Writing candidly about her own struggle with her teeth for The Irish Independent in 2016, Victoria May Clarke admitted that it was actually late spouse Shane McGowan's teeth that attracted her to him in the first place.
“A mouthful of rotting stumps and a gurning grin had become his trademark until this time last year, when he braved the dentists after having avoided it for 58 years....
"Having dodgy teeth and not caring about it was part of what attracted me to Shane. It was a sign of rebelliousness, of being a free spirit, a non-conformist. It was a sign of not being shallow, perhaps, of being willing to see beyond the superficial charm of a Hollywood smile. The Hollywood smile in America simply says that you had a good orthodontist, but in Europe it still carries a stigma of being ‘fake’ or vain.”
“What you do or don’t do with your teeth can be a style statement, a political statement, it can convey information about your values, in the same way that the kind of car you drive says something about you. Mine is held together with gaffer tape."
She further opined that once upon a time she didn't see flossing * as something that “cool” people would do.
But now, after a course of expensive dentistry, Clarke's position on oral self-care is similar to Pam Ayres's.
Far from being anti-image and anti-glam - a dissident refusal of pop's self-salesmanship - there was a perfect homology between Shane McG's gappy grin and the aesthetic of his songwriting.
Principles outlined in this interview
“People don’t understand what it takes to write a truthful song, a song that is trying to be pure and honest.”
And on the subject of his radical self-neglect and dissolution:
“You call it chaos. I don’t regard it as chaos. I regard it as natural living.”
The anti-smile was in that sense a perfect billboard for the product - realness, refusal of showbiz, the embrace of unhappy endings and beautiful losers.
Like Martin Amis, during his own struggles with extreme dentistry, looking in the mirror at his mouth - after having had all his carious remnants wrenched out - and seeing in the absence, the flappiness of loose lips around empty gums, a presentiment of his own death.
It's an archetype
* "Flossing" in the other, non-dental sense, too. Like sartorial slovenliness, rotted gnashers represents a valorous disregard for self-presentation, a virtuous absence of vanity...
The Americans have an archetype about "British Teeth" don't they?
ReplyDeleteThey don't seem to realise that their own impetus for dental perfection comes from their culture requiring them to be eager-to-please salesmen.