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Philosophy In The Boudoir And In Memory Of Mack Sennett: A Transgender Interpretation free porn video
Philosophy in the Boudoir and In Memory of Mack Sennett: A Transgender
Interpretation
By Cal Y. Pygia
Surrealist artist Rene Magritte regarded his paintings as visual poems in
which he sought to express the "secret affinities" between objects which
seemed otherwise wholly unrelated. He detested Freudian interpretations
of his work, regarding such readings as puerile and superficial, if not
totally irrelevant. Therefore, he would have been likely to reject
psychoanalytical readings of La Philosophie dans le Boudoir (Philosophy
in the Boudoir) (which he painted in two versions) and a similar work, In
Memoriam Mack Sennett (In Memory of Mack Sennett).
For similar reasons, he would probably have looked askance at the
transgender interpretation that I offer in this essay. Nevertheless,
once a work of art is submitted for public consideration, it becomes fair
game for others to interpret as they will, provided, of course, that
their interpretations are grounded in something reasonable. Mine, in
this essay, follows the tradition of the so-called new criticism,
proponents of which include Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, among
others, which proposes that the text (or, in the case of Magritte's work,
the imagery) be understood according to a "close reading" of the
significance of its rhetorical and poetic, or figurative, meanings.
For those who are unfamiliar with the works I've mentioned, a brief
description of them follows.
In Memory of Mack Sennett (1936) is the earlier of the three paintings;
both Philosophy in the Boudoir and its variant followed in 1947. Mack
Sennett features a free-standing wardrobe, the right door of which is
opened to reveal a nightgown suspended from a hanger on a vertical wooden
rod. The left door is closed. The wardrobe is of a simple design, so
the viewer's attention is directed at the single item of attire inside.
Ankle-length, the white nightgown is itself of a simple design, with long
sleeves, a high V-neck, and no adornments of any kind. However, a pair
of firm, high, round (i. e., young and healthy) breasts, of Caucasian
hue, complete with pink nipples, are visible beneath the fabric; in fact,
they are not so much visible through the material as they are part of it,
as if the nightgown itself sports breasts. A shadow behind the nightgown
indicates that the garment is real, despite its fantastic appearance.
Philosophy in the Boudoir features a similar nightgown, suspended, once
again, from a hanger on a vertical wooden rod. The view is closer. If
the apparel is inside a wardrobe, the wardrobe itself is not shown,
except for the herringbone-pattern grain of the wooden panel that
comprises the inside of the closet's back. The long, sleeveless
nightgown has a ruffled collar and is ruffled around the armholes, but it
is otherwise of plain design. Once again, a pair of breasts, high, full,
and round, or healthy and youthful, press through, or are part of, the
nightgown. Their luminous, pink nipples appear to be erect. Before the
nightgown, atop a table or block, a pair of silver high-heeled shoes, the
toes of which are of flesh rather than leather and the nails of which are
painted white, stand, ready, one presumes, for wear. The articles on
view are real, their shadows attest, for rod, nightgown, and shoes all
cast shadows of themselves. A variant of the original Philosophy was
painted shortly after the first, with pubic hair and vulva but without
shoes.
The Freudian interpretation of these works is that they are unconscious
reenactments of the childhood trauma that Magritte suffered when his
mother drowned. (She had been wearing a simple nightdress at the time,
the front of which had ridden up so as to reveal her torso while covering
her face.)
The close reading of the new criticism, while it may be mindful of
psychoanalytical and other interpretations of artistic works, has its own
method, as mentioned above, relying less on speculation than it depends
upon an analysis of the rhetorical and figurative elements of the work
itself.
In analyzing either of these paintings, one can begin by identifying the
images they depict: closet or wardrobe (both); rod and hanger (both);
shadows of nightgown and/or other objects (both); breasts and nipples,
seen through (or part of) the nightgown (both); high-heeled shoes ending
in painted human toes (Philosophy); wood grain (Philosophy); wardrobe,
with one door open (In Memory). In the second version of Philosophy,
Magritte loses the shoes and adds the pubes.
