The transgressive director, writer and trash connoisseur stopped by the bar Coco 66 in Brooklyn, N.

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For those of a certain age, Pretty Hate Machine will always evoke a particular form of teen-transgressive ressentiment.

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Alas, I fear it's just another example of the art world swooning for the "transgressive" that is, anything that violates social norms.

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"When there's something that feels intimate and taboo and transgressive and compulsory, then it sort of works its way out, " he says.

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Part of the explanation is that parliamentary rebellion, rather like adultery, is habit-forming: at first it feels impossible, then transgressive and finally mundane.

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Perhaps the greatest mark of glam rock's influence is the fact that most of the public think these transgressive statements now look rather quaint.

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While it would surely be transgressive in the extreme to stage "The Testament of Mary" in, say, rural Mississippi, mounting it on Broadway is about as daring as writing a musical that makes fun of Mormons.

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Too often, in fact, they do little more than titillate the cognoscenti by being as deliberately "transgressive" as possible, in the process shocking innocently earnest viewers who fail to realize that transgressive art has no purpose other than to shock.

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