Sunday, September 16, 2007

Black Butterfly


The black butterfly symbolises the malfunctioning nature in modern society. It creates and harbours the illusion that butterflies are an infinitely feminine and beautiful creature. Moths are not beautiful, indeed some people are petrified of them, so to make the butterfly black is to shift the focus away from beauty and simply add it into the Addams Family-style dimension of the sinister and bizarre.

Surely, to shift a motif of beauty into the area of gothic fantasy (with or without a sense of humour – I haven’t decided yet) is to replace the meaning of beauty. Replacing the meaning of beauty then in turn questions the area that made the original meaning. And that throws the original premise swiftly down to the abyss of anarchy.

It devalues and fucks up meaning, it highlights that nothing is stable. The black butterfly is here with us to stay. Not so much a moth, not so much a butterfly, not a caterpillar anymore, nothing.

But it is something. I’m not existentialist enough to simply say nothing. Simply the black butterfly exists.

And thank God it does! If everything was as simply defined then we’d all be out of a job! It then symbolises something more.

What is this more? What?

It now becomes a symbol of the dysfunctional, the cynical and the depressed. It is a manifestation of what is seen beyond reality.

The butterfly hovers like a humming bird, but makes no noise.

It’s the newspaper article that accuses another mascara brand of using fake lashes on airbrushed models; it’s the pyramid scheme, its “earn £200 extra per week” cards in the post office. It’s an ASBO awarded to the poor family that do not have a garden for their kids to play in so they kick a ball about in the street.

The black butterfly is the un-squashable feeling of the alternative. It’s the marginalised feeling. It’s not being able to cope with what you are supposed to be, it’s a manifestation.

Its Frauza Balk going from Dorothy Gale to Nancy, its Sylvia Plath’s corpse hanging out of the back of an oven, its Amy Winehouse singing about Rehab and then going to rehab.

It’s what Beth Ditto wants to be but sold out.

There is something just not right with a world that prides things that don’t really matter over shit that does. Really. What are you more worried about? The double chin? The size of your penis? Those new shoes in Topshop or the twelve people who were just killed in some foreign war-torn country halfway across the globe. Honestly? For me it’s those shoes in Topshop. I’m just as bad as the rest of them. I’m just as conditioned and exposed to modern society. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t by clothes from Primark, have a freezer or shave my legs. We are all conditioned into this false economy. False. That’s what it is. Takes a special person to stop and really look.

Plato banged on about caves and images and prisoners. It’s the modern world. It’s any world, but then the butterfly shakes my argument with its dark wings fluttering at the back of my mind. What is real?

5 comments:

Alex said...

Have you been at that medicine cabinet again?

Sabrina Mei-Li Smith said...

oh, stick you your mama too



and your daddy.

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sadalbari said...

The black butterfly is inspiring, like a symbol of hope of some sort. I liked what you wrote.

TheeBossyDiva said...

The black butterfly symbolises the freedom that stems from a dark place... A Beauty that replaces hate... And a stance that it will be oppressed no more!