less human anyway.” So Zah, who goes exclusively by the mononym, chooses to channel this internalized sense of alienation toward creating monstrous personas that incorporate spirits and ghosts from Japanese folklore. “Sometimes I feel more like these spirits I portray, trying to be human, [than] what I was born as.”

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holy

A post shared by @ zah on Dec 21, 2018 at 2:23pm PST

If makeup was initially conceived to hide imperfections and enhance physical beauty, these nightmare-inducing looks are put together without a whiff of concern for the beauty standards that have policed women’s self-presentation since skin-lightening lead powders first made their appearance in ancient Greece. Tomasyn Hayes, 22, a New York-based artist who goes by @lustsickpuppy on Instagram and resembles a cross between an insect and the Queen of the Damned, sees her extreme makeup routine as a form of shape-shifting. “I think that we all have an immense range of emotions inside of us and at times we don’t allow ourselves to express those emotions because the world will only accept so many,” she says. By creating looks that involve bleeding gums, smeared lipstick and flecks of mould, she’s able to channel her emotions and present them outwardly as a comfortable form of self-expression.

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You spoil me

A post shared by 𝕷𝖚𝖘𝖙$𝖎𝖈𝖐𝕻𝖚𝖕𝖕𝖞 (@lustsickpuppy) on Dec 7, 2018 at 12:33pm PST

“When I was a kid, I started doing makeup just to appease my classmates so I could be the prettier girl and get more attention—of course it didn’t work,” says Elle Vatel, a 19-year-old college student from Florida who goes by @uggiebbyboy on Instagram. Instead, Vatel, who uses he/him pronouns, began to develop his own unique style of doing makeup that involves sprays of confetti, clusters of undulating lines and fortuitous daubs of colour deposited with precious little regard for the orthodoxy of human features.

“We’re living through a time now where diversity is the mantra of the younger generation,” says Philip Fimmano, trend analyst and director of trend forecasting agency Trend Union North America. “Regardless of your paraphernalia or fetish, everybody is allowed to publicly display it and feel comfortable with it.” Fimmano adds that anyone born after 9/11 has only ever known the world in the context of economic collapse, with fear of terrorism and airborne diseases and climate change permeating the global consciousness. These harsh social conditions coupled with a growing yen for diversity have created the perfect climate in which these transgressive looks can thrive.

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used @fluidebeauty @cultcandycosmetics @lovehappimess @claropsyche 💜💜💜💜

A post shared by Elle (@uggiebbyboy) on May 13, 2019 at 3:37pm PDT

Indeed, with gender fluidity and trans and non-binary identities becoming more accepted, the nature of the body one is born in is being called into question. Many of the people who replicate the mutant cyborg aesthetic find their human bodies fundamentally oppressive.

“I was born in a human body with very specific limitations,” says Hayes, who characterizes her self-expression as a way of transcending her anatomy. “Growing up, I really admired tattoos and piercings, but dyeing your hair only allows for so much modification.” By playing around with clownlike face paint and pointy elf ears, “you are truly redefining what it means to be human [in a way] that is commonly accessible,” she says.

While these looks are unconventional, they aren’t exactly unprecedented. Fimmano cites instances of extreme body modification that cropped up in the late ’90s and early 2000s, noting that subdermal horn implants were a potential forebear of this trend. The biggest difference, he says, is that “these fetishes were expressed in a downtown club in some sort of attic or basement, but now that conversation is being had online.”

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Provoke Madrid

A post shared by Fecal Matter (@matieresfecales) on Oct 4, 2018 at 2:37pm PDT

Perhaps the ascendancy of mutant freaks is less a subversion of beauty than an evolution of it. Those who don colourful contacts in an attempt to transcend their humanity aren’t actively trying to court hostility; rather, they’re trying to make the world a more open-minded place by moulding their outsides to conform to the way they feel on the inside, which, coincidentally, is often scared, anxious and hostile.

“We refuse to comprise our vision of life because society can’t handle it or prefers something ordinary,” suggest Dalton and Bhaskaran. “If it were just an aesthetic lifestyle, we wouldn’t have enough courage to pursue it. But because it’s our journey of translating our authentic selves into our lifestyle, it’s actually very easy. All we have to do is be ourselves and not be afraid. For us, it’s either that or die.”

The post How Mutant Alien Cyborg Beauty is Challenging What it Means to be Human appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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