Here's the set:
I said "geode" in my post last night, and now I'm reading about the set in Architectural Digest:
The proscenium... "feels a little bit like a geode, or a kind of sculpture made out of crushed glass,” [designer Derek McLane] says. When producers Mike De Luca and Jennifer Todd asked the designer to do the show again this year, the proscenium was the first design he conceived. The end result is this dazzling faceted piece decorated with a staggering 45 million Swarovski crystals. (For comparison, last year’s proscenium only had 27,120 crystals.) He then expanded upon the crystalline structure for the other pieces on the stage you see here, flattening them into more abstracted, two-dimensional forms that have a bit of an Art Deco flair to them.I'm glad to see the set's designer intended what I saw, a geode. I don't know if he also had in mind my alternative interpretation: vagina dentata.
Vagina dentata (Latin for toothed vagina) describes a folk tale in which a woman's vagina is said to contain teeth, with the associated implication that sexual intercourse might result in injury, emasculation, or castration for the man involved. Such folk stories are frequently told as cautionary tales warning of the dangers of unknown women and to discourage rape. Erich Neumann relays one such myth in which "a fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother...".A fish! We heard all about that fish-in-the-vagina character last night. The creature won best picture! "How Weird, A Movie About Fish Sex Became Awards Season’s Consensus Vote" (HuffPo). It beat out "Get Out" in which white people got inside the head of black people. A fish gets into a woman's vagina:
[A] mute woman (Sally Hawkins) fucks a godly fish-man (Doug Jones), and we swoon with the same emotional heft once devoted to “Titanic,” “West Side Story” and “Casablanca” ― all (deserving) Best Picture winners of yore. What a seemingly repulsive concept, brought to life in the dreamiest of fairytales and packaged for uncynical audiences willing to embrace the lore.Well, our psyche is complicated and jumbled and Hollywood trades in dreams. Me, I have dreams where I shout "Get out!" and wake up my poor non-piscine husband. But glam it up, attach 45 million Swarovski crystals and we'll be fucking fish in our dreams.
The Oscars host, Jimmy Kimmel made a joke:
The most nominated movie tonight, a film that’s up for 13 Oscars, The Shape of Water written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, a wonderful man. Congratulations I’m very happy for Guillermo. You made a beautiful movie and thanks to Guillermo we will always remember this year as the year men screwed up so badly, women started dating fish.They used to say "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," now a woman doesn't need a man but she needs a fish. A fish doesn't need a bicycle, but does a fish need a woman? I assume that in the movie the fish does need the woman. I haven't seen it. Does she ask for consent? She's mute! But fish don't talk anyway. It's all in the gestures, I guess. Start reaching, groping, and observe. Does she/he just let you do it?
That reminds me of how the over-the-top glitziness of the stage — especially the changing interiors within the geode/vagina — made me think of the strivingly posh interiors within the erections of Donald Trump.
Ah, dreams! Who can penetrate the depths of our dreams? Guillermo Del Toro (the bull)? Little Barron on his lion (big pussy)? Donald making the vagina symbol with his hands in front of his crotch while Melania, standing next to him, extends a long, phallic leg?
And that reminds me of Jimmy's most notable joke/"joke" last night:
Oscar is the most beloved and respected man in Hollywood and there’s a very good reason why. Look at him. Keeps his hands where you can see them. Never says a rude word, and most importantly no penis at all. He is literally a statue of limitations. And that’s the kind of men we need more of in this town.We — who's we? — need more of the kind of men with no penis at all? I read that to mean: Ladies, that's not really what you want, is it? Don't you think you need to recalibrate your demands? And, indeed, the Oscar statuette has long been regarded as exceedingly phallic. Here's a woman named Bidisha bitching about it in the Guardian 3 years ago (before we got the gilded white man in the White House):
The Oscar statuette is a gilded white man holding a sword – basically, a phallus holding a phallus.
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81 comments:
Weirdest Althouse post since I started reading here in 2006.
Ann: I guarantee that the set designer didn’t know about vagina dentata. I didn’t know about this before you brought it up. I also doubt the majority here knew about it. How do you know this stuff?
It's all so patronizing, to talk about women as if they are so much more powerful, wise, and better than men.
When it's true, you don't keep announcing it from a stage. In fact, these days when groups of people are powerful, you aren't really allowed to talk positively about that power at all.
"Ann: I guarantee that the set designer didn’t know about vagina dentata. I didn’t know about this before you brought it up. I also doubt the majority here knew about it. How do you know this stuff?"