Obviously, the centerpieces of all three paintings is the nightgown with
breasts (or, in the variant of Philosophy, breasts and pubes). The
nightgown's position alone would make it stand out, for, spatially, it
occupies roughly the center of attention in all three paintings, and, in
In Memory, it is revealed because the door that would conceal it, were it
closed, is opened. Likewise, although no door is shown in Philosophy,
one assumes that the garment is hung inside a wardrobe or a closet and
that, therefore, the door to the cabinet is likewise open. However, the
nightgown, whether it is equipped with breasts alone or also sports a
hairy vulva, is clearly no ordinary nightgown. There is something
magical, perhaps even supernatural, about the item of clothing. It bears
the imprint--indeed, more than the imprint, the reality itself--of its
wearer's breasts (or breasts and pubes), just as, in Philosophy, the
high-heeled shoes bear the impressions of, or their wearer's actual,
toes.
The nightgown and the shoes bear the imprints of the wearer's femininity,
for nothing is more feminine than a pair of breasts, a vulva, and high-
heeled shoes, especially when the nightgown bears breasts and the shoes
end in the actual toes, complete with painted nails, of the woman who
wears them. The clothing is feminine, both in its design and in the
traces of its wearer's own sex.
The clothing is also associated with the bedroom, for the nightgown is
sleepwear, and the high heels, although they would not be worn to bed,
might be worn by a woman whose purpose it is to sexually arouse her
paramour. Moreover, women's shoes--and high heels, especially--are
sadomasochistic in nature, exhibiting patriarchal power and female
submissiveness. They not only cramp the feet and make the calf muscles
ache, but, according to podiatrists, they also cause severe physical
disability after prolonged use.
They are the modern equivalents of Chinese foot binding, as the original
story of Cinderella's tiny glass slipper (a vaginal substitute, too,
according to psychoanalytical readings) indicates: Cindy's foot fits the
slipper because it has been subjected to foot binding, in which the toes
and the heel are surgically removed before the remainder of the truncated
foot is severely bound during the time that a girl otherwise grows to her
adult stature.
High-heeled shoes have a curious effect upon the wearer's anatomy as
well, which is another, if not the primary, reason that they are worn.
They elevate and tighten the buttocks, thereby drawing men's attention to
them. As sexual signals, a pair of high, tight buttocks suggests that
the woman who, as it were, models them, is ready, always (or as long as
she wears these buttocks-enhancing shoes, at least), for sex.
Since the nightgown and the shoes are associated, both sexually and
otherwise, with the bedroom, they are a woman's evening wear--literally,
her nightdress. By wearing this costume, she signifies that she is a
woman and that she is available, as such, to her male lover. By putting
on a sheer nightgown that will reveal, even as it conceals, the
accoutrements, as it were, of her femininity (breasts and/or vulva), a
woman signifies her womanhood; she both puts on and models her
femininity. As Magritte's paintings suggest, clothes not only make the
man--or, in this case, the woman--but the woman also makes the clothes.
Clothing truly is a second skin, and, when the clothing is worn by a
woman, it is more than merely skin deep.
When one wears attire that is set apart for use in a particular time and
place and for a particular purpose, such clothing becomes ritualistic and
ceremonial. In a word, even if it is so in a secular (or sexual)
context, such clothing becomes costume and serves a religious purpose. A
nightdress is ceremonial. It celebrates woman as a sexual object, as an
offering, as it were, to be displayed upon the altar of the bridal or
marital bed, where, after worship (foreplay) has occurred, the sacrifice
shall suffer la petite morte, "the little death" of orgasm.
The imprint or presence of breasts and pubic mound in the highly
sexualized nightgown (and of the imprint or presence of the fleshly toes
and painted nails in the high-heeled shoes) is similar to the imprint of
the image of the crucified man in the Shroud of Turin, which may or may
not represent the image of Jesus Christ Himself. According to one
theory, if the image is that of Christ, the radiation resulting from his
resurrection is responsible for the imprint of his face and crucified
body. Therefore, the shroud is impregnated with the very essence of
Christ, or of God Himself, some claim.
