386
JONATHAN MILLER
And what you get for your cash is just four glossy snaps of an improvised
charade of bare-bottom beating, with, more often than not, a couple of
obviously giggling, half-hearted tarts pulling each others' knicks down
in a small back bedroom in Meard Street. Sometimes they make a go
of decor and the photographic studio is got up to look a bit like a
dungeon or perhaps a schoolroom. All rather unconvincing since one
can usually make out a record player in the blurred background, and a
pile of Andre Kostelanetz records. Ay me the woods decay and fall!
Style has fled from the flagellant scene and since Gresham's law seems
to operate as much in Pornography as it does anywhere, the cheap photo–
graphic "tat" of today has driven out the more voluptuous currency of
old fashioned sadism. Just once in a while though, amongst the glossy
flagi-pics a perplexing pack of nineteenth drawings appear in photostat.
Suddenly one is back in the world of nuns swooning beneath the lash
of cruel abbesses, pale, furious governesses, darting eyes and all the
other desperate equipment of the romantic agony. But on the whole
Swinburne has given way to Stephen Ward and the fatal luxuries of
Our Lady of Pain have dwindled dismally to hasty high price punish–
ments in Old Compton Street. And of course as one gathered from
the whole Profumo affair, backed up by the sight of the clientele in these
porn shops, the flag scene is pathetically middle aged with flatulent
tycoons suffering themselves to be thrashed 'til the blood's drawn by
unconcerned young bits who'll turn their hands to anything for a
bit of cash. (Well that's
quite
enough of that, thank you very much!)
BeatIes, of course, are still of the essence, more perhaps now, though
in a special posthumous sort of way. They have passed on, not into
obscurity or anything like that, but upward into a Top People's paradise
where they are sometimes seen enjoying a quip with the Queen Mum
or else chatting up the Duke at a luncheon. They have become a
religion in fact. The days of their ministry on earth seems to be over–
they don't seem to perform so much-and they have been taken up into
heaven preferring to conserve the holy mystery of the Holy Quaternity
in a delicious incommunicado. All over the place though there are icons,
devotional photos and illuminated missals which keep the tiny earth–
bound fans in touch with the provocatively absconded deities. There
have been heresies of course. An antinomian group called the Rolling
Stones who have a rough delinquent style have got a huge following
and in fact all over London there is an air of expectant pop chiliasm
with Wardous Street filled these ayems with purple hearted drinamyl
droves coolly awaiting the resurrection of Charlemagne and the Franks.
The current War of the Roses is Mods versus Rockers. That's to
