Nothing Is Forever

Through a series of "projective" psychological questions, meant "to draw out a respondent's innermost feelings about diamond jewelry," the study attempted to examine further the semi-passive role played by women in receiving diamonds. The male-female roles seemed to resemble closely the sex relations in a Victorian novel. "Man plays the dominant, active role in the gift process. Woman's role is more subtle, more oblique, more enigmatic...." The woman seemed to believe there was something improper about receiving a diamond gift. Women spoke in interviews about large diamonds as "flashy, gaudy, overdone" and otherwise inappropriate. Yet the study found that "Buried in the negative attitudes ... lies what is probably the primary driving force for acquiring them. Diamonds are a traditional and conspicuous signal of achievement, status and success." It noted, for example, "A woman can easily feel that diamonds are 'vulgar' and still be highly enthusiastic about receiving diamond jewelry." The element of surprise, even if it is feigned, plays the same role of accommodating dissonance in accepting a diamond gift as it does in prime sexual seductions: it permits the woman to pretend that she has not actively participated in the decision. She thus retains both her innocence—and the diamond.

For advertising diamonds in the late 1970s, the implications of this research were clear. To induce men to buy diamonds for women, advertising should focus on the emotional impact of the "surprise" gift transaction. In the final analysis, a man was moved to part with earnings not by the value, aesthetics, or tradition of diamonds but by the expectation that a "gift of love" would enhance his standing in the eyes of a woman. On the other hand, a woman accepted the gift as a tangible symbol of her status and achievements.

By 1979, N. W. Ayer had helped De Beers expand its sales of diamonds in the United States to more than $2.1 billion, at the wholesale level, compared with a mere $23 million in 1939. In forty years, the value of its sales had increased nearly a hundredfold. The expenditure on advertisements, which began at a level of only $200,000 a year and gradually increased to $10 million, seemed a brilliant investment.

Except for those few stones that have been destroyed, every diamond that has been found and cut into a jewel still exists today and is literally in the public's hands. Some hundred million women wear diamonds, while millions of others keep them in safe-deposit boxes or strongboxes as family heirlooms. It is conservatively estimated that the public holds more than 500 million carats of gem diamonds, which is more than fifty times the number of gem diamonds produced by the diamond cartel in any given year. Since the quantity of diamonds needed for engagement rings and other jewelry each year is satisfied by the production from the world's mines, this half-billion-carat supply of diamonds must be prevented from ever being put on the market. The moment a significant portion of the public begins selling diamonds from this inventory, the price of diamonds cannot be sustained. For the diamond invention to survive, the public must be inhibited from ever parting with its diamonds.

In developing a strategy for De Beers in 1953, N. W. Ayer said: "In our opinion old diamonds are in 'safe hands' only when widely dispersed and held by individuals as cherished possessions valued far above their market price." As far as De Beers and N. W. Ayer were concerned, "safe hands" belonged to those women psychologically conditioned never to sell their diamonds. This conditioning could not be attained solely by placing advertisements in magazines. The diamond-holding public, which includes people who inherit diamonds, had to remain convinced that diamonds retained their monetary value. If it saw price fluctuations in the diamond market and attempted to dispose of diamonds to take advantage of changing prices, the retail market would become chaotic. It was therefore essential that De Beers maintain at least the illusion of price stability.

In the 1971 De Beers annual report, Harry Oppenheimer explained the unique situation of diamonds in the following terms: "A degree of control is necessary for the well-being of the industry, not because production is excessive or demand is falling, but simply because wide fluctuations in price, which have, rightly or wrongly, been accepted as normal in the case of most raw materials, would be destructive of public confidence in the case of a pure luxury such as gem diamonds, of which large stocks are held in the form of jewelry by the general public." During the periods when production from the mines temporarily exceeds the consumption of diamonds—the balance is determined mainly by the number of impending marriages in the United States and Japan—the cartel can preserve the illusion of price stability by either cutting back the distribution of diamonds at its London "sights," where, ten times a year, it allots the world's supply of diamonds to about 300 hand-chosen dealers, called "sight-holders," or by itself buying back diamonds at the wholesale level. The underlying assumption is that as long as the general public never sees the price of diamonds fall, it will not become nervous and begin selling its diamonds. If this huge inventory should ever reach the market, even De Beers and all the Oppenheimer resources could not prevent the price of diamonds from plummeting.