I'm an educated person who has been reading for over 60 years. But it's a pretty standard cultural reference for me. I think most people here know it. I'm sure I've blogged it before, so you should at least know it from there.
Too round to be vaginal.
I saw one guy on twitter say it's how he imagined Cher's colonoscopy.
It also looks like the maw of a hook worm about to sink its teeth into whichever ass is standing there on the stage.
Previous vagina dentata posts (both of which link to the same Wikipedia article I linked to today):
1. December 8, 2006 — "What Britney's Crotch Did To My Stats."
Sissy's right. But I was just doing my usual thing of talking about Camille Paglia. I just hope Camille -- she of the dinner dis -- realizes that she has more currency around here than Britney's crotch.
BONUS LINGUISTIC INSIGHT: I do not like the word "crotch" to refer the body part in question. Here's the dictionary definition:
crotch
NOUN: 1. The angle or region of the angle formed by the junction of two parts or members, such as two branches or legs. 2a. The area on a pair of pants, underpants, or shorts where the two leg panels are sewn together. b. A piece of material sewn into a pair of pants, underpants, or shorts that joins the legs. 3. The fork of a pole or other support.
ETYMOLOGY: Possibly alteration of crutch and partly from Middle English croche, crook, crosier (from Old French croche, hook, shepherd's crook, feminine of croc, hook; see crochet).
See? To refer to the vulva as a "crotch" is to wish it out of existence, to see it as simply the place where one leg becomes the other leg!
Now, go crochet yourself a pair of panties, and beware of the female crocodile... and the vagina dentata.
2. September 8, 2007 — "Hillary wants withdrawal bill..."
Hillary wants withdrawal bill with teeth."
I'm getting some scary vagina dentata imagery out of that Kos headline.
Hillary wants withdrawal, Bill. With teeth!
I'm an educated person who has been reading for over 60 years.
Or just watch Netflix. One of their movies is called "Teeth." I haven't seen it but the blurb is about a girl whose vagina grows teeth after she is sexually assaulted. Or something like that.
"Too round to be vaginal."
???
You mean not round enough or are you not making the vagina/vulva distinction?
A strong independent woman of Ethnicity goes to the doctor to find out why she can't get pregnant, and later tells her friend "The doctor say I got a fish in my tubes and if I ever have a baby it'll be a mackerel."
Screw the vagina dentata! I want to know who won Best Casting Couch Performance! Or the coveted Best Social Justice Posturing award?
To repeat a punchline:
"See, I don't have teeth down there"
"Well, no wonder. Your gums are terrible"
"Pussy Bites Back: Vagina Dentata Myths From Around the World/From India to Chile, it seems almost every culture has its own toothed vagina horror story rooted in castration anxiety."
And that’s the kind of men we need more of in this town.
Dickless Kimmel approves of dickless Oscar. How unexpected.
Ann
Put up a poll re vagina dentata.
I obviously had an inferior education at Jesuit schools. But in defense of my ignorance, I never took any art courses.
And I only started reading Althouse in 2016 or 2015.
The proscenium represents the 30 miles of broken glass I'd drag my dick through to avoid Jimmy Kimmel.
AA does know the weed they are selling today is much more powerful than the stuff they sold in her younger days, right?
Most of us here have heard about vagina dentata. I first heard the term in the early 1970s. Since then, I have seen it brought up again every couple of years in magazines and pop culture, like television. Just a week ago, The Magicians had a storyline where a queen, forced to marry the younger brother of a prince she was marrying for a political alliance (he was murdered by the younger brother at the altar--how things are done where he's from), told the too-young prince about the teeth (then knocked him out and took a thorn bush or a mink's jaw to his penis) in order to delay the consummation of their marriage.
In a discussion of the book "Jaws", Peter Benchley said that the originally planned cover art of the town of Amity framed by shark's jaws was determined to be a vagina dentate image so it was changed to the shark swimming up to the swimming girl. Phallic was OK at the time. As an aside, Jaws is one of the few movies of books that I found better than the actual book. Except the end, the shark just dying in the book was a superior end to the "shooting the oxygen tank" of the movie.
There's no proper vagina. It will disappear and reappear all the time, but always be associated with woman.
It's from male brain wiring, making men interested in that nothing definite.
Even at the end it remains unclear, but the right thing to do seems to be to stick your penis in it.
Hillary wants withdrawal, Bill. With teeth!
Huma Abedin, dental hygienist.
