NSFW Blanche and the Femme Corporis Politique

[Erny]

I hadn't realised his name was Khan! Well then he's obviously a space steep nomad.

Here are some Mongolian boots :

Not a million miles away from the cowboy boots he's wearing, indeed given the job they perform a convergence of design is to be expected.

High gloss is also not unexpected. And I'm not seeing the lacing, just your usual Blanchesk studs and spikes. As to the fur trim, fantasy step nomads always have a fur trim on everything.

The second guy has a wiff of polish Hussar and or Prussian about him, eastern (nomad lite even) again. The dark age of technology swept away by the medieval Empire al the last traces of the classic world burned in war. Quite apt that he should sytand on the ruins of a classical statue no?

Zhu, you have sex on the brain.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

Well, to be honest I said I'd approach the works of Blanche through a feminist lens, and that's what I'm doing *ahem*.

Nice find on those mongolian boots if anything the choice to depict the historical period in which the heeled shoe was acceptable male dress reinforces the idea of the figure as shoe-fetishist. The studs to the front, could just be studs, but on a shoe they are normally fastening devices - the drawing is ambiguous so affords multiple readings. Whilst we could say Khan is 'just' a pseudo-historical image, I think it really has to be taken in context of the nearly endless parade of women in fetish shoes, and the a-historical footware of the other male figures, who nontheless carry forward other historical signifiers: Space viking doesn't get viking shoes, space roman doesn't get roman shoes, space german doesn't get german shoes - it's only when the opportunity for high heels comes in that we get this somewhat twisted historical reference.

Even if we ignore the other fetish codes (the phallic symbols, burlesque curtain / cape) and read just Khans heel as purely functional and historically determined, it creates normative gender disparity because none of the female heels are awarded the same context and intellectualisation. Men are practical, useful and 'historical', women are painfully impractical, decorative fetish objects.

... I can't think of a historical reason for Fulgrim (for it is he) to stand on a naked female figure rather than a naked male one, as there was plenty of nude statuary of either gender in the classical world, and both would have been equally fitting if all that was intended was to show the medieval period wiping out the classical one. Posing a male figure with a female figure, literally down-trodden and under-foot, suggests a different dynamic at play, and is readily understood as an image of patriarchal dominance over women.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

Might be interesting to compare other, similar, male/female leg/foot compositions in the genre:

Frank Frazetta (65) - adoration / worship / submission - emergence from landscape/nature.

Eddie Jones (77) - adoration / worship / submission -

Carl Critchlow (87) - irony / narcissistic subject

Fulgrim is perhaps this theme taken to its extreme - a caricature of the standard objectification of the female subject and it's possible to read it as a reflective commentary on the 'woman as leg-attachment' trope - the normalised subject-position made explicit by literally representing the female as an object (sculpture), illustrating Simone de Beauvoir's 'woman in love, who.. 'lives in fear, trembling before this man who holds her destiny in her hands without quite knowing it' (The Second Sex), and similarly her Narcissist, who transforms herself into an object to be idolised - hence Critchlows focus on the ritual beautification of the nails, and the subsequent humour that arrises. Maybe, despite his earlier protestations, Blanche became a kind of existentialist after all.

 

[Kitsune]

Some really good posting in here. gentleman.......chapeau.

 

[Erny]

Space vikings don't get viking shoes because in the 40K universe space vikings wear power armour. Also Vikings are not generally associated with their foot wear the same way a step nomad is associated with riding boots.

Is the costume overly dramatic, yes, does that make it fetish? Perhaps or perhaps these are just cartoon portrayals of larger than life stereotypes living in a Baroque world. What do you expect supreme beings in such a world to wear? Adidas?

Women sprawled at a barbarians feet? Well we could blame the male gaze I guess but really its just a picture of a big guy the teenage viewer wants to be next to the submissive bit of totty he is going to shag latter. We can contextualize that all we like but we may as well contextualise why rain falls from the sky or why men grow whiskers. In a fantasy picture, film or novel aimed at teenage boys the female is probably going to be a bit of a sex object. I don't think any amount of contextualising is going to make the kids want to read about the barbarian that put down his sword and spend a good few months getting to know the girl next door or in the next class. Well rounded relationships are what the kids are practicing and cocking up in real life. Escapist fantasy with loads of meaningless sex is just meaningless fantasy.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

These spiked shoes suggest that John Blanche is into femdom and masochism, right?

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

So putting aside possible oral-fixative or lactose intolerant fears of larger breasts. What is it that would make Kate Moss suitable, and not Christina Hendricks appropriate models for females in fantasy art?

