touching the sublime
Cotopaxi by Frederic Edwin Church, 1862
I just finished reading this essay by Candice Wheule about women’s fascination with loving monsters. Think Twilight, Beauty & The Beast, del Toro’s Frankenstein.
Candice touches on the Romantic idea of the sublime, and says:
“Maybe the current discourse on monsterfucking and embarrassing boyfriends both hover just above the deeper truth: women turn to monsters because men, on the whole, have failed so completely that women are forced back toward fantasy—toward the one place the Sublime still feels possible.”
Is loving a monster loving the sublime?
Edmund Burke wrote in 1757, ‘Whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.’ (A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful)
It instantly makes me think of the ‘immersive experiences’ we have here in London. We’ve got ‘The Legend of the Titanic’ where guests can “relive one of the ship’s most poignant moments” via LCD screens and VR headsets.
Similarly, there’s "The Last Days of Pompeii". Another immersive exhibition, where you get to "witness one of history's most dramatic events unfold."
We love to get as close as we can to the danger, without ever touching it.
Stories of falling in love with bloodsucking, bonecrushing monsters feels more ethical than wandering round a recreation of a natural disaster that wiped out over 2,000 people.
I don’t think we go to the Titanic or Pompeii exhibition to feel empathy for the people involved in these disasters. I think there’s a baser desire, and that’s to experience something massive, something terrifying, something unthinkable. We want to experience something outside of our everyday. But in a safe way, of course! We want to take off the headset, leave the exhibition centre and go get a burger afterward!
I wrote a song about an earthquake simulator in the Natural History Museum, which is also a kind-of love song? The room simulates the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, which killed at least 5,000 people. The simulator is a shaky floor in a Japanese grocery store setting. When I went there as a kid it made the biggest impact on me, because it was fun. That juxtaposition between the actual event and the simulated experience is something I can’t really reconcile in my head.
My song, 'Earthquake Room,' is about a date I went on at the museum, but also this idea of wanting to experience something (love!) safely and quickly, without any of the true risk. Brushing up against the sublime.
I find it really interesting, this wrestling between danger and safety. The distance from the disaster which creates the sublime.
Are we allowed to pretend? Are we allowed to experience it?
Is it okay that we get to walk away after?