Without intending any irreverence, one might suggest that something
similar is true with regard to the impregnated nightgown; it is suffused
with the very essence, the flesh, of femininity: breasts (or breasts and
vulva). It is a costume partly of flesh, and innately feminine flesh at
that.
What is the viewer to make of the last image in these paintings--the
image of the wardrobe or closet? Symbolically, a closet represents a
place in which secrets are kept--secrets that are embarrassing or that
could damage one's reputation were they to be known to others. The
secrets themselves are usually represented as skeletons, but, surely, in
keeping with the closet metaphor, such secrets should be regarded not as
skeletons but as items of clothing. A woman, of course, would have no
need to keep secret the fact that she wears women's clothing. Therefore,
if the wearing of women's apparel is being kept secret, it would appear
that it is someone who could be embarrassed or have his reputation
damaged were it known that he wears such attire. A man, in other words,
who wears women's clothing--a cross dresser or transvestite--would be
much more likely to keep such a secret than a woman would be.
The closet is not an accidental prop. Magritte could have easily draped
his nightgown over the back of a chair or across a bed as to have
displayed it hanging in a closet or wardrobe. Therefore, the presence of
the closet should be read as an important clue--and, perhaps, as the key
itself--to interpreting the meaning of these paintings. The closet is
the context. Its presence, and the nightgown's presence within it, is
the central image of these paintings, and, as such, it is the image from
which the other images must derive their significance.
In this reading of Magritte's paintings, the closet is figurative and
literal at the same time, symbolizing the transvestite's lifestyle and
his need to hide his penchant for wearing women's clothing from others.
The paintings suggest that he has either completed dressing for the
evening and has put his things away or that he is taking them out to don
his now-gay apparel ("gay" in the sense of gaiety, not--or not
necessarily--in the sense of homosexuality).
By wearing women's clothing, especially clothing which is equated with
both femininity and sexuality, the cross dresser assumes the feminine
role, becoming, for a time, the woman whom he would like to be at all
times, sacrificing his own masculinity, if not his dignity, to worship
both the female sex and the feminine gender that is normally denied to
him. At the same time, however, he also imparts part of himself to the
clothing he wears. Just as tribal warriors sought to take upon, or into,
themselves the fierce nature of natural predators such as bears or lions
by dancing about in the animals' skins during ritualistic religious
ceremonies, transvestites take upon, or into, themselves the nature of
the women whom they would emulate. At the same time, thereafter, they
are known by the name of the creature whose essence they have thus
extracted and taken into themselves. (Beowulf's name, for example, means
"bear-wolf," [or, possibly, "werewolf"] possibly marking him as a
berserker, a feared Norse warrior who waged war dressed in a bearskin).
In dressing as women, cross dressers invest the garments of women with
themselves, just as the garments invest them with the femininity that the
clothing, as costume, represents. By wearing women's clothing, men
become women; however, they also sacrifice their own masculinity, so that
the breasts and vulvas that they leave behind, when they hang upon their
nightgowns at the break of day, are as much their own as these
accoutrements of femininity were theirs merely on loan.
Magritte was a happily married heterosexual artist (despite his
homoerotically charged L'ocean [The Ocean], Le Printemps Eternal [Spring
Eternal], and Le Premir Jour [The First Day], in which a naked woman or a
ballerina in a tutu replaces the erect penis of a nude god or a dressed
violinist, respectively). Therefore, it is doubtful that Magritte
intended the transgender meaning that this close reading of the "text" of
In Memory of Mack Sennett and Philosophy in the Boudoir, variations one
and two, suggests. Once again, however, after an artist delivers his or
her work into the hands of the public, such work can and does take on
meanings far beyond those that the artist him- or herself may have
conceived. Thus does the public criticism of art enrich works of art
rather than impoverish them.
* * *
Note: It is customary to capitalize only the first letters of the first
words of the titles of Magritte's works and, of course, to italicize
them, but since Fictionmania doesn't allow writers to italicize text, I
have opted to use title case in identifying these titles.
Mikayla
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