Word: phallus
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...enormous phallus—which had life-like veins, a urethral bulge, and a sizeable scrotum—elicit such iconoclastic fanaticism? And how could students who are normally so respectful of public art forms and self-expression react so violently to a harmless ice-covered phallus in their midst...
Such questions are especially troubling given the long and distinguished history of phallic imagery in art. The greatest poets of ancient Greece, for example, used the phallus liberally. In Aristophanes’ comedy “Acharnians,” the protagonist Dikaiopolis holds a religious procession with a model phallus and sings a bawdy song called the phallikon in Greek. He instructs his slave to hold a “phallus-pole” up stiff and straight and sings an ode to the “midnight rambler and carouser.” The phallus procession...
...many cultures including the ancient Greeks, the phallus is a positive symbol. For example, the phallus is a symbol of the Hindu god Shiva and often is found in temples dedicated to the god. A man with an erect phallus was a common portrayal of the ancient Egyptian god Min, showing that the Greeks were not alone in their positive associations with the tumescent male appendage...
Perhaps the phallus-breakers of Harvard Yard were reacting with bourgeois conventionality in labeling challenging art as subversive. Or maybe they were acting on some radical women’s liberation agenda that requires the destruction of visible symbols of male virility...
...phallus’ detractors might point to its large-size life-like features to label it not art, but an obscene symbol of male excess. The phallus might be threatening as a reminder of the subjugation of women by the hard-hearted, monolithic patriarchy. These objections are baseless. Although the builders of the snow phallus likely took pleasure in the sheer physical presence of the work, this pleasure does not invalidate the artistic merits of the sculpture. Moreover, public expressions such as the phallus should be debated, not destroyed. The next time a phallus goes up in the Yard...