Posted on 12/21/2008 2:04:58 PM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
As NewsBuster Dan Gainor has noted, Playboy Mexico thought it could make some pesos by peddling an issue with a scantily-clad Virgin Mary on the cover—just in time for Christmas.
Today's Los Angeles Times contains an editorial denouncing the tasteless stunt. All well and good. But it set me to wondering. Did the LAT protest similar outrages against religous symbols when they appeared in the US?
The infamous "Piss Christ" comes to mind. Even more on point is the portrait of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by lacquered elephant dung and cutouts from pornographic magazines, that the Brooklyn Museum found worthy of display.
I'm going to guess that the LAT never editorialized against either of these. As NewsBuster and Times Watcher Clay Waters pointed out, the LAT's East Coast counterpart, the NY Times, editorialized in defense of both works of "art," while condemning the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Would LAT protest Playboy’s naked Mary if published in US? Ping to Today show list.
“Piss Christ” and “Mary Smeared with Elephant Dung” were ART....
Don’t you appreciate ART?????
Or are you just another right-wing troglodyte?
/sarcasm
Guilty as charged ;-)
Question to readers: I didn’t post the cover photo here. Over at NewsBusters, a colleague writing about the controversy posted a good-sized reproduction of the cover. Not wanting to give it too much play, I posted a much smaller version of the image in my item thee. How do people feel about this: is it wrong to show the image at all, or appropriate for purposes of discussion?
She isn’t naked, and the only similarities to La Virgen de Guadalupe is that she is female and draped in a shawl. They’re selling magazines.
I disagree. As stated in the editorial:
“The publisher of Playboy Mexico, Raul Sayrols, maintains that no reference to the mother of Jesus was intended. Apparently the cover line “Te adoramos, Maria” — We adore you, Mary — and the model’s Pieta-esque resemblance have simply been misinterpreted. The magazine, he said, was aiming for a “Renaissance-like mood.”
“We don’t buy it. This issue was published just days before Mexico’s most important religious celebration, the annual pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The Virgin of Guadalupe is the country’s most revered figure, and the pilgrimage is one of the world’s largest religious events. And of course, Christmas is right around the corner.”
I think the girl on the cover and the photographer might be the last two people still in mexico.
The Mexicans had cameras 2000 years ago.. in the Middle East?
I may be wrong, but this photo might not be of the REAL Mary.
“Te adoramos Maria” has a religious connotation in Spanish that “We adore you, Mary” does not have in English. Of course they intended to make oblique reference to the virgin.
The point I was making was just that I thought it was not inappropriate to post the picture.
I don’t believe the real Virgin Mary would pose in a Playboy magazine even if cameras existed in her lifetime. ;0)
It was yanked from a previous thread. Anyone that wants to see it can probably find it with a little effort.
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