The Necessity of Deviance

In the ideal Utopia, individual freedom flourishes. In such a state of existence there would be no deviants, since there would be nothing to deviate from. Everyone would bloom like a beautiful flower according to their own precious, individual natures. There would be no stifling social codes, no prejudice, no repression, no crime.

Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, Utopia is unattainable. Deviation is the only thing that’s kept the human race from dying off from bad ideas, lack of style or just plain boredom, not to mention tyranny, incompetence or stupidity.

As it is, within every religion, within every country, every city and small town, deviance springs up unwanted like some ugly, evil mushroom, much to the horror of civil and moral "authorities." It is the one irrepressible, ineludable constant of human existence.

Thank God.

It is the deviant, at first persecuted, then martyred and worshipped, who changes society, starts all the new religions and philosophies. It is the deviant virus buzzing around in the rotted innards of the established states and belief systems that keeps the decayed carcass on its feet until something paramutates off and it crashes to the ground a stinking corpse...although sometimes it actually takes a few centuries to fall over.

On a less grandiose scale, deviation worms its way into fashion, art, sex and every other form of human conduct, often while the guise of perfect respectability is maintained. Deviance is a basic necessity of life, on a par with food, shelter and clothing. And like any other activity; it can be pursued in cowardly or courageous fashion.

Society seeks to maintain the status quo out of pure bloated inertia. Industrialization gave rise to the middle class in all developed countries, and soon the middle class had begat its own culture: a culture of cowardice, conformity and sterility whose holy ground became the suburbs. Conformity was required, the status quo worshipped.

Yet the stricter status quo is enforced by social codes, the more widespread the deviant urge becomes: today the suburbs are hot-beds of deviance and depravity, while inner cities - admittedly more violent - are staid in comparison.

Look through any window in suburbia to see men dressed in leotards or neo-nazis in full regalia drowning kittens in bathtubs, while through ghetto windows you see earnest young dope dealers and pimps chasing the standard capitalist dream. Sexual and other deviations are shunned in the ghettos while the suburbs provide the privacy, leisure time and money to engage in such activities.

It is the pointlessness and boredom of middle class life more than anything that spurs and motivates people into a life of deviance. Poor people are too busy trying to "make it," chasing commercial images of success, and rich people hide all their glorious deviance behind an impenetrable wall of discretion and propriety. It is out of the belly of the middle class that pours a virtual army of "deviants" as they are quick to be called. Punk-rockers are drop-outs from suburbia, with their anti-beauty esthetics. Before them the Hippies were the drop-outs with their drugs and anti-materialism. Many Gays in New York, San Francisco and other big cities are escapees from middle class conformity. A thousand bizarre cults worldwide are gorged on the children of the middle class. It is the greatest contribution of the middle class to culture.

Deviance in its most spectacular, sensational and violent forms has become a new religion, merging punk-rock with Satanism, Nazism and modern death-technology. Mark Pauline, a San Francisco artist, builds engine-powered contraptions that animate the corpses of chickens and rabbits in a grotesque fandango. Autopsy videos are all the latest rage, and a small movement of xeroxed fanzines that idolize mass murderers is cropping up, reflecting wider interest in this new industrial death culture that has in fact been well received in the art world.

Mass murders are replacing pro-ball players as focal points of youthful fascination. Gilles de Rais, Ed Gein, Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy are among the most revered.

Gilles de Rais emerges from the muck of history as the John the Baptist of this new order. The richest noble and bravest knight of early 15th century France, de Rais won a prominent place in French history books for his battlefield heroism in the cause of Joan of Arc, personally rescuing her from the English at least twice. His later career as lunatic, devil worshipper and sex murderer of hundreds of young peasant children won him a place in the wax museums.

Ed Gein, killer and cannibal of the American 1950’s, exploded as a blinding supernova in the holy firmament of sexual deviants. Inhabiting an unworked farm in rural Wisconsin, Gein impressed neighbors as a mildly retarded simpleton who hung out with kids and was good for handyman chores and helping road crews chop weeds along the highway. Yet Gein’s quiet, peaceful manner concealed the soul of a frenzied deviant. By night he engaged in murder, graverobbing and necrophilia, as well as the manufacture of human lampshades, chair seats, nipple belts and skull caps. All of Gein’s crimes were traced back to a desire to revive his dead mother from her grave and driven out of control by a twisted sexual urge. Perhaps the ongoing celebration of Ed Gein is a reaction to the sterile teases of pop icons such as Doris Day and Annette Funicello who purveyed a dehumanized aura of sex that Gein actually came to practice.

Charles Manson is certainly well enough known, both the myth and the reality (if in fact they can be separated). Yet while Manson dabbled in Satanism and admired the Nazis, he was a different phenomenon than either medieval castle-dwelling de Rais or farmboy idiot/introvert Gein. Manson became the Great Hollywood Killer and his legend has been enshrined by media circus parole hearings and annual televising of "Helter Skelter" that are as eagerly awaited as the "Wizard of Oz." "I live in my world," said Manson in prison in 1970, "and I am my own king in my world, whether it be in a garbage dump or if it be in the desert or wherever it be, I am my own human being. You may restrain my body and you may tear my guts out, do anything you wish, but I am still me and you can’t take that." Is it any wonder Manson strikes a chord with teenagers, deviants and outcasts constantly bucking the norm?

Finally there is John Wayne Gacy. If mass-murderers are considered the ultimate deviants then John Gacy is an ironic contradiction. While Gacy was a killer, a more average, normal, successful and respected member of the community you could not find. He was the quintessential suburban "well respected man." His taste in everything from houses to cars to backyard barbecues was middle class suburban. None of this cult-worship commune jazz for him, his world revolved around the gravity core of middle class respectability. Because of this he could never admit, and in fact to this day denies, that he is gay. He has been called by some "the ultimate closet queen" and the results of his repression and self-loathing became national headlines in 1979.

While Gacy is a pretty poor role model for any self-respecting deviant, he is the current mass-murder record holder and hence earns the respect of the pure-minded death cultists who despise any hint of insanity or cultism. Manson and Gein on the other hand were more flamboyant and colorful characters and have enjoyed popularity on a wider scale, inspiring movies and songs and even bleeding a little bit into pop culture. Gilles de Rais, though, remains almost unknown to Americans with their fast-food slaughters and shopping-centre massacres, while in history-conscious France he is known to every school-boy.

Other mass killers have made the jump from police reports into pop legend.

Jim Jones was the ultimate cult leader and fake Mohammed. Charles Starkweather was the 1950’s own white-trash James Dean/Rebel Without a Cause, and Lizzie Borden slaughtered her parents - what red-blooded American teenager hasn’t thought about it? Today there are endless Hillside Stranglers, Highway Killers, Nightstalkers, mad slashers, berserk snipers holed up in schoolhouses, and walking time-bombs exploding in post offices and fast-food restaurants.