> Secularism, atheism, non-belief or disbelief... somewhere in there. I
> had a traditional exposure. I wouldn't call it training, quite. As a
> kid I tried to fantasize my way through some of it. But it didn't
> work. I could engage or play back or tell myself or imagine, that is
> fill in with images some stories and ideas, but mostly they were
> awkward, didn't make sense, or were too strange, even as pretend. The
> experience was something like trying to make sense out of a foreign
> language (maybe because some of this was presented in a foreign
> language?). There was something nasty or ugly or not-nice about the
> whole package. Maybe it wasn't consumer friendly---a pretty toy that
> bites your finger?
Well my experience is different, of course, but the foreignness is integral to many centuries of Catholicism. There are versions that try to be more familiar, but they are marginal variants. That doesn't mean it isn't meant to be consumer friendly. Not quite a toy, though, more like an movie star -- but even that's not quite right. Attraction made more spectacular for its distance from you in any case.
> ``..Want to talk about symbolizing virginity in Christian
> art and I'm your girl. I've only seriously thought about the exposure of
> genitals in relation to Madonna+Child images -- her breast, his penis, that
> kind of thing...''
>
> That's another one of those strangenesses. What's the virginity angle?
> I had already decided the whole thing was bullshit and a kind of mean
> spirited bullshit at that---before I even grasp what virginity was.
There are a number of important differences between the Virgin and everyday virginity, though.
> I got the don't beat-off message, but oddly or tellingly, that wasn't
> linked in my mind with virginity.
Well it's not really the same thing, and not just physically. Even if both codes are about "sins of the flesh" they don't relate to that idea in the same way. Also highy gendered at all levels.
> .... But symbolizing virginity is a difficult thing to do. I mean how to
> you show, what is not? How do you depict what hasn't happened? This is
> one of those mysteries.
Mysteries, yes, that's partly what it's meant to be. But also the virginity of the Virgin is paradoxically active and passive at once, and both elements can be symbolized, by her positioning, but the setting which reflects her, it depends on the time and the place of course. The Renaissance has some of the most standardised codes. Go find yourself a painting/whatever of the Annunciation of that period and you will get a selection from the motifs of enclosure -- closed book, garden, often a portico with her on on side and the angel on the other, a tubular type lily, the positioning of her hands and cloak. All about the question of open and closed. And her posture is often also an expression of this liminal quality -- I love the ones where she seems to be shunning the Angel and his words (often visible in the image), and although this is meant to be a proper humility and reticence, it is also an articulation of her choice, weirdly expressed in yet another active/passive entanglement --
"be it done unto me". This figure is very influential on images of young women in visual arts afterwards, including ones that have nothing to do with (or at least not explicitly) christianity. Of course it draws on really long histories before it, both visual and other wise, but the institutionalisation of certain images for the Virgin, along with the right artistic forms to express it and means and opportunities to do so... well I won't start going on about it.
> The kids in Mexico were very hung up on this
> issue, but I missed the full brunt of that because we moved back to
> the states just in time. In Mexico, worship of the Virgin was almost an
> independent thing from regular Church, but I wasn't old enough and
> didn't stay long enough to really get what was going on. It was as if
> women, especially old women had a god of their own. It is hard to
> remember without too much later overlay.
Very true, and absolutely not confined to Mexico. This is partly about the difficult and hotly debated incorporation of various non-Christian histories and figures into the Virgin as canonical text, so there was a long and important excess that hung around her. Also some of the most circulated apocryphal texts extend and expand those references to give the Virgin her own godliness, and the Church was a long time agreeing to exclude them and didn't do so uniformly. There is some persistence in these kinds of apocryphal roles. But, there's the whole going on about it thing again...
Catherine
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