Don't you feel the wind turning?

The wind carrying what was shameful become legitimate? The chaotic raft of moralizing under your feet shaking?

Alas, no, of course.

The theme of the human zooI've always been inspired by the exhibition of the type in which Kanaks were exhibited during the 1931 colonial exhibition. I used to play it as a child, sitting in my room half-naked, behind makeshift barricades, imagining a parade of worldly visitors who had come en masse, shivering as much as swooning in front of the monkey man. This game was not, in my mind, linked to any feeling tinged with racism, a word of which I was unaware at the time, but rather aroused by a taste for an elsewhere, a thirst for strong images and a strong admiration for the so-called savagery that I was trying to feel in myself by dint of embodying it. But after all, perhaps it was a germ, all Western, of that famous racism that is now feared? And perhaps I am still full of it in spite of myself, through this aspiration to look for an 'exotic' iconography, such as that of raw sex, elsewhere than in the sole references of a milieu that I have always frequented in a more or less offbeat way: a precarious or small/middle class, tending towards respect for culture and admiration for the artistic.

I realised as I grew up that there were as many forms of racism as there were identities. That this variety was dependent on both the environment and what the individual considered to be his or her own culture and identity, both of which were composed of a myriad of ordinary little racisms innocently called 'tastes', but which most of the time were rather intolerant of neighbouring or confronting their opposites. Apart from the most brutal and offensive of truly ethnic scorns, perhaps the most insidious of ostracisms were those peddled amiably over a glass of wine by men and women of culture, discussing worldly values, comforting each other, and being naturally persuaded that they were on the side of the good, the responsible, the balanced, or worse: the just. So let's talk about it.

The disdain for pornography (which has taken the place of shameful guiltand then the offended rejectionIn the case of the latter, the evolution of fashions [and not mores] and times is equivalent to the rejection of one's own image through the representation of a representative of one's species, filmed or photographed in the course of the animal excitation of one's organs and psyche. Some would also include close-ups of genitals at rest. Either.

Better still, it is tantamount to detesting the highlighting of an image of one's own reality, under the practical and frequently invoked argument: the secrets of intimacy (we are looking here at X in its entirety, without stopping at the specific attributes of the many styles ranging from the most softs to the most extreme, from amateur exhibitions to the most luxurious professional productions). Bof.

The argument of intimacy has never really convinced me, as I have observed that I feel no discomfort in front of the spectacle of animals copulating. Why should it be any different with people I know and whom my vision always leads me to look at first as humans, evolved animals that we are? Well, in my opinion, precisely for this good reason: unlike that of animals (for the majority of us, it seems to me, but it would be necessary to investigate further), the spectacle of the copulation of our fellow human beings excites us.

Nothing very new so far; literature and masturbatory cinema have seized on this state of affairs to make their own hay since they appeared. What is not new, but rarely accepted as a simple postulate, is that sexual fidelity cannot exist in the absolute; it is enough to put anyone, men or women, in the right situation for it to collapse. Of course, it is possible for us, up to a certain point, to resist genital arousal, but in any case, it is no less a resistance and not a deliberate choice capable of being sustained. And it is this little nuance, it seems - and it is easy to understand why, in a large number of couples of all stripes - that does not go down well; the sound of which is little heard in family or friendly gatherings. I'm not talking about swinging or any particular sexual practice.

I'm only talking about the fact that, because of our reflexive and animal nature, refusing excitement is never a choice, but a control.

I don't think this is taught in schools, nor is it the basis of the precepts dictating the union of couples. As usual, religious people get away with it thanks to the concept of "temptation", which - and I say "hats off to you! - would not be part of us by essence, but would have been inflicted on us as the punishment for having given in to it. It's easy to see that all this defence built up to "save" the human being from his natural impulses, in the face of what society would like him to be, is biting its own tail, I would dare say, if only by referring to the unfortunate snake that has since been used as a scapegoat, and that if the choice of sexual fidelity is commonly brandished in the name of love in a monogamous union, it is only in balance with a well-felt frustration that is little by little wisely absorbed by reason and the fear of being alone.e one day.

