Archive for the ‘Language and the body’ Category

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All the world is new again

May 1, 2023

🐇 🐇 🐇 for the first of May — not only beginning a new month, but also (among other things) celebrating the rebirth of life, and embracing the raw carnality of the season. This is the immediate follow-up to yesterday’s Walpurgis Eve, as described in my posting “Lord, preserve us from the witches”.

From my 5/1/20 posting “Trois lapins pour le premier mai”, about the 1st of May:

by some cultural reckonings the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and also (in some countries) International Workers Day, so: dance around the maypole, set bonfires for Beltane or Walpurgis, prepare for outdoor bo(i)nking (rabbits again!), break out the lilies of the valley (muguets pour le premier mai), cue the choruses of L’Internationale, and march in solidarity with the workers. (Feel free to choose from this menu, as your taste inclines and your schedule allows.)

The posting muses on, among other things, rabbits, Botticelli’s Three Graces from Primavera, and reworkings of the threesome theme.

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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and the body, Myths, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

The crocheted penis

April 22, 2023

(Today’s not-dead-yet posting; life has been very difficult, but I don’t think I’m up to providing details.)

In the penis art category — there’s even a Page on this blog about my postings on the subject — an entry in Susie Bright’s Journal (in her category “The Leisure Hours: Susie Bright’s Latest Food, Drink, Craft, Goof-Off”): “The Crocheted Penis: Jack Davis created a whole new world in fiber art” from earlier today.

Warning: this is going to be about (simulacra of) penises, so clearly not to everyone’s taste.

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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »

Two winged men

April 20, 2023

Something of a present to me from Vadim Temkin: two of his recent digital artworks; he writes:

When I was doing these winged men, a warrior angel and Icarus, I was thinking of you.

Thinking of me because I have a thing for winged men (often posted about on this blog).

So here they are, cropped for WordPress modesty.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Myths | 1 Comment »

The sculpture garden

April 6, 2023

Specifically, a huge (and very popular) public sculpture garden featuring nude statuary. Scarcely imaginable in the prudish United States, but it’s something of a national treasure in Norway.

From the Third Eye Traveller site, “Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo – Why You MUST Visit the Weird & Wonderful Frogner Park” by Sophie Pearce, last updated 1/15/22. One example from Pearce’s story, with her comment:


The Man Attacked by Babies sculpture shows a man that literally has babies crawling all over him. It almost looks like the babies are flying everywhere.
This abstract work is meant to represent a father who is nervous at the thought of parenthood.
Others say this is called the Man fighting off genii, or evil spirits.

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The Rodin of the 21st century

April 3, 2023

That would be Grzegrorz Gwiazda, whose extraordinary bronze Shamefaced (of 2015) came to me on Pinterest a little while back:

(#1)

All sorts of details to come, but I’ll start out by juxtaposing #1 to two works by the father of modern realistic sculpture, Auguste Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917).

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Posted in Art, Language and the body, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

The divine phallus

April 2, 2023

… in marble and bronze: a continuation of yesterday’s “Two bronze Orpheuses”, which began with the fate of Michelangelo’s marble David in Florida, where high school students must be shielded from viewing the statue’s penis. Australian cartoonist Cathy Wilcox’s savage take on that situation:


(#1) Wilcox’s “American Obscenity” cartoon (from the Sydney Morning Herald)

From here, even disregarding the American obsessive prudery about the human body, the topic goes off in many different directions. I’ll ramble through these in no particular order, starting with a digression on Wilcox, who’s new to this blog.

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Posted in Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Myths, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

Two bronze Orpheuses

April 1, 2023

🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit for the first of April, and that’s no joke. Today’s topic is the depiction of the god Orpheus in two bronze statues, one in the UK, one in the US.

More specifically, it’s about the treatment of Orpheus’s genitals in the two statues, reflecting a (sub)cultural difference between the US (where a strain of fundangelical belief holds that the naked human body, especially the male body, is unclean and dangerous, especially to children and women, who therefore must be elaborately protected from viewing it) and essentially the rest of what might referred to in shorthand as western civilization (where norms of privacy and modesty hold sway, but artistic representations of the naked body have their place, even in public parks and gardens).

This posting was provoked by, first, a complex case in Florida involving a reproduction of Michelangelo’s David shown to a high-school class; and then the ensuing photo of one of the Orpheuses — from the UK — on Facebook. There’s a lot more, but I’m unable to finish this posting today, so I’ll just give you the teaser materials here. More to come

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Posted in Art, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »

Denis Sarazhin

March 31, 2023

🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate March, a month that seems to have lasted forever, through meteorological disasters, the daily devastation of mass shootings, and the profoundly dangerous paranoid ravings of the moral monster Grabpussy. Oh yes, and the latest chapters in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the event that, quite by accident, relocated two artists from Kyiv to Chattanooga TN (in a state that is currently contending fiercely for the title of Gun Capital of the United States).

This is about one of them, Denis Sarazhin, who came to me through a reproduction of some of his remarkable paintings on Pinterest. In particular:


(#1) Pantomime No. 22 (2017); note the painfully contorted poses

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Posted in Art, Language and the body, Language in politics, Poetry | Leave a Comment »

From parts unknown

March 21, 2023

In yesterday’s (3/20) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, a cowboy — call him FM —  bellies up to the bar in a saloon in the fabled Old West:


(#1) Though he’s wearing jeans and  a handsome Western dress shirt, FM’s greenish pallor, eccentric hair, and neck bolt mark him as an outsider, not from these parts, not from around here; meanwhile, FM is a composite being, cobbled together from random parts — bodyparts — by Victor Frankenstein (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

So there’s parts and there’s parts. And FM’s from parts unknown  is a parts ‘bodyparts’ pun on the model of parts ‘places’ in what is now a rather formal and poetical expression from parts unknown ‘coming from an unknown place’. The Frankenstein world superimposed, absurdly, on the Gunslinger world.

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Posted in Books, Clothing, Comic conventions, Formulaic language, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Puns, Style and register | 2 Comments »

In the air, three cruises of death

March 18, 2023

(A decidedly lubricious moment of entertainment, to spice up a Saturday; it’s about facial expressions, but men’s genitals figure prominently, so this is not for kids or the sexually modest)

This e-mail ad (cropped here) in my e-mail today (3/18) — an ad for a sale of Raging Stallion gay porn flicks, featuring characters from RS’s just-released Take Off, set in a fantasy world of airline personnel:

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Posted in Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Phallicity | 1 Comment »

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