Of usefulness

At school, I used to be worried by the opinion, unstated but hanging in the air, that a developing country should give priority in its education budget to useful subjects such as engineering and informatics over literature.

Then in my twenties, I was given the doubtful priviledge of conversation with some persons, active at the head of what we politely call "socio cultural organisations". One of them, an engineer, struck me by his passionate advocacy of the most tenebrously conservative opinions on culture. Conservative in the Mauritian sense often means the preservation ,at great expense, of forms of peasant culture which had come with us in the times of Indian immigration, but which are out of time and place, for we are no longer in rural India – old folk songs, certain rituals, meant to die on the vine , to give place to a new culture.

I owe to these persons the debt of realising that one rarely has a passion for useful science. There do exist some people who will gladly spend a whole week end redoing the plumbery. But generally, accountants and informaticians are, like everyone else, enthralled by useless pursuits. A car is useful only because it helps people to go to the races , to football matches, to the sea side, to the temple, to visit their parents. Of course, a car also brings us to the office, but most of us derive little joy from this. We get our paycheck because it enables us to live, which means, beyond the basic needs of food , shelter and clothing, the pursuit of irrational pleasures.

Even an Edison or a Da Vinci were driven by passions – to explore mathematics, and science , by which, inadvertently, they would stumble on useful discoveries, and the later being useful only because they helped others in the pursuit of other useless pleasures.

Man by nature is addicted to some pleasure, whether it be alcohol, or religion, or women, or invention. Communism was, among other reasons, unpleasant because of its glorification of engineers and heavy industry. If most people were passionate about electrical dams, maybe it would have been a more popular form of social organisation. But people generally like glamour and/ or, religion, and communism was low on both.

So, now, I no longer feel ashamed about loving books and art films. My friends at the local bar – lawyers, accountants and policemen – are devoted to football, engine tuning, whisky and horseracing. The difference between me and them is one of degree of cultural sophistication, not of nature.

Of Morality in art

I sometimes wonder whether the devil can be beautiful. Can art prevail if it is immoral ? I think my doubts come from my family background. I was raised in a standard Hindu middle class family, which means a bit of pietism did get in my bones. Like many others before me, I have flipped the pages of the encyclopedia at thirteen, looking at those naked women of Western art, and I have wondered, deep inside, whether all that art was not an excuse to look at naked people.

There has always remained, in me, the question of whether the aim of life should not be religion, and if all that secular art and literature was not a dangerous diversion. From that doubt, there came the need to justify art in moral terms. That art is good because it does this or does that. But it could not quench the suspicion that art can exist, beyond morality.

I only made headway on that question when I realised the obvious, that art is related to sensual enjoyment. The latter is predicated by moral guidelines. We say that such a piece of art is "high" because it elevates our spiritual or intellectual awareness, the other is "low" or "crass" because it only thrills low instincts.

Can high art exist, which does away with moral guidelines ? Quentin Tarantino's films are an interesting case. We do enjoy violence on the screen, let's face it. It is one of the baser instincts which we should get rid of, but as long as we don't, we have action movies to serve our needs. "Pulp Fiction" elevates the violence level, and wraps it up with derision and virtuoso narrative skills. It is outrageous and beautifully told. But after watching "Kill Bill" one and two, I personnally feel a bit sick of it. I would not like to watch "Kill Bill" again. There is no longer that coating of derision we had in "Pulp Fiction", which gave me licence to enjoy the violence.

Moral guidelines vary from person to person. Not at the core ( at least, we hope not), but at the edge. How much can we suspend our moral judgement, because we find something beautiful ? Actually, we are, most of the time, most willing to leave moral judgement hanging on a hook. There is a great deal of dubious dealing which goes on in our mind when we appreciate art. We may look at a Renaissance picture of the Virgin and Child, and convince ourselves that we are looking at a fine piece of painting, but we are mostly enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman ( nobody, I guess, pays much attention to the Child). At least for the likes of me, a great deal of my aesthetic enjoyment is a cheating on the Trappist monk who lives in a cell, somewhere in my brain.

We cheat, or we may be seduced. Some beauty is tame ( gazing at a landscape), most of the rest involves some sex or violence. Beauty can be pretty treacherous. Of all forms of art, the sentimental, or mawkish, is one of the most dangerous, because it pretends to be related to morality, when it is in fact a celebration of self rightedness. The popularity of sentimental films and novels in a society is a sure sign of general hypocrisy.

