Word: dentata
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...dismasted sloop, adrift and rudderless in the deep Caribbean blue. Enormous sharks circle the boat. Their ominousness is reinforced by the zone of black water from which they rise. (The catalog, rather absurdly, suggests that celibate Homer was invoking that hoary phantom of the Freudian couch, the vagina dentata. This could make sense only to an art historian who has never been near a live shark.) On the horizon, a square-rigger sails indifferently by, and we see the waterspout of a coming tornado. There will be no rescue. The painting refers back to other images of marine disaster, notably...
...Lovis Corinth's Temptation of Saint Anthony. Exotic suggestions of bestiality (as with Salammbo) provided another popular theme. Arthur Wardle's Bacchante cavorts with a whole herd of amorous leopards, and Frederick Stuart Church's Enchantress strolls through the wilderness with two tigers "whose growling jaws suggested the vagina dentata which turn-of-the-century men feared they might find hidden beneath this . . . beauty's decorous gown...
Even fashion pictures of strong women seem designed to play on the fears of misogynist men. A Von Wangenheim photo in the current Vogue has a vagina dentata theme: a vicious dog faces the camera, with bared teeth directly in front of a woman's crotch. Doesn't the picture seem to say that women are sexual killers? "Well," rationalizes Von Wangenheim, "it works better that...
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