Persephone eats
For the past couple of days I have been non-stop working on an article about pornography in the academic world – a broad view on where scholars stand in relation to the discussion of pornography as a valid format of erotica representation, and not as an example to be quoted by any kind of politics fuelled minority studies, be it gender, women, race, or whatever. The way the academic world discusses pornography has enraged me, bothered me, and bored me. As a result, often I found myself digressing, but not so far out. This is something I started scribbling on the back of a copy of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, in a Starbucks café downtown Rio this week, after a jinx.
I have written verse in the way one dances,
my gestures have drenched the air with heroism,
and in breathing I have gleaned the great treasure of
the world, all that floats and all that is
sacred, divine, voluptuous.
I am your end and you [are] my beginning.
I am your renewal.
-- Anna de Noailles
I often revisit books I love as if they were old friends. My afternoons of literature and coffee have many times substituted any contact with real civilization – or, at least, a living one. But in some cases, and more often than not, literary characters are, to me, more real than real people, and this is the case with Edna Pontellier, from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). So, as it was raining and it was a lazy Friday, I curled up with Edna, Kate, and Swiss Miss to spend some girl time. In the midst of my reading, however, I remembered Sandra Gilbert’s critique on Chopin’s work, most specifically her analysis of the final dining scene and its significant similarity to the Last Supper. The scene revolves around Edna Pontellier’s diner party, and Chopin’s obvious choice to portrait Edna resembling Aphrodite raises debate over a possible recovery of the image of “Aphrodite/Venus as an alternative to the patriarchal western myth of Jesus” (GILBERT & GUBAR 1989: 96).
It is not Edna Pontellier or Aphrodite that I want to talk about, though: it is about another pair of goddesses which have been recently put together by the delicate and perceptive camera of Joshua Darling: Sovereign Syre and Persephone.
It was this video entitled “Persephone Eats”, posted online on November 17, 2011, that caught my eye.
It has been a somewhat impossible task for me to write about Sovereign Syre – and have I tried! – because everywhere I look there seems to be another rich façade to be explored. In a handful of videos I watch over and over in a mixture of delight and obsession, Sovereign presents herself as an infinite universe impossible to be even partially grasped. She quotes Shakespeare, follows Samuel Pepys, and seduces an imaginary Lord Byron behind the camera. She vandalizes her own photographs and claims to like Rihanna, after talking about the Timucua and a book written in 1568. She states her clear intention of creating a kind of porn that answers to her expectations since she could not find the porn she wanted out there. She scorns at any criticism she might face due to the comparison she has just made between her intentions and those of a Nobel Prize winner. She calls herself a writer. A performer. A model. A poet. She is able – together with Joshua Darling and Bob Lopez – to really ignite a discussion about pornography and parody by pouring honey over her face, and she is also unafraid to declare herself “totally arrogant” and innocuous.
Like with Persephone and the underworld, it was narcissistic love that led Sovereign Syre into doing porn art, and being taken to the "dark" side by her explicit belief in her ability to create something new is Sovereign’s least innocuous streak: it was not a kidnapping, but an act of voluntary servitude. Persephone knew full well that anyone who had eaten while in the underworld would not be allowed to return; yet, she went ahead and ate the pomegranate seeds. Her choice prevented her from being fully restored to Demeter, but also came to establish her as Queen of the Underworld, whose hostess duties included guiding Odysseus through the gallery of notable women.
Any female passivity found in the Greek mythology is nowhere to be found in Darling House’s version of the myth. Persephone exposes herself to Hades, luring him into seducing and ravishing her. But we are not Hades: Sovereign is Hades. And it is too late we realize we have been captured into her (under)world. She is beastly, wild, primal, instinctive: her raw hands get covered with juices that comes not from the pomegranate, but resemble her own blood: she bleeds sexuality and erotism. She is violent, carnal, devilish. It is her own core she is licking, not a pomegranate half. And it is the same pomegranate that turns into a heart – my heart – my womb – her womb.
Joshua Darling's photophobic camera watches from a distant place - an amniotic sac environment, fluid and warm - images still unborn and unfocused like remembrances. He revisits our pre-natal knowledge, glimpsing over a somewhat familiar scenery, evoking a mnemonic quality that throws us back onto a dream-like stage.
In the Darling House’s version of the Persephone myth, Persephone EATS. She is not offered food; hers is not a passive role. She EATS. It is Persephone herself who offers the pomegranate to the avid, hungry eyes of the spectator. She entices; she seduces; she bounds you to the underworld she promises to create. And, you know, she delivers it. Or Darling (House) does. It is just impossible to tell them apart now.
- Published January 7, 2012