The beauty of collective violence is also seductive. Nazi paraphernalia are a case in point. The deathly allure of their processions by torchlight, which history documentaries cannot help but show, when they could have avoided them, and the stylish German army: the Messerschmidts and panzers were splendid machines, and the army officers had a beastly beauty ,with their smart uniforms, and monocles, and duelling scars, and riding crops.

A tricky form of beauty is that of "libertinage". It is a French exercise, starting from the 18th century, which stems from a virulent strain, in French culture, of anticlericalism. It deliberately provokes Catholic morality by describing amoral sensual enjoyment in all its refinements. We owe "Manon Lescaut" and "Les liaisons dangereuses" to it, but it has trickled down the centuries into a peculiar, flippant French outlook at human relationships, which has given us the tongue in cheek love scene between Jean Seberg and Belmondo in "A bout de souffle" , and a great too many more bitter than sweet love comedies in later French cinema. There is something dark and tired about the French view of love, with their créatures ( Brigitte Bardot, Sophie Marceau in a sillier vein, Isabelle Adjani in a smarter vein) flitting around cynical, badly shaved men ( the
French worship Humphrey Bogart, and despise Maurice Chevalier).

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am divided about how to qualify it, it is a form of beauty on the decline, because it hinges on the idea of woman as a temptress, and it necessary involves the man ( heavily built, deep set eyes, Lino Ventura type, obviously a moine défroqué, a man who would, in earlier times, have been a monk, the kind that takes care of the forge, but in modern times, has to be content with being a police inspector) slapping at one point the foxy lady, or at least shaking her by the shoulders ( see The Maltese Falcon for details) . You can't have that on the screen in our politically correct times, all actresses are goooooood, and the men are baaaaaaaaaad, or well meaning jerks.

The beauty of temptation has lost all its refinement nowadays. In the 40's we could still have Rita Hayworth's dance of the seven veils. Now it comes to that sorry excuse for a film noir, more of a bad fantasy about rich women, Basic Instinct. The way these two policemen go on and on about the 110 million dollars Sharon Stone has inherited as if that was the point of the story. Actually, I'm sure at one point the film director contemplated scrapping the sex scenes altogether and going on a tour of her villa instead, with the interior decorator's phone number on the left of the screen. The heavily emphasised contrast with Michael Douglas' commonplace lifestyle. His big clumsy American car and her sleek smart European convertible, in that car chase. That interrogation scene, where she, wrapped in cashmere, shows her cunt to a room of men in bad suits – marvelously subtle assertion of class superiority, isn't it. Other, more primitive people, use wit to the same effect, I am told. Poor Sharon Stone, she could have weighed 300 pounds and have hairs sprouting from her ears, Michael Douglas would still have slept with her. A movie that uses sex as a pretext to wallow in social envy, how pitiful.

Come to think of it, how fast we are losing the art of seduction - which lies at the heart of the idea of sinful beauty - who are the women artists, nowadays, who could play the role of sultry seductress? Meg Ryan (????), Julia Roberts ( can't do much apart from her goofy smile), Gwyneth Paltrow ( vague). Uma Thurman could, a long time ago. Maybe Angelina Jolie, though there is something a bit irritating about her. There is hope with Scarlett Johanson. And then you have these "singers" on MTV who look more and more like pornographic actresses, in these "clips" which themselves look more and more like porn films. Not too brillant on the men's side either. Brad Pitt, a bit. George Clooney and Pierce Brosnan, whom everyone is a bit tired of, by now. Why do I have this feeling that in the future all actors will look like Tom Hanks and all actresses like Meg Ryan ?

What boring times we live in, everyone so nice, neat and hardworking, and with all those beautiful actresses who keep preaching in their interviews in the glossies about how they eat only salad, have a great mom and pop and care deeply for the poor, when they are not playing in a movie in which the main part is held by a giant monkey or iguana or whatever. In the 50's, you had a journalist asking Ava Gardner: "How come you married that 120 pound midget ?" ( meaning Frank Sinatra) and she replied : " Honey, coz 20 pounds of it is cock", and no doubt she blew her cigarette smoke in his face after that.

Which brings me to guess that sin is embedded in art. It becomes clearer in times like ours, when everyone tries to sanitise sex, when art tries to become politically correct. Apart from landscape paintings and the like, all secular art is inherently sinful to a degree. All art is not sinful, but if one tries to remove the sin from art, a great deal of art goes with it. How obvious it sounds, suddenly. I hope the reader does not feel I wasted his time, when the conclusion seems to have been so foregone.