If you read that “Why I won’t date hot women anymore” article from the New York Post that I gently parodied in my post yesterday, you no doubt remember Benedict Beckeld.
Sure, the name itself might not immediately ring a bell, but you will almost certainly remember his picture: He’s the muscular fellow who posed, sans shirt, while playing or pretending to play a violin.
Beckeld is also the guy who complained to the author of the article that “people who are better looking are less likely to pursue advanced degrees, or play an instrument or learn other languages.” Beckeld, who clearly sees himself as really, really, ridiculously good looking, went on to point out that he in fact has an advanced degree, can play the violin, and can speak seven languages. (Allegedly.)
Well, it turns out he has opinions about things other than hot people and their alleged unwillingness to learn stuff. Indeed, the late-thirties Brooklyn “writer” and self-publisher has a “philosophical blog” through which he attempts to force these ideas upon what one imagines, for him, has been a very unwelcoming world.
He’s a thoroughgoing reactionary clearly convinced that his ideas are far more original and interesting than they really are, and most of his essays are pretty much unreadable philosophical dreck. (Trust me, I tried to read a bunch of them.)
The only one I managed to make it all the way through was his latest one, a rambling post on the now-famous “Fearless Girl” statue that now stands athwart the famous Wall Street bull statue in Manhattan’s Financial District. Needless to say, he’s not a fan of Fearless.
After declaring in an aside that “the girl’s fearlessness stems mainly from stupidity, since not even a grown man would stand a chance against a rampaging bull,” Beckeld goes on to set forth his main thesis: that Fearless represents the ungrateful and “oikophobic” ideology of modern feminism.
“Oikophobia,” in case you’re wondering, means hatred of home; Becheld is using it to mean “the dislike of one’s own civilization and a disregard of the traditions that shaped it.” Beckeld is completely obsessed with this idea and is apparently writing a book on the subject, because why not?
Anyhoo, here’s what he’s got to say about little Fearless.
Fearless Girl is a stab not only at testosterone-laden executive boardrooms (though Fearless Girl is as much a corporate stunt as anything, whereas Charging Bull was the work of an independent artist), but also an oikophobic attack at the United States.
Oikophobic!
Wall Street no doubt has its excesses, but it also contributes enormously to its city’s and country’s financial success, and thereby to so much of the wealth that we all take for granted here, and which we criticize and consider insignificant precisely because we have come to take it for granted.
Later on in the essay, he accuses feminist types of being, basically, overgrown children. But of course he doesn’t put it quite so succinctly. Wall of text, incoming!
A part of attacking the ruling power is now the prejudice that, no matter what, one should never change for others and that one is fine just the way one is. This is why it is also significant that the statue does not simply portray a female, but specifically a young girl rather than a woman. For the dissemination of the aforementioned anti-patriarchal prejudice is a reflection not only of people having become more narcissistic, but also of the increased purchasing power of young people. This prejudice – that no matter what one does or how one behaves, one should stay the way one is – happens to be expressive of a particularly youthful and infantile attitude, and since young people have more money than they used to, or at least a greater access to their parents’ money than they used to, the popular culture is going to change in order to cater to their emotional needs, and so more films will be made, more songs produced, where this prejudice is expressed. Many of these young people will learn over time that it is in fact healthy to change in some respects every now and then, and that some bases of power – such as American power – are better left untouched, although there is, of course, a feedback loop in which the increased stress on this prejudice in popular culture will also, regrettably, come to influence those who might otherwise not have been victims of it. The girl of the statue has the knowledge and understanding of a child, but the conviction of a prophet, and therefore taps perfectly into the self-righteousness of the millennial generation (who feel intellectually flattered and therefore love the statue).
But of course he blames the millennials!
The statue – and the politicians who support its presence – thus, opportunistically, dips into that faux-feminism of the young and the angry, who know what they hate but not what they love, and who in any case refuse to understand what they owe to the object of their wrath.
You ungrateful kids! GET OFF OF MY LAWN!
Beckeld has many similarly not-very-mindblowing thoughts on subjects ranging from the election, America’s alleged decadence, and the problems he’s got with contemporary feminism. I would pull out some amusing quotes, but, well, his blog posts are far more tedious than amusing. So instead I’ll go take a nap.
If unlike me you love every second you spend readng Beckeld’s blog posts you can sample more of his writing in his two English-language books. One, called Art & Aesthetics, is apparently about, well, art and aesthetics. The other, a self-published volume with the somewhat prosaic title Statements, offers, according to the author,
two parts I wrote when I was 17 and 19 years old, respectively. It deals mainly with issues of ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history. It also contains my first critique of academia.
