"A realistic-looking statue of a man sleepwalking in his underwear near the center of Wellesley College has created a stir among the women on campus, especially as more than 100 students at the all-women’s college signed a petition asking administrators to remove it."
(Via Instapundit.)
ADDED: It's easy to make fun of these women, but I do think it's fair to say that the art folk here are exploiting people. The sculpture is out in the open where it can be seen from a distance and it really does look like a strange man stumbling about in his underwear. Whether you're afraid of "him" or simply think he has a problem — after all, it's winter — and needs help, you're drawn into a real emotional response before you realize it is art. You're out there, living your life, in the public space — here, at a college that has drawn you in through gestures of welcoming and has taken your money — and suddenly you see a problem that you must respond to. But — ha ha — it's only a statue. You're silly. You were afraid of a statue. So it's an unsettling prank. Why? Is that good art? It has appropriated your peace of mind, your comfort in a public space, for what? To challenge and intrigue you, perhaps. The art people on campus would like to reach out — like this fake man groping forward nakedly sleepwalking — because the youngsters need to be contacted, against their will, and if they don't like it, they're to be publicly derided for their lack of sophistication.
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70 comments:
I am watching and obsessed with Orange is The New Black and love Crazy Eyes and Office Matt Mcgorry-totally dreamy.
fyi-Wellesley is one of the richest towns in America...totally New England and fab.
tits.
Remember the Hula Hoop?
Now there was a craze.
Completely hilarious.
Eeek ! A Mouse !
Well, I guess any potential employer who was looking at hiring a Wellesley grad is now having second thoughts.
Wellesley clearly isn't a college. It's a botanical hothouse.
• It’s a lousy piece of “art” but the reaction is revealing.
Wellesley is a huge lib/jewish area....
"it's making students on campus feel unsafe, which is not appropriate"
Feminists are always "feeling unsafe".
I swear to God, in a Feminist Gulag the last words a man would hear, before the bullet entered his brain, would be "you make me feel unsafe."
Barney Fag represented Wellesley.
Enough said.
Man, that article was a smorgasbord of bullshit. Sheltered ninny bullshit. "Art" bullshit. "Trigger" bullshit. Bullshit bullshit.
I liked the comment from "bostondiver":
If the statue was at any other college it would already have been decorated and dressed in any number of different "outfits" with pictures of it all over the web. At wellesley they sign a petition.
"it's making students on campus feel unsafe, which is not appropriate"
It's really interesting how the Left thinks it okey-dokey for a member of the Approved Downtrodden to exercise a heckler's veto on the speech of others if they feel "unsafe" or "uncomfortable".
Why did God give men nipples?
If two small worlds collide, does the universe know it? Perhaps, but only to laugh.
@Titus,
Why did God give men nipples?
Because He knew, in His perfect foreknowledge, that MtF transgenders would want to have the basics to build from.
If you'd only read the Catechism, you'd know these things.
Are some of them going to get the "vapors"?
With any luck the videos will get posted to YouTube.
Anybody checked the Onion lately? I'm sure they've done this. Perhaps with squirrels?
Uncanny Valley
Peter
the reaction of these feminazis is definitive proof that female suffrage was a colossal blunder.
Schreiner said she felt “freaked out” the first time she saw the statue, thinking for a moment that a real, nearly naked person was lingering near the campus center.
“This could be a trigger for students who have experienced sexual assault,” she said.
Bill Clinton has the same effect.
God in heaven. Hear my prayer. I thought we were through with Woody Allen. And underwear. Scared women. Pathetic vulnerability.
"I honestly didn't even want to get too close to him," said Laura Mayron, a Wellesley College sophomore. "It honestly makes me a little uncomfortable with how real he looks.” Bless your heart, Laura. Consider yourself lucky to be at an all female college where the sisters can calm you right down. Just remember, honey, all the men at the University of Wisconsin look exactly like that guy, wandering lost between classes, in Bucky Badger thongs.
So now the War on Women has its Underwear Bomber.
“This could be a trigger for students who have experienced sexual assault,” she said
I hear that things are so bad at Wellesley now that they've banned public showings of the Roy Rogers Show because of Trigger.
Link bad now or my phone is messed?
