Armageddon Days Are Here Again

On this Earth Day, what more appropriate topic than the Whole Earth Catalog? The Whole Earth Catalog was a thick, oversized paperback largely written by Stewart Brand. Issued twice yearly from 1968 to 1972, and sporadically thereafter, its purpose was to provide information and access to “tools” in order that a reader could “find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.” Widely associated with the counterculture movement of the 1960s as well as with the environmentalist movement, the Whole Earth Catalog actually contributed to the survivalist movement that began in the 1960s and gained momentum in the 1970s, appealing to libertarians and conservatives alike. The Whole Earth Catalog wasn't merely a handbook for hippies trying to live off the land; it was also a survivalist's bible, useful in making preparations for Armageddon.

Serendipitously, the first Whole Earth Catalog was issued just about the time George Romero's Night of the Living Dead was released in theaters (October 1968), a movie about a group of humans trying to avoid being eaten by zombies. The protagonists of Night of the Living Dead are, if you think about it, prototypical survivalists. Although they were completely unprepared for the social disruption caused by the rise of the living dead, they clearly understand the need for self-sufficiency, even if they are unable to obtain it. They also understand the need for self-defense, by fitting out an existing building in order to protect themselves against a zombie siege of uncertain duration.

I happened to screen last night the classic Twilight Zone episode “The Shelter” (September 1961), a Cold War-era adaptation of the fable about the ant and the grasshopper. The same fable was the inspiration for Philip Wylie's 1954 novel Tomorrow!, in which two fictional Midwest towns undergo a nuclear attack, but only one of them is prepared for it. (One version of the fable has it that the grasshopper idled away his summer hours doing nothing, while the wise, forward-looking ant stockpiled food for the winter. When winter inevitably arrived, the grasshopper found itself starving. Predictably, the grasshopper begged the ant for food and was rebuked for his indolence.) In "The Shelter," a wise doctor has spent months building a bomb shelter in preparation for a possible nuclear attack. When such an attack seems horribly imminent, the wise doctor installs his family in the shelter, refusing admittance to his friends and neighbors. Like the zombies of Night of the Living Dead, the doctor's neighbors and friends are reduced to frightened helpless creatures, viciously turning against themselves and the doctor for refusing to give them refuge. They begin an attack to smash down the door of the shelter in order to get inside to safety. Of course, prior to the "The Shelter," the theme of survivalism had been used by many science fiction writers, but I think it is interesting that between the airing of "The Shelter" and the publication of the Whole Earth Catalog seven years later appeared Don Stephens' Retreater's Bibliography (1967) containing instructions on how to build and equip a remote survival shelter. A 1968 supplement to the Retreater's Bibliography was later issued, and there were subsequent reissues of the book as well. I should make it clear that I'm not claiming any cause-and-effect influence between Don Stephens' book and the Whole Earth Catalog. Rather, it was a matter of convergence of ideas, a prevailing belief in imminent social collapse and a suspicion that modern industrial society was about to undergo a disaster of apocalyptic scale -- the fragility of the social contract.

While certainly not its intent by any means, the Whole Earth Catalog arguably gave rise to a number of associated publications, among them William Powell's The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), which contains instructions for the manufacture of homemade explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and other things. A few years later, in 1975, Kurt Saxon started The Survivor, a newsletter urging subscribers to build fortified survival structures in rural or lightly populated areas where they might hold out against so-called "killer caravans" of looters from nearby urban centers -- that is, instructions to prepare themselves for the night of the living dead.

Ordinary People

The Rolling Stones' album Black and Blue (1976), a minor record in the Stones' vast oeuvre and the first made after the departure of guitarist Mick Taylor, was released 35 years ago today. This fact in itself is trivial and hardly worth mentioning. More interesting, historically speaking, is the controversy surrounding the manner in which the album was promoted (pictured, left). The Rolling Stones, one of the earliest rock bands to model itself consciously on the 1950s jazz subculture (or counterculture), successfully blurred any clear distinctions between being bohemian and being deviant.

The trend began, at least in terms of the band's album covers, with the graffiti-covered bathroom wall of Beggars Banquet (1968), which invoked the stereotypical site, in the popular imagination, of the male homosexual encounter. The origins of the S&M themed promotional image for Black and Blue came out of trends in fashion photography in the mid 70s, in particular the work of photographers such as Helmut Newton and Chris von Wangenheim. A year before Black and Blue's release, Newton had created a controversial May 1975 Vogue spread, "The Story of Ohhh…," which featured an image of a man sadistically grabbing hold of a woman's breast, linking sex, violence, and danger. On his part, Von Wagenheim had created a advertisement depicting a bejeweled model being bitten on the wrist by a Doberman pinscher. Although I no longer remember the moment when I first saw the promotional image for Black and Blue, studying it now it seems to be both a deliberate provocation as well as something of a put-on, perhaps another instance of Pop Art irony, possibly yet another illustration (for some) of art's fundamental donnée, to disturb. While the poster's visual pun on "black and blue" is hardly subtle -- a kid in junior high can get it -- that doesn't seem to be the real point. Album cover aside (in which the Stones seem strangely mannequin-like, alienated, and unfocused, perhaps to suggest the state of the band at the time), the poster for Black and Blue links sexual adventurism with S&M. The poster's self-conscious S&M theatricality, with its cuffs and ropes and its staging of violence and humiliation and the model's unambiguous sexual invitation, suggests domination and enslavement as well as outre´ sex as an exciting way of life. Hence the Stones represent everything hip and Modern--they are with it, man.

In her 1975 essay, Fascinating Fascism, Susan Sontag observed that this sort of imagery is "a logical extension of an affluent society's tendency to turn every part of people's lives into a taste, a choice; to invite them to regard their very lives as a (life) style. In all societies up to now, sex has mostly been an activity (something to do, without thinking about it). But once sex becomes a taste, it is perhaps already on its way to becoming a self-conscious form of theater, which is what sadomasochism is about: a form of gratification that is both violent and indirect, very mental." While Black and Blue's poster is perhaps stereotypical in the way it associates rock music with transgressive behavior, Sontag might argue that the poster's self-conscious imagery of sadomasochism acts as a sort of enticement, suggesting that while rock music to some is ultimately a harmless form of transgression (like driving through a red light at 3:00 a.m. when no cop is around), to the enlightened it is altogether more significant, promising the sort of extravagant life to which only Sade himself aspired, filled with dominance and submission, sex and humiliation, made even more exciting because "it is forbidden to ordinary people." In other words, to consume rock music (especially the Stones) is to surpass the limits of your dull, profane existence. In her essay, Sontag cites Leni Riefenstahl, who said, "What is purely realistic, slice of life, what is average, quotidian, doesn't interest me." Sontag writes, "As the social contract seems tame in comparison with war, so fucking and sucking come to seem merely nice, and therefore unexciting." In other words, Altamont was not the disaster that is usually depicted, but rather life at its most extreme, with all of its promise of excitement and danger. Anything but nice. Nice was Woodstock.

Which is also to say, rock itself is a form of gratification that is indirect and vicarious. But that is the way the Stones seem to want it: listen to the music and get your rocks off. The Stones, the dark double of the Beatles, the bad boys of rock, however they wanted to be perceived, certainly it was never as "nice." The Black and Blue poster is certainly not "nice." To be "nice" is to be civilized, which means to be alienated from, or deprived of, the savage experience the poster image promises -- even if that experience is theatrically staged.