Posted on 12/26/2008 4:20:33 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Catholics and Christians in Mexico have expressed outrage over Playboy’s latest cover. The shot feature a model wearing a white head covering and nothing more in front of a stained-glass window, an obvious attempt to evoke the Madonna (the original, not the singer) at the time Mexican Catholics celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Fox News was all over this story, to no one’s surprise:
I suppose I should be outraged as well, but honestly, Playboy and the rest of the porn industry stopped surprising me years ago. Their hostility towards religion has been obvious for a long time, and the new Madonna imagery is just the latest attempted insult towards people of faith. It wouldn’t even be worth of comment, except for two points that I have yet to note being made in what little debate this cover has inspired.
First, conservatives will have a tough time criticizing Playboy for using religious iconography for its own social/political commentary after the defense made of the Mohammad cartoons. While the point in the latter had more intellectual heft than a naked model showcasing her wares, the cartoonists and their supporters (myself included) had little problem with exploiting religious imagery to score political points. Freedom of speech applies in both cases, at least in the cover, which is very suggestive but shows nothing more than anyone would see on a California beach, although the tagline, “Te adoramos, Maria” is at least somewhat sacriligeous in this context as well.
That leads to the second point. Our Western traditions of free speech and open debate have allowed offended Christians to protest the publication without massive violence and threats of death. The offense in this case goes far beyond what most of the Mohammad cartoons depicted, and yet millions of Christians have not gathered in anger to threaten death and the violent imposition of a Christian theocracy. The Vatican has not issued a fatwa on Hugh Hefner’s head, and I’d be surprised if they bother to react at all.
Update: Bottom line is that it doesn’t take much courage for Playboy to insult Christians. We’ll know they have testicular fortitude when they take Melissa Clouthier’s advice ( See here : http://www.melissaclouthier.com/2008/12/15/playboy-insults-christianity/)
Let us pray...
Meanwhile, I suspect that particular issue will sell like fresh hot tortillas down there.
Just coincidence but look up big funding for Catholics for Choice (pro choice cinos) and Playboy is a contributor to their liberal causes.
Heck maybe it could be educational to some people that Madonna Ciccone is not the most famous or most important Madonna in history...........
How bout plain simple decency. Wonder if the author thought of that before she made her article sound like it was impossible to square ourselves?
Yeah, I think Playboy should do a spread of the top 10 Muslim women of Mecca — call them Mohammed’s favorites...
The Muslim women would wear the new “mini-burka”, a narrow black lace strip around their neck. I think it would sell well. Muslim men would probably be the best buyers...
I think the Playboy issue would outsell their standard magazine, “The 10 best looking goats in Mecca”... LOL...
A list of Mad Mo's faves would have to be called "The Top 10 Muslim Women Under 10."
The author appears to be very thin skinned and desperately searching for a way to be offended by an inoffensive photograph. Or maybe I’m mistaken and “te adoramos, Maria” really translates to something other than “we love you, Maria.”
Whats more out of touch than Playboy. Its a 85 year old man leering at a bunch of plastic gold diggers.
ping
The message I get is that she is calling Christains ‘wimps’ for not making a bigger deal out of the so-called offense. I find her article and the implication she makes to be more offensive than the cover of a porn magazine.
I will reiterate the comments I made in the first thread I noticed reporting on this (an article from the LA times which took offense at offending Mexicans, but not at offending Christians):
I suppose the cover per se is offensive. Though given the standards of feminine modesty that prevail throughout Christendom today, the model is far more modestly dressed than some ‘Marys’ painted by many ostensibly pious Western artists of the 16th century in comparison to the standard of their day—and, indeed, save for the implication that she is clad only in the rather full wimple, more modestly in absolute terms than some.
It is also, alas, the more-or-less logical end of the progression, or more properly regression, that began when the Latin West stopped producing iconography, and began producing religious art. There have been plenty of ‘madonna and child’ paintings ostensibly of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Christ that were really paintings of the artist’s wife or sister or paramour posed as the Blessed Virgin with a generic cute baby. Often these ‘Marys’ were depicted nursing, or simply with one breast bared (as in Jan Gossaret’s or Pedro Berruguete’s paintings from the early 16th century); and this at a time when the concept of feminine modesty prevailing in Christian lands was not so far from that prevailing in all but the most austere Muslim countries today. Read the papers on iconography that Benedict XVI wrote while a Cardinal.
I presume there is something actually offensive inside, though it is unremarked in the [LA Times] article: a ‘pictorial’ with lewd photographs of the model implicitly identified with the Blessed Virgin on the cover. Despite the dim view I (in common with the present Pope of Rome) take of the development of Western religious art, I join my Latin brethren in being offended at that.
Wouldn't it look a lot like an issue of Field and Stream????
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