The words "vagina dentata" have never come up in any conversation that I've ever had with anyone. I'll call myself the 99%.
Vagina dentata never made intuitive sense to me but it's classical.
I took it as meaning the penis goes in erect and comes out limp but didn't exactly see the poetic point that needed making, if that was the point.
Anal dentata would scare Hollywood more.
You mean not round enough or are you not making the vagina/vulva distinction?
I'm talking about the entrance to the vagina, which in most circumstances is not a big round gaping maw.
If the vagina dentata is classical, then The Toothless Vagina is Revolutionary.
With all the vagina around, it's a good time to bring cunt into acceptable language.
It's US performance is great and needs to be applied, but will probably be ruined by the Brit usage as unpleasant and undependable person in general.
There once was a sci-fi comic book called 1994 (originally named 1984, but when the dreaded year came and departed as all years do the publisher decided to re-christen his mag) which was essentially softcore porn embedded in hazily sci-fi tropes involving alien worlds, monsters, etc. One multi-part story involved a girl whose vagina is symbiotically inhabited by a giant flesh-eating amoeba. The hapless damsel, who seems unable to find a single stitch to wear, travels aimlessly from planet to planet while her internal tenant pops out from time to time to devour various bad guys and evil gals along with the occasional good guy just to show everyone, but especially its landlady, just who is boss. Nice drawn but absurdly scripted.
Since we're discussing vagina dentate moreso than the geode or the Oscars, I'm going to play the pedant here:
"Castration" refers to the removal of the testes, not the penis, as does "emasculation." There is no English word to refer to the removal of the penis other than "penectomy," which specifically refers to a surgical removal. None of those words would accurately be used to describe the process of having it bitten off by pussy teeth.
Best choice would be "Bobbit" or "bobbitization", but those haven't really become mainstream words yet.
Did this have anything to do with the big V herself?
Quaestor, I'm remembering a "Twilight Zone" or "Tales From the Darkside" episode which (I'm now guessing) was based on that story. Maybe more than one, because I'm remembering one set in the American West (ie, cowboys), but also a similar story set in the modern day that I think starred Alyssa Milano.
The “fish-man” can’t be a fish because most species of fish don’t penetrate the female during mating. The female fish releases a large quantity of eggs and the male ejaculates all over the mass of eggs. Sharks are the main exception, and they actually have a pair of penises. This is the money quote from one website:
“Technically, they aren't penises, but modified fins. They're called "claspers," and they function like penises. The male can use either one to penetrate the female during mating (but never both at the same time). Each clasper has little spurs that lock it into place once it's inside the female...”
The idea of the little spurs is intriguing. Sort of like a vagina dentata, but in reverse.
Maybe the “fish-man” is actually a mammal? There are YouTube videos of captive dolphins getting frisky with human women. Note to women: if you go to a resort that has a “swim with the dolphins” attraction, do NOT skinny dip!
rhhardin said...
...but the right thing to do seems to be to stick your penis in it.
When in doubt...
Ann Althouse said..."Pussy Bites Back: Vagina Dentata Myths From Around the World/From India to Chile, it seems almost every culture has its own toothed vagina horror story rooted in castration anxiety."
"seems almost every culture" means "most cultures probably don't, but we're too unserious to bother checking."
Besides the superficial mind-reading, how do they know - IOW, why do they assume - that women didn't make up those goofy stories?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Fern%C3%A1ndez
The Oscar statuette is a gilded white man holding a sword – basically, a phallus holding a phallus.
Gosh, Bidisha, that is kinda racist. Oscar is a gilded Mexican man, a Mexican man who was half Native American, too boot!
Without teeth, the Vagina Dentata is the Vagina Dentura.
The Germans have a word for this.
Big Mike said...
The idea of the little spurs is intriguing. Sort of like a vagina dentata, but in reverse.
Lots of animals have penile spines, including chimpanzees. It probably has something to do with the males of those species lacking some important moral quality.
I've heard of the vagina dentata, but even if you've never heard of it, the Freudians would say that you're aware of it. Something like Oedipus or the Oedipal complex. The vehemence with which you deny such a phenomenon is proof of the vitality of its existence. One does not entrust with one's favorite body part unto the embrace of another person without a certain amount of trepidation.......I suppose I'll see The Shape of Water when it comes out on Netflix, but very little about the movie whets my interest. Instead of a cleaning lady wouldn't the movie have been more dramatically effective if the creature was into the bikinied starlets of Cannes. The creature could be, like, symbolic of Harvey Weinstein.
policraticus said...
