Word: nuns
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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BEST PUNCH: "Organized religion, in my experience, has been destructive. Why do I have to do what all these men are saying? Why is a woman's sexuality supposed to be so evil?" Also, turned down Mom's offer to be a nun...
...photo from this era shows Buñuel in full nun-drag - making it no surprise that early on in "Chien andalou" (after the infamous eyeball- slitting scene, featuring Buñuel himself) our hero is seen bicycling through the streets wearing nun-like apparel. Later on, as the hero attempts to sexually attack the heroine, he is required to pull ropes connected to a variety of weighty impediments - including two reclining Marist brothers (one of whom is purportedly Dali). "L'Age d'or" followed soon after, but Buñuel was not able to return to his trademark imagery...
...kissing of altar boys' feet leading to sexually charged stares between the man and the woman who will become his beloved ("El/This Strange Passion," 1952). The coup de grace is delivered in "Archibaldo de la Cruz" when our hero, an aspiring (but terribly clumsy) serial killer, frightens a nun so badly she plunges down a deep elevator shaft - producing, in most cinemas, a hearty round of laughter...
...pair of perpendicular lines: making a cross is as simple as rubbing two sticks together. Yet how much potent symbolism can be read into this image; how much religious and social weight it has borne. Place it on a nun's habit or a Klansman's hood and get drastically different readings. Tweak its four ends and a swastika emerges. There are familiar evocations of the crucified Jesus in this piquant Christmas tome (actually more a Good Friday book), but Klein lets her imagination roam wild through pictures of trapeze artists, surfboarders, plastic cutlery and body sculpture. The figure...
Lucy Kaylin, however, gives careful consideration to just such matters in her absorbing new book, For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun (Morrow; 239 pages; $24). Kaylin, the "daughter of a Jewish-born atheist father and a lapsed Lutheran mother who has since turned to Zen Buddhism," approaches the subject with a respectful, blank-canvas curiosity. Some of the nuns she interviews are cloistered, emerging only briefly from a shuttered existence. Others live in apartment complexes and work in boardrooms, indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. All seem inclined toward frank discussion of their faith...