Selling individual diamonds at a profit, even those held over long periods of time, can be surprisingly difficult. For example, in 1970, the London-based consumer magazine Money Which? decided to test diamonds as a decade long investment. It bought two gem-quality diamonds, weighing approximately one-half carat apiece, from one of London's most reputable diamond dealers, for £400 (then worth about a thousand dollars). For nearly nine years, it kept these two diamonds sealed in an envelope in its vault. During this same period, Great Britain experienced inflation that ran as high as 25 percent a year. For the diamonds to have kept pace with inflation, they would have had to increase in value at least 300 percent, making them worth some £400 pounds by 1978. But when the magazine's editor, Dave Watts, tried to sell the diamonds in 1978, he found that neither jewelry stores nor wholesale dealers in London's Hatton Garden district would pay anywhere near that price for the diamonds. Most of the stores refused to pay any cash for them; the highest bid Watts received was £500, which amounted to a profit of only £100 in over eight years, or less than 3 percent at a compound rate of interest. If the bid were calculated in 1970 pounds, it would amount to only £167. Dave Watts summed up the magazine's experiment by saying, "As an 8-year investment the diamonds that we bought have proved to be very poor." The problem was that the buyer, not the seller, determined the price.

The magazine conducted another experiment to determine the extent to which larger diamonds appreciate in value over a one-year period. In 1970, it bought a 1.42 carat diamond for £745. In 1971, the highest offer it received for the same gem was £568. Rather than sell it at such an enormous loss, Watts decided to extend the experiment until 1974, when he again made the round of the jewelers in Hatton Garden to have it appraised. During this tour of the diamond district, Watts found that the diamond had mysteriously shrunk in weight to 1.04 carats. One of the jewelers had apparently switched diamonds during the appraisal. In that same year, Watts, undaunted, bought another diamond, this one 1.4 carats, from a reputable London dealer. He paid £2,595. A week later, he decided to sell it. The maximum offer he received was £1,000.

In 1976, the Dutch Consumer Association also tried to test the price appreciation of diamonds by buying a perfect diamond of over one carat in Amsterdam, holding it for eight months, and then offering it for sale to the twenty leading dealers in Amsterdam. Nineteen refused to buy it, and the twentieth dealer offered only a fraction of the purchase price.

Selling diamonds can also be an extraordinarily frustrating experience for private individuals. In 1978, for example, a wealthy woman in New York City decided to sell back a diamond ring she had bought from Tiffany two years earlier for $100,000 and use the proceeds toward a necklace of matched pearls that she fancied. She had read about the "diamond boom" in news magazines and hoped that she might make a profit on the diamond. Instead, the sales executive explained, with what she said seemed to be a touch of embarrassment, that Tiffany had "a strict policy against repurchasing diamonds." He assured her, however, that the diamond was extremely valuable, and suggested another Fifth Avenue jewelry store. The woman went from one leading jeweler to another, attempting to sell her diamond. One store offered to swap it for another jewel, and two other jewelers offered to accept the diamond "on consignment" and pay her a percentage of what they sold it for, but none of the half-dozen jewelers she visited offered her cash for her $100,000 diamond. She finally gave up and kept the diamond.

The Paleface

Don't Blame It On The Sunshine

I'm a dancin fool

Youwsa, youwsa, youwsa

I got it all together now

With my very own disco clothes, hey!

My shirts half open, to show you my chains

And the spoon for up my nose.

- Frank Zappa, 'Dancin' Fool'

“You know the Woodstock generation of the 1960s that were so full of themselves and conceited? None of those people could dance.” 

- The Last Days Of Disco (Wilt Stillman, 1988)

"Musically, disco developed out of the main styles of early 70s black music: the polyrthymic funk inspired by James Brown and George Clinton, and uptempo soul music, especially extended versions of Philadelphia International hits. Socially, its primary sources lay in the gay rights movement that gathered momentum follwing the Stonewall Riot of 1969"

- Craig Hansen Werner A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America

“The tone of the place is sufficiently gay that a woman can protect herself by adopting a fierce gaze to indicate dykishness, or by staring fixedly at herself in a mirror, for self-absorption is respected here.” 

