Nelson Minar writing on Facebook on 7/19 alludes to the controversial oysters vs. snails bath scene in the 1960 movie Spartacus:
Facebook has now figured out that I prefer snails to oysters so it is serving me ads featuring improbable men’s butts instead of improbable women’s butts. It hasn’t figured me out on the daddy / twink axis yet though.
I was derailed for a moment by a vision of a rock band called Improbable Butts. And, entertained by NM’s report that he’s a snail guy, derailed for a longer period by this vision of a notably phallic rainbow snail:
(#1) From the Craiyon site, an AI image generated from the prompt “A whimsical rainbow-colored snail with a trail of sparkling slime”
But now to Spartacus, after which I can return to snails as food and the verb eat.
Sexual tastes at the movies. From Wikipedia, with the two relevant characters’ descriptions boldfaced:
Spartacus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas in the title role, a slave who leads a rebellion against Rome and the events of the Third Servile War. Adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Howard Fast’s 1951 novel of the same title, the film also stars Laurence Olivier as Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, Charles Laughton as Sempronius Gracchus, Peter Ustinov as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus, and John Gavin as Julius Caesar. Jean Simmons played Spartacus’ wife Varinia, a fictional character, and Tony Curtis played the fictional slave Antoninus.
… [The 1991 restoration of the film:] A team of 30 archivists restored several violent battle sequences that had been left out because of the negative reaction of preview audiences. Among the deleted footage was a bath scene in which the Roman patrician and general Crassus attempts to seduce his slave Antoninus, speaking about the analogy of “eating oysters” [the oyster as a vaginal symbol] and “eating snails” [the snail as a phallic symbol] to express his opinion that sexual preference is a matter of taste rather than morality. The four-minute scene had been removed following an objection by the National Legion of Decency. When the film was restored (two years after Olivier’s death), the original dialogue recording of this scene was missing; it had to be redubbed. Tony Curtis, by then 66, was able to re-record his part, but Crassus’ voice was an impersonation of Olivier by Anthony Hopkins, who had been suggested by Olivier’s widow, Joan Plowright. A talented mimic, Hopkins had been a protégé of Olivier’s during Olivier’s days as the National Theatre’s artistic director, and had portrayed Crassus in the Jeff Wayne musical album. The actors separately recorded their dialogue.
So: you couldn’t see it in 1960, because some people judged that same-sex relations are morally offensive, so that audiences had to be shielded from the baleful consequences of being exposed to talk suggesting or images conveying a man fellating another man. By 1991, homophile movements had largely changed the public consciousness in large parts of the world; there were still people who judged that same-sex relations are morally offensive, but they no longer held sway over the media. Now Olivier’s character could be seen and heard to be trying to draw Curtis’s character into a snail feast — into fellating him.
(The copies of the film available on the net are murky and muffled, pretty much unwatchable. And the still images captured from the film are all behind paywalls. So I’m not showing you the scene, just offering a description of it.)
Eating: actual snails and snail-likenesses. I’ll start with the mollusks, but eventually I’m going genital, with the phalluses.
From Wikipedia on snails as food:
Snails are eaten in many areas such as the Mediterranean region, Africa, France and Southeast Asia, while in other cultures, snails are seen as a taboo food. In American English, edible land snails are also called escargots [French escargot ‘snail’], and the production of snails for consumption is called snail farming or heliciculture [helici– ‘of snails’ from the genus of snails Helix, from Latin helix ‘helix, spiral’, from Ancient Greek ἕλιξ (hélix ‘something twisted’)]. Snails as a food date back to ancient times, with numerous cultures worldwide having traditions and practices that attest to their consumption.
Some escargots. With butter, garlic, and parsley (some people view snails as a mere vehicle for butter, garlic, and parsley). From the Savory Experiments site, “Classic French Escargots” from 3/26/16:
(#2) Stuffed in snail shells, for a dramatic presentation
The snail’s point of view. In this Peter Steiner cartoon:
(#3)
Eating. Food and phalluses. See my 2/17/19 posting “Eat it! The oral humiliation you deserve”. with a section on the nasty penumbra of the verb eat, including sexual eat, aka fellate (involving a phallus rather than food).
Which brings us back to the act that Crassus (as played by Laurence Olivier) had in mind for the slave boy Antoninus (as played by Tony Curtis) to perform on him (with a clear conscience, mind you). In a few playful words: Crassus wanted his snail drained.
July 26, 2024 at 6:50 am |
Similar to the distinction in #3 is the usage of calamari on restaurant menus, on the presumption that a significant number of English-speakers would be put off by squid.