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Right, Savoy.
I've been considering starting a thread on these chaps for quite a while, so forgive me if I run away with myself a bit.
I've been nigh on obsessed with Savoy since I read about the in Rapid Eye 2 (much missed Brit Occulture compendium) about 10 years ago, and have become something of a completist. Look at it this way; I have two whole shelves bulging with their assorted paperbacks, records and hardbacks. I have been in contact with them and found them gentlemanly and encouraging and there has recently been a development in my relationship with them which I will not go in to for fear of jinxing it. Needless to say I AM NOT PARTISAN.
The excitement with Savoy for me is all in the mix. It's a heady brew of Sci-fi, Rock'n'roll, Pornography, Decadence, modernism, comics and pretty much everything else that makes art exciting. They are also genuinely, startlingly dangerous. I'm sure it will disturb to know that, as well as being prosecuted (and having one of their founders, David Britton, sent to strangeways) for obscenity, they are also one of the only publishers (if not THE only) to be prosecuted under the Race Relations act.
I won't go into details here but it's definitely worth reading about (check the website, sorry I don't have time to provide links, my lunchbreak is nearly finished).
The fuss was about a novel called 'Lord Horror', which dealt with the holocaust and featured several scenes of stomach churning racist violence. Weight was added to the case by a comic Savoy published called Meng and Ecker. Meng and Ecker is simply obscene. I own pretty much every issue and I simply will not let my friends, family or anyone else read it. It is practically indefensible if, and this is crucial, the person you are attempting to defend it to doesn't know anything about the Savoy universe or what they are trying to do.
Wheras Lord Horror (and the sequels Motherfuckers and Baptised in the Blood of Millions) are incredibly weighty, rich in allusion and far to complicated to be simple racist pornography, Meng and Ecker has all the subtlety of a pick axe in the cock. The vile twins of the title (who are allegedly the mutant offspring of Joseph Mengele) simply steamroller through a series of "plots" massacring everything in their path. It is only when the comics are read in conjunction with Motherfuckers that one gets any sense of internal dialogue, and the simple stupid sadness and banality of the characters.
Lord Horror himself is a dionysian lunatic, a mixture of Fascist propaganda-ist William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw, see what they did there?), Lord Byron and Superman. Violent, Scorpionic and decadent, he is the hideous result of a combination of High-modernism, Romance and Nietzchian will-to-powerism. In short Lord Horror IS Fascism, in all it's disgusting, self-deluded glamour.
I would recommend any of the books or comics involving Lord Horror (Reverbstorm, Hardcore Horror, Motherfuckers, Baptised...) their shock value is overriden by a genuine sense of sadness and desolation (I consider them fiercly moral), however the Meng and Ecker stuff should be read AFTER you have familiarised yourself with Savoy a bit more. The website is a good place to start.
Trust me; Savoy are fucking heroes. It might be difficult to see behind the violence and moral ambiguity, but they are on the side of the angels.
Sorry this is a bit rushed, I wanted to get something down ASAP. I'll be back with more later, I'm sure. |
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