From: wagley@screaming.net   
      
   "Enfleshed_Spirit"  wrote in message   
   news:1155221773.313366.270890@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...   
   > I've been trying to make sense of the ways in which men's   
   > bodies are visually presented in Western societies. And by that I   
   > mean the referencing of male embodiment within both elite culture   
   > (via, for instance, painting, sculpture, ballet, fine art   
   > photography, etc.) and popular culture (via, for instance,   
   > advertising, pornography, television programming, no/minimal clothing   
   > athletics, etc.). This has been going on for at least a decade now.   
   > As you might imagine, it's been an uphill struggle. Although at   
   > times it's faded, my hope remains to find online others seriously   
   > interested in exploring the matter. As with anything else, it's   
   > likely that greater headway could be made the more people become   
   > involved. Are there any such individuals belong to this group? My   
   > sense is that, at a minimum, the project requires a capacity for   
   > intense self-reflection, as well as keen powers of observation and   
   > interpretation.   
   >   
   > Let me be frank: although few firm conclusions about specifics have   
   > been reached, the overall inference that's taken shape over my years   
   > of research is that visual culture typically MISrepresents what it   
   > means to be a male human being. And it does so monstrously.   
   > Although, thankfully, there are more than a few exceptions, the   
   > depiction/performance of male embodiment strikes me as usually   
   > radically inadequate and misleading. More often than not, our   
   > physical makeup as men is delivered as nothing more than a pose-able   
   > corpse. Seldom does it appear to have any connection with the living   
   > flesh of actual men. Take muscularity--which plays a major role in   
   > both the fine arts and mass media--as a case in point. From the   
   > perspective of most visual representation, men's muscles are inside   
   > our bodies, under the skin. Located within that interior space, they   
   > are defined in terms of their anatomical functions and material   
   > dimensions. Such muscles, both with respect to location and   
   > definition, are muscles about which we can know theoretically and   
   > scientifically. And, to my mind, on the whole that's a good thing.   
   > Such muscles, however, are NOT the muscles with which men live in   
   > the world of concrete experience.   
   >   
   >>From the viewpoint of the male body as living flesh, one's muscles   
   > are not under the skin but within the world. They ARE   
   > our "situation."  As such they are not anatomical functions and   
   > material dimensions. Instead, they are human activities. I know my   
   > muscles in and through the heavy boxes carried upstairs here and now,   
   > in and through the embrace given to and received from a friend, in   
   > and through the ball just thrown to my nephew. These muscles, unlike   
   > those of the pose-able corpses occupying much of visual culture, are   
   > not neutral or detachable from one's living environment-just as my   
   > mind is not at this moment an interiorized mechanism more or less   
   > locatable in my brain, but rather my present activity of thinking and   
   > typing these words.   
   >   
   > In much the same fashion, the male body of living flesh never exists   
   > in neutral space, unlike the "artistic" pose-able corpse ordinarily   
   > shown in an homogenous expanse filled with uninfluenced and   
   > uninfluencing objects. Don't our bodies experientially "generate"   
   > space--more akin to the realities in Einstein's universe which move   
   > and sculpt space rather than Newton's universe where space is the   
   > container for things? For example, a man who's in love walks through   
   > the world in such a way that his movements carve space into so many   
   > places of proximity to and distance from the beloved, into areas of   
   > warmth and intimacy, into zones of quiet whispers and shared   
   > conversations. Even when it is the focus of a composition, a man's body   
   > may well show up in a portrait, or an ad, or a movie looking   
   > essentially the same as anything else in view. My impression is   
   > that both elite and popular cultural forms still tend to stick men as   
   > autonomous   
   > forms into a Newtonian universe.   
   >   
   > In raising questions about visually representing the male body, I   
   > acknowledge   
   > making certain well-considered assumptions. For instance, I'm convinced   
   > that the   
   > meanings of any type of representation are never reducible to   
   > subject, content, design, or technique of execution. They are not   
   > accessible through any purely formal, stylistic or iconographic   
   > deciphering, nor through referencing biographical details about the   
   > image-maker/performer. Rather, they are inherently and essentially   
   > attached to their socio-cultural and politico-economic contexts, as   
   > well as to all the subjective and objective inter-dynamics of   
   > production and reception. At every moment our bodies embody all our   
   > relationships with others. I also assume that representing men   
   > without clothing is (at most) only tangentially about the   
   > biologically-given sex of maleness. Rather, it appears to always   
   > relate to the ideologically-shaped gender of masculinity--regardless   
   > of whatever else such representation might be about.   
   >   
   > I would argue that, for most of its history, visual culture in the   
   > West has been dominated by "the male nude," a distinct invention of   
   > ancient Greece, to which the Roman Empire provided a few final   
   > touches. Only during the last couple centuries was "the female nude"   
   > moved to center stage. This was done so that it might serve a visual   
   > economy suited to the power-relations of bourgeois modernity. The   
   > iconic male bodies produced pre-nineteenth century have recently   
   > reappeared as the compelling emblems of so-called postmodernity. In   
   > psychoanalytic terms, it might be said that they mark "a return of the   
   > repressed." Only now they have been "tweaked" and re-encoded with   
   > meanings pleasing to the potentates of commodity culture (rather than   
   > royal, civil or church powers).   
   >   
   > It seems to me that the ideologically-sanctioned representations of   
   > the male gender basically depend upon two generic archetypes: the   
   > heroic, masterful and controlling mesomorph; the easy-going,   
   > yielding, sleek-bodied androgyne. It might be helpful to think of   
   > these as (on the one hand) the Farnese Hercules--Michelangelo's David-   
   > -Sylvester Stalone's characters--the Calvin Klein Olympian type and   
   > (on the other hand) the Hellenic Faun--St. Sebastian--Leonardo   
   > DiCaprio's characters--the Calvin Klein waif type. Although these   
   > archetypes may be interpreted along the lines of active-passive and   
   > macho-fem, there is solid historical foundation for considering it   
   > crude oversimplification to see this distinction in necessarily   
   > homoerotic terms.   
   >   
   > In fact, one of the primary means of legitimizing "the male nude" as   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)