Real Dolls

Comparative Literature maven and surf diva Keri Endich joins us for a meditation on ersatz love companions!

From: Keri Endich"
To: "Bill Nericcio
Subject: RE: ENGL493-01-Spring2007: Key Counsel | e493
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:30:57 -0700

If lust is in your way of having a "real" relationship check this site out! This website is filled with over the top obscene machines. Virtually these "dolls" are made, sold, and bought to fulfill everyone's sexual fantasies. You can successfully order and customize your doll straight from your home by accessing this website and following some simple steps. The features your doll can have are limitless! You can pick anything from the nail color of your "doll" to the exact skin tone of your liking. The list goes on... do you have a sexual preference of what your "dolls" pubic hair is colored?- Well if you do- then the "realdoll" is right for you.



Go ahead- play around on the site with a virtual tour of what you would want your doll to look like. This enables the customer to be guaranteed that what they are getting is their choice. Did I mention that this web site also offers "shemales" as one of their "doll" features? Regardless of your sexual fantasies the real doll website will help create what is best for you!

Ok- lets get serious here... I am not making this up... and I am not trying to promote a new product line to the sexually frustrated. I just think that it would be nice for everyone to start accepting the fact that people are sex obsessed and there are places on the web that cater to those needs. When I stumbled- ok I fell rather hardly upon this site, I could not stop looking at it. I viewed the different photos of "dolls" and felt as if I were looking at porn.

The "dolls" seemed so lifelike that I wondered if any marriages were broken up because a wife or husband walked in on their spouse with one of these machines. This creation takes machines to a different level than I would have thought fathomable for people. I think overall it is sending the wrong message to people. Letters and e-mails were posted for reccomendations on certain dolls and what they could do for you. People were said to have like the dolls more than their "wives" and that being with a realdoll was stress free. I suppose that the only thing these dolls are really lacking is the ability to communicate- but hey what do we need that for anyway? There is also a video of an artist that features a realdoll in his video. She falls off a balcony and seems to be ok afterwards!



These creepy machines are being created without most people knowing about them. I can see the dangers that these dolls could have among all of our psyches. There are strong emotional attachments with children and their dolls, could this not be the same for adults? Although the dolls seem to be full of life physically there are emotonal needs that people have which are not being met. Whether inlove or obsessed with your doll, you cannot take him/her home to mom and dad. I think this sexual fantasy is teetering on the edge of creating some fucked up relationships with that of reality. These dolls are "real" but I think all of the reality has escaped their users.

Keri

Prolegomena to a Theory of the African American Imaginary

SDSU English and Comparative Literature Graduate Student Bianca Chapman checks in with some semantic and semiotic fire:

“But in my case everything takes on a new guise. I am given no chance. I am overdetermined from without. I am the slave not of the “idea” that others have of me but of my own appearance.” –Frantz Fanon

The image holds an ever-steady beat, permeating through the consciousness. The beat can transcend the music held before its composition, or it fights through the impressive amount of noise surrounding it. The African-American female image works over-time. As gifted student of the culture, Kiri Davis, demonstrates in an entry to the Sixth Annual Media That Matters Film Festival, there is a very present dissection of the “proper” image and the image of the African-American self. This concept of beauty is buried underneath the guise that dark-skin is still associated with “badness” or “ugliness” while lighter skin is associated with “goodness” or “beauty.” As the investigation continues, Davis juxtaposes (ever so appropriately) the experiment used by Dr. Kenneth Clark to justify segregation in the Brown vs. Board of Education case with a contemporary experiment of identical proportions. African-American children were given two dolls, black and white, and positioned to choose which dolls (yes, dolls) were better, nicer, prettier. The majority of the children preferred the white dolls over the black dolls. Davis consorts with this experiment in 2006 and little has changed. The power of the image has transformed into a louder/brighter force, suffocating the eyes/ears of human beings of African descent. We also see the opportunity of this toy-takeover in Republic of the Congo, thanks to the prolific work of Hector Mediavilla.



The dolls/mannequins represent what Fanon emphasizes as the need to become white at the expense of the dark skin or the “dark” image. The dolls also give a diagnosis of the destruction of the self-image in the African-American consciousness. The doll becomes the embodiment of the beat/image, its power only determined by the ability to be absorbed or (hopefully) purged.