So that sounds like an absolute delight, huh?
OK, I still can’t get over how appalling shirtless violin guy is. In the interview someone posted above he says this:
‘my literary agent is currently shopping around a memoir I wrote about my time as a volunteer teacher in Namibia. I lived in a small village with the Herero tribe in the Kalahari Desert, close to the border with Botswana, and it is, if I may say so, quite an unusual and in some ways tragic story.’
Maybe not as bad as his teenage indictment of academia, but probably close. I wonder if his literary agent is familiar with this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/05/zambians-hit-back-at-white-saviour-gap-yah-memoir
I served in Malawi with a friend who would have had such a laugh out of this; she died about a year and a half ago so we were unable to share our scorn.
@Dormousing_it
Yeah, I remember all the crap they spewed about us back when, and this is exactly why my teeth grind when they bag on the millennials(probably sic) these days. We were shallow, slackers, no attention span, blah blah blah… Guess which generation is being called that now? Second verse, same as the first. With the added fun of even more assholes stomping on your fingers and laughing at you while you’re trying to pull yourself up than twenty years before. I don’t envy them their position, any more than I did that of Generation X.
Frankly, I’m so over it, because it’s the same divide and conquer shit as before. My hopes are with the millennials, because having been on the receiving end of this trickle-down horsecrap they know damn well it doesn’t work, and an irritated, socially conscious voting bloc is not something you want to annoy any more than necessary,
Why this sound like somebody’s soundcloud mixtape archive?
@Alan
Update! I actually had to defend Rosalind Franklin at dinner today.
@ Dr EJ
I’m envisaging some sort of rear spinning scissor kick so you actually took them out with your tattoo for extra irony points.
But if it was something more academic I’m still intrigued. Who was dissing her?
@Dormousing_it:
Not only that, but we’re now the leaders of the anti-Drumpf resistance movement.
And here in Canada, we also formed the bulk of the movements to abolish all anti-abortion laws (we haven’t had one since 1988, when I protested against the last one while still in university!) and to legalize same-sex marriage (which has been legal across the country since 2005). We’re also staunch environmentalists and anti-poverty activists. And we cut our teeth on all this during the Mulroney Recession…
“Slacker” THAT, all you “Me Generation” boomeryuppies.
@Bina
Would that we had more of that movement south of the border here. Unfortunately too much of the USA’s population still has a horrible case of rectocranial inversion. We’re trying though!
As for the ‘slacker’ thing, my take is if you know the workplace game is rigged against you, why destroy yourself body and soul for the benefit of someone who doesn’t give a shit about you? And the powers that be wonder why the morale of the most recent two generations is in general so goddamn low…
Egads. I wrote some pretentious nonsense when I was 17 and 19, too, but I did not turn around as an adult and decide the world needed to read it.
Shirtless violin man has never heard of Minoan bull dancers
@Dalillama: according to this cbc article, it’s going to be all three levels of government.
I didn’t see a fixed date though. The government (not sure which level) did take action in Vancouver though, which apparently helped.
@dr. ej: thank you for the youtube link! I will watch that when i’m not on mobile.
@Alan
My uncle. He claimed that Watson and Crick published first, even though Franklin had a paper published in the same issue of the journal. They used her data to build their model and didn’t give her credit. I couldn’t let that comment slide. One of the other dinner guests was interested in the controversy because he hadn’t heard about it. He was going to do some research so at least he will learn about her.
Unfortunately there were no scissor kicks. It didn’t seem appropriate at my grandparent’s house.
@ Dr EJ
I’m not surprised. I’m quite into sciency things but even I grew up on the story that it was Watson and Crick inspired by a spiral staircase.
But science is full of cosy but untrue narratives. It’s like no disrespect to the famous heroes and heroines of Bletchley Park; but we never hear about the Poles or Tommy Flowers or (my favourite) the unsung MI6 peeps who realised Enigma machines were a commercial product so just bought one from the manufacturers.
But women face a special erasure. How many people remember that “Von Claueswitz’s” On War was actually put together by his Mrs. Or Sister Rosetta Tharpe invented rock and roll. Or Wing Chun (the kung-fu founder) was a nun?
In science it’s like women are allowed Madame Curie and maybe as a bonus Hedy Lamar, but that’s your lot.
