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Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin
by Mel Gordon

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1256700.Voluptuous_Panic_The_Erotic_World_of_Weimar_Berlin?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182297600m/1256700.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1256700.Voluptuous_Panic_The_Erotic_World_of_Weimar_Berlin?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/37198.Mel_Gordon">Mel Gordon</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/27337110?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars if I wasn’t a lazy bastard, I’d put together a photography book called Fascist Fashion. Yeah, that’s right. americans are great at a certain form of propoganda but the real 20th century badasses, the communists and fascists and tyrants and totalitarians and terrorists (in the case of the latter, their 21st counterparts really need to get their shit together. unruly beards and dirty robes and timex watches? Suicide Chic? uh… no), understand the aesthetics and sexuality of power and violence. (americans seem not to understand the sexuality of anything. It just seems to seep to the surface of our pop culture in a variety of disturbing ways) 
 
 consider Stalin. in america he’d be some short, scarred, ugly guy. over there? a crisp boxy suit, stylish hat, trimmed mustache, twinkle in his eye, throw on the samovar, olga on one knee, marfa on the other, weekend at the dacha, sheee-it comrade! or Castro: beard, army fatigues, cute little cap, and that cigar (which, of course, isn’t just a cigar). and Mao? motherfucking Mao? the little red book. the serene smile. the badass longshirt he wore all buttoned to the top? goddammit, i’d bang his bald, chubby ass quicker than you can scream “Workers of the World Unite” -- and Mobutu. Trujillo. Tito. Saddam. and the grandaddy, of course, Hitler. goddamn, if those nazis didn’t know EXACTLY how to make facism attractive. And who did Hitler fall to? Truman? A mid-western haberdasher? Yuck! 
 
 the best we have to offer is Kennedy. stack of Ian Fleming books in the oval office*, glass of scotch in hand, banging broads in the back room of Sinatra’s palm springs hideaway, under the table handjobs from an aging Marlene Dietrich… and even him, even JFK, the exception that proves the rule, had to play it safe and wear those drab blue suits all the time. shit, can you imagine what Dior, Balenciaga, Ungaro, or St. Laurent could have done for JFK had he given them free reign? 
 
 so there’s no american counterpart to my book. No Capitalist Chic. Who’d get in that snorefest of a book? fucking Tom Delay? former-exterminator christianist jackass? do that guy up all Founding Fathers Chic in powdered wig, make up, and knickers and he still sucks. Nancy Pelosi? uh, maybe if the plastic-surgery deer-in-a-headlights look and newscaster hair suddenly became chic… and Bush? total zero. Total fucking waste. 
 
 well, Winston Churchill (again: great personality, horrible fashion icon) famously said ‘the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery’, and it may be true. capitalism may be the least of all evils, or it may be soul crushing, instrumental in the end of days… I don’t know. but I know this: fashion-wise, its leaders and political advocates have nothing on those who have fallen before its might.
 
 
 *interesting to consider that JFK was, of course, a massive Ian Fleming/James Bond fan and saw himself as something of a spymaster Bond type. certainly explains why JFK deployed so many damn black ops CIA missions he makes Cheney look like a little bitch. shit, JFK put out a moteherfucking mob hit out on Castro! fuck with that, Dick. Interesting to do a kind of cause-and-effect thingie starting with a boy born in London exactly 100 years ago who would write a few spy novels which would inspire the most powerful man in the world to do some seriosuly badass shit and basically alter human history. watch what you write people. and remember: (to slightly alter a lyric by one of the true fashion icons of the 20th century) “you are suppressed, but you’re remarkably dressed”… 
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/193310?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

brian's review
rating:

if I wasn’t a lazy bastard, I’d put together a photography book called Fascist Fashion. Yeah, that’s right. americans are great at a certain form of propoganda but the real 20th century badasses, the communists and fascists and tyrants and totalitarians and terrorists (in the case of the latter, their 21st counterparts really need to get their shit together. unruly beards and dirty robes and timex watches? Suicide Chic? uh… no), understand the aesthetics and sexuality of power and violence. (americans seem not to understand the sexuality of anything. It just seems to seep to the surface of our pop culture in a variety of disturbing ways)

