David has a pee-pee
The human body is PORNOGRAPHIC. Who knew?
The Florence museum that houses Michelangelo’s statue of David has invited teachers and students from a Florida school to visit, after an uproar over an art lesson.
The school’s principal quit after a complaint about a sixth-grade art class that included an image of the statue.
A parent had complained the image was pornographic.
So have her children had their genitalia removed? Was it porn every time she changed their diapers when they were babies? Is it porn when she takes a shower?
The controversy began when the board of Tallahassee Classical School – a charter school in Florida’s state capital – pressured principal Hope Carrasquilla to resign after three parents complained about a lesson that included a photo of the 17ft nude marble statue.
Where is his fig leaf god damn it?! What was this Michelangelo fella thinking?!!
According to Florentine art historian and dean of the University for Foreigners in Siena, Tomaso Montanari, such an attitude is “disconcerting”.
“First comes the dismay at the absence of educational freedom, as it should not be restricted or manipulated by families,” Mr Montanari said.
“On the other hand, from a cultural perspective, the Western world has a tendency to associate fundamentalism and censorship with other societies, believing it possesses the capability to spread democratic ideals worldwide.”
He’s right you know. This is Talibanesque. Granted there aren’t whippings or burials alive or beheadings involved, but the thinking is all too similar.
Yes, yes I do.
Oh, wait, that’s not me.
Anyway, the school in question is a charter school, which means it’s public, paid for by the taxpayers of Tallahassee and Florida, “which follows a curriculum from Hillsdale College, the conservative, Christian institution in Michigan that has helped launch dozens of “classical” charter schools nationwide” (source). To me that’s the bigger scandal.
I don’t disagree.
I really wish we could agree on a definition of pornography. That’d be quite helpful, thanks. Unfortunately, that’ll never happen, so we’re doomed to fight these battles forever.
NiV: What, you don’t think “I know it when I see it” is a good definition?
It’s her firm policy to keep her eyes very tightly shut. It makes things awkward, but she remains pure.
Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be anything visible to set some people off.
I once had a book by Jerome Agel called The Making of Kubrick’s 2001*. One section of it included critic’s reviews of, and viewers’ reactions to the movie. One was from a woman who thought the Star Child at the end was pornographic. I thought this was amusing, as all the “pornography” was happening inside her head:
“Wait. That’s a baby. In order to make a baby, two people have toOHMYGOD!!!”
This example led me to the conclusion that some people deserve to be offended. I now know that there are lots of people who will go out of their way to find offence.
*I must have been six or seven when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I’m now amazed that anyone would have taken me, but I was a space nut as a kid, so there’s that.) It was infuckingcredible. I went home and drew all the spacecraft!
YNNB —
“That’s the thing about religious satire – it automatically delivers offense in the right dose: the amount of offense you take is exactly the amount you deserve.”
— author of Jesus and Mo, January 6, 2016
[A quote I have used many times, including in a talk I gave titled “Laughing at God: Religion, Irreligion, and Humor.]
As an aside, for anyone thinking that Italians back then were uniformly cool with the display of the human body, it appears the statue had its nether regions covered up soon after it was moved into place. From the Wikipedia article: ‘ …that summer, the sling and tree-stump support were gilded, and the figure was given a gilded loin-garland.’.