Source Unknown
The psychedelic background reminds me of some of the stuff Ryan McGinley has shot in caves. The pose would seem to even further suggest him, except that he’d shoot in a studio with more even lighting and acknowledgement of the camera.
Were I to see this image in a magazine, I probably wouldn’t give it pause. But the way it is presented here–on what appears to be a cheap bathmat, suggesting an implicit POV shot–contributes a luridness in which I am always inclined to revel.
Source Unknown
“Masculinity is clothing; femininity is flesh.”
–My erstwhile philosophy professor
summarizing Nancy Chodorow.
Alexander Wolff
Pauwen en reigers[Cinematographer: Geert Lautenschutz]
Peacocks and Herons is a half-hour comedic series which aired on Dutch television in the late aughts.
As far as what its about: search me (There’s nothing about it in English.)
I don’t make a habit of posting shit I know fuck all about but this not only has a nice Jeff Cronenweth vibe, it represents something of which there should be a lot more: depictions of male nudity in visual culture.
Granted I haven’t seen a single episode Peacocks and Herons, it could be packed with graphic depictions of female bodied nudity. But I would still give kudos to the Dutch.
Why kudos? Unfortunately we haven’t made very much progress in the more than thirty years since the instance of full-frontal male nudity in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was eight-sixed due to erect genitalia being perceived as ‘aggressive’ by the MPAA censors.
Meanwhile for every scene of male bodied nudity managing to somehow slip through unchallenged, tens of thousands of instances of female bodied nudity flood in unchecked. A proliferation which pushes the boundaries of what is considered edgy/graphic. To the point where the majority of instances of female bodied nudity carry an instinctive and compelling correlation to sexual activity.
I’m with Blake on his assertion that “the naked woman’s body is a portion of eternity to great for they eye of man.” But the glaring double standard and inequality it facilitates piss me right the fuck right off.
We need more Micheal Fassbender in Shame, more Alexander Skarsgård, more Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises, more Peacocks and Herons.
Maybe a week or so ago, the lovely sextathlon re-blogged a post featuring images of Michelangelo’s David side-by-side with a photo of a nude male pin-up appended with an question as to why the former is defended as Art and the latter is deemed obscene.
My suspicion is that the party line runs: the skill required to carve a nude dude from a chunk of marble exceeds what is needed to plunk a hunk down in front of a camera.
The dichotomy really centers on the way male nudity challenges invisible assumptions, i.e. the spectator will be straight, white and male or deferential to such a perspective.
Michelangelo was likely gay, David—a homoerotic sculpture. But Renaissance aristocrats didn’t get their dressing gowns in a twist because the work was conceived with fail-safes to diffuse the “gay”: the contrapposto of Greek statuary was the lingua franca among Firenze’s intelligentsia; also, naming the piece after a mensch who was such a bro that he had a man killed to bone his wife further obfuscates its homoeroticism.
On the other hand, photography is a relatively young medium and as such there are fewer ruses to diffuse perceived affronts to the invisible ‘heterosexual norm’. Thus: an image of a cock is, well… a cock—and most likely totes gay.
Pornographers, and trench coat clad old men standing on street corners, have done fuck all to ameliorate matters. Both reduce heterosexuality to metonymy—men are their swollen manhood; the sight of which is somehow sure to start vaginal secretions dripping down thighs.
With all that bullshit, I guess people see the hairless semi-hard cock tucked between the boys shaved legs and immediately dismiss the image as “gay.” Maybe, they are a wee bit sensitive and wonder about the subject’s ambivalent gender identity.
Fuck that noise. And should your eyes’ appetite not be omnivorous enough to appreciate the meticulously considered, conceived and constructed pulchritudinous depiction of longing, then fuck you, too.
Acetylene Eyes 