#dresses like his robo papa

[miss617]

I've been having a rough relationship with art lately, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of it. So, here be some art and some lore for my fanfic.

[communistconsumerist]

The S in S&M Stands for Surveillance: How #Girlboss Feminism Thrives Through the Sex-bot 

Sell your sex, doll—be dynamo! Encased in Thierry Mugler’s “superrealist” masterpiece—metallic in its conception, Hajime Sorayama-ified in its eroticization—Zendaya’s techno-Venus seems to scream just about that and nothing more. Blood diamonds, reaped and gathered by Congolese children, trickle down her plexiglass body, smudging all that is silvery about her skin with streaks of success. The actress seems to have superbly #girblossed her way into fame. Hence, she can embrace her sexuality now like never before! It is clear: She is the Standard—a fem-bot that has “made it”. Sans the stripper-bot facade that the model in Mugler’s ‘Cirque d’Hiver’ (as Thierry "Manfred" Mugler titled his couture collection) performed on the catwalk, however—wearing the same bodysuit underneath a dress, torn off in haste, plaguing peepshows through terrorizing binaries set between human and artifice—Zendaya’s 2024 reconstruction of the sex-bot falls into the consumable traps of conforming eroticism.

Traps Mugler’s winter circus refused to replicate.

Yet, times have changed since then, and sex dolls have become the new feminist sexy. Consent is king, and participatory pornography is liberating. Screening the hot and hustle of womanhood through fashioned surveillance has made of clothing new confinement. 

At first sight, Mugler’s clothed cyborg may not align with Donna Haraway’s—author of A Cyborg Manifesto—illegitimate robo-offsprings of papa patriarchy. These successors reject the marital exchange of bestiality in favor of hybridizing the machine and the organism, eliminating essentialist understandings of humanness, and mediating translations of sex into genetic engineering and reproductive technologies. Thus, they are removed from the sciences and technologies that thrive in their ardent reproductions. Ardent reproductions, in the sense that medicine is dependent on military power, which is dependent on the government, which is dependent on the media, which is dependent on fashion—all of which are controlled by papas (also: the phallus). Mugler’s robot has transparent windows—the flesh underneath being her nipples and breast fat, her stomach and legs. Her chest cherries are furthermore circled with metal, adding extra emphasis to the lactiferous ducts once necessary for breastfeeding, now simply sexy.  

Unlike Haraway’s genderless cyborg, the she-bot is a wearable prosthetic—a femmed up version of hypervisible femininity. A depiction of classic womanliness made shiny with Sorayama-varnished lac. A fetishized She, wearing windows for the scopophile.  

Yet Mugler’s she-bot moves. She poses.  

Where Sorayama’s sex-bots display themselves to be looked at—merely appearing, not acting—Mugler’s she-bot mimes the magnetism of the stripper next door, imbued with the intention to attract attention of the phallus while simultaneously policing it. Distinctly mechanical, her striptease unsettles the divide between artificial intelligence and “biological” desire, unsettling the papa and killing the boner. Instead of giving the she-bot a second, Mugler foregrounds her performance of the fashion piece instead. She disrobes herself—subjects herself to being ogled—and prostitutes her body to inorganic materialization. To the likes of Walter Benjamin, this has always marked fashion’s relation to the body, yet the she-bot's sex-appeal succumbs to that of a different inorganic than peters buoy up from. Her mechanical frame has another raison d’être, rendering visible the performance of fashion and its close kinship to materializing the female body and its various transformations—making the She an object, triumphing over Her death while actively defying Her mortality. She gazes in reflection and looks back.  

Much like feminist theorist Craig Owens sees the peep show to be an inversion of the patriarchal Panopticon, Thierry Mugler’s couture shifts “the gaze” and steers surveillance. The designer was known for transforming his women into insects and robots of various kinds, forging breast plates out of molded plastic, and creating stilettos out of steel. He would exaggerate the femaleness of his models with exoskeletons—similar to that of the she-bot—attaching handlebars to bustiers, and turning models into multitasking motorcycles and motorcyclists. As long as he had bodies to work with—those that could act out his grotesque imageries—the designer would play the role of a playwright. He would sculpt shapes that were infernal in their inauguration—consistently becoming, downgrading, and regenerating. His theatrics would embrace drag artists as well as “the overweight” and “elderly”. Individual identity is absorbed into cloth, after all!