Returning to the topics of breasts... I've done some cross-referencing and I have to say that the huntress type and big breast simply don't go together.

Big breasts are simply dead weight on chest. They aren't evolved for mobility, for hunting. They are rather a function of lifestyle based on sexual traits as a prime value of a person (a.k.a. a prostitute). They are more typical for heavily sexualised singers and actresses.

But that type of women is completely absent in MMA (and MMA are saturated with hunter types of both sexes). If you'll look at pictures of MMA artists, you won't see massive breasts. Just small-to-medium with small being most common.
I think that depiction of Diana as small breasted one was a depiction of her as a huntress, not as a virgin.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

AranaszarSzuur - I'd be loathe to draw conclusions about an artists or illustrators intimate life from their works (Warhol was gay despite idealising Monroe) - to me these are impersonal cultural symbols, used to describe a fantasy world that is a dark mirror of our own - it's still very much satire. Although I'm sure he has a lot of creative freedom Blanches works are part of a corporate commercial endeavour, and no doubt takes some direction, feedback and editorial from others. On the other hand, it's just ink on paper - it's the viewers brain that does the rest.

I agree that the smaller breast belongs to the Maiden archetype (of which the Huntress is a sub-branch) and the larger breast belonging to the Mother, and that perhaps that speaks to the smaller-breasted figures as the Mother and Crone are less likely to be 'adventurers'.

Boris Vallejeo (1983)

I don't know Erny, works of art don't just fall from the sky like rain, nor sprout from the chin due to hormones, they are the products of the hands and minds of thinking human beings. A piece of fantasy art is not a simple act of nature that we have to shrug and accept as a fact of life - nothing has any meaning until we give it to it.

Of course there is a place for sub-dom barbarian, Gorean fantasy if that's your cup of tea, same with shoe fetishism or whatever. The feminist position is that images reflect more than just bedroom fantasies but are part of a wider cultural myth that reinforces and reflects the inequality of the sexes. Existentialist view is that all these myths are enslaving humanity into behavioural falsehoods - the kind of hypermasculine hero that Chevvy Chase and Thrud are sending up are just as restrictive an idea to the existentialist view of freedom as the submissive. Besides, the 30/40k 'universe' of heroin chic dollymops in kinky boots and anonymous heavyweight human tanks is not just marketed at teenage boys any more.

Fulgrim however does seems to reflect upon the existential plight of the objectified female figure in 'art' in an almost knowing manner. Something we haven't really touched on yet is Blanches graphic language in the Heresy works - it's red, sepia and black, scratchy pen-work, splatters and integrated hand-written scrawls begin to mind cartoonist Ralph Steadman.

Like Steadmans, Blanche in the Heresy works appear hurried, stabbed things, insipid yellows and gory reds like bodily fluids. The drawings don't take on the neutral, mechanical reproductions of surface reality, or the airbrushed aping of it. They consciously draw attention to their made-ness, their existence as drawings not mere attempts to The graphic, gestural conjuration of the scathing cartoonist implies that the subjects are being critically represented rather than being praised. The pen draws scorn. They are not rendered in lovingly faux-oil-painting surface - compare to Frazettas robust, bold gestures, form-giving brush strokes like a mud drenched Cézanne, or Vajello's slick glossy cinemascopic tones, the viewer is not invited to imagine we are looking at a real or hyper-real thing. Rather it is under-real, grubby, visceral object. There is no gender-disparity in the approach of style, the Null-Maidens and Space Marines are equally deserving of the sharp end of the pen. It lends the whole an anti-heroic (dare I say 'punk'?) acidic edge.

If you want to see Adidas and Converse, we need look no further than works of Ashley Wood and Jamie Hewlett. Heck, Puma even put Bode on their sneakers.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

AranaszarSzuur - I'd be loathe to draw conclusions about an artists or illustrators intimate life from their works (Warhol was gay despite idealising Monroe) - to me these are impersonal cultural symbols, used to describe a fantasy world that is a dark mirror of our own - it's still very much satire. Although I'm sure he has a lot of creative freedom Blanches works are part of a corporate commercial endeavour, and no doubt takes some direction, feedback and editorial from others. On the other hand, it's just ink on paper - it's the viewers brain that does the rest.

I agree that the smaller breast belongs to the Maiden archetype (of which the Huntress is a sub-branch) and the larger breast belonging to the Mother, and that perhaps that speaks to the smaller-breasted figures as the Mother and Crone are less likely to be 'adventurers'.

I don't think applying these three archetypes make sense when discussing tastes of artists.

