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June 10, 2019  

SO! Reads: Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s Personal Stereo

In Personal Stereo, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s eminently readable history of the Walkman and its kind, it is telling to learn that Sony founders Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita were prone to conversing in ‘something akin to a private shared language’ or idioglossia. “They would sit there,” recounts Morita’s eldest son, “and we would listen but we had no idea what they were saying” (21).  In later life, following strokes, both lost the ability to speak; Ibuka’s son characterises their subsequent relationship as “communicating without words’.” Even the name Sony itself, notes Tuhus-Dubrow, with its origins in the Latin sonus and the English slang “sonny,” was ultimately “a word in no language’” (13).  It is as though aural perception, delivered on an intimate scale, is somehow revelatory in a way that transcends the typical organising principles of language. The incorporation of the sonic into everyday life forever approaches a kind of affective intensity.

Personal Stereo tunes into this frequency and – by virtue of its array of research and skilful marshalling of social and cultural history – offers a compelling map of its coordinates. If, as part of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, one of its central tasks is to apprehend the affective resonance of the inanimate, it is testament to Tuhus-Dubrow’s work that she is able to manage the breadth of her material into an adroit and concise narrative while at the same time allowing space for her writing to approach these contained moments of intensity. “When I think of [the Walkman] now, I think of joy,” she writes in the introduction (1). While acknowledging that undue celebration of the past can stymie the present, she offers a quietly persuasive case for an examination of nostalgia amid the anxiety of contemporary life, which almost serves as a rallying cry for a generation pinioned between the two: ‘The past, whatever its shortcomings, has the virtue of having already happened. And we survived it.’

As iTunes – like the glory of the world – passes into epilogue, it is again time to consider how we might frame obsolete technologies as echoes of a particular moment in our lives, anchored between progress and decay. As texts, they harbour a kind of degraded cartography: a summation of meaning and collapse.

The story of the Walkman begins in the bombed-out ruins of 1940s Tokyo, as Ibuka and Morita establish the foundations of the company that would become a consumer electronics giant as part of Japan’s ill-fated post-war boom. It is striking how much of the Walkman’s development was shaped by the ravages of warfare: Tuhus-Dubrow notes how its antecedent, the tape recorder, was first used in the German military, and early headphones were issued to fighter pilots. It is possible to read the subsequent commercial adoption of personal listening devices as an attempted refashioning of the domestic interior, transgressed so violently in acts of conflict. One of Ibuka’s founding principles for Sony was to “apply highly advanced technologies…developed in various sectors during the war to common households” (12).  Tuhus-Dubrow also recounts the case of Andreas Pavel, a native of post-war Berlin, who emigrated with his family to São Paulo and developed what we might term a “counter-prototype” to the Walkman, partly inspired by the internal acoustics of his mother’s home – “a mecca of sound” – in Cidade Jardim. Object lessons are formed through disintegration and salvaged materials. Morita compares his formative partnership with the older Ibuka to a newly-established familial unit: “It was almost as though an adoption were taking place” (13).

Akio Morita (left) and Masaru Ibuka (right), 1961. Courtesy of Sony

This elides neatly with Tuhus-Dubrow’s central chapter, which is also the strongest. Here, she discusses the reception of private listening within the public domain, and how existing societal norms apprehended this new sonic phenomenon. It is intriguing, and at times hilarious, how much of the reaction operates as moral critique: from a 1923 article comparing the very act of solo listening to alcohol abuse or a drug habit, to rather more recent takes that foreshadow the current intergenerational culture wars. “The personal stereo,” harrumphs A.N. Wilson, ‘became the archetypal accessory of the me-generation” (68).