The essence of Mugler body lies not in its surface, but in its heights and cavities—a body that is becoming, as Bakhtin would put it. In Thierry's collections, women's sexualites are performed rather than made innate. These performances are ones of “untrustworthiness” that stage the surveillance camera opposite to the sex-bot, capturing the peeping Tom instead of patriarchy’s prostitute.  

In ‘Cirque d’Hiver’ she emphasized the staged-ness of sold sex. Now, on the sand-covered red carpet, she swims upstream the patriarchy and sells her sex on the socking great stage.

Blood rushes through the penis once again. The women have won! 

So has Zendaya, clad in Mugler’s metallic robo-armor, whose sheer plexiglass inserts ever-so teasingly unveil another bodysuit. Stepping into the premiere of Dune: Part Two, re-engineered with prostheses, the actress is physically pruned into the role of sand warrior Chani, personifying the #girlboss said character represents. Because as much as she appears in the phantasies of the phallus, Paul—around whom the narrative of Dune is strap(ped)-on—she is a fighter, a strong independent woman, who happens to be perplexing and peculiar enough to the extent she can be desired, and made into a fellow’s porn-tasy. Such independence is interlaced within the actress' selfhood as well, who has now stepped out of the image Disney once set out for her, covering her bareness with concrete cotton and conflict diamonds she has worked her way up for to pay. She can finally take charge of her sexy! 

...We have yet to let go of the phallus.  

Next to her co-star Anya Taylor Joy—whose character is inspired by matriarchal cult leaders, as Catholic as they come—it becomes even more evident what image of womanhood is deemed to be congestible these days. Nobody desires a nun whose selfhood is pinched within the precincts of tradition (even if she is wearing archival Dior). Yet where Zendaya does not bare herself to mislead the phallic gaze into a performance of staged sex, she sells her sex as an individual act of liberation—one that does not operate against Owens’ Panopticon, but rather Sorayama-ifies itself to become a fetish. Her necklace, shimmering shinily against her silver frame, only highlights how alienated the superstar is from her erotic capital. One she has staged to be economic and social. Where being an individual has centered itself to be of most importance when it comes to self-formation—as opposed to Dior’s veiled marking of an agency that regulates itself within a collective conceptualization of devout femininity—sexual emancipation has reorganized the fashioned body into a consumer practice. A practice based on individual action, or so they say (the papas). Yet this “action” has sprung out in the minds of surveilled subjects who have disciplined themselves to internalize their own hypervisibilities. Minds that are ever-so aware of the gaze, ever-so traditional.

Where Zendaya’s sex operates around a type of self-branding—in which eroticized clots of cutis are framed within individual parcelization—she is ultimately hustling! Within this scopic regime, her tinman body is removed from its perfomative context and once again made to-be-looked-at. All she is, then, is plate pieces of metal—to be sold in a market that thrives on erotic evaluation, and to gain. The cracked chunks of children's cuticle, and the droplets of sweat within her diamonds may be as segregated from her sympathy as her girlbossism is, given her self-sexualization thrives on bodily competition and corporeal commodification. Both are situated in a consumer system where women’s difficulty to stabilize their symbolic and economic value is solved through sexual self-value—made individual, but catered to the cock. Objectifation, made feminist, only benefits the Shes that gain and are successful.

Ultimately, the only winner is the man.  

Startling as this is—Mugler’s she-bot has both defied and acquiescenced, shriveled the phallus and made it swell. Ultimately, she marks the template sadomasochist—both in her positionality within the panopticon, and with her sexed performances of the self (in all its organicity and artificiality). Time will tell if she manages to break out of her current surveilled confinement, but in the meantime she will continue to stage herself with all her silvery sheen. What Zendaya’s resignification of this boundary breaking She has come to show then, is what #girlbosses do best! To thrive within the patriarchy is to challenge the phallus—only when defiance sells.  

