[1053] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: "Bling Bling" party posters
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeremy H. Brown)
Fri Feb 22 18:37:51 2002
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Message-ID: <uv6zo21cdpl.fsf@suspiria.ai.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 18:13:26 -0500
From: "Jeremy H. Brown" <jhbrown@AI.MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <20020222213451.GF28695@yiff.mit.edu>
Eh, it's just a particularly pathetic display of penis envy. Pay it
no attention.
Jeremy
rax <rax@mit.edu> writes:
> So, a few days ago, I noticed posters for some "Bling Bling" party in various
> places on campus. Some of them included pictures of a topless man and a topless
> woman (not explicit, but obvious), and i said to myself as i walked past it,
> "Wow, that's kind of unnecessary." I then continued living my life.
>
> Today, walking around campus, I saw another set of "Bling Bling" posters,
> bearing the same information (in a different font) and a very different image.
> These posters bore an impressively and disturbingly graphic depiction of
> a penis being cut in half by a pair of scissors.
>
> While I certainly do not know, I cannot help but suspect that this may be
> the work of whomever created the "Get Nu'dered" posters last (term?year?),
> which depicted the male symbol having the arrow removed in a similar fashion.
> Those, while I thought they were tasteless, were not directly offensive.
> These current posters made my stomach turn.
>
> Now, it is possible that the goal of the posterers was to make my stomach turn.
> Well, you certainly succeeded. I am really rather fond of my penis, you see,
> and the image of it being cut off is extremely unpleasant. I do not believe
> that my penis has ever hurt anyone, nor that many men who walked down the hall
> and experienced the same sickening feelings had "guilty penises." You did
> succeed, also, in causing me to think about what would make someone put up
> these posters - the first posters, which had faded from my memory, returned.
> I do not think the first posters were in particularly good taste, and I did
> not intend to attend the party in question. However, I do not feel that the
> response was at all called for. The portrayal of a shirtless woman as
> advertising for a party (and I have asked a number of female friends about
> this; they agree with me) is on a completely different scale.
>
> Not only were these posters placed along the infinite corridor, but when I got
> home to East Campus and went to the door to front desk, hoping to check my
> mail, the same giant picture was in my face. I tore it down, disgusted.
> Walking across the courtyard and starting up the stairs, I found that someone
> had placed the selfsame poster in a stairwell of East Campus. I tore that one
> down also. I was offended that someone felt the need to place this vile
> image in my path a number of times, and then inside of my home as well.
>
> If one wanted to parody the poster without being patently offensive, one could
> have despicted a number of things: just one dumpy nerd on a couch, perhaps, or
> a man being rejected by a woman. That would have been clever, and (at least
> comparatively) subtle. I wonder what the reaction to a poster which depicted
> a clitoridectomy would be? Certainly and justifiably, negative. Then why is
> this even close to acceptable?
>
> Please, whomever is responsible, try to keep in mind that if your goal is to
> enlighten, you will not succeed by driving away your target audience.
>
> rax
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation on the use of the mailing lists mit-talk, all-talk,
mit-news, housing-talk, and the mit-talk Zephyr class is available at:
http://web.mit.edu/institvte/talk/