- Harpers magazine article on disco, 1976

"Disco... was a beautiful artform. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star." - Barry White

“Studio 54 was the embodiment of the most decadent social period of any city in modern history. By 1978, Dionysus had hired a press agent and New York was headlong into an era of staggering permissiveness.” 

- Steve Gaines Simply Halston: The Untold Story

"I first noticed it the first time I threw a party. The staff of Punk magazine came, as well as members of several of the hottest CBGB's bands, and when I did what we always used to do at parties in Detroit - put on soul records so everybody could dance - I began to hear this: "What're you playing all that nigger disco shit for, Lester?" 

- Lester Bangs, 'The White Noise Supremacists'

"Disco seemed to arouse something like castration anxiety in rockers."

- Alice Echols Hot Stuff: Disco And The Remaking Of American Culture

"It felt to us like Nazi book-burning. This is America, the home of jazz and rock and people were now afraid even to say the word 'disco'."

- Nile Rogers, Chic

Running Up That Hill, With No Problems

"The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterolgical armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness." 

- Wilhelm Reich

I've never been a huge fan of Kate Bush, but she's certainly intruiged me since an early age. Stars who maintain such a long, incredibly successful career while retaining a key element of mystery often do. In our age of wall-to-wall gossip, pop punditry and celebrity saturation, Bush has managed to remain low-key over three decades (rarely giving interviews, never touring); while somehow making every album release an event of sorts. This is rare for any pop star, but it's practically unheard of for modern female performers. It also fascinates how universal her appeal is - black or white, male or female, gay or straight, she's retained a global fan base loyal enough to ensure Platinum sales since 1978. Is there anyone else who could inspire devoted plaudits from Rufus Wainwright, Outkast, Ariel Pink, Rolf Harris, Tricky, Charlotte Church, Prince and John Lydon? If anything, she's as inclusive as a pop star could be since the 70s.

There are superficial elements of prog, folk and MOR in her 70s records, but it remains difficult to categorise Bush in those genres. Her creative autonomy and studio mastery are widely admired, and it's striking how she continues to remain 'outside' music industry trends. David Gilmour's patronage - and early, crass attempts by EMI to exploit her sex appeal - are little more than footnotes to her biography now. Barely out of school, she burst into the charts with one of the weirdest 'novelty' singles to ever top the charts around the world. There were inevitable spoofs, but watching them now it's apparent how wide off the mark those parodies were. For all the dance moves, mannered vocals, and undeniable hamminess, she's avoided the contempt shown towards many venerable pop stars. 1978 audiences didn't quite know how to take her, but 'Wuthering Heights' and subsequent album The Kick Inside established a persona that has grown while remaining remarkably consistent. She is an unashamed European romantic who emerged at a time when the romantic 'project', and by extension modernism, was assumed dead everywhere, from the pop charts to academia to politics.

 

The novel Wuthering Heights itself maintains a mysterious appeal. Has there ever been a more popular love story with such vile characters at the centre of it? The love depicted in Wuthering Heights is one of resentment, cruelty, misery, betrayal, claustrophobia and slow, early death. It's doubtful any of us could bear a short introduction to Heathcliff or Cathy, much less ruin our lives in their names. Yet despite canonisation as a classroom text, it still strikes a chord with readers to this day, with endless film versions and predictable popularity in 'big read' surveys. Not quite 'gothic', its savage l'amour fou was a major inspiration to the surrealists, with Luis Bunuel releasing a version after several aborted attempts. The layered, conflicting perspectives on this nightmare couple are arguably as much a precursor to modernist narrative as Tristram Shandy. But it isn't Sterne drawing tears from housewives and informing unforgettable songs. There's a certain something - never quite captured by most adaptations - haunting the novel, its readers, and Kate Bush's music.

