2013.06.19 为什么这么多人喜欢看女性自杀的图片？

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SEXES
Why Do So Many People Like Looking at Images of Women Committing Suicide?
Drawings, paintings, and photographs of dead young women have been popular for centuries.

By Emily Matchar
JUNE 19, 2013
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matchar_suicide2_lines.jpg
A 16th-century drawing of Cleopatra on her deathbed; a 19th-century painting of Hamlet's Ophelia; a 1947 photograph of Evelyn McHale, who leapt to her death from the Empire State Building; a 2009 Lanvin advertisement
This week, the shock-mongers at Vice are in trouble over a fashion spread depicting famous female writers who have committed suicide, in the act of committing suicide. There's Sylvia Plath kneeling before the oven, historian Iris Chang with a gun in her mouth, Charlotte Perkins Gilman clutching a chloroform-soaked rag to her face. All wearing kicky retro blouses and drapey, romantic gowns, of course.


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The spread created so much controversy—"ghoulish," wrote the New York Observer; "shameful," said Jezebel; "a new low," said Salon—that Vice took the pictures off the website, posting a standard semi-apology ("[we] apologize to anyone who was hurt or offended").

But Vice is hardly the first to aestheticize the suicides of famous women, to make death by one's own hand look glamorous, even sexy. From Lucretia piercing her bare breast with a dagger, to Cleopatra clutching the asp to her milky bosom, to Ophelia floating weightlessly in a flower-filled stream, female suicide has long been a titillating subject for artists.

Even un-famous suicides have inspired art and fashion. There's L'Inconnue de la Seine, the unknown teenage suicide fished from the river with an impossibly peaceful look on her lovely face. Her death mask, taken by a smitten morgue worker, has been inspiration for dozens of works of literature and music, as well as the basis for the Resusci Anne CPR doll, the "most kissed face" of all time. There's Evelyn McHale, who jumped off the Empire State Building in 1947, leaving a strangely serene-looking corpse lying on top of a crushed limo. The Life magazine photo of her Sleeping Beauty-like corpse became an Andy Warhol print.

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So what is it about dead young women that artists find so romantic?

Some of the fascination is obvious. Early suicide means staying young and beautiful forever. Female suicide is also associated with certain supposedly feminine attributes: sensitivity, being swept away by emotion, submission to forces larger than oneself. But more significantly, the suicide fixation is part of a general cultural obsession with beautiful dead or dying women, in fiction and in life. From Beth in Little Women to Satine in Moulin Rouge! to Winona Ryder/Charlize Theron in Autumn in New York/Sweet November, the rosy-cheeked, glassy-eyed consumptive, the ethereally pale cancer patient, are alluring. They're thin. They're passive. Their needs are few.

Using images of gorgeous dead women to sell consumer products isn't new either. You only need to flip through a glossy magazine to see images of apparently deceased women selling sunglasses and headphones and stiletto heels. A French Wrangler jeans ad shows a mud-splattered corpse half submerged in a pond. A series of Lanvin ads feature stiff, pale women splayed on couches as if in rigor mortis, cats surrounding their bodies. The platinum blonde in a Versace ad lies sprawled at the bottom of a marble staircase in a sparkly purple gown, blank eyes gazing heavenward. To judge by fashion shoots, you'd think necrophilia was as hip as skinny jeans.


Like these ads, the Vice spread uses passive dead or near-dead female bodies to sell clothes. Which is gross enough. But the fact that THIS is the way Vice chooses to portray such brilliant and accomplished female authors—mad, tragic, broken, silenced—is doubly sexist and offensive.

In my imaginary photo shoot, Dorothy Parker is mid-joke at the Algonquin Round Table. Virginia Woolf is squeezing Vita Sackville-West's ass at a picnic. Sylvia Plath is typing, baby on her lap. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is handing out pamphlets on evolution at a Darwinist meeting.

They're active, they're in their element. They're doing the things that made them who they were, not the one thing that ended their lives.

Emily Matchar is the author of the forthcoming book Homeward Bound: The New Cult of Domesticity.



