--Mary Renault's Alexander is a secular Christ figure
--Speaking of Christ: Christ, the cover of Madonna's Hard Candy CD is thick. And I mean with meaning. It's got a message...this being Madonna, a sexual message...for pretty much everyone who walks by. She provides identification/envy for the straight chicks, open legs for the attracted-to-women folks, bondage for the kinksters (the black boxing tape/strap she's pulling on her hand, which also stretches in front of her open mouth--not only furthering the bondage theme but invoking oral sex as well), and an overall attitude of blatant irony for gay men. That is one hard-working picture. And it has deniability! Technically, she's just striking another pose. You could stock this thing at Wal-Mart.
--By the way, that there was more or less an iconographic analysis, essentially the same as what you'd do if confronted in an academic setting with a Giotto. (And now we're three for three on Christ references. I picked this one not because it depicts Christ per se, though, but only because it depicts a single figure, like the image above. Makes comparison easier. To wit: both images are meant to invoke powerful emotions in the viewer and use the vulnerable body of their subject to achieve their impact. But the purpose of each image is of course totally opposite.) (Well, um, actually not, now that I think about it. Both are meant, despite their inherent sadness, to invoke adoration and a kind of ecstasy. But the nature of the adoration, the nature of the ecstasy, and the expected result--purchase versus prayer--that's where the difference lies.)
Anyhow--intellectually conservative academics can't stand the philistine postmodernists wanting to talk about Madonna CD covers in class, but this is exactly why they do--because look what can happen, look how things can bang up against each other in your head in unexpected ways. Culture is not a temple, it's a mosh pit. Well...part of it is a temple. And part of it is a Zen garden, and part of it is a happy park, and part of it is Swan Lake at midnight. But part of it is a mosh pit, where Giotto's Christ and Madonna's candy struggle to save one another.
--You might have noticed that I ran across the Hard Candy image here, at the site All About the Pretty. I've been thinking about her post on this foaming bath oil. Any scented oil that can make people talk about it the way they usually talk about kirtan has got my attention.
--But does that say more about the oil, or the unique psyche of the individual it touched? Different things open the door for different people. In the end, beauty is beauty, whether it's an asana or an eau de parfum.
--Or a near-ancient devotional painting. Or yesterday's wildflowers. Don't you love how they spring up between roads and by overpasses, on those accidental greenspaces no one has figured out how to exploit yet. Or gotten permission to.
--Have a good day.