Blanche's women are confirmed to be similar to his actual girlfriend at some time. His choice of the huntress isn't dictated by these archetypes but more by Jungian concept of anima that is personification of the unconscious part of the mind.
I suspect that Blanche is an ENFP spiritual gatherer just like Giger and his spiritual waifu is an INFJ spiritual huntress. Sadly it's impossible to confirm it because he has no video interviews.

Frazetta is an INFJ and his savage women are idealised ENFP spiritual gatherers.
They put admiration and worship on a fierce INFJ spiritual hunter.

At the same time Blanche seems to have an opposite direction where he has a masochistic worship of the huntress. I think the high heeled boots here symbolise sexual dominance and violent sadism.

 

[Fimm McCool]

Oh wow, you even shoe-horned in Myers Briggs! With a spiky shoe horn?

 

[Erny]

Of course there is a place for sub-dom barbarian, Gorean fantasy if that's your cup of tea, same with shoe fetishism or whatever. The feminist position is that images reflect more than just bedroom fantasies but are part of a wider cultural myth that reinforces and reflects the inequality of the sexes. Existentialist view is that all these myths are enslaving humanity into behavioural falsehoods - the kind of hypermasculine hero that Chevvy Chase and Thrud are sending up are just as restrictive an idea to the existentialist view of freedom as the submissive. Besides, the 30/40k 'universe' of heroin chic dollymops in kinky boots and anonymous heavyweight human tanks is not just marketed at teenage boys any more.

The problem with this feminist theory is that it is a theory entirely without proof. It comes from the school of thought that if enough scholars get together and discuss things in a rational way truth will emerge just like mush of philosophy. A theory is published, criticism is made and the theory refined until it is accepted truth. At no point have real observations made in an unbiased way been used to test the theory. There are no major scientific works or papers. Nothing. A bunch of broadly aligned sociologists decided this was the way the world works and it has been accepted as truth by enough people to hold legitimacy. Such faith is beyond my ability to believe. It could be true but there is no evidence.

My Occams razor cleanly cuts the majority of horny teenage boys obsessions into the huge doses of testosterone bin rather than the social conditioning bin. Experiments have been done here, give a woman half the normal resting testosterone dose of a teenage boy and get yourself a nymphomaniac (a nymphomaniac with heart problems). An artist asked to paint a cover to appeal to young men for a book about a barbarian that gets the girl won't have to think long and hard about how they are going to go about it. We know what the boys like.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

I don't think applying these three archetypes make sense when discussing tastes of artists.

Maiden-Mother-Crone however is used in Feminist literary criticism, which is why I picked it up as a tool - it also has applicability to neopaganism and connects to Pat Mills Slaine and the background of the Wood Elves in Warhammer through the Horned God (the lover-son of the goddess) so it kind of 'plugs in' to the wider cultural matrix that formed these images. However I think Simone De Beauvoir's observations on the Narcissist, the Lover, the Mystic and the Serious Man are more fruitful - although they do kind of map onto the MMC/HG. Ultimately these models are just a way of saying "we're not seeing a broad spectrum of representation" by using the tool to illuminate the absenses - in a kind of Saussure-ian Paridgmatic analysis - to show 'what is conspicuous by its absence'.

I think the main philosophical split we have is that I'm not really interested in trying to work out what the artist thinks. I'm looking at a piece of art. The artist isn't there, the work is. Unless we let the art stand on its own and allow it to become enmeshed in the viewers narrative then it lacks meaning. Roland Barthes, Death of the Author etc. Art as autobiography can only go so far.

But in terms of using a cultural symbol-system - I'm ignorant of people using MTBI in art criticism - do you have any references to this kind of practice?

I think the high heeled boots here symbolise sexual dominance and violent sadism.

That's the main paradox - in order to become a symbol of 'sexual dominance' the female is compelled to submit herself to the physical torture of fetish clothing - boots that bend and distort the foot, corsetry that makes it difficult to breathe, and ultimately subsume her own identity to the male fantasy stereotype of the dominatrix.

 

[Asslessman]

I think the high heeled boots here symbolise sexual dominance and violent sadism.

That's the main paradox - in order to become a symbol of 'sexual dominance' the female is compelled to submit herself to the physical torture of fetish clothing - boots that bend and distort the foot, corsetry that makes it difficult to breathe, and ultimately subsume her own identity to the male fantasy stereotype of the dominatrix.

