[pure-silver] Re: Venus After School

DEAR SHANNON ET AL.,
        Machiavelli said in all his sexist lingo, "I speak of men as they
are, not as I would have them be!"  
        I teach a class in film at the local University.  One of my students
wants to do a Public Service Announcement about child sexual activity.  She
is a teacher at a primary school and the very day we had class she had
learned that an 11 year old girl and two 12 year old boys had had sex in one
of the empty class rooms during lunch break.  I was shocked.  Where did they
get the idea for this behavior?  But THIS IS THE REALITY whether parents
want to admit it or not.  
        The issue of publishing SM's photos for older men is a completely
different topic but one must NOT assume that sexuality is a foreign subject
to VERY young people these days.  Deplorable?  Perhaps, given your
particular moral orientation but one must face the reality.  Perhaps during
the 90s one expected sexuality to start later but, when I was an adolescent
in the late 60s on Long Island, NY, sexual activity started around 13 or 14.
I find it hard to believe that things have regressed since then and the
evidence suggests that sexual activity is starting younger now.  
        I know the issue is exploitation via images but there are many
healthy adult women who were sexually active at ages very close to those at
which SM portrayed her daughters in sexually suggestive poses.  Is SM
leading the cultural curve or following it?  Consider the evidence.  
                CHEERS!
                        BOB

-----Original Message-----
From: pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Shannon Stoney
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 7:23 AM
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [pure-silver] Venus After School

>  Even within this group there are those who do not make the 
>connections that you do. For example, I had never seen - or heard of 
>- "the Ingres odalisque painting" to which you refer. (No, no art 
>history courses.) I just looked at it on the Internet, and I fail to 
>see the slightest resemblance to any of the Mann photos I've seen 
>(admittedly, not all of them). The open, inviting sexuality of the 
>Ingres is not even slightly evident in Mann's photos. Sexuality, 
>perhaps; an offertory - not at all.
>
>

Upon further reflection I've decided that Sally Mann probably meant 
to refer more to Manet's Olympia than to the Ingres paintings.  But 
Manet and Ingres were both referring to an old trope in western art: 
the prostitute reclining on a couch, sometimes covering her vulva 
with her hand.  Mann may also have been referring to the Botticelli 
painting commonly called Venus on the Half Shell, as she calls her 
own photograph Venus After School.  In both the painting and the 
photograph the female figure covers her vulva with her hand.

I can't find Venus After School on the internet, but both the 
Botticelli painting and Manet's Olympia are easy to find.

--shannon
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