All this language about triggers, etc. is really about PTSD. Which is what victims of sexual assault, or any trauma, can experience, by sight or sound or smell reminds one of the trauma, triggering an emotional reaction that runs the gamut from fear to rage.
A major part of treating PTSD is teaching the sufferer to deal with those reactions and recognize when they are reacting and calm themselves down. I myself have been and am dealing with such triggers from Iraq service.
But, it is not the task of society to arrange the world so that PTSD sufferers don't have triggers. Which is what the feminists and their pet victims on campus are demanding.
What the PTSD sufferers need to do is try to tough it out and deal with the underlying issues of the sexual assault they went through and not try to coerce others behavior because they are having an abnormal emotional reaction to normal things.
Their demands that other comply with them due to their PTSD reactions is unreasonable.
Shouldn't all Woody Allen films be banned at Wellsey? Talk about a "trigger"!
To paraphrase one of the comments on the article, I can now claim that seeing Lena Dunham naked is "a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault."
Oh wait, are only women allowed to use their fears as an excuse to stop other people's art?
"Their demands that other comply with them due to their PTSD reactions is unreasonable."
Well, yeah. But what makes it even more unreasonable is the great likelihood that there was never any traumatic stress in the first place, merely a claim of victimhood (that most holy of states).
As lefties would say to us, which I repeat to them,
Get over it.
Deal with it.
Isn't Wellesley College where Hillary learned to muff dive?
Ride the statue naked, film it and post it on Youtube. That'll get it taken down.
Have you clicked through and seen the statue?
It's not bronze with elements of abstraction. It's flesh colored and realistic. And scary. And stupid.
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
Look at my tighty-whiteys, girls, and despair!
"Scary"? I'd say it's creepy, as all hyper-realistic statues are. I'll agree on the "stupid" part, though.
I thought pictures of Lena Dunham naked body had been banned as cruel and unusual punishment.
After looking at more closely I can only come to one conclusion:
He's a Democrat voter.
Young Hegelian @ Titus @ 8:35:
LOL!
Men have nipples because the nipples form before sexual differentiation. God was being efficient.
The sculpture is a hoot. Flabby, disoriented, pasty white, really unmanly underpants.
As to the reaction, there are some women who might want to consider whether they would be better off just going to a convent.
Saints forfend! My pearls, Mabel, my stars!
My face when all feminists are cartoons of prudish old biddy spinsters. :P
I think we understand Hillary a little better now.
I was going to ask, Is it OK to call women pussies?
But that would be in bad taste. But I will ask whether anyone thinks that complaining that a statue causes "apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault" diminishes the seriousness of concern about sexual assault by actual human beings?
Somehow a fake man triggers fears of sexual assault while half naked marching women with SLUT written on their bodies triggers, what exactly? Men to make dumb comments so the women can attack them and say, "SEE, SEE! We told you!"
Dear Lord, save me.
Fear is the sisters would fight over him, the only man amenable to them.
Oh, c'mon! Really?
That's not a sleepwalker.
That's a zombie.
And zombies are totally culturally hip. Get with the program, Wellesley! Untwist your panties double-quick, ok?
Wellesley College senior Annie Wang
That's just perfect...
Let it all hang out, Annie!
Chris Elliott ought to stand in his underwear right next to the statue
and say "boo!"
It is creepy, but not in the way they think.
I'm not sure why it's creepy, it just is....
Dead like? Sounds too zombie. Fish like? Sounds to out of place.
Field punishment! That's it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_punishment
The statue clearly facilitates Wellesley's rape culture, privileging patriarchal oppression. I feel the need to repair to my swooning couch to fan my fevered brow.
maybe they could tolerate it if they painted a cross on his chest and placed him in a giant mason jar of urine?
I like your analysis Angelyne
I wonder how they would have felt if it looked like David Beckham in his underwear commercial.
In their defense, "statue of some dude in his underpants" doesn't exactly top my list of "stuff I want to see when I look out the window" either.
Althouse said:
"Statue of a pathetically vulnerable man somehow "triggers" female fears of victimization."
Perfect. Seeing a poor man freezing in a snow storm triggers female fears of themselves as his victims? Pathetic.
SGT Ted said...
"...I myself have been and am dealing with such triggers from Iraq service."
Thank-you for your service.