Dolls | Black and White and Upside-down

Graduate student extraordinaire from e725 drops out of the blue and into the Obscene Machine blog with a provocative entry on dolls:

Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:18:17 -0700
From: "Andrea Knab"
Subject Blog submissionTo: "Bill Nericcio"

Hi Professor Nericcio

I found this image online and thought it was interesting. Apparently, the lucky child to take this doll home can play with his/her black baby doll or white baby doll by just flipping the dress over. What I think is most interesting is that the white doll's face is obviously worn, her eye is missing and the paint on her face and hand is chipped. However, the black doll's face is pristine. The child who owned this doll seems to have favored playing with the white doll more than the black one.
According to the website where I found the picture, the dolls date back to the antebellum era and were thought to represent the symbiotic relationship between black and white children. I searched for more "upside down dolls" and found this description: A very charming vintage upside down doll. One side is a black mammie type character with a floral gown and great bead necklace. The other side is an equally lovely Carmen Miranda type character with a fruit hat, bright beads and pretty red dress. These dolls represent extremely generalized representations of black and Latin women. The children who play with these dolls undoubtedly imagined them to be the mammie, Latin diva, or some other type of stereotypical role.
Sadly, I'm sure kids today would play with these dolls in the much the same way.

Andrea Knab

Cyberhive 18: Technosexualities | Real Dolls in the House

Two of our Technosexualities cybernauts checks in with postings.....   do note that some of the links are NSFW.... not safe for work; do avoid if you are squeamish about adult issues!

first posting... from Jenna Carter:

Original-Recipient: rfc822;bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu
Subject: More MALAS Cross Pollination
From: Jenna
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:30:56 -0700
To: William Nericcio <bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu>
Check this out! Ever heard of this Asian phenomenon??
Interesting video at the top of the page here:
.... all of which reminds me of the movie Lars and the Real Girl!

-Jenn

The second from Ashley Boyd...

>>Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:42:35 -0700
>>Subject: Re: Guys and Dolls (BBC Documentary)--MUST WATCH!
>>From: Ashley Boyd
>>To: Bill Nericcio

>>Dear Dr. Nericcio, >> >>I found this BBC documentary on Youtube called "Guys and Dolls". Its >>about men who buy Real Dolls for companionship (I suggest visiting >>their site to find out exactly what they are if you do not know already). >>It's really interesting. One >>guy said that he preferred the Real Dolls over what he termed >>"organic" women. I found that interesting and also particularly >>problematic especially from a feminist perspective... >> >>Here's the link: >>Guys nd Dolls (BBC Real Doll Documentary All five or six parts are >>available on Youtube.
>>
>>Ashley
>>
>>--
>>
>>
>>Ashley Boyd
>> >>Ashley >> >>-- >> >> >>Ashley Boyd

Hans Bellmer

e725 Ace Reporter Natasha, checks into the Obscene Machine labyrinth with a worthy posting on Hans Bellmer's work:

From: "natasha"
To:
Subject: blog submission
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 12:35:58 -0700

Prof.Nericcio,

I came across an artist that I felt we could apply to our class and many of the works we have been sharing. Hans Bellmer (1902- 1975) was a French sculpture and photographer.


Among the art world, he was thought as a Surrealist. He was best known for his bizarre, life-sized dolls that he created in the 1930's. He first started making the dolls to oppose fascism of the Nazi Party. Many of the doll parts and poses were extremely odd and unusual, many with 'mutated forms and unconventional poses.' (see plates) He designed the doll project to renounce the Nazi Party's idea of the 'perfect body.' Bellmer was forced to flee to Paris after the Nazi Party declared his work immoral. Although his work was more broadly accepted in Paris, he did spend most of WWII in prison but did eventually resided in Paris. He stopped making dolls and for the rest of his life proceeded creating erotic drawings, paintings, and photographs depicting adolescent girls.





Today, more than ever with so many anorexic models, actresses, musicians, role models etc (who desperately need to be fed )...we need to send a positive message to our youth and campaign for better representation of young women in our advertisements. If not the consequences could be severe. Bellmer's work shows us that these issues have been pressing since the beginning of time.

Thank you! Natasha

Dare Wright, Dolls, Photography, and the Psyche

Ace e725 Correspondent, Tria Andrews, checks in with a moving and evocative dispatch that fuses select, nuanced elements of our seminar's obsessions:

From: "Tria Andrews"
To: bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu
Subject: e725 Dare Wright


Dr. Nericcio,

I have recently finished reading a wonderful biography--Jean Nathan's The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright. The biography is not only fascinating, but entirely relevant to our course studies. Dare Wright wrote a series of morbidly enchanting children's books in which she photographed dolls and stuffed bears. She also, like Cindy Sherman (whom another classmate wrote in about earlier this semester), took many self-portraits, some of which she appeared arguably as herself and others, in which she appeared as someone else--muse, mermaid, dead girl.