How was such a negation of reality, which still today translates into a burning, glowing gaze, whether lecherous or contemptuous, reasonably possible, we may one day ask ourselves? Yet nothing that we do not practice or know about ourselves or others by heart is shown to us through the pornographic genre. Do we realise then (I often imagine, wrongly, that we do) how deep the problem is and into what contradiction it leads the kindly, broad-minded but banally prudish democrat, who claims to be fighting, at least in principle, against religious, political or economic totalitarianism? He grimaces at an open ass just like his own, during prime time, but does not flinch when he is painfully sodomised without any preparation, via advertisements in which banking establishments want to pass for entities that are attentive and understanding towards the interests of his family. What part of himself is our well-behaved citizen mocking by living by these precepts? They, the states, the multinationals... are not mistaken. They know that prohibiting or favouring representations of a god, censoring images considered subversive or drowning our eyes in advertisements that offend common sense, amounts to strictly the same thing. In all cases, the only decisive factor is to occupy us with images as we do with children. Decision-makers and politicians, grouped together as representatives of society, make the choice, often without knowing it, being children themselves, in accordance with the legislation, of the type of pornography they will impose on the population, starting with their faces in 4 by 4 during election periods, that's all. The only substantive issue is to understand how to entertain us consistently, without tiring us too much. What oversized image, what star face that has become the landscape of everyday life, what soda bottle, what pope, or what 50-metre-high Christ icon is going to pop up in the public space, in the town square, in the tangible translation zone of the collective unconscious to excite us permanently and honestly? Fortunately, there are fundamental differences between styles and not all pornography is equally raunchy, nor does it carry the same spirit. Russ Meyer's passion for big boobs tells us something about male fantasy and seems to me infinitely more natural and healthy in its outrageous desire than the unadmitted way of taking advantage of the blond charm of smiling, prepubescent little actors, solely in order to sell a lot of milk-flavoured chocolate bars to all the households in the world wishing to ensure the good health of their children. But as we know, constant excitement can create irritation.

Knowing full well that we are Mr Hyde and Dorian Gray by nature, we nevertheless only consider it on the global scale of our species (the famous: "the people") and like to consider ourselves (at least to tell ourselves) as an individual as a relative exception to the rules governing this same species. Curious, to say the least. What we admit to be true for all humans, would not be quite so for The Individual.

At the root of the rejection of the ass image as a self-portrait is the desire to appear more this or advantage this I don't want to be reduced to that," she says. "I don't want to be reduced to this," she will say. "It only shows one side of me," he will object. "Great claim to be anything other than an ass picture," I'd say.

But hey, "big", "small", ok, let's take the time to nitpick. We often find this deep vanity in pretending to exist in this way and be someoneThis is the side of the bourgeois spectator who is going to excite his intellect and make his feeling of Being froth inside his chest, by going to attend an intelligent theatre performance. A strange method if the aim is really to "cultivate" oneself, to resow without having turned over the soil or pulled out the weeds.

This culture, acquired and maintained without prior sanitation of the land, feels like a bottle of perfume poured on the dirt.

It is not possible to learn anything new and real, without first having uncovered and scraped thoroughly what one had thought until then to be the 'dirty' part of oneself, one's gutter. This is where you have to go, to the stream of mire where the madman cleans himself. The shit is much less palpable there and the fishing more miraculous than in the common trough, especially if you think it is so well situated, at the crossroads of great knowledge.

Going to see inside one's own ass seems to me to be a salutary undertaking, blowing a fresh wind somewhere on the way to the libraries and theatres of the world, if I don't get Photoshop in my face, on the walls, the screens and the packaging, every day that, it seems, the good Lord does.

Therefore, a prayer is needed.

My God, search my ass,

Let it be 507 valid hours going back ten and a half months from the day I died!

Excerpt from TU MENDIERAS TANT | LES PARQUES D'ATTRACTION © David Noir