Master Builders: Villa Straylight as Deviant Gesamstkunstwerk

I was able to understand much of the technological jargon of Neuromancer on only the simplest level, but I did find the architecture (what a surprise) of Villa Straylight and Case’s memory of the wasp’s nest intriguing. It reminded me of a lecture on animal architecture (EEB 311—excellent class) that focused mainly on termite mounds, which are absolutely spectacular on the inside. They look like very modern interiors—something Verner Panton might have come up with if he worked with a less psychedelic color palette. Wasps, too, are impressive builders. In Neuromancer, Case connects a wasps’ nest with Villa Straylight, a structure I would compare to a warped version of Art Nouveau.


Left: termite mound. Right: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. Termites are blind, by the way.

Art Nouveau interiors are sometimes described as “cocoon-like” and are characterized by a sometimes bizarre, highly stylized version of nature. They are organic, with curves and swirls and whorls of every kind everywhere, and they exemplify what the Art and Archaeology Department likes to call the “GESAMSTKUNTSWERK.” Unfortunately, (perhaps the Art and Archaeology Department is not aware of this fact), we do not all speak German. In short, the Gesamstkunstwerk is a total work of art. The architecture/artist/creator takes care of absolutely everything, down to the smallest detail. In the case of the Art Nouveau interior, this means that all the furniture and artwork is site-specific and built-in, nothing can be moved or changed, and every surface, every corner, from the doorknobs to the glass of the windows, has been designed by the creator.


Collaboration between scientists, architects, and artists to replicate a termite mound interior on a human scale.

Villa Straylight represents a perversion of the total work of art. Instead of creating new objects for the space, scavenged items are brought in and violently forced into place. Case, looking at the Villa through Molly’s eyes, is appalled by the “ugliness” of an otherwise beautiful door. The door itself is not repulsive, but the way it “had been sawn down to fit a particular entrance” is (173). Case observes how everything in the house has been “forced” into place when in fact “none of it fit” (173). He sees Villa Straylight as the result of the “compulsive effort to fill space, to replicate some family image of self” and it reminds him of “the shattered nest, the eyeless things writhing” within it (173). In the broken nest, Case sees “the thing the shell of gray paper had concealed:” “Horror. The spiral birth factory…a kind of time-lapse photography…hideous in its perfection. Alien…bulging, writhing life” (122). Within the nest, and within Villa Straylight, nature is perverted and hideous, a factory of reproduction devoid of love or humanity.


Wasps' nest exterior and interior.

To Case, Villa Straylight is a “place grown in upon itself” (172). But in 3Jane’s description, Villa Straylight is a “body grown in upon itself” (167). Like the endless layers and chambers of the wasps’ nest, it is organic and alive, like a growing organism. But a body can never attain the level of Gesamstkunstwerk. Life is just too messy and too out of our control to ever be a perfect work of art, complete in itself with nothing more to be added or adjusted. A faint tang of horror, hinting at the hideous sights within, is always present. This idea relates to the mask of Armitage’s face, which breaks down into Corto’s tormented visage (188) and the fact that for all the advances made in surgery, it is always apparent when someone has had a little work done (for instance, Case can discern counterfeit youth by looking at people’s knuckles (153)). The mask or shell, though disguising the interior, nonetheless subtly betrays itself.

Speech Sounds: Interior World and Radio Imagination

In Speech Sounds I was particularly interested by Rye's description of the new world's hierarchy: "The least impaired people tended to do this--stand back unless they were physically threatened and let those with less control scream and jump around. It was as though they felt it beneath them to be as touchy as the less comprehending. This was an attitude of superiority." In this diseased society communication has seriously deteriorated, and I found it interesting that the new basis for a class hierarchy here was based on ability to communicate. Also, the violence that came out of this seems crucial--the higher classes (those with more ability to communicate and understand) were able to contain themselves and not react with violence to the lower classes (the more impaired). In a society that is largely a society of interior existence, as these people have trouble understanding and communicating with each other, people turn to violence. Then, it seems that people can only rely on violence as a means of communication, and everyone is out only for himself or herself. Is this human nature on its most basic level, when the confines of society and codified means of communication are destroyed?
In this story, I was very aware of Butler's 'Radio Imagination.' In the 1997 interview she describes how characters often live in her head, have voices, motivations and are created without any real sense of a physical presence. In Speech Sounds, I definitely noticed this, as each character, especially Rye, has an extremely evolved inner life, and virtually no physically descriptive presence. In fact, the main focus of the story for me was on how people cope with their own interiors, and looking at the human interior through the lens of a disease that has severely impaired the interior and ability to communicate in a lot of ways, is an excellent way to do this. Ultimately, it comes down to violence and basic human emotions: jealousy, lust, greed, anger, fear. I found the world that Butler constructs here to be very much a reflection of her 'radio imagination' and an interesting lens to look at basic human nature. It seems that Rye has a major advantage, as she is less impaired than most, and I would honestly have liked a glimpse into the mind of the people with more severe impairments. For example, the man who kills the woman at the end. I think it would have been incredible to hear the thoughts (however basic) going on in his mind as he murdered his wife and the stranger (Obsidian) who attempted to save her. On the other hand, the moment in the car when Rye and Obsidian reveal to each other their strengths is a fantastic insight into this. Watching them both experience and suppress a wave of bloodthirsty jealousy explains a lot about how Butler imagines the human interior.