The vocals of the song were re-recorded by Bush in 1986, and the production 'beefed up'. It was a curious move to change her most recognisable hit. This time it was sung with more aggression and frustration, less vulnerability; cries growing up into a howl. It came after the success of a series of albums leading to Hounds Of Love, the singles of which worked towards a general theme (elaborated on the 'Ninth Wave' suite, on the album's second half). Consider the chorus of 'Running Up That Hill' - what was this song actually about? The sound of it - infectious as it was - is telling. Promised crescendos never quite arrive, but are alluded to in ghostly vocal overdubs lurking in the background. It gains coherence in light of other songs like 'Hounds Of Love', which continues the imagery and movement of the above (also in 'Babooshka', 'Suspended in Gaffa', 'Wow' and 'Sat In Your Lap'); of an invitation to something, moving towards it with open arms, then retreating in frustration at the crucial moment.

From nothing real

I just can't deal with this

I'm still afraid to be there

The real clincher comes with 'Cloudbusting', a Radio 2/MTV hit about... Wilhelm Reich? Both song and video focus on his more bizarre experiments, and the equally bizarre suppression of  his work (not only was Reich jailed until his death, the government destroyed all his scientific papers, to the indifference of other scientists). Unlike her contemporaries, Bush has never been one for impotent political postures. 'Army Dreamers', 'This Woman's Work' or 'The Dreaming' deal with themes that could have been touched on by 18th century romantic poets. But Reich, pariah of the psychoanalysts, lapsed (but unrepentant) Marxist and progenitor of the 'sexual revolution', was very much a 20th century figure; less easily assimilated than Freud, more outre than Jung, and an eccentric embarrassment to the left. Despite relative obscurity, changing sexual attitudes have made many of his ideas commonplace since the 70s. 

Although Reich's writings found favour in more occult circles, mysticism and hippy platitudes get short shrift in Bush's songs. Images of trees, mountains, skies and waves - romantic cliches on the surface - are militantly material. For both her and Reich, nature in all its chaos and danger is the energy required to be fully human, from the kick inside to Aboriginal 'dreamtime'. This theme has been explored since 'Them Heavy People', her 1978 tribute to Gurdjieff and whirling dervishes. As with the momentum of so many of her songs, the modern subject tends to retreat from this energy under the fragile armor of contrived personae ('Wow', 'Babooshka') or technological hubris ('Breathing', 'Experiment IV'). Since the industrial revolution, unmetered energy has been treated like some ineffectual ghost, yet her lyrics often read like open invitations to it. The Red Shoes alludes to the dangers of unleashing dormant ecstasy as much as Wuthering Heights. However they may be the kind of energies that don't need to be harnessed so much as embraced, the knowledge that is "sat there in your lap": 

I hold a cup of wisdom

But there is nothing within.

My cup, she never overfloweth

And 'tis I moaneth and I groaneth

Bush has always been open about her cultural influences. Unlike the reference points of David Bowie or other art school dilettantes, she's also remained true to a consistent preoccupation. Previous ecstasies are now more sanguine with motherhood, personal grief and maturity; but even the title of Arial betrays ideas of another world lurking below. Not a world promised by God, but another kind of holy ghost - one that haunts the biological human body itself (it was her physicality that comedians attempted to mock, but looking more embarrassed than their target). This ghost continues to haunt western culture. From Greek tragedy to modernism, the romantic ode to the guitar solo, the Holy Roman Empire to fascism. The bete noire of scientific, religious, political and domestic authority; acknowledged as an invisible battleground by feminism. The unnameable, irresistible but monstrous element that dragged Cathy and Heathcliff to the moors. The great terror that doomed Wilhelm Reich and his research to a lonely grave. The dreamtime lying outside measurable space, unlocked by the key she kisses to Houdini on the cover of The Dreaming. It's Molly Bloom's joyous, restless, delirious climax to Ulysses; as honoured in The Sensual World. Throughout Kate Bush's music and imagery lurks yet another spectre haunting Europe: the orgasm.

The Apocalyptic Underclass

A Boy and His Dog (1975), although never a hit, was somewhat influential in its depiction of a post-apocalyptic world. Directed by L.Q. Jones (a character actor mainly known for his Peckinpah lowlifes), it has obvious echoes in Mad Max, not least in its post- technological inversion of the western (although some 70s westerns share motifs). Featuring a young Don Johnson as Vic, who 'scouts' a post-nuclear wasteland with the help of his telepathic dog Blood, it depicts a world where young men and boys (no-one lives long here) fight a war of all against all for food and women. Guns are the only guarantor of trade, and dogs are the smartest guys in the room. 

