Reader's Diary (Week 16)

It is possible to love really only that which stands above us, a Woman, who through Her beauty, temperament, intelligence, and strength of will subjugates us.
(Sacher-Masoch, 1870)

Femdom Advertisement

In honor of Goddess GINA, i had to try myself...

Reader's Diary (Week 15)

Where i am, i don't know, i'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, i can't go on, i'll go on.
(Beckett, 1953)

Women in Ads - Voodoo Hosiery

I would like to present here some advertisement campaigns that not only try to sell their product but also have courage to comment on a patriarchal world and show strong and powerful Women. I am glad we can see such ads more frequently nowadays and their public acceptance is much less bewildering then just a couple of years ago.

For me it started with Voodoo Winter Hosiery campaign in 2002. This outdoor advertisement featured an image of elegant young Woman walking behind two crouching men, naked except for dog collar, the leashes of which were held by the Woman. As far as I know the billboard has been seen in Austria only and many people found it offensive. Fortunately it was not banned, but some discussion about double standards and ignorant sexual exploitation were held.

The whole campaign was carefully prepared and it was VERY successful. It drove sales up by an unprecedented 87%. The controversy re-started the brand awareness. But it was not only selling the hosiery. The images show ideals of role reversal between male and Female gender. Women are not innocent victims any more, but the males are stupid and incapable. The advertisement worked in the favor of the Female as the dominant gender, portraying the pathetic males as hopeless and easily manipulated.

Max Ernst and his Picture-Manifesto

As far as I know Max Ernst (1891 - 1976), a German surrealistic painter & sculptor, made only one picture that can be called masochistic. It is 'The Blessed Virgin Chastising the infant Jesus before Three Witnesses' from 1926. This probably little blasphemous picture (it was immediately publicly denounced by the archbishop of Cologne) is recreating Parmigianino's mannerist masterpiece 'The Madonna of the Long Neck' from 1540 for 20th century. Muted colors are replaced by primary one, fluid forms and classical allusions are replaced by simple geometric shapes and traditional adoration by the modernist questioning.

The beaten child in Ernst's picture, the blond, curly haired Jesus, is most probably autobiographical. In 1896 five year old Max escaped from his parent's house and walked in the middle of a pilgrim's procession. Enchanted by blue-eyed, blonde infant in red night shirt the pilgrims proclaimed 'Look, little Jesus Christ'. When next day a policemen brought the child home, little Max proclaimed that he was sure he was a little Jesus.

The three men peeping through the window and watching the scene are Paul Eluard, Andre Breton and Ernst himself. Masochism played important part in whole Surrealism and its esthetic, but it was reversed - turned around - from passivity into more active form of sadism ('it is in so far as the subject makes himself the object of another that the sado-masochistic drive not only closes up, but constitutes itself' - surrealists were reading Freud too much, I think). This Ernst's paining, so carefully destroying old myths about art, remains one of the rare examples of pure masochism in whole surrealistic movement.

Easter Bunny for My Goddess

Spring is here

Spring is here, things are happening and I will just use immortal words from Eliot's famous poem:

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.