Skip to main content

Creative Platypus: Femme Fatales

 





Femme Fatales, femme formidable 
What are the differences between the rippling muscles and bulging buttocks of the nude men of Sword and Sorcery and their female counterparts?

Warhammer has attempted to solve the problem in their Age of Sigmar and Warcry lines. It seems as if their goal is to render their War Queens along the exact same lines: equally clothed, muscular, and posed. Their Chaos warriors are equally bulky and armored and their screaming sibarites are androgynous. Dark Elf witches now even dare to be ugly occasionally. 



Artists have been drawn to both the sexual and asexual beauty of the human form since time out of mind. Since the advent of ethical monotheism, society has often sought to censor or control this tendency. As a result, expressions of nudity in art have often found their outlet in ancient myth and the fantastic. Michelangelo turned to Scripture, Titian to Grecco-Roman Myth. The Pre-Raphaelites added Medieval legend. Gauguin and Picasso looked to non-European cultures whose mores had not felt the full force of colonialism. It is against this backdrop that the Post-war United States and Japan developed the pop-cultural fantastic as outlets. Like the erotic pottery of Classical Athens, much of the output was pornographic, but there is, perhaps, in the best of artists like Frazzeta (note the Italian heritage) a sort of riotous exaltation in the sheer power and beauty of the human form. Too Nietzschian? Too Pagan? I leave that for you to decide. The Platypus refuses to weigh in on this subject as he thinks we should all grow fur coats.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
10 comments
Read more

Under the Moon: The Platypus Reads Part LXVI

My wife and I were discussing our favorite books from the Chronicles of Narnia on our way back from lunch.  My wife, true to her sunny personality, is a staunch fan of "The Voyage of the Dawntreader."  I can't argue with that choice but, when push comes to shove, "The Silver Chair" has always been my favorite. I have a bit of a theory.  I think "The Voyage of the Dawntreader" is Lewis' grail legend.  If that's so, then I'd hazard a guess and say that "The Silver Chair" is his "Pilgrim's Progress." -just think about the shape of Puddleglum's hat and the fact that he lives in the Fen Country and you'll see what got me thinking down this line. That brings me to why I like "The Silver Chair" so much.  When I was little, we had a children's version of "Pilgrim's Progress" that my mom used to read to me.  I lived in New England and the Christianity I was raised with had a heavy tin...
7 comments
Read more