Open AccessThe Broker in Pornography and Violence: Lou Reed in Lulu’s World
Author(s) -
Sławomir Kuźnicki
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
explorations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2353-6969
DOI - 10.25167/exp13.20.8.4
Subject(s) - perversion , reinterpretation , pornography , art , normative , balance (ability) , art history , sociology , visual arts , literature , aesthetics , law , psychology , political science , gender studies , neuroscience
The article analyses the literary and cultural layers of Lulu, the album published by Lou Reed in collaboration with Metallica, based on Frank Wedekind’s two modernist dramas: Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora’s Box (1904). In Reed’s reinterpretation, the two plays become his means through which he enters the area of disturbing perversion and graphic pornography. Consequently, Reeds seems to follow Susan Sontag’s diagnosis according to which the goal of pornographic literature is to disorient and to disturb mental balance. In the case of Lulu, it demonstrates Reed’s strategies of crossing the borders between what is commonly accepted and what is rejected because of its non-normative quality. It results in multilayered kinkiness that outreaches the literary frames of the project and makes it possible to view Lulu as a piece of art that is both uncompromising and visionary.