cliterature

I am all for freedom of expression but sometimes I think: why? Just: why?

The freedom to do anything does not make being crass a virtue. It doesn’t mean using insult as a marketing strategy cool. But here I am aiding and colluding just by talking about it.

Here is the guts of it.  Mexican Playboy did some pictures clearly referencing classic methods for depicting the Virgin Mary.  You don’t have to be a genius to realise that: 1) a lot of people are going to hate this.  2) That their disgust will generate modo free publicity especially as they released it just before the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe (not to mention Christams on the way).  And that 3) Playboy won’t lose to many customers in the process, unless there is a huge Roman Catholic soft core market that I am naively unaware of who would give up their booby on the basis of implied sacrilege.

 Playboy central office apologised.  Yeah, right.  The pictures are everywhere and I doubt sales suffered–because they weren’t exactly sorry enough to withdraw the issue.  And if they did they would get even more crap form the ‘freedom of speech’ brigade (and yes, I am a card carrying member).

 So, my bottom line (or bossom line, in this case) is that the magazine staff had every right to run with this provocative but effective approach, and I am going to talk about it just like they wanted.  But neither of us are showing a whole lot of class or consideration in the process.  We are doing what people in our roles do. they are selling magazines, I am talking about a topical issue, but the high ground is nowhere in sight.

Below is a recent cover of Newsweek featuring Sarah Palin.  As one blogger commented: “Wow. Kind of sexy, and just kind of weird at the same time.”  I think it could, at best, be considered a questionable choice.  What, I wonder, is the point being made by showing Palin with a shotgun over her shoulder?  It is a file photo from 2002, robbed of its original context as a hunting snapshot.  My take on it is that it hopes to gain gratuitous attention by combining Palin as a topical personality with a strange deep seated sex-fear weirdness embedded in our culture and apparent in other ‘chicks with guns’ photographs.

Take, for example, two more pictures from my Irving Klaw pinup collection.  Is this what flits through the mind in finding a rather ordinary, fully dressed picture of a hunter with a gun ”sexy”?  Here we have a girl was no pockets but a big pistol–who certainly seems happy to see you.  And another with a nice rifle and a serious lack of buttons (poor girl).  Neither is terribly explicit and the gun is clearly there for a fetishistic reason that only a Freudian could truly appreciate.

Not that I think the essential element is any kind of penis envy, at least not directly.  I think the interesting element is a tension between ‘feminine’ helplessness and the sheer lethality of firepower.  The message, as with the movie still below, is pure noir.  It is this woman is dangerous, maybe even fem-fatal [sic].

And that, ultimately, may be what the Newsweek cover was saying.  And although, Lord knows, I am no Palin supporter I think there is a strand of misogyny mixed in here.  If Cheney actually shooting someone is widely seen as just funny, why is Palin just holding a gun so provocative?  Sometimes a gun is, after all, just a gun.

Sexism isn’t generally all that overt these days–at least on most urban areas on the US.  I do, I suppose, sit in a the back of a limo with the seat beat pressing right on my neck no matter what I do.  It would be across my shoulder if I was the height of an average man, rather than (as I am) the height of an average woman.  But honestly, isn’t that a pitiful thing to be complaining about?

 As I suppose is the Hudson News outlet at the airport that thinks computers and retirement are somehow  only the purview of men.  I mean… com-poot-are, what are one of those?  And me, I plan to die young and beautiful like like all good females do, and avoid that messy business of needing to save up any money for later.  Or maybe my non-existant husband with deal with that for me.

 To be fair I think the labels may have drifted a little out of place, but the whole idea of labelling magazines by presumed gender of readership strikes me as rather silly.  They are grouped predominantly by topic and if you want to know what the magazine is about, specifically, the cover tends to be something of a clue. 

Besides, as any logical and educated person knows, the whole thing is based on a logical fallacy.  Even when most of the readers of a magazine on a certain topic are women, that does not imply that most women are interested in that topic–which is, to my mind, what would make something a ‘woman’s interest’. 

But I shall desist ranting on this point for fear of becoming boring. 

The debate about whether nudes shown in art are erotic or not, is a bit about the debate about whether men and women can just be friends.  That is, it is stupid.  I don’t even understand what kind of life you would have to live to not have ever had an opposite sex friend you didn’t bonk.   Either very sheltered or very busy I guess.

Of course people can be depicted naked in a way that is not erotic.  The stacked bodies at death camps were not sexy.  Breast feeding mothers, nudist beaches, saunas.  Being naked is not just about sex.  Although many of us now do in fact lead lives where we see very little nudity other than our own or prior to sex.  That, I think, is rather sad.  Perhaps it does condition some people to get turned on even by a naked table leg.

But yes, there are non-erotic nudes. Spencer Turnick, for example, bypasses the libido with sheer numbers and inert, headless poses. My main reaction to his extensive and repetitive use of mass nude crowd scenes around the world is that is suggests a peculiar fixation, but not a fetish.

But I find it interesting that many artists promoting their creation or viewing of nude art as non-erotic focus on depicting one or a few conventionally attractive models or the opposite sex in their child-bearing years.  The insistence of a lack of erotic content arises generally from religious morality or a disdain for producing low genre ‘porn’–not from the depiction being intrinsically non-sexual.

In fact, the angst that comes up over and over is most often a debate about whether the work is art or erotica (a.k.a. porn).  This is also a stupid question.  A picture can cause a person to be aroused without ceasing to be art.  And human diversity being what it is almost any depiction of anything will arouse someone.  (a.k.a.it is a false dichotomy)

Now it seems we are trying to obliterate any picture anyone might be aroused by in a way we don’t approve of.  Most obviously in the case of children and teens, not matter what the artistic merit might otherwise be.  People variously argue that whether something is erotica depends on the artist’s intent, or the viewer’s reaction (which ones?), or simply something you know when you see it.

The real question is: why do we care so much?  What is the big deal with some people getting turned on by pictures, whether we approve of that response or not.  Anything they might subsequently do remains entirely their own responsibility.

Queen Elizabeth I once famously defended freedom of religion by saying she had ‘no desire to make windows into men’s souls’ (even though she believed their eternal souls to be at stake).  So why do we keep trying to draw the curtains on their libidos?

This cover was withdrawn from the shelves of Lifetime Christian Bookstores. It is an event that helps me remember that people are deeply offended by women for reasons other than sexuality, Sometime it can just be that a fully-clothed, responsible woman is not in her ‘place’–these women are female pastors.

“We have removed the September/October issue of Gospel Today from our shelves because the cover story, featuring female pastors, clearly advocates a position contrary to our denomination’s statement of faith, the Baptist Faith & Message,” Chris Turner, a spokesman for Lifeway Resources, told The Christian Post. [quoted from The Christian Post]

 “It is contrary to what we believe.” [Same speaker qoted from RightWingWatch]

It seem perculiar to me that just seeing the traditions of other denominations should be considered so unacceptable as to be considered visually obscene.  A window into another word, I suppose.  I mean what would cause a similar level of disapproval in me?  Perhaps a magazine actively promoting violence and hate crimes?

 Which leaves me wondering if representative of the book chain feel about female pastors like I feel about people who commit hate crimes.  To be honest I am having a little trouble wrapping my mind around it.  I am further confused by the fact the magazine is not on display but is still being sold under the counter–very much like explicit pornography in a mainstream store.