After a hiatus, the erotica series is back, although I do have to cover some well-worn ground now and then. The hairy, virile and priapic Samson has been the focus of more than your usual biblical erotica, tempted by the alluring Delilah.
The story has provided a moment for screen sirens to play the voluptuous Delilah and for that condom full of muscles to do his thing. What they once said of Keanu Reeves – young, dumb, and full of come – may also apply to Samson.
But there is something odd about these images …
Something about the hair …
Post-coital fetal position notwithstanding …
If you had grown up with great slabs of the Bible at the end of every evening meal, you would know that Delilah doesn’t do the deed. She is merely the facilitator of Samson’s emasculation, for Delilah ‘called a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head’ (Judges 16:19).
For all their decadent plushness, it is a feature the older paintings capture.
Suddenly the scene teams with people. Gone is the hetero couple in intimate deception, for now we have hair fetishes, hints of group sex and a bit of S/M thrown in.
What marks the turn to the hetero couple? The atomisation of modern life? The narrowing of ideas of love and lust?
Or the need to slot Samson into that key role of straight biblical hero (albeit a little flawed). So we can’t have him, as in this picture, in intimate embrace with other muscled men, some in uniform, others brandishing their phallic things at him, Samson with a leg in the air and perhaps enjoying the attention.
No matter how seedy, he must, after all, be straight:
17 April, 2010 at 9:33 am
Interesting
17 April, 2010 at 10:15 am
you apparently haven’t seen scott bailey’s latest posting… ghastly.
17 April, 2010 at 12:13 pm
You mean the christ with abs that look like a penis that would make Lord Shiva envious … I’m not up to the gospels yet. But yes, http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/
Or http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/images/standard/WebLarge/WebImg_000003/1974_184726.jpg
17 April, 2010 at 6:58 pm
What I like about stories such as the Samson cycle is the way the sacred = magic. Actually, to touch on the whole debate over secularisation, I prefer the argument that what originally pagan folklore was appropriated late into a sacred schema, rather than the reverse. That’s why there’s so many lumps and bits sticking out in stories like this.
18 April, 2010 at 10:13 am
[...] Redivivus, showing a lively interest in matters relating to Exitpoint Stallions and my occasional biblical erotica posts. But at least Jim and I share our Reformed perspectives, although I’m probably a little more [...]
19 April, 2010 at 9:10 am
I think your insight regarding the Western focus on the hetero couple (as the absolute centre of the capitalist universe) is a profound analysis of these paintings!!
But I would tweak it a little more – the MAN is the centre really – it’s his masculinity that’s under threat, his hair, his woman that allures & betrays him etc etc etc. SHE poses a threat to his authority, power etc. A warning story to MEN about those pesky women …
Those old paintings are SO much more interesting anyway!!
19 April, 2010 at 11:22 am
On this theme the older ones have got much more going for them and the recent ones wimp out. Notice how all those pieces of hair in the blue painting are both phallic and turd-like and how he seems to be creeping back into the womb.
21 April, 2010 at 8:56 am
Ewww yeah you are right!!
Or they could be eels swimming in the sea of her hair while he gives her some good … hence the wry smile on her lips … !!?
It would be really cool if there was a way you could put a artist and date somewhere – like a “pop-up” thingy when I wriggle the cursor over the pic … ??! (I am so techno-literate NOT)
22 May, 2010 at 11:34 am
[...] one is a bit kinky: the last in the Samson series, it has him in the temple of Dagon, blinded, chained, stripped down. He asks the boy to guide him [...]