Not only do the Milanese menswear brands re-invent Latin tradition of homosexuality as a scandalous and shocking way of viewing masculinity in contemporary fashion imagery, but also several Parisian brands. One latest
representative example is Thierry Mugler, which launches its Spring – Summer 2012 menswear manifesto Brothers of Arcadia on one online pornography website,
Xtube.com.
Directed by Branislav Jankic, the film consists of two settings and scenes which refer to two epochs. And by using the same male models throughout, the style
colludes with the sense of timelessness, or fits the postmodernism condition in Jameson’s (1983) critique of contemporary manner of “historicizing” in
Postmodernism and Consumer Society. In the first part of the film, the black and
white color suggests the theme of nostalgia. At the same time, with the background
10 Reference of pain in fashion can be seen from a slogan of “Cause me pain, Hedi Slimane” printed on the T-shirt of designer Henry Holland’s collection for House of Holland.
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music of Franz Schubert’s (1827) Piano Trio 2, Opus 100 (D. 929), the nostalgic emotion of Romanticism is also clear. On the other hand, the setting on the beach in Greece, the musculature, the hairstyle, and the stance of male models, are rather archaist nostalgic with the reference of Greco Roman tradition of male beauty and homosociality. Meanwhile, one is constantly reminded of the sense of time with the double contemporary speedo and accessories on the male models. The frequent close-ups in slow motion focus on the body parts of the male models, giving a spectacle of flesh and make the male models to appear as “larger than life” figures.
Yet, the performances of the male models are rather voluptuous than heroic as they slowly touch their own flesh and expose themselves nude. The scene refers to ancient Greco-Roman epoch at 2:10, with the presence of archaic Greek columns in Doric order and the male homosocial tradition with their attachment to each other with a rope at 2:15. While the scene proceeds, the homosocial bond becomes physical with their play with sands and their embracement, and both performances allude to homoeroticism. At the transition at 2:35, the scene turns into full colors for the emphasis on colored sand, which strongly refers to exotic Indian Holi tradition. The ambiguity of their bonds further obscures with the flashes of close-ups on the male model’s red-colored skins as well as the introduction of techno beats mixing with Schubert’s trio at 2:46. Stylized in contemporary archaized tank, the male model seems to run into a night club scene as he opens up a door. While indoors, with same Greco Roman archaic dressing styles and accessories and the usage of colored sands, the collusion seems to refer to the 1990s psychedelic and rave music. Yet, the
electronic beats of the background music, White Horse, are less progressive. Starting at 3:08, the scene is revealed to be a photo shooting. While the psychedelic
perspective continues with overlapping scenes of lions’ battle, it turns into a sensual
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performance of orgy and BDSM, nostalgic with its reference to “porno-chic.” With the clear shots of erected penises and the performance of male models masturbating, the “porn” scene is even more provocative than Ford’s metaphorical style in his implication to sex. As the closure overlaps with the opening scene, the film becomes self-referential and exposes the scene constantly on-the-make.
From the perspective of Marxist postmodernism, Mugler’s manifesto is styled with the aesthetic of pastiche, which in Jameson’s contention makes a blank irony in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991). However,
according to the art executive of Mugler, Nicola Formichetti, the project is a combination of “modern and ancient myths,” drawing on styles between Italian neo-Realism cinema and contemporary “everyday voyeurism” porn website. My argument is that the masculinity Formichetti projects through “surfers, footballers and classical gods all rolled into one” as “Olympian Athletes of Sex” also envisages a Modernist voyeuristic imagination of dramatic erotica on contemporary men.11 The modernist provocation is still visible with its challenge in its “excessive” use of male nudity for “real” sex with its pastiche of historical/social moral taboos in the fantasy of masculinity, and the use of porn styles in high-end fashion also plays with the blurry distinction between “mass culture” and “high culture” in Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of “taste classifies.”12
11 The summer Olympics in London in 2012 is also clear as the reference of Brothers of Arcadia. The British 18-year-old diver, Tom Daley, drawing the attention of the media with his physique and look in his speedo designed by Stella McCartney further coheres with Formichetti’s “porno-chic” imagination on male athletes.
12 One aspect that Bourdieu’s theory can’t cover consumer culture is whether there is a legitimate culture, or the kind of legitimate culture what we used to know. In a very fundamental postmodern point of view, either by Jameson or Lyotard, the line, or separation between high culture and so-called
‘popular’ culture, is constantly blurred. The legitimacy in culture doesn’t clearly correspond to
distinctive social class anymore, with constant use of crossovers in popular music and classic music and the mass production of fast fashion brands cooperation with avant-garde designers, examples are shown in the Swedish H&M’s annual cooperation with designers since 2001 from Karl Lagerfeld (2001) to Maison Martin Margiela (2012).
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Concerning the theme of porno-chic in contemporary imagery of European men’s fashion, such provocative narrative forms in advertisement campaigns has responded to the concern of queer theorists Creekmur and Doty (1995) of being “out in culture.” Their concern is that contemporary queer images have to “occupy a place in mass culture, yet maintain a perspective on it that does not accept its homophobic heterocentrist definitions, images, and terms of analysis” (p. 2). In sum, I would like to conclude that such forms are able to question the subject of Western masculinity and sexuality from the internal core with their contemporary fantasies and traces in Western historical trajectory.
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III. MUTATION:
A different kind of Adonis and youthful masculinity in contemporary European Menswear