One could even go further and see those women wear such attire to show how they''ve overcome the pain of wearing them (dominance over our own physical conditiion) and also to show men how how they are slave to the sexual icon they represent and to their own desires... (dominance over intellectual condition)

 

[Zhu Bajie]

I think the high heeled boots here symbolise sexual dominance and violent sadism.

That's the main paradox - in order to become a symbol of 'sexual dominance' the female is compelled to submit herself to the physical torture of fetish clothing - boots that bend and distort the foot, corsetry that makes it difficult to breathe, and ultimately subsume her own identity to the male fantasy stereotype of the dominatrix.

One could even go further and see those women wear such attire to show how they''ve overcome the pain of wearing them (dominance over our own physical conditiion) and also to show men how how they are slave to the sexual icon they represent and to their own desires... (dominance over intellectual condition)

Yeah, that's the idea happiness in slavery!

 

[Erny]

Symbolism and meaning are readily found in a work such as the Arnolfini Portrait, they were put there for a reason, indeed without knowing them your response to the painting will necessarily be different to someone that gets the code.

Symbolism and meaning in a side panel portrait of a 2d space marine primarch in a gaming book can clearly give a number of interpretations. The mess could all have come together due to a number of conscious and subconscious societal norms or it could say more about the viewer than the painter. Art criticism that goes beyond the discussion of form and technique often says more about the critic than the artist after all. Personally, this is the space nomad one, with a big gun, is a valid position to take.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

Symbolism and meaning are readily found in a work such as the Arnolfini Portrait, they were put there for a reason, indeed without knowing them your response to the painting will necessarily be different to someone that gets the code.

Symbolism and meaning in a side panel portrait of a 2d space marine primarch in a gaming book can clearly give a number of interpretations. The mess could all have come together due to a number of conscious and subconscious societal norms or it could say more about the viewer than the painter. Art criticism that goes beyond the discussion of form and technique often says more about the critic than the artist after all. Personally, this is the space nomad one, with a big gun, is a valid position to take.

Of course. I hope you didn't take anything I'd written about saying Khan isn't a 'space' nomad or that that reading was 'wrong' - although he doesn't have a big gun, and there are very few signifiers of 'space' - it is absolutely justified. But there are other readings and texts we can bring to it as well. We could take a post-colonialist lens and ask why we have Khan as the only non-european primarch and ask where the Sub-Saharan primarch is, which is a worthy question, but not the focus of this thread.

Art criticism doesn't intend to be a science nor have pretensions to the scientific method, it's not 'theory' in that sense. And sure, some paintings are heavily coded - alchemical symbolism and early modern oil painting are full of obviously coded symbolism. Much of the symbolism in modern painting, advertising, commercial art and propaganda are less codified latent cultural symbolism - it's the job of criticism to bring those to light. The humour in the National Lampoon Vacation poster, or Critchlows Thrud simply would not work if the codes didn't already exist. Indeed, I wouldn't expect the humour to work in many cultures on earth, because they are specific cultural artifacts, not the inevitable products of biological processes.

 

[Erny]

So I remembered him having a big gun when he doesn't...what does that say about me I wonder?

Actually I feel on firmer ground discussing why one space demi-god born to usher in a galactic wide theocratic fascist state should look like a space step nomad rather than a space Zulu. I guess western D&D fantasy tropes only get as far as the step and or the middle east, given the classical and dark age allusions from Europe had been used though hardly exhausted getting that far may be seen as reasonably diverse for the 90's.

We could ask why D&D fantasy tropes are so Eurocentric, it could be due to colonialism or it could be down to Europeans (by culture) writing the background and setting their games in familiar territory.

The humor of the national Lampoons poster is that it looks like the artwork from the kind of fiction and films that were popular at the time the irony probably being that Chase probably isn't a undefeated and noble barbarian of few words that gets the girl. We still get it because we understand the reference. I wonder how many of your average 14 year old of today woudl get it. Criticism is after all a self feeding monster and what can be viewed in a piece of art is beholden to the viewer. I could write a good deal about Vallejeo's use of colour. How we know how different colours impact our brains and help create emotion. Or we could just accept that a hero lit from above in front of a brooding sky looks cool. Sometimes looking cool is all that is going on.

Never put down to malice what can be put down to stupidity.

Equally never put down to deeper meaning what can be put down to does it look cool.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Of course there is a place for sub-dom barbarian, Gorean fantasy if that's your cup of tea, same with shoe fetishism or whatever. The feminist position is that images reflect more than just bedroom fantasies but are part of a wider cultural myth that reinforces and reflects the inequality of the sexes. Existentialist view is that all these myths are enslaving humanity into behavioural falsehoods - the kind of hypermasculine hero that Chevvy Chase and Thrud are sending up are just as restrictive an idea to the existentialist view of freedom as the submissive. Besides, the 30/40k 'universe' of heroin chic dollymops in kinky boots and anonymous heavyweight human tanks is not just marketed at teenage boys any more.