Wright's life is highly problematic. As a child, she posed for countless hours while her mother, a renowned artist, painted her photograph. The two had a close--almost incestuous relationship. Wright, who never married and eventually lost her mother was, as the title of the biography points up, herself a lonely doll. Friends of the Wrights recall that they were always hungry when visiting. Mother and daughter were not interested in food or even so much social interaction as they were at playing elaborate dress up. Wright even painted the floor of her apartment so that it appeared to be black and white tile and not the hardwood that it was. Visitors marveled at the realism of the facade.

The woman, the woman-child, and the child as doll. What could be more relevant to our discussion than a real life example? And the entrapment of Wright, her sad, sad decline as she and her mother aged--could no longer continue their respective rolls--is none other than tragedy.

I do hope some people will look into Dare. She is one of my favorites.

Tria

CYBERHIVE 40: Technosexualities | Nazi Sex Technology Break-throughs!

Bill,

I snagged  this text straight off the Internet (shame, shame, I know) BUT I found this bit of historical information quite interesting:

1941 ---- Nazi’s Invent the Modern Sex Doll. 

That’s right! The world’s first sex-dolls as we know them were created in Nazi Germany at the request of the SS leader, Heinrich Himmler. Called the “Borghild Field-Hygiene Project,” Himmler came up with the concept to stop the “unnecessary losses” of Nazi soldiers due to STD’s. The Project was considered ”Geheime Reichssache,” translated:  ”More secret than top secret.”

The sculptor on the project, Arthur Rink, created three dolls. Typ A: 168 cm bust. Typ B: 176 and Typ C: 182 cm. According to Rink, The SS wanted the breasts “round and full” and SS Dr. Olen Hannussen insisted on “a rose hip form, that would grip well.” As for the face (Yes, they cared about the face, too.) The team agreed it needed a cheeky and naughty look.  They asked to borrow the face of an actress of the time, Käthe von Nagy, for the doll, but she declined. Dr. Hannussen suggested an “artificial face of lust”, which he thought would be more appealing to the soldiers.  Technician, Franz Tschakert agreed saying, “The doll has only one purpose and she should never become a substitute for the honorable mother at home… When the soldier makes love to Borghild, it has nothing to do with love. Therefore the face of our anthropomorphic sexmachine should be exactly how Weininger described the common wanton’s face.” Going along with the Nordish Nazi vision of beauty, a tall leggy blonde rounded out the form. The first model of Borghild, Typ B, was completed in September 1941. Later, this blonde life-sized woman would inspire Ruth Handler to create the Barbie Doll for girls.  Not sure which is creepier, the info above or below (the latter definitely needs a redesign - YUCK!):

2009 --- The First Male Sex Doll. 

Germans make the first make Android-Sex doll, named “Nax.” It has an “automatically soaring penis” and “artificial automatic ejaculation.” It costs $10,000 and the only thing weirder than the name Nax, is what he looks like (above). Yikes! I guess German ladies love bald dudes with ponytails that reek of failed Cirque Du Soleil performer. Sorry American ladies, better luck next time.

-Jenna

Flor Garduño and Cristina Rivera-Garza

William A. Nericcio DRAFT

Mexican Eyegiene: Photography and the Novel in the Work of Cristina Rivera-Garza and Flor Garduño

“Matilda is constructing her paradise,” Cristina Rivera-Garza writes, and I am filled with dread. Rivera-Garza, like Vladimir Nabokov and Eduardo Galeano, and, like Luis Buñuel, devil sinematographer, is an arch-fiend of cruel irony and the “paradise” that her words etch onto our psyche will prove to be as comforting as “asylum” is in No One Will See Me Cry—that is, no comfort at all (218). “There are no eyes,” she continues, “fewer and fewer things to say.”

There are many details, but there is no plot at all to guide them or stop them or give them meaning. The ether, the façade of the theater, three stars crowning the waning quarter of the moon, the smile of a stranger, fragments of broken dolls. Nothing has significance…Tautology is the queen of her heart.”