Tuhus-Dubrow’s research is smart and on point, not least because it leads to a productive consideration of how the cathartic element of the private soundtrack becomes something that society struggles to assimilate. She takes to time to weave in personal testimonies and reminiscences that are effective and somehow touching: “the Walkman,” she admits, “was a source of elation and comfort” (85). A friend recalls how “[my] inner world was enriched by the freedom to explore music on my own” (84).  Pavel describes how the first use of his prototype, in the snows of St Moritz, evoked “a state of ecstasy,” in which life temporarily assumed a cinematic quality. “Suddenly,” he remembers, curiously switching to the present tense, “I’m inside a film” (27).

Darryl with a new Walkman, December 25, 1982, Image by Flickr User Kent Kanouse

Others speak of how musical accompaniment aids a more immersive interaction with the world around them, and it is here that perhaps the real strength of Tuhus-Dubrow’s work emerges: the generosity of an approach that permits mutual recognition; the summoning of an experiential quality that is elusive in its definition but vivid and immediate in its resonance. It is a mode of writing – and indeed a mode of listening – that is resolutely contemporary, formed in a firestorm of technological innovation that was both oppressive and liberatory, attuning us to new ways of being at the same time as it degrades and erodes old certainties.

It bears resemblance to what Tuhus-Dubrow recognises as “the logic of our own bodies, with organs and limbs whose motions are connected to their functions, and which are susceptible to injury and gradual breakdown” (102).  Earlier she writes, “as one song neared its end, I would begin to hear the opening chords of the next in my head.”

What is it, this sense of auditory anticipation?

It is the forming of new waves. We have blood in our ears.

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Featured Image: “Walkman through the cassette” by Flicker User Narisa (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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Lewis Jones is a writer and itinerant based in Brighton, UK. He received an MA in Literature, Culture and Theory from the University of Sussex, having previously graduated in English Literature from the University of Winchester. He is interested in how artistic and aesthetic mediums might be used to develop new theoretical approaches to culture and society. He particularly likes urban spaces, as visual and auditory environments, and the intersections between music, movement and the body. He thinks that dancing about architecture is a perfectly valid exercise.

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tape reelREWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

SO! Reads: Hiromu Nagahara’s Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan’s Pop Era and Its Discontents–Shawn Higgins

SO! Reads: Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder’s Designed For Hi Fi Living–Gina Arnold

SO! Reads: Susan Schmidt Horning’s Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP— Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo

SO! Reads: Steph Ceraso’s Sounding Composition: Multimodal Pedagogies for Embodied Listening–Airek Beauchamp

December 3, 2018  

Femmes Fucking the Camera: Listening to the Sonics of Boudoir Photography

Pictured above areRaven Von Scrumptious (right) an Sepia Jewel (left), two burlesque dancers from San Diego, California. Raven and Sepia started “eye fucking” in burlesque classes with Coco L’Amour and later they transferred these gestures to the photo studio and the stage,  gestures that as Juana Maria Rodriguez notes, “dance, flirt and fuck” (2014). “Eye fucking” is transmitting tease, a play with your audience that is coquettish. Eye fucking entails going beyond the gaze of the audience into a realm where you meet your inner erotic, your inner gaze. Eye fucking creates arousal, homosociality, agency, femme desire, confidence, and a queer space with a lot of glitter.  As Smiley LaRose—the name I chose to take on as my student burlesque name—I have learned to “fuck the camera lens” from these two women and the burlesque community in San Diego, who encourage me to embrace what Celine Parreñas Shimizu calls “productive perversity.”  

In this post, I reflect on the sonic intimacies between burlesque and boudoir photography. I am sharing part of a larger film project titled #GlitterBabes, where I tell a story of how burlesque as a recreational practice empowers women to engage their sensual selves.  The film came about when I signed up for a Soloist Workshop and my burlesque stage persona Smiley LaRose was born. I tell this story through Glitter Tribe Studio, the first studio dedicated to the art of burlesque in San Diego.