Wellesley women are pussies. At Smith they'd have had this "artist" hanging by his balls from a tree by now.
What's the big deal about the criticism? If the Wellesley students called it 'progressive' and celebrated it, the commentariat here might be saying, 'Puke.' If we called Obama 'art,' would we all be saying, 'Nah, nah, na, na, nah, can't criticize.'
"Why did God give men nipples?"
So that, with the proper use of hormones, they could apply to attend Wellesley?
If God was truly being "efficient," as Steve suggests, wouldn't waiting until after sexual differentiation to form the nipples have been a better mousetrap?
In hoc signo victim.
It could have been a lifelike statue of the most notorious W. alumna in her undies. Oh, the humanity. Nobody but nobody is ready for that. I may need to bleach my visual cortex from just forming that mental image.
Someone from Feminist High Command should slap these ninnies a good one - we don't need our members to try extra hard to make The Movement look inane.
How about they remove it because it's stupid?
For them it is a vision of the future that is TOO real.
Its like when a woman realizes she is just like her mother.
Womyn's Studies 101 final exam question: The Womyn of Wellesley need a statue of a man in his tighty-whities like a fish needs _____?
See. Obama is wrong. Wellesley needs more Art History majors (and fewer Women's Studies majors.) Basically, everyone is saying "creepy, ugly, stupid" art. But when you are paying Wellesley prices for tuition, you just feel like you have to fancy it up a bit. The WS majors may say moronic things about triggering, but they just mean "creepy, ugly, stupid." I'm sure an Art History major could do better.
Apparently, Boston.com took the story down. Link doesn't work.
If the Wellesley students called it 'progressive' and celebrated it, the commentariat here might be saying, 'Puke.'
Yes, that's exactly right. It is horrible art. If you are celebrating this art, as art, you need to explain why.
We might celebrate the craft of it. It's really, really life-like. But the concept is idiotic. It's a man in his underwear. There is nothing deep or thought-provoking about a man in his underwear.
At least, that's what I would have said if the Wellesley students were celebrating this as a beautiful work of art. I would have mocked them.
The appropriate response to a man in his underwear representing the university is to roll your eyes, laugh at it, and mock the university.
Or you could have fun with it, even if the art is bad. You could take pictures with the statue. It's entirely possible to enjoy bad art, lots of people do. And we can disagree about what art is bad. People do that, too.
I can imagine some "progressive" person wanting to put up this statue in the public square in Mississippi, right in front of the courthouse. And people having the vapors about that. And this would likely not happen if the statue was a classical nude. A classical nude has class. A man in his tightie whities does not.
Having said all that, the over-the-top reaction of the Wellesley students, using words like "sexual assault," makes me think that this art is frickin' brilliant. Any artist who exposes the insanity of feminism to the world is doing us all a huge favor.
Feminism is deranged. It has become a hateful, bigoted thing.
Imagine a racially segregated campus and a bunch of white people signing a petition about a public statue of a black man in his underwear. And they want to remove the statue. Why do they want to remove the statue? Because they are racist. They are afraid of the black man in his underwear. He reminds them of crime. He is a criminal. They are afraid of him and they want him removed.
This art has exposed the hateful and fearful bigots on the Wellesley campus. Bravo to the artist and bravo to the Lisa Fischman, who obviously knows her campus very, very well.
I went to the artist's site, because the sculpture (which I found awful) shows a lot of skill. He does not do that much of the "hyperrealist" style. This comes off much better since the unrealistic posture pushes it out of the uncanny valley (at least for me.)
Of his abstracts, the paintings seem more interesting than the sculptures, but that could be due to the small computer images.
The sleepwalking man is far worse than anything else that I looked at in his archive.
Correction - I didn't see the closeup views before my last post. Lots of his sculptures are hyperrealist painted bronze in surreal configurations - upside down flower vases, ropes suspended in air, etc.
you're drawn into a real emotional response before you realize it is art
Welcome to Weimar.
> It's easy to make fun of these women, but I do think it's fair to say that the art folk here are exploiting people.
So what?
"art folk" have been exploiting/harrassing others for decades. Remember Piss Christ?
The only difference is in who was offended. Why do these co-eds deserve more deference than Christians?
Please provide an example of art that does not exploit people.
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