The 70s was the decade when various apocalyptic scenarios went mainstream. The disaster movie cycle (Towering Inferno, Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure, various Airports, and any number of films where nature strikes back) modified the premise of the previous decade's On The Beach, with superstars as elites facing overwhelming disaster, attempting to survive it assisted by professional expertise. Along with the nightmare scenarios, the basic pleasure was waiting to see who made it to the end ("Ooh Robert Vaughn's dead! Will Fred Astaire survive?"). There was also novelty in the Grim Reaper not selecting victims according to status.

However, with their use of spectacular effects and all-star casts, the 'event' disaster movie had its low budget mirror image (often the case with 70s genres). The lewder, cruder apocalyptic scenarios of George A. Romero, Roger Corman or other 'exploitation' productions rarely featured elite characters or superstar experts who could eventually save the day. This time, the stories were largely told on the level of worn-down working stiffs, or indeed a dangerous 'underclass' excluded from labour value. Mirrored in their budgetary differences, these conflicting perspectives were a matter of class. The economic relations and emotional connections of bigger budget disasters were put aside to favour raw survival. With victims played by c-list actors, individual deaths were granted less dramatic significance. With stagflation, mass lay-offs and energy crises moving many urban areas towards 'post-apocalyptic' conditions, faith in technical expertise and organisation wasn't an option at the grindhouse (like the one still open for business in A Boy and His Dog, showing porn loops and old westerns). Nor did these films affirm family bonds in their traditional sense.

A Boy and His Dog generated fierce feminist criticism for its sexual politics. 70s cinema's obsession with rape has been discussed here, and this film is no exception in its disturbing attitude to women (also present in Harlan Ellison's original stories*). The figure of 'woman' - teenage Quilla June - is posited between a suffocating, (literally) sterile social conservatism and the most brutal form of post-capitalism, with women  the ultimate commodity - producer or product. Underground, women are reproduction machines in a grotesque version of Republican ideals (anticipating The Handmaid's Tale). Outside, women hide away for their own safety - hence the need for 'his dog' to sniff them out in exchange for food. Both 'societies' being caricatures of what each fears in the other; Quilla June's 'choice' is between a patriarchal prison of automated duty, or a feral 'me' generation of violent sexual predators. Much criticism focussed on her character willingly trading on these misogynist negations. Without giving away spoilers, family and 'love' are revealed as meaningless when pit against crude, ugly necessity.

Like so much of 70s cinema, it opens up stark polarisations without easy resolution. The idea of the repressive, family-driven small town vs. the lawless post-industrial wasteland still informs American political discourse (and has increasing traction in Europe too). In their youth, both Vic and Quilla June are little more than bewildered adjuncts of their respective worlds, fuelled by illusions of power and escape. The film was released in the dying days of Fordism, and more than its explanatory nuclear war, the film's anxieties fixate on masculinity as an unruly surplus, with women as its economic and/or biological battleground. This theme is now common to 'apocalyptic' scenarios, and not just in film. Although the big budget 'event' disaster has since returned to re-affirm family values, the supposed 'underclass' despair of A Boy and His Dog  - and similar low-budget 70s catastrophes - has disseminated into popular culture more pervasively than the gentrified, containable nightmares of Irwin Allen.

*Later - unfilmed - stories of Vic and Blood feature radioactive zombies, and a lot more 'survivor guilt'. Ellison's stories, like Romero's films, were deeply influenced by Richard Matheson's I Am Legend - the urtext for innumerable novels, comics, films, TV shows and games since the 70s.