The Oscar statuette is a gilded white man holding a sword – basically, a phallus holding a phallus.
You mean "a [racist of color] woman named Bidisha" was shockingly wrong three years ago? That's heartbreaking.
When everything becomes a sexual symbol...
#Sad
typo: Nice drawn but absurdly scripted.
Nicely drawn...
Didn't watch a second of the Oscars. On the Good Morning America report this morning they omitted the:
"Never says a rude word, and most importantly no penis at all. He is literally a statue of limitations. And that’s the kind of men we need more of in this town."
Why my wife has this on in the morning is beyond me but some things you just shut up and put up with. Um, with which you put up?
“When it's true, you don't keep announcing it from a stage. In fact, these days when groups of people are powerful, you aren't really allowed to talk positively about that power at all.”
Traditionally, the benignly powerful only talked about their power when they were going to bring it to bear. Nowadays, they patronizingly talk about the supposed power of others as a means of distracting from their own rapaciousness. The highest use of modern PR is co-opting those you mean to exploit.
Ann's pronouncement that "we'll be fucking fish in our dreams" brings to mind W.C. Fields' dismissal of the idea of drinking water: "Fish fuck in it."
Quite a trifecta for Doug Jones this past year: appeared as the Creature From the Black Lagoon in an Oscar-winning film, dominated the narrative of Twin Peaks: The Return, and won a Senate seat in Alabama.
@Fernandistein, you just gotta spoil everything, donchya?
The Oscars Set looks like the effect that I get in my vision when I am having an ocular migraine.
Very pretty, sparkly, psychedelic man.....and extremely annoying for about 15 to 20 minutes.
W.C.Fields said they lost their corkscrew in Afghanistan and had to survive for three weeks on food and water.
Tom Petty was one of the biggest losses of 2017- Room is a great song & we get Vedder doing a soulful rendition strumming a Rickenbacker. (Young Tom idolized Mcguinn & Lennon and their Ricks.)
I've never heard of vagina dentata, but I am for it.......
Little Barron on his lion (big pussy)? Donald making the vagina symbol with his hands in front of his crotch while Melania, standing next to him, extends a long, phallic leg?
Althouse, thy name is Paglia.
There are quite a few men without penises in Broward county Florida. Yea, we could use a lot more of them.
Was this the inspiration?
http://thestir.cafemom.com/food_party/210483/geode-cake-vagina-nadias-bakery
A guy asks an Asian woman if the urban myth is true, that Asian womens' vulvae are sideways. "Why do you ask ? Are you a harmonica player ?"
"Weirdest Althouse post since I started reading here in 2006."
Keep Althouse Weird.
"In a discussion of the book "Jaws", Peter Benchley said that the originally planned cover art of the town of Amity framed by shark's jaws was determined to be a vagina dentate image so it was changed to the shark swimming up to the swimming girl. Phallic was OK at the time."
The shark wasn't "ok." It was evil and very scary. So they wanted the phallic imagery to tie to primal fears. There's also primal fear of female genitalia, but that's just not what the shark looks like.
Compare Moby Dick.
Let Althouse dree her weird.
"There's also primal fear of female genitalia, but that's just not what the shark looks like."
Thus the James Bond film "Octopussy."
Of course, James Bond also had 'Jaws', the gigantic Richard Kiel with metal teeth.
Seeing that, you would never want to fuck Richard Kiel in the mouth ever again.
The Germans have a word for this.
There's also primal fear of female genitalia
That hasn't been my experience.
Female genitalia are interesting to guys for no reason that guys can figure out.
It appears to them as rational, but with no reason to be found. It's weird.
That's not a fear though.
After intercourse it's no longer interesting. So guys know they're being saps.
Yet it's interesting next time. That's real.
"...45 million Swarovski crystals"
How many crystals per viewer does that work out to be?
All them crystals going to be dismounted and auctioned? Stored for future use? Sewn onto a dress for Oprah?
What is the price of a "Swarovksi crystal?
'A guy asks an Asian woman if the urban myth is true, that Asian womens' vulvae are sideways. "Why do you ask ? Are you a harmonica player ?"'
If God didnt intend for guys to eat pussy, He wouldna made it look like a taco.
OK, let's get our minds out of the gutter.
In the context of an erudite discussion of vagina dentata, our gracious hostess skillfully compares the two seafaring monsters in Jaws and Moby Dick.