Notes from Underground

To some, living underground is simply untenable—to do so is to be confined and cut off from light and air. On the one hand, retreating below ground can be the first step toward degeneration, as it is in The Time Machine. To embrace the earth is to embrace the primitive, atavistic side of our nature. But it is also a defense mechanism—whether the threat is a tornado or an atomic bomb, the earth is our shelter. Why is it that this natural sanctuary, safe from the elements, can also be so repugnant and terrifying? To go underground is to enter the ultimate interior. Why should we be so uncomfortable about dwelling in this seemingly safe place?


When the Time Traveler first sees a Morlock, one of these “white, ape-like…creatures of the half-light,” he believes it is a ghost or a trick of the light (56). There is something ethereal and phantom-like about them, perhaps due to their pallid hue (see Melville’s chapter on whiteness in Moby-Dick for more on this). The element most frequently associated with the Morlocks is bronze, the material from which the hollow base of the sphinx statue and the rims of the wells are made. This calls to mind the Bronze Age and primitive man. The Time Traveler refers to a Morlock as a “Thing,” a “little monster,” and a “human spider” as it scampers down the well (58-59). Another fictional creation with supernatural climbing abilities is Dracula (he climbs head-first down a castle wall and is compared to a lizard), also a product of the 1890s. The end of the nineteenth century is pervaded with a fear of degeneration and anxieties about illusory progress.

Interestingly in The Time Machine, both the Morlocks and the Eloi are products of degeneration (63). It is not as if only the creatures living down below devolved, while everyone on the surface stayed just fine. This implies that it is not the fact that they live underground that is the cause of the Morlocks’ fall into atavism. It is also notable that in his dealings with the Morlocks, the Time Traveler is reduced almost to their level: “I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with—hands, feet, and teeth” (69). Later on, while he smashes the Morlocks with what is essentially an iron club, I cannot help but feel that the Time Traveler is starting to degenerate a bit himself (there are also a handful of extremely violent remarks made by the Time Traveler that clash with his usually more objective and scientific persona—see page 29 for an example).

For all the horrors associated with the Morlocks and their subterranean, machine-filled dwelling in The Time Machine, living underground is portrayed in a far more positive light elsewhere. In the case of a cozy hobbit hole or of a hollowed-out embankment by Gaudi, for example, there is something almost sacred about the earth. In agricultural communities like the Shire, the earth is the direct source of food and nourishment. In Gaudi’s case, this is the earth of Catalonia—to dwell within that earth and truly appreciate the land was part of the regional spirit. What is it that makes us embrace the earth as the foundation of life, and at other times to decry it as a terrifying and unnatural place to live? For instance, with some Modernist houses like Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie or the Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the key ideas is about living on an elevated plane away from the ground, which is dirty and profane. What made some Modernists reject the earth, while others (like Frank Lloyd Wright) held the land to be sacred?

Gaudi, Park Guell, Barcelona.

To conclude my post, I am putting a link to a video posted on another class blog, from the University of Edinburgh. It is a fascinating video, and I recommend watching the whole thing. But if you do not have half an hour to spare, go to about fifteen minutes in for a segment on the tunnel dwellers of New York City. Given the choice of sleeping out on a bench, exposed to the weather, and living underground, some have chosen the latter option and have lived in these tunnels for years.

Undercity: http://text-city.tumblr.com/post/3186495940/undercity-contributed-by-stephanie-wong

***Most of the architecture references in this post are derived from material covered in ARC 203 and 242.