Posted February 10, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
This is an article from London’s The Evening Standard of 30th August 2011.
The headline reads Huge clean-up begins as Irene death toll hits 46.
The article itself is unremarkable. What concerns us is the photograph and caption.
We will all do unusual things in times of great stress and surviving a hurricane is going to lead to strange deeds by a lot of people. One of these deeds is, however, unlikely to be saving a fish from the water in which it is swimming.
This is a man caught in an intimate moment with his partner. Normally, one presumes, their pleasure would be taken in privacy. But a hurricane destroys tree cover, removes the screening reeds and sedges by the riverside, erodes the inhibitions that normally lead to circumspection.
This is a moment of passion, thrown into embarrassing relief by extraordinary circumstances. Well done to Rashid Razaq for attempting to preserve the man’s feelings in this international expose.
Posted February 10, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
Posted February 10, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
Shame has a significant role in the creation of many artefacts concerning sex with fish from the classical period.
In this coy Roman nude (veined Marble, 100-130BC, Apulia) in the Ashmolean Museum, we see Venus attempting to cover her nudity after being surprised in the act of sex with a fish. The fish has been represented as a dolphin, probably in deference to the prevailing morality. Dolphins were considered by many Romans, particularly those in the southern provinces, as people who had been chosen by Posiedon for sacred duties.
Consequently, what was commonly known as ‘riding the dolphin’, in which women might take advantage of an aroused captive male dolphin, was not such a source of embarrassment as it may be in modern society. In practice, however, this was rarely done. Dolphins were difficult to keep in captivity and to be responsible for the death of one would draw the wrath of Posiedon. No such consequences were attached to sex with fish, just a certain sniggering stigma. Hence the replacement of the fish in this particular statue: a residual shame still clings to the penitent Venus.
For an immortal, it would be perfectly acceptable to claim that one had, once again, fallen victim to the shape-shifting subterfuges of Jupiter who, as well as adopting the forms of bulls, swans, golden showers and the like, could presumably have his way with an unsuspecting goddess in the form of a fish or a dolphin.
Posted February 10, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
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