"If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay -- in solid cash -- the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy."
Aldous Huxley, as quoted at Overcoming Bias
Theo asks whether the advertising image above is demeaning to Italian women. I say NO! (that's Italian for "No"). I say it's art. Let's analyze the picture:
It's a compelling image, with the late Renaissance landscape in the background (the Garden of Eden, with Eve covering her private parts with pasta in her new-found shame? Or is the background the bleak, sterile desert of Western Capitalism?). The gal's hair and the dinner plate are obvious echoes of Botticelli's Venus. But why the cup of cappucino? Coffee with pasta? What exactly is the artist trying to say about gender, transexualism, race, power, veganism, consumerism, carbon trioxide or whatever, capitalism, spaghetti, and coffee? Or does she have some Barbera in the coffee cup? Wine or coffee - bloodthirsty Christian wine or peaceful, spiritual Moslem coffee? West vs. East? But assuming it's wine in the coffee cup, what's up with that? Is she a victim of Capitalism, too oppressed and impoverished by The System to afford clothing or a proper wine glass? Or is her nakedness a warning about the Crisis of Anthropolitical Capitalist Global Warming? Is there Christian meaning in that cup: "Take this cup. This is my blood..."? For sure, she is saying "Eat me (and drink this)", but in what way, exactly? And does the lady represent a blasphemous pomo version of the Holy Virgin - or a faithful representation of the whores sex workers to whom Christ ministered? Madonna or sex worker? Or maybe a female Christ? Is she saying "Drink of me" (a request for an oral, not a phallic interaction - as a critique of our phallus-dominated, warmongering culture)? Is the snake-like pasta a reference to Satan, or an echo of Laocoon and his Sons? Or both, a deft blending of pagan with Christian imagery? And how do the tensions of all of these dualities help us to interrogate the dangerous and discredited assumptions of Western Civilization?
(I can do this sort of BS all day long, without once mentioning that she's a hot and delicious Italiano babe. Our college readers are welcome to expand on this post for their Art History term papers. An "A" guaranteed from your crackpot pomo prof.)