In fact, both the dance and photography studios I write about here have an intimate relationship. The film starts with Smiley’s curiosity about how her classmates and teachers engaged the art of tease and navigated all the different aspects of it. As a fat performer, I was particularly interested in the way that my burlesque sisters and myself would navigate topics of body confidence, sensuality and stripping. As it turned out, these practices require a practice of listening to the details of our bodies and its engagement with musicality, the rhythm of our tease(s), and our awareness for how the camera can capture our corporeal erotic wavelengths both on and off stage.

In other words, I engage in ‘dirty listening’ to describe the sonics of boudoir photography and the erotic sounds that go into capturing sensuality in its most intimate ways. In their qualitative study of erotic photographers, Wentland and Muise found that in order to have a successful shoot it was crucial to create “relaxing and comfortable” spaces for femmes. A common practice among the photographers was to have “constant dialogue with their clients, both at the beginning and during the photo shoot, in order to help their clients relax.” They allowed femmes to have control over the shoot and explained every step along the way.  In fact, as photo shoots progressed, several clients “requested shots that were more revealing than what they had initially discussed” (106). The findings by Wentland and Muise share many commonalities with the way photographers in San Diego also engage the practice of Boudoir, particularly the understanding that agency is experienced along a continuum and photographers support their clients by accommodating different techniques that can silence their negative self-talk.

At Bad Kitty Photography, where both Raven and Sepia had their shoots, a layer enabling femmes to get into an affective state of sensual comfort is music. To prepare for shoots, Bad Kitty asks their clients to think about their favorite music to set the mood. On their website, they list creating a music playlist as a recommendation to prepare for the shoot. This recommendation intrigued me and aroused an intellectual sonic orgasm. As a scholar of music, sound, and sexuality, their suggestion reminded me of a post by Robin James, where she argues that  “we can understand the physical pleasures of listening to music, music making, and music performance as kinds of sexual pleasure.” In Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music, Roshanak Khesti has described the erotic aspects of aurality, and has described the ear, as an ‘invaginated organ’ that penetrates the body with pleasure-in-listening. Here, music is consumed in a femme-centered space to get the model and its photographer to a state of intoxicating perversity.

Beyond the music recommendation, the photographer who worked with me also used sonic techniques to help me get relaxed and comfortable. Ashley Rae, aka “My Bomb Ass photographer,” no longer works at Bad Kitty, but her impact there particularly with other women of color clients is remembered.  While we were choosing my outfits, I shared with Ashley, how nervous I was about not being able to make sexy faces. She looked at me and said, “It’s easy! All you have to do is pronounce ‘juice.’” She later asked me to look at the mirror while I practiced. The trick in the exercise was how slow I said “juice” the slowness and softness or my pronunciation created a shape in my lips that unconsciously also influenced the way my eyes moved. After juice she told me to pronounce “prune.” Ppppp-rrrr-uuuuuuu-nnnnnn—ee.

I look at my photos and I see the effect it created. “vocal utterances function as another kind of embodied gesture – opening the mouth and projecting sounds, words, and breath imprinted by the unique physical qualities of our inhabited bodily instruments,” as she points out in Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and other Latina Longings (124).

She spoke dirty to me and I liked it.

“Give me more bootyhole,” Ashley said.

Rodriguez asks, “what happens when I talk dirty to you? How does the address of speech transform the performative gesture of its utterance?” (125).  Dirty talk– how my photographer engaged me in dialogue – contributed to my afloje (looseness) as the shoot progressed. The address of her speech, along with her gestures, made me get lost in her camera. Witnessing the way she touched herself–and the way she wanted me to touch my body–formed a collective vision of sensuality, one where all femmes of color could feel like goddesses.  It was her dirty talk, the tone of her voice, and the power of her Black Femme gaze that helped me get there. Following Audre Lorde’s vision for the power of the erotics, we imaged a different world with her camera, a world where femmes eye fuck each other, and for each other, constantly displacing the male gaze. Her foreplay allowed me to listen to how my Eyes Talked, My Eyes Teased, My Eyes Fucked.