The problem with this feminist theory is that it is a theory entirely without proof. It comes from the school of thought that if enough scholars get together and discuss things in a rational way truth will emerge just like mush of philosophy. A theory is published, criticism is made and the theory refined until it is accepted truth. At no point have real observations made in an unbiased way been used to test the theory. There are no major scientific works or papers. Nothing. A bunch of broadly aligned sociologists decided this was the way the world works and it has been accepted as truth by enough people to hold legitimacy. Such faith is beyond my ability to believe. It could be true but there is no evidence.

My Occams razor cleanly cuts the majority of horny teenage boys obsessions into the huge doses of testosterone bin rather than the social conditioning bin. Experiments have been done here, give a woman half the normal resting testosterone dose of a teenage boy and get yourself a nymphomaniac (a nymphomaniac with heart problems). An artist asked to paint a cover to appeal to young men for a book about a barbarian that gets the girl won't have to think long and hard about how they are going to go about it. We know what the boys like.

It's fucking depressing that we live in a world where such gross manipulation is a norm and Wil Rees doesn't continue to make GRIMDARK graphics for Wh40k (and C100 marines weren't adapted as the standard design).

I remember buying Neverwinter Nigths in 2002 and being completely grossed out by how they are trying to influence me with loading screens and portraits.

I don't think applying these three archetypes make sense when discussing tastes of artists.

Maiden-Mother-Crone however is used in Feminist literary criticism, which is why I picked it up as a tool - it also has applicability to neopaganism and connects to Pat Mills Slaine and the background of the Wood Elves in Warhammer through the Horned God (the lover-son of the goddess) so it kind of 'plugs in' to the wider cultural matrix that formed these images. However I think Simone De Beauvoir's observations on the Narcissist, the Lover, the Mystic and the Serious Man are more fruitful - although they do kind of map onto the MMC/HG. Ultimately these models are just a way of saying "we're not seeing a broad spectrum of representation" by using the tool to illuminate the absenses - in a kind of Saussure-ian Paridgmatic analysis - to show 'what is conspicuous by its absence'.

I think the main philosophical split we have is that I'm not really interested in trying to work out what the artist thinks. I'm looking at a piece of art. The artist isn't there, the work is. Unless we let the art stand on its own and allow it to become enmeshed in the viewers narrative then it lacks meaning. Roland Barthes, Death of the Author etc. Art as autobiography can only go so far.

Well, male artists will almost always draw waifus from unconsciousness. Which usually won't be mothers or crones.

But in terms of using a cultural symbol-system - I'm ignorant of people using MTBI in art criticism - do you have any references to this kind of practice?

Apparently Jungian literary criticism is actually a thing. I don't know if anyone actually uses MBTI for criticism. Would be quite pointless as MBTI tends to mistype a lot of people.
Personally, I use another typing system that roughly correlate with MBTI but uses physiological cues for reliable typing without requiring very high self-knowledge and high knowledge of the system from a typed person. I just use MBTI names for general understanding.

I think the high heeled boots here symbolise sexual dominance and violent sadism.

That's the main paradox - in order to become a symbol of 'sexual dominance' the female is compelled to submit herself to the physical torture of fetish clothing - boots that bend and distort the foot, corsetry that makes it difficult to breathe, and ultimately subsume her own identity to the male fantasy stereotype of the dominatrix.

tfw no non-mangled 3D dominatrix waifu available.
tfw no non-mangled 3D females available at all.

 

[Erny]

It's ****ing depressing that we live in a world where such gross manipulation is a norm and Wil Rees doesn't continue to make GRIMDARK graphics for Wh40k (and C100 marines weren't adapted as the standard design).

I remember buying Neverwinter Nigths in 2002 and being completely grossed out by how they are trying to influence me with loading screens and portraits.

Whats depressing about horny 14 year old boys in the 80's getting to buy books with skantily clad women on the front? I remeber it being pretty cool actually. If it isn't your taste just don't buy it!

And what was wrong with never winter nights, a by all accounts very tame computer game?

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Whats depressing about horny 14 year old boys in the 80's getting to buy books with skantily clad women on the front? I remeber it being pretty cool actually. If it isn't your taste just don't buy it!

And what was wrong with never winter nights, a by all accounts very tame computer game?

If you don't understand, then good bye. No point interacting with you.