性别
为什么这么多人喜欢看妇女自杀的图片？
几个世纪以来，死去的年轻女性的图画、绘画和照片一直很受欢迎。

作者：Emily Matchar
2013年6月19日
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matchar_suicide2_lines.jpg
16世纪埃及艳后临终前的画作；19世纪哈姆雷特的奥菲利亚画作；1947年从帝国大厦跳楼自杀的伊夫林-麦克黑尔的照片；2009年朗雯的广告
本周，Vice公司的震惊者们因为一幅描绘自杀的著名女作家的时尚传播画而陷入困境，在自杀的过程中。西尔维娅-普拉斯（Sylvia Plath）跪在烤箱前，历史学家张爱玲（Iris Chang）嘴里含着一把枪，夏洛特-珀金斯-吉尔曼（Charlotte Perkins Gilman）脸上攥着一块浸泡过氯仿的抹布。当然，所有人都穿着时髦的复古衬衫和垂坠的浪漫长袍。


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这篇报道引起了很大的争议--《纽约观察家》写道："可怕的"；Jezebel说："可耻的"；Salon说："一个新的低点"，Vice把这些照片从网站上撤下来，发表了标准的半道歉声明（"我们向任何受到伤害或冒犯的人道歉"）。

但Vice并不是第一个将著名女性的自杀行为美学化，使自己的死亡看起来很有魅力，甚至很性感。从卢克丽霞用匕首刺穿自己的裸胸，到克利奥帕特拉将天鹅肉紧紧抱在怀里，再到奥菲利亚在开满鲜花的溪流中失重地漂浮，女性自杀长期以来一直是艺术家的一个刺激性主题。

即使是不出名的自杀者也激发了艺术和时尚。塞纳河畔的L'Inconnue》，这位不知名的少女自杀者从河中捞起，她可爱的脸上带着不可能有的平静表情。她的死亡面具被一个痴情的停尸房工作人员拿走，成为几十部文学和音乐作品的灵感，也是Resusci Anne CPR娃娃的基础，是有史以来 "最亲的脸"。还有伊芙琳-麦克黑尔，她在1947年从帝国大厦跳下，留下一具看起来很奇怪的宁静的尸体，躺在一辆被压坏的轿车上面。她那张睡美人般的尸体的《生活》杂志照片成为安迪-沃霍尔的印刷品。

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那么，是什么让艺术家们觉得死去的年轻女性如此浪漫呢？

其中的一些魅力是显而易见的。早期自杀意味着永远保持年轻和美丽。女性自杀也与某些所谓的女性属性有关：敏感、被情感冲昏头脑、服从于比自己更大的力量。但更重要的是，对自杀的迷恋是文化上对美丽的死亡或垂死的女性的普遍迷恋的一部分，在小说和生活中都是如此。从《小妇人》中的贝丝到《红磨坊》中的莎婷，再到《纽约的秋天》/《甜蜜的十一月》中的薇诺娜-赖德/查理兹-塞隆，脸色红润、目光炯炯的痨病患者，空灵苍白的癌症患者，都是诱人的。他们很瘦。他们是被动的。她们的需求很少。

利用美丽的女尸形象来销售消费品也不是什么新鲜事。你只需要翻开一本光鲜亮丽的杂志，就能看到明显是已故女性的形象，她们在推销太阳镜、耳机和细高跟鞋。法国Wrangler牛仔裤的广告显示，一具溅满泥浆的尸体半淹没在池塘里。一系列的Lanvin广告展示了僵硬、苍白的女性躺在沙发上，仿佛处于僵硬状态，猫咪围绕着她们的身体。范思哲广告中的金发女郎穿着闪亮的紫色长袍，躺在大理石楼梯的底部，空洞的眼睛望着天空。从时尚摄影作品来看，你会认为恋尸癖和紧身牛仔裤一样时髦。


像这些广告一样，《副刊》利用被动的死亡或接近死亡的女性身体来卖衣服。这已经够恶心了。但事实上，Vice选择用这种方式来描绘如此出色和有成就的女作家--疯狂、悲惨、破碎、沉默--是双重的性别歧视和攻击性。

在我想象中的照片中，多萝西-帕克正在阿尔贡金圆桌会议上说笑。弗吉尼亚-伍尔夫在野餐时捏着维塔-萨克维尔-韦斯特的屁股。西尔维娅-普拉斯正在打字，婴儿在她的腿上。夏洛特-帕金斯-吉尔曼在达尔文主义会议上分发关于进化论的小册子。

他们是积极的，他们是在他们的元素。他们在做使他们成为自己的事情，而不是结束他们生命的一件事。

艾米丽-马查尔是即将出版的《回家》一书的作者。新的家庭崇拜。