Beyond the shoot, the boudoir photos that she took of me would capture forever the fat perversity that she inspired in me. The energy we created inside that studio lingers in my skin. I remember her dirty talk and when we pose, my friends who have also gone through her spell also say, “give me more bootyhole” Like that, my remix yells “si, metete con mi Cucu!”

As a fat student of burlesque, my dirty talk, my dirty listening, is inspired by other women of color, fat performers, and porn stars. I gaze upon them for inspiration, guidance on eye fucking, and poses. On March 9, 2018, I participated in the second annual Plus Size Art Show at Meseeka Art studio in San Diego, California. I submitted 20 pieces of boudoir photography to the show that celebrated the bodies of five women of color plus-size burlesque performers from San Diego. They included Buttah Love, Raven VonScrumptious, Lucy May, Sepia Jewel and Smiley LaRose. The other art pieces in the show also centered fat perversity by presenting women in shibari, bikinis, nude, and boudoir.

Photographed by Ahnyung Nadine

The all-women DJ collective Chulita Vinyl Club de San Diego played at the show while people danced, drank, and viewed the live fat artwork in formation.  Listening to the charlas in the room, you could hear fat women share the power they felt from seeing other fat women feeling sexy. One of the participants approached Sepia and Smiley to ask us if we were also exhibited in the artwork. We both pointed at our images, celebrating each other by complementing our sexy poses. She told us that it was her first time ever taking photos in lingerie, and that playing with the shoot was empowering. We both agreed, because as burlesque dancers and students, stripping to nakedness has had multiple effects on the way we viewed our bodies, and their sensuality. Can you listen to how we use boudoir, erotic art and burlesque to create a visual archive of fat-sex-positivity?

Although Raven was not able to attend the opening of the show, she saw it through Buttah’s Instagram story. When I texted Raven, she told me she almost cried from seeing her photos framed on the wall. Raven was art, a fat femme was art. But even though she was not there, her photos transmitted energy and a fat perversity: her fat eyes talked, her fat eyes teased, her fat eyes fucked us.

Prrruuuuuu-nnnnnnneeeeee  

We moan.

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All images courtesy of the author.

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Yessica Garcia Hernandez is a doctoral candidate and filmmaker in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California San Diego. Her scholarship bridges fan studies, sound studies, women of color feminisms, fat studies, girl studies, and sexuality/porn studies to think about intergenerational fans of Mexican regional music. Yessica earned her B.A. in Chicanx Studies from University of California, Riverside and an M.A. in Chicanx and Latinx Studies at California State University Los Angeles. She has published in the Journal of Popular Music, New American Notes Online, Imagining America, Journal of Ethnomusicology, and the Chicana/Latina Studies Journal. Her dissertation entitled, “Boobs and Booze: Jenni Rivera, the Erotics of Transnational Fandom, and Sonic Pedagogies” examines the ways in which Jenni Rivera fans reimagine age, gender, sexuality, motherhood, and class by listening to her music, engaging in fandom, and participating in web communities. She explores the social element of their gatherings, both inside and outside the concert space, and probe how these moments foreground transmissions of Latina power. Yessica’s broader research interests includes paisa party crews, Banda Sinaloense, Contestaciones, and Gordibuena/BBW erotics. She is a co-founder and member of the Rebel Quinceañera Collective, a project that utilizes art, music, photography, creative writing, filmmaking, and charlas to activate spaces for self-expression and radical education by and for youth of color in San Diego.

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tape reelREWIND!…If you liked this post, check out:

Unapologetic Paisa Chingona-ness: Listening to Fans’ Sonic Identities–Yessica Garcia Hernandez

LMGM’s “Lost: Choirboy” & El Jefe’s “Muñoz & La Mission: A Sermon. . .” (in memoriam José Esteban Muñoz)

Freedom Back: Sounding Black Feminist History, Courtesy the Artists– Tavia Nyong’o

Mediated Sexuality in ASMR Videos–Emma Leigh Waldron

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