While browsing through
aview, the Android app that improves on the much promoted ABCTV iview,
an app designed for Apple products – why do corporations indulge Apple in this
way when the percentages are changing? - the Channel 4 programme Secrets of
the Living Dolls appeared near the top in the ‘S-Z’ listing. Something
caught the eye as the finger tapped on the screen to further explore this image
of, well, it was not clear. Perhaps this is what grabbed the attention. One saw
a gold bikini-clad figure with long blonde hair blurred in its swaying, with a
face that one might describe as classically made up. Indeed, it did look overly
so, almost to the extent of being falsely styled to conform to every
photo-shopped fashion magazine’s front page beauty: literally, just made up –
see: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/secrets-of-the-living-dolls
One had forgotten that a tap of the finger started playing
the programme. After years of struggling with a clumsy and crude iview app,
using aview was just so extremely simple and straightforward. One wonders why
it is that the ABCTV refuses to promote aview for Android users. Why does it
insist on its Apple bias when there is a parallel and better app for Android?
The first images made one look again. What was this show about? It started with
a seventy-year-old man in a mansion, who slept upstairs in rooms that were his
exclusive domain. There was the suggestion of a deep secret being concealed. As
he was shown reaching into his cupboard trying to decide what to wear, one
thought that he must be gay; but no. He pulled out a silicone body suit,
complete with breasts and vagina, and pulled it on. After adjusting the
placement and fit of this shroud, he reached for the mask. This was a silicone
hood painted with thick lips and wide eyes in an attempt to capture the essence
of every fashion model in its extremes.
The mask was pulled over his head, juggled to get the match
of holes with eyes, nose , mouth and ears, and then it was laced at the back
like a shoe. The transformation was completed with a flowing, wind-blown wig
that he habitually flicked aside with the backs of his hands, gestures that
self-important stars use. Now, with the bikini on and carrying the options of a
large pair of sunglasses and a chirpy cap, he swayed as though he was indeed on
the catwalk, still performing movements learned from watching the style of the
ladies in the shows. It was a difficult image to reconcile with the small,
wiry, seventy-year-old person who was under all of this silicone glam,
especially when he went swimming.
Forgetting about the question of why folk might behave in
this way, one pondered on the skin-deep façade and its ambivalent quality that
bounced from convincing identity to complete and utter fake farce in the one
millisecond. One could see and feel both aspects fighting for the claim to
dominance – truth. It was a remarkable experience that never faded throughout
the whole programme. Others dressed up too – other ‘female maskers’ as they were
called. All held something of this strange and contrasting duality. Even when
one saw the factory where these masks and bodysuits were being made, the
illusion was maintained. The facts were never strong enough to dismantle the
evidence of theatre. One did get the impression that viewing too many silicone
vaginas and their moulds might modify one’s perception and make the image just
too familiar; but the faces were different. They held their primeval quality of
immediate recognition and understanding - of empathy: see http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/quilty-harding-and-accents.html
One was confronted by each identity coming into existence.
The faces were never identical. Each had its own character, just as each masker
had his own name as her. The reactions to the dolled up men were interesting.
Other men suddenly got the urge to give a big hug and a vague kiss. It seemed
that silicone became real on the touch, unresponsive. When unmasked, this might
have been an awkward move, but the shroud made all of the difference. It seemed
to generate visions of the ‘Page 3’ girls. There was a somewhat raunchy feel
about the whole affair, something clandestine, forbidden, hence interesting.
More silicone than flesh could easily be revealed without any change in or threat
to anyone’s emotions or sensitivities. The display of the shroud was simple and
unthreatening; but this exposure could stimulate visions of fantasized
possibilities that seemed to excite some. Perhaps this is why the discretionary
vagina existed? Without going into any specific detail, it was explained that
there was a pocket option for the vagina too. This was a very strange world
indeed.
One was always left floundering between outrage and
understanding; disbelief and conviction; irresponsibility and principle. There
was a horrendous gap between the flighty falsehood of attractiveness and the
reality being concealed that remained as the latent enigma. The flashy, tarty
Shiela that blazed her way along the sunny ocean promenade in full flesh
colours, was in reality a seventy-year-old, slightly wizened, wiry man. One thought of
architecture, how it can be dolled up too.
c.f. image below
The parallel was interesting, as it was here, in this
programme, that one could experience aspects of the charade that one is not
immediately exposed to in the built environment. One could sense the extremes
of this strategy, its true dichotomy; its falsehoods; its convincing games, far
more clearly than when standing before a slick building. Our cities become
theatres that we participate in, perform in, in much the same manner as the man
and his doll interact. We enjoy the game rather than observe and critique.
Here, in the show, life itself was exposing its shroud of pretence. If there
ever was an example to illustrate how architecture can hold and maintain
integrity, and lose it too, it was here. In its most extreme, the built form of
a theatre set is the closest parallel to these ‘Living Dolls’ – the most
explicit and obvious; but architecture is really never far from this shallow
contrast between life and form – forms that shroud life.
There is much experimental shaping and creating with our
computer facilities today that are making just about anything possible. While
these stunning images might amaze and delight the eye, it is their match to
life and their relationship to lived experience of place in time, in the
ordinary everyday of existence, that becomes the critical and crucial measure
of the art. It is really just too easy to doll something up and create a
stunning identity, just as these ‘dolls’ do. It is far more challenging to
create a shell for the mollusc, a fit for both physical, emotional and
psychical beings and their inter-relationships. This is architecture. The
‘dolls’ show how it is that something other is merely theatre – a game of
images: dolling things up for appearances only, ephemeral displays of fashion
clichés. No matter how beguiling or expert the illusions might be; no matter
how the glossy images in the magazines or the digital files might appeal;
architecture is always more that this.
The silicone might be a perfect fit; the eyes, ears, nose
and mouth might all work perfectly, just as the fake vagina could too, but
there remains something more integral, more complete, more intimately true to
the wholeness of an experience that can resonnate with unknown harmonies that
enrich when there is coherence and completeness in complexity. Shrouds carry
their own death knell. Architecture must never be a shroud. It needs to express
reality, not conceal it. It is never like the advertisement that fakes an
identity to stimulate desires. It is there to augment, improve, support; to
enhance life in every way, be this function or form; form or function - or
feeling. Architecture is never ‘dolled up.’ Art always has something of the
shroud about it, but it becomes most challenging when the match is between
emotions and feelings rather than other different shapes and objects. It is architecture
that is most at risk of becoming a tarted-up form; of ignoring any substantial
depth in its meaning for life.
Secrets of the Living Dolls needs to be a programme
that is kept in the forefront of one’s mind, for it clearly highlights
explicitly every problem there is with decorative art and slick architecture:
lest we forget.
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