Bit late to this particular thread, but did you know that the guy who made the angry bull sculpture is quite unhappy about the girl standing up to it?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/12/charging-bull-new-york-fearless-girl-statue-copyright-claim
I somehow can’t find any sympathy for him.
I can understand why Di Modica is unhappy, but not sympathise. As an artist, you don’t get to dictate how your art is perceived (this is equally true for the Fearless Girl statue, which is not without its critics). You particularly don’t get to insist that your vision must go unchallenged for decades, especially when your art is in a public place. The bull was installed in 1989. The world, including Wall Street, has changed since then, and perhaps more people are ready for a challenge to his ugly, aggressive, fuck-you celebration of capitalism? Not that that’s how Fearless Girl was intended, but, like I said, what the artist meant is not the last word.
@ moggie
Under international copyright law artists do have some, limited, ‘moral rights’. Those include not having your work ‘modified’ without your consent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act
But he does seem to be being a bit of a dick about it and, as you say, amending or changing artworks to produce a new interpretation is in itself all part of artistic endeavour.
@Alan: i was wondering about moral rights! I hear it’s a commonwealth thing, and not actually something in American law. I was wondering if an artist, someone who apparently installed the statue with no permissions or permits, has any. He’s not american, but the statue is in the states, and was probably produced there so…?
It makes me think of the ribbons on the geese of eatons centre, and how the artist successfully used his moral rights to get them removed.
I’ve also heard of Canadian film editors preventing a film from being recut without their permission. If only the editor on the original star wars had moral rights!
Every contract i’ve ever signed has made me sign away mine. I always check.
@ rhuu
Ooh, where are you based? In the EU moral rights are the one thing that can’t be sold or assigned. They’re inherent to the artist (of course, it can get complicated).
As for Mr Bull-Statue, hasn’t he brought a claim? Be interesting to see how it’s argued if it gets to court.
I can see how castrating the bull, or placing it inside a giant sesame seed bun, could be said to be an unfair modification. But placing another statue some metres away? If he’s able to block that, that’s a bad law, in my opinion. It would be interesting to know how distant the other statue must be before a court will reject his argument.
@ moggie
You are not helping my struggle with vegetarianism.
But to your main point, it would be hard to argue I think that fearless girl wasn’t intended to modify the meaning of the Bull by being an integral part of the full display. The message only makes sense if the statues relate to each other in physical space, regardless of distance.
Although counter to that is merely placing something next to a work a modification that falls within the definition of the Act? Let’s say Da Vinci still had copyright in the Mona Lisa. Could he object to an exhibition that featured the original but also a gallery full of derivative works?
Hmm, it’s an interesting topic. Heh, whilst I still think he’s being a bit full of himself I’m now curious about what would happen if he does go ahead with a lawsuit.
It may already have appeared on WHTM, but this article sums up 3/4 of how I feel about the Fearless Girl’s insertion into, and subversion of, Di Modica’s creation:
https://gregfallis.com/2017/04/14/seriously-the-guy-has-a-point/
Another 1/8 of how I feel about it is that I’m ticked off this advertorial designed to hit us in our feels is a child, not a woman; a potential, not an actuality. Wall St is full of adult women who could use a little recognition themselves. I hope they feel positive about this addition.
The final 1/8: Di Modica’s work was unsolicited, and remains his to control. The place it is in, is not. If he doesn’t like the way his bull has been reframed by the addition of the girl, he can vote with his four hooves and remove the bull altogether, place him beside the girl in alliance, add a grown woman riding on his back facing down a bear, whatever flight of creation he likes – and hope that once again his vision will be embraced by other people.
@ croquembouche
What a brilliant article. It really does encapsulate all the issues and the fundamental dilemma.
It’s funny that fearless girl is quite literally corporate virtue signalling (in the marketing sense). Does that undermine the message though? Of course here the message is very much in the eye of the beholder. The literal message, as shown by the caption, appears to be ‘buy shares in our company’.
Fascinating stuff.
I’m going to pretend to be an art critic and therefore say that’s an excellent choice for a NASDAQ company that primarily deals in Futures rather than current stocks.
I’ve never really understood the Bull/Bear thing. Do you think there was a meeting one day:
@Alan: I think it’s another deal where men can’t have anything representing them unless it’s quote-unquote badass. Even when it’s being “cautious” or “timid”, which are icky feeeemale emotions.
Yes, good article!
I’ll also add: I resent that she represent’s women’s power by infantilising women. She’s inspiring to little girls, maybe, but the grown women working in finance might not be so pleased to be represented by a child.
I just keep thinking that he’s the Golden One’s brother…