consider Stalin. in america he’d be some short, scarred, ugly guy. over there? a crisp boxy suit, stylish hat, trimmed mustache, twinkle in his eye, throw on the samovar, olga on one knee, marfa on the other, weekend at the dacha, sheee-it comrade! or Castro: beard, army fatigues, cute little cap, and that cigar (whic...more if I wasn’t a lazy bastard, I’d put together a photography book called Fascist Fashion. Yeah, that’s right. americans are great at a certain form of propoganda but the real 20th century badasses, the communists and fascists and tyrants and totalitarians and terrorists (in the case of the latter, their 21st counterparts really need to get their shit together. unruly beards and dirty robes and timex watches? Suicide Chic? uh… no), understand the aesthetics and sexuality of power and violence. (americans seem not to understand the sexuality of anything. It just seems to seep to the surface of our pop culture in a variety of disturbing ways)

consider Stalin. in america he’d be some short, scarred, ugly guy. over there? a crisp boxy suit, stylish hat, trimmed mustache, twinkle in his eye, throw on the samovar, olga on one knee, marfa on the other, weekend at the dacha, sheee-it comrade! or Castro: beard, army fatigues, cute little cap, and that cigar (which, of course, isn’t just a cigar). and Mao? motherfucking Mao? the little red book. the serene smile. the badass longshirt he wore all buttoned to the top? goddammit, i’d bang his bald, chubby ass quicker than you can scream “Workers of the World Unite” -- and Mobutu. Trujillo. Tito. Saddam. and the grandaddy, of course, Hitler. goddamn, if those nazis didn’t know EXACTLY how to make facism attractive. And who did Hitler fall to? Truman? A mid-western haberdasher? Yuck!

the best we have to offer is Kennedy. stack of Ian Fleming books in the oval office*, glass of scotch in hand, banging broads in the back room of Sinatra’s palm springs hideaway, under the table handjobs from an aging Marlene Dietrich… and even him, even JFK, the exception that proves the rule, had to play it safe and wear those drab blue suits all the time. shit, can you imagine what Dior, Balenciaga, Ungaro, or St. Laurent could have done for JFK had he given them free reign?

so there’s no american counterpart to my book. No Capitalist Chic. Who’d get in that snorefest of a book? fucking Tom Delay? former-exterminator christianist jackass? do that guy up all Founding Fathers Chic in powdered wig, make up, and knickers and he still sucks. Nancy Pelosi? uh, maybe if the plastic-surgery deer-in-a-headlights look and newscaster hair suddenly became chic… and Bush? total zero. Total fucking waste.

well, Winston Churchill (again: great personality, horrible fashion icon) famously said ‘the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery’, and it may be true. capitalism may be the least of all evils, or it may be soul crushing, instrumental in the end of days… I don’t know. but I know this: fashion-wise, its leaders and political advocates have nothing on those who have fallen before its might.

*interesting to consider that JFK was, of course, a massive Ian Fleming/James Bond fan and saw himself as something of a spymaster Bond type. certainly explains why JFK deployed so many damn black ops CIA missions he makes Cheney look like a little bitch. shit, JFK put out a moteherfucking mob hit out on Castro! fuck with that, Dick. Interesting to do a kind of cause-and-effect thingie starting with a boy born in London exactly 100 years ago who would write a few spy novels which would inspire the most powerful man in the world to do some seriosuly badass shit and basically alter human history. watch what you write people. and remember: (to slightly alter a lyric by one of the true fashion icons of the 20th century) “you are suppressed, but you’re remarkably dressed”…

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message 1: by deleted member (last edited 07/15/2008 01:31PM)

07/15/2008 01:21PM

You mean you didn't like Janet Reno's primary blue dresses and gold seashell brooches? Then there was Laura Bush--sort of Oleg Cassini-meets-Oy Vey Cassini. I didn't know if she married the Most Powerful Man in the World or was waiting for a bus trip to the Mall of America. (Quit staring at me, Laura. Put down the amphetamines.)

You are so right, Brian. Fascism/totalitarianism wrote the book on oppressive showmanship. Riefenstahl, despite possible other moral failings, was likely done in by the showbiz of Nazism. The lock-step, the tailored suits, the strong graphic flags and kitsch emblems.

(I also want to give a shout-out to the black chador. As a stricture, it's reprehensible; but as a costume, it's ominously chic. Sort of like the faceless walker from Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon.")