The shark wasn't "ok." It was evil and very scary. So they wanted the phallic imagery to tie to primal fears. There's also primal fear of female genitalia, but that's just not what the shark looks like.
Compare Moby Dick.
But did you know that the whale in Moby Dick also had a nefarious father spreading primal fear on the high seas?
His name? Poppa Boner
Camille Paglia and her Greek / Roman art studies knew all about Vagina Dentate.
You first have to Be a Freudian that thinks he knows all about the unconscious mind from the study ( guesses) of
Dreams(Subconscious being a bad translation).
It does Make a make think twice about a woman with both a gynecologist degree and. Dental School
Degree.
But dreams are just dreams.
Hey, ah, Penis, what do you have to say about vagina dentata?
The Germans Have A Word For That. said...Without teeth, the Vagina Dentata is the Vagina Dentura.
The Germans have a word for this.
Translation: Der zahnlose Revolutionär
I was with you right up until while Melania, standing next to him, extends a long, phallic leg Professor. Unless it's a third leg (jutting forward from the middle somehow) I'm not sure how anyone can get "phallic symbol" from "attractive woman's leg exposed from a underneath her dress."
Anyway I think the fun analogy would be: A fish needs a woman like Meade needs a bicycle.
David Begley said...
And I only started reading Althouse in 2016 or 2015.
Tardiness is no excuse, mister. Those archives exist for your edification so you'd better just get busy.
Alanis Morissette: You Oughta Know
I would like to see Kimmel replaced next year. I don’t think he did the best under the circumstances.
Lowest rated Oscars ever.
Congrats!
Compare Moby Dick.
The great white as portrayed in the film is almost entirely mouth, mainly because its the mouth that eats and it's the eating that's scary. In terms of body count, Melville's whale is far deadlier than Benchley's shark. "Bruce" got five including Quint according to Speilberg, perhaps more in the novel, (I'm not about to reopen that penny dreadful just to tally up the meals enjoyed, so leave it at five.) but the white whale killed the Pequod's entire complement save one, that's over forty by some reckonings. Nevertheless, Benchley's shark is an instrument of horror. It kills people to live just like Dracula, the Minotaur, and ten thousand other monsters from story and myth. Moby Dick, on the other hand, has no interest in men except in the context of self-defense — only those who seek to kill the whale have anything to fear from him.
If one is bound and determined to see these sea monsters as metaphors of human genitalia then the Jaws shark can only be a vagina. Observe. Two joined arcs with lots of pink inside, what more do you want? Okay, so there's no clit and the slit goes side to side rather than up and down, maybe "Bruce" is oriental. Moby Dick, however, is unquestionable a penis. Besides the fact that he's Moby Dick and not Moby Pussy there's his killing method. "Bruce" kills by engulfing a man, perhaps not dick first, but certainly including the dick. Observe. Pretty orgasmic if you ask me. Before swallowing Quint's upper works "Bruce" probably got a mouthful of Quint-splooge, which explains the shark's off-camera moniker quite nicely. Meanwhile, Melville's whale kills mainly by ramming things, usually a ship, but seeing as how most of Pequod's crew didn't stand up to Ahab's looney and frankly non-contractual proposal in the first place, at least in one case a shipload of pussies. QED.
I read to the end of the post, just to see where it was going.
If this wasn't written under the influence of alcohol, I'm amazed.
Trump hatred cannot be left out of anything, even stream of consciousness connections between minerals and awards shows. Amazing, as I said, and amazingly ridiculous. Thanks for the giggles.
Althouse sees a vagina on stage; I see more of a Goatse.
Tomato, tomahto, vagina, spread asshole.
Which is more likely, given Hollywood's recently publicized depravities?
Fishy vaginas?
I think I'd prefer the butterflies in Cardi B's vag.
President Trump has driven almost everyone in Hollywood stark raving mad. It shows in the themes of their work over the past year.
Althouse said...There's also primal fear of female genitalia
That's about as common and widespread as penis envy.
Well maybe not as widespread.
Requires more spread, actually.
To expand on my 4:08....I don’t think there’s a “primal fear” of female genitalia. Or, perhaps there’s just a language problem. If you said, “there’s a primal awe of female genitalia,” I’d agree.* Fear connotes something to run from and avoid; awe connotes reverence. I don’t own much Freude in the original tongue, so I can’t check the language he used.
Perhaps there’s a quasi religious aspect here. I suspect as much.
______________
* I think even rhhardon would agree.
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