Mapplethorpe and Such

I recently finished a book entitled "A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis" by David M. Freidman. The author makes extensive mention of photographer Robert Mapplethrope. I am familiar with his work and have admired much of what I have seen. However, I did learn some interesting and frustrating information that I hadn't previously been aware of.

According to Friedman, in the early 1980s Mapplethorpe released a book of photography entitled, "Black Book," This set of photographs is most famously known for one in particular entitled "Man in Polyester Suit." Apparently the idea for the photo came about when an African American boyfriend of Mapplethorpe showed him a three piece suit that he had purchased. Mapplethorpe didn't like the suit and pointed out it's flaws by saying, "wouldn't a nigger wear a suit like that?" (It frustrates me that Mapplethorpe could not rise above racism especially since as a gay man he was considered a minority himself)

Mapplethorpe cropped the suit to his liking and took a photo of his boyfriend with the fly open and his boyfriend's uncircumcised penis hanging out.

"His massive black penis is simulanteously fascinating and frightening, suggestive of a primative, even bestial, sexuality that no garment, polyester or cashmere, could possibly contain. The effect is startling, even viscerally so. As critic Arthur C. Danto writes in Playing with the Edge, this photograph demonstrates what playing with the edge means.
It 'keeps the viewer supsended between beauty and danger. It is supposed to be shocking.' Three hundred years of American phobias and fantasies, a history marked by lynchings, castrations, and paranoid fears of black phallic superirority, had become a disturbing, unforgetable and political work for art. 'You want to cut off this penis? The photo seems to be asking. You better bring a really big knife.'"

I WAS GOING TO POST MAPPLETHORPE'S PHOTO BUT AS IT MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME I WILL NOT. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN VIEWING THE PHOTO SIMPLY GOOGLE IMAGE "MAN IN POLYESTER SUIT" BY ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE

"Clearly, Mapplethorpe idealized the black penis as a thing of beauty, producing art that subverted the prevailing cultural view that deemed such an aesthetic a contradiction in terms. Yet, in some ways, his work confirmed that same racism - a view as old as the scientific exploration of the "gradation" in man by Charles White. This is because the interesection of sex and race has always been fraught with psychological tension in Western culture. As Sander L. Gilman points out, the African's debased status is what has always made him the exotic sexual object par excellence for some Caucasians. For these whites, the black is their erotic alter ego, the sexual other. He is appealing because he is appalling."

Mapplethorpe at one time was in search for the perfect penis. He eventually found that perfect person...a 25 year old AWOL sailor. He gave the sailor some cocaine and persuaded him to pose for him while he shot photos.

The book explores the history a black man's penis being racialized. This wasn't news to me. I know especially as an anti-pornography feminist that there is much racism that exists in the porn industry. Black men are certainly objectified and exploited for their penises. Black men in porn are often viewed as insatiable savages.

In the early 1900s, in the U.S. especially, black men were viewed the same way only more so. Researchers were known to have saved castrated penises of black men in jars for further study. The black penis was noted as being extremely large and therefore frightening and threatening to white men. It was concluded by these white scientists that a black man's larger penis suggested a smaller IQ. Often when black men were lynched they were also castrated. This symbolized taking all that one could from another. His life, and what was considered to be his manhood.

I am all for a man celebrating his body and appreciating it as a thing of beauty rather than just simple functioning. In fact I encourage it as I think men and women alike are not taught to celebrate themselves. We are not taught to celebrate our beings, our bodies and yes even our genetalia.

What is extremely unfortunate though, is that our culture seems to have a history of either fearing penises in general or eroticising them to be something powerful and dominant. I can't tell you how much this frustrates me.