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Erotic helplessness : a study of the history of the Damsel in Distress theme in art

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coldturkey said:
cebtuB&E, February 1943
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This is the capture of the Ganj-i-Sawai by Henry Avery ("Long Ben") in 1695, the crime of the 17th century. Avery led a coalition of privateers in an attack on the Mughal treasure fleet and despite stiff resistance (including from the captain's hastily armed Turkish concubines) captured the flagship and proceeded to loot it,murdering, raping and torturing as they went. Many of the women aboard jumped into the sea and drowned rather than face the pirates. Avery and his men escaped with treasure worth tens of millions in today's money and although half a dozen were caught and punished for other crimes Avery and the rest simply disappeared to enjoy their riches.

Captain_Every_Works_of_Daniel_Defoe (1).jpg
 
coldturkey said:
Thankfully Matania worked for a British paper, where to my knowledge there was no equivalent to the Hays Code ;)
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As a resident of this green and pleasant land I still find Matania's illustrations astonishing in a household magazine featuring articles on weight loss and golf and buying a dog. Not just the nudity but the strong undercurrent of sexual sadism. We never had anything like that in the swinging sixties or even the sordid seventies. We had to make do with the lingerie section in the Freemans catalogue

I do however remember a particularly powerful BBC Schools film about Boadicea that featured lots of Roman maidens being slaughtered on the steps of the temple in Colchester (a spot I have stood on). Turned me right round.
 
Salty Sam was tryin' to stuff Sweet Sue in a burlap sack
He said, "If you don't give me the deed to your ranch
I'm gonna throw you on the railroad tracks!"
And then he grabbed her (and then)
He tied her up (and then)
He threw her on the railroad tracks (and then)
A train started comin' (and then, and then!)

For a supposedly ubiquitous cliche there is suspiciously little of this done other than in jest.

a89800bce5b83ffe2a_Barney_Oldfield's_Race_for_a_Life.jpga89800bce5b83ffe2a_The_Fatal_Ring.jpg
 
gerembeau said:
View attachment 1521931
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The comic story behind this intriguing picture can be found here (in French - if you use Chrome, right-click for Google to translate it)

http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/clunettes.htm

- essentially a pretty boy managed to get himself admitted to the convent as a nun, and got one of the young sisters pregnant. The angry prioress made all the nuns parade with minimal clothing, she put on her specs (les lunettes) to peer at their parts closely - with all these naked females around, suddenly the guilty one's sex shot into view in a way that knocked off the prioress's glasses!

Thomas Rowlandson illustrated the same scene, the print is in the V&A:

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/...jean-de-la-satirical-print-rowlandson-thomas/
 
Eulalia said:
The comic story behind this intriguing picture can be found here (in French - if you use Chrome, right-click for Google to translate it)

http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/clunettes.htm

- essentially a pretty boy managed to get himself admitted to the convent as a nun, and got one of the young sisters pregnant. The angry prioress made all the nuns parade with minimal clothing, she put on her specs (les lunettes) to peer at their parts closely - with all these naked females around, suddenly the guilty one's sex shot into view in a way that knocked off the prioress's glasses!

Thomas Rowlandson illustrated the same scene, the print is in the V&A:

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/...jean-de-la-satirical-print-rowlandson-thomas/
Click to expand...
"Naked" and "nun", why do those words go together to produce the most erotic phrase in the English language: "naked nuns"!
 
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