The Sex Lives of Christ-Children (Part 2)

I want to close this discussion with a brief note on the visual content of the works discussed in part one. It occurs to me now that there isn't really any sex going on here. There are penises and erections and nigh-fellatio, but along the lines of Steinberg's reading they're more akin to Gray's Anatomy than Grey's Anatomy. It reminds me of Baudrillard (again) and some of his thoughts about nudity. Before the change in mores that caused the "sexual revolution" or whatever, nudity was, to put it like he did, an "eruption." It had a value that ran counter to the existing order of signs. But today, with the body sufficiently "liberated," sexual allure and desire are snuggly plugged into the system, and have no more mystery or power than a coffee table from IKEA. The liberation of sexuality brings sex out of the bedroom and into the marketplace. "Sex appeal" becomes a label to be displayed like any other commodified sign, just as that coffee table signifies "good design" and "functionality."

It seems like the surprise created by these images comes from a certain idea about the past that we have, for we realize (or at least believe) that nudity carried a very different value in the Renaissance. We become shocked "for their sake," but at the same time we feel a little heartened to know that sex, "our" sex, existed in the Christian order, an order which we believe to be feverently anti-sex. But what we fail to realize, I think, is that these paintings have as much to do with sex, that "liberated" sex that we think threatens the Christian order, as pornography does; that is, there's not really any connection at all. What is surprising is that here we see sex transformed into signs that have nothing to do with their "origins;" after all, Anne performs a sexual act upon Jesus with pleasure likely being the furthest from her thoughts. Sex has become integrated into the religious order just as pornography, soft and hard, integrates it into the consumers' order.

So in sum, we are seduced by these works not because they depict "the sexuality of Christ" in some kind of pristine sense, but rather because they mirror our own use of sex as sign, albeit in a very different way.