goth-loli, and repressive desublimation

Both Adorno's Minima Moralia and Marcuse's One Dimensional Man contain discussions of the contrast between the "sex" and erotic fufillment. "Sex" meaning the infintely reproduceable act in itself, which has been de-immoralized through a loosening of sexual morality, is not capable of fufilling the libido. It acts mostly to temporarily divert the impulses, and keep the masses receptive of and available for domination and administration. Or so they say.

One particular series of aphorisms from Minima Moralia concerning the infinitely reproduceable act, beauty, and the freedom of women, strikes me as being quite relevant to a couple of discussions I've been party to lately: one concerning how Kate Moss, and a number of couture models aren't "TV pretty", and another about the Goth Lolita scene being constantly misinterpreted as equivalent with either the Ame/Euro Goth scene, or more mistakenly, "cosplay".

That series of aphorisms centers on one key principle. Beauty, as well as the subject are only meaningful when pulled into stark relief by the subject.

No gaze achieves beauty, without being accompanied by indifference, and well-nigh contempt for everything outside of the viewed object. And it is solely through bedazzlement [Verblendung: dazzle, infatuation], the unjust closure of the gaze vis-à-vis the claim raised by everything which exists, that justice is done to what exists. (48th aphorism)

As such, the exchangeabilty of experiences is antithetical to an authentic experience of beauty, and percludes "doing justice" to the object. The idea that the ultimate subject, the human, is made into an object is further problematized when that object is an entirely interchangeable part in the infinitely reproduceable and saleable act:

Casanova’s women, not for nothing identified with letters instead of names, are scarcely to be distinguished from each other and also not from the figurines, which form complicated pyramids in Sade’s mechanical organ. Something of such sexual brutality, the incapacity to make distinctions, lives however in the great speculative systems of idealism...(54th aphorism)

What better example of this sort of incapacity to make distinctions than the sample photos from japanese delivery health sites:



Different girls, same clothes. The girls measurements and particular talents are meticulously detailed (I have seen in a magazine measurements of the various facial features of the models included as well). This is extreme objectification of what are properly subjects unto themselves. For the man, this is the whole purpose of this sort of "cosplay". The woman herself becomes relatively insignificant, compared to the concept of fucking "a high school student" or "a nurse". The same sort of interchangeable beauty fills prime-time broadcasts with similar smiles, and the world with women "who style themselves as flowers, because that’s what their husband likes." (aphorism 59)

It's in this sense that the goth-loli scene is a rebuttal of the beauty industry. The gothic lolita subculture, as much or more so than any other subcultural fashion group in japan emphasized inventiveness, and is not usually directed toward sexual attention. Perhaps, it's important to say that that has begun changing as the "movement" is more popular, saleable, and homogeneic. (We've even got a few up here in Aomori that can be spotted on the bus now and again).


In a sense, the novelty also demands at least a longer glance. I think this aspect of the presentation of goth loli is much the same as the strange fashion photography of the nineties. In at least arresting the eyes of the subject, they both attempt to steal the privelege of beauty, but since any such attempt necessetates deliberately turning the subject to pure object, I doubt you could say it escapes the problematic side of objectification.

Then again, I doubt you could make Adorno enjoy a photograph.