We need assistance here. The Oxford Dictionary lends a hand: “Tautology, ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: via late Latin from Greek, from tautologos ‘repeating what has been said,’ from tauto- ‘same’ + -logos (see -logy ).” A “world of no eyes” lands Matilda in a vertiginous abyss of repetition, “a wristwatch is a wristwatch. A silk tunic is a silk tunic. The desert is just the desert.”

Stasis. Nothing moves. And as Matilda moves inexorably toward her mad fate, her decades-long imprisonment in a Mexican home for the insane, we move along with her, blindfolded, mumbling repetitions, trying to emerge from the labyrinth of mirrors (too many eyes and too much “I”) where Rivera-Garza, cruel and beautiful Cyclops leaves us.

Equally savvy, devilishly ironic, Flor Garduño treats us to a similar universe with her camera. Our eyes look quickly, somewhere and they see Gabriella in Gabriella (Mexico 1999)—we come face to face with beauty and sentience and mystery: is the veil an accessory, an adornment, or, perhaps, a shield, a means to a veiling that intends to hide a secret.



But the eyes cannot stop, Garduño’s prints exert a gentle but insistant gravity and so, no tautology, Gabriella reveals more as Gabriella reveals more—they are not the same thing--the model is not the work; the work is not the model.



Gabriella reveals Gabriella’s breasts or, again, not a tautology, Gabriella reveals Gabriella’s breasts. And, of course, tautology or not, both statements come up short because it is Garduño’s camera that has made this encounter possible, Garduño’s eye or eyes as well. And then there's the problem of the model, Gabriella, who is, as the introduction to Garduño's Inner Light tells us, more an actress than a posed mannequin; more an agent than a statue.

And, lest we forget, Rivera-Garza’s writing hand and eye for eyes must come on stage now for a bow: without Matilda, without the tragedy of her captivity outside witnessing, without voyeur, in a place where “there are no eyes,” would we have been able to have seen Gabriella and Gabriella at all.

The paradox of a novel that teaches us to see a photograph and of a book of photographs that will, like Rivera-Garza’s novel, change the way we see Mexico forever.

Works Cited

Rivera-Garza, Cristina. No One Will See Me Cry (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2003.

Garduño, Flor. Inner Light: Still Lifes and Nudes (Boston: Bulfinch/Little Brown, 2002).

Antique Stores and Ethnic Mannequins

Tria Andrews, a graduate student at SDSU writes in with an extensive posting and semiotic safari for our galleryblog readers:

From: "Tria Andrews"
To: bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu

Professor Nericcio,

Today I went antique shopping in OB. I happened to have my digital camera so I took these photographs. Although I think these pictures speak for themselves--or more precisely speak for the puppeteers who created them--I did want to note that the pinup of the Mexican woman was in startling contrast to the other pinups available for sale. Most other pinups were depicted in primary or warm colors--not a deep, sinister purple--and as the center (if not sole focus) of the photograph. Notice in this pinup, the woman is an afterthought. The maracas and sombrero are prominently displayed, suggesting the fetish as more cultural than sexual.

Of course, there is the simple portrayal of the Mexican girl and boy or woman and man--which if woman and man is the case, is all the more frightening for this racist and childlike depiction. There is also the serving tray (telling in itself) with the depiction of the Mexican man selling flowers, though his Bogarted cigarette and sidelong glance suggest he is plotting something more--here, we the have Mexican as criminal.



Additionally, there is the display of the minstrel dolls--among them salt and pepper shakers--as well as the subservient 'Dancin‚ Minstrel' whose pointed ears conjure none other then Satan.





Please also note the Native American pinups--as if pinups weren't problematic in themselves--and how they are positioned. Of course one Indian has nothing more to worry about then her fellow Indian. She should have her bow and arrow positioned toward the artist and not her fellow comrade, but as you can see, this is not the case.

Anyway, I had a good time. Didn't buy anything, but was certainly entertained--though maybe not in the way the puppeteers intended I be...

Sincerely, Tria

the

CYBERHIVE 38: Technosexualities | The Medium is the Machine

To: memo@sdsu.edu
Subject: MALAS600B - Machines
From: Jenn
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:01:30 -0400 (EDT)

NSFW!!

Bill,


Totally your discretion if you want to share this on the blog or not. There's an interesting phenomenon in the adult entertainment industry with the creation of "f***ing machines," or sex machines. They serve as a "replacement" for the real thing. I guess the men have their Real Dolls and the women have their F-Machines... how can anybody compete with these??? check out some of the designs:

-Jenn

Yet Another Chapter in the History of the Ersatz Human or Freaky Comic Caucasian Dolls