Permissive Society, Raging Bulls

Just some of the leading actresses (as they were then known) of the 70s who had key roles as victims of sexual violence:

Sissy Spacek, Nancy Allen, Faye Dunaway, Isabel Huppert, Jodie Foster, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Susan George, Diana Ross, Raquel Welch, Diane Keaton, Liv Ullmann, Mia Farrow, Charlotte Rampling, Joan Collins, Catherine Deneuve, Candice Bergen, Jessica Lange, Margot Kidder, Angie Dickinson, Stephanie Beacham, Sally Kellerman, Pam Grier, Mariel & Margeaux Hemingway, Farrah Fawcett, Lesley Anne Downe, Barbara Hershey, Genevieve Bujold, Brooke Shields, Charlotte Rampling, Sylvia Krystel, Barbara Hershey, Susan Sarandon.*

Directors of the 70s - who used sexual violence in their key films:

Sam Pekinpah, Martin Scorcese, Brian Depalma, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Bernardo Bertollucci, Michael Winner, Don Seigel, Robert Altman, Claude Chabrol, John Carpenter, Nicholas Roeg, Ken Russell, Clint Eastwood, Alan J. Pakula, Pasolini, Jodorowsky, Wes Craven, George A. Romero, Jonathan Demme, Michael Ritchie, Paul Schrader, Marco Ferreri, Bertrand Blier, William Friedkin, Sidney Lumet, Ingmar Bergman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Richard Brooks, Arthur Penn, Luis Bunuel, Ridley Scott, and the grandaddy of them all... Alfred Hitchcock.**

These lists only cover the 70s 'mainstream' - we'll leave aside the endless reels of porn, exploitation, and 'video nasties' for now (or the many emerging national cinemas of the period). But the question remains: why, even if we allow for the easing of censorship, was rape such a defining motif of the 70s? How did its 'legendary' directors make such a name for themselves with an unprecedented level of visual misogyny? Why, from '68 onwards, was rape used so frequently, 'humorous' to horrific, left-wing to right-wing, leading the plot or as background incident, overwhelmingly man on woman, but also incorporating man-on-man, paedophilia, incest, necrophilia, bestiality... and even between humans and demons, viruses, machines or aliens? Particularly telling is how almost every genre and market (however 'niche') indulged in scenes of rape of some kind.

It's now common currency that late 70s/80s cinema was a restoration of sorts, but even then rape continued to march across screens regardless; this time with the 'rape revenge' cycle, in line with the right-wing agenda of the 'rehabilitated' hero on the side of law and order, family values, and imperial wish fulfillment. But for many films of the 70s that (at the very least) had deeply ambivalent attitudes towards the traditional hero and the ideology he represented, rape became the brutality du jour - standing in for capital in many cases, sometimes for the urban/ethnic hordes in need of 'cleansing', at other times for the unaccountable power of government and military, or uncontainable 'rebelliousness'.

The (re)emergence of feminism at the dawn of the 70s had a part to play, of course - but was it seen as that threatening so early? Unlike 40s noir (itself revived in a big way during the 70s), 70s male confusion and anxiety was reluctant to blame women outright for their woes. It instead became a ritual, a motif present in the most inappropriate of narrative arcs. A shorthand way of telling us the Hero Isn't a Nice Guy, or Capitalism Is Cruel, or The Orgy's Gone Too Far. Most telling of all, rape was something for men to deal with (or dramatically fail to deal with). Such ambiguities were often closed to the women concerned. If they were 'lucky', then it was a one night stand and/or silenced with a door slammed in their face. Otherwise it was rape, a gaping wound, or a long take of their mutilated remains to get the second act in gear.

It is perhaps telling how 'iconic' some of these films - and their 'maverick' auteurs - now are. Long awaited 'uncut' versions generate hype (among boys of all ages) restoring the kind of misogyny that censors and county councils once thought beyond the pale. How far we've come in the name of 'liberation'!

*You may find some of these names obscure. Of those that survived the increasingly juvenile casting demands of the 80s/90s, many continued in parts where they fight institutional misogyny (but win over the 'liberal' self-flattery of tinseltown). With the 'redemption' requirements of later Hollywood, they often came up trumps on a 'personal' level. A case in point being Jodie Foster, who went from being a twelve-year old prostitute (nearly all these actresses played prostitutes), to a court case/academy award winning gang rape victim, to her most successful role as a plucky FBI agent who melts the heart of a cannibalistic serial killer... to her current niche as maternal vigilante who's mad as hell and won't take it anymore.

**Of the surviving directors, many have the convenient niche of cynical hackery or basically remaking the same film over and over again, until that darn oscar shows up. They overcame misogyny by pushing female characters as far back as is narratively possible, and making maleness it's own melodrama.