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Works referenced: 

Ekardt, P. (2020). Benjamin on Fashion. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350076013 

Greer, K., Kane, L., Leonard-Rose, M., Morrison, M., Staveski, C., Freeburg, R. S., Couch, N., & Bench, H. (n.d.). Spectacles of agency and desire: The grotesque body. Spectacles of Agency and Desire: Dance Histories and the Burlesque Stage. https://scalar.usc.edu/works/spectacles-of-agency-and-desire/the-grotesque-body.2 

Haraway, D. (2013). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the late Twentieth Century. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203955055-16 

Owens, C., Bryson, S. S., & Watney, S. (1992). Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA21071736 

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Related readings: 

Illouz, E. (2021). The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations. John Wiley & Sons. 

Morrison, E. (2016). Discipline and Desire: Surveillance Technologies in Performance. University of Michigan Press. 

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[twiggeh1339]

So I have a theory about the papa's that ties to the robo papa we are seeing. This robo papa has 3 forms, similar to the previous papa's and that had me thinking about how we see the trinity and how it connects to the body. It also raises some other connections with the possible horsemen theory about our 4 lovely papa's. To start off I want to explain why I see each connection to the specific papa's.

Primo, he is the horseman of famine, the mind and father in the trinity, and he takes the form of the skull robo papa. He is the foundation and the pillar of the mind and belief. In his album, we hear this dedication he has to his faith through ritual and con clavi con dio. Famine is heard in stand by him and Elizabeth and prime mover. Held together with the "I'm crucified" cover.

Secondo, the horseman of war, the soul and son of the trinity, and the muscle of the robo papa. He is the call to action and the will of the soul. We see his personality give rise to a call to action but also to act on our soul desires. He is deeply sad and angry taking position as Papa with neutrality. His album we hear his voice call us to act on our desires and the call to action in year zero. The connection to the son while not super apparent connects with his willingness to step down from his position as Papa, willingness to give up and accept his retirement. The cover of "I'm a marionette" supports the theory.

Terzo, the horsemen of death, the body and spirit of the trinity. He takes the form of the flesh of the robo papa. His album presents the question of death and what comes after, from pinnacle to the pit is reflecting on his fall from power for his strong independence. He is the papa that is outspoken and not afraid to push the ministry on their own beliefs and traditions. He embodies the confidence and independence that challenges life and looks death in the face. His album also reflects on the physical and spirit. We hear this through absolution, spirit, and he is. The cover of "if you have ghosts" speaks to the physical fighting the spirit, that regardless of the physical desires, the spirit has everything. Like his status of the horsemen of death, and the uncontrollable nature of death that happens when we least expect it he is removed from papa status and we see his death along with the others after his removal.

Copia, the horsemen of pestilence, the vessel for the dark one/satan/etc. He is the copy of that is waiting for inhabitants. Because we see him as the first papa to break the bloodline of the previous papa's, which is a very important lore peice, he is able to be a clean slate and able to succeed where the previous generations have not. How does he connect to the previous papa's for the horsemen theory? Well, we see in his album as cardinal, he's untouched by the sickness of his pestilence as he's not yet papa. But his album warns us how with every album before his rise to power, he was in the background. The overarching themes of the albums before prequelle struggle to only support war/death/famine. When we see these themes, pestilence, sickness, and corruption take place. In rats and faith, it's shown to us that these pests are everywhere and always watching and listening. This growing madness of the mind, body, and soul is ever present and can not be stopped. When copia becomes papa emeritus iv is when his full horsemen power begins to degrade his form. The madness and paranoia and personality shift to untrusting others is apparent. He gears his ghouls up for war. He dresses himself as a commander and fearless, strong leader. But underneath that facade copia is fighting the pestilence that plagues his mind and soul. That leaves him wide open to become a vessel, both mind and soul weakened to not fight the dark one inhabiting his body. As said before, he's a copy, not by blood line but by a pillar to usher in the end of times. We see this now in the LP he shifts lyrics to put himself as the devil, as the dark one that will reign.

Hope this is entertaining I'm having fun with all the possibilities, the connection of trinities and how we could see the hag, the mother and girl possibly?