Let´s talk about nudity...

Shade

Jewel said:
Ric, back to the Dove commercial, no matter how great a commercial of anything if you don't like the smell of the soap no matter how much I like the commercial I would not buy it. That does not mean the commercial is a failure, it means the product might have hit a plateu or was surpassed by competition.
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This would be true if:

Dove generally did not perform well with consumers
or
People had stated positive reactions to the commercials despite a lack of increase in sales.

But
Dove has always been a top seller
and
The general public (yes those people ruin everything) found the ads distasteful
 

RiccardoLS

Cat* said:
Wonderfully put, and thank you so much for broadening my mind with that explanation! I absolutely understand what you're saying.
And yet, in the end, a card may be not good, even after this work.
I think that a deck is "good", when all the work you do on single cards goes in the same direction, along the same intepretation key. This way the study of the deck opens to a bigger whole than just the single cards.
It may be said that the originality of the single cards is just a cue to something more important, and just the first step. That - if a deck is good, and if it good for the person.

Cat* said:
Actually, I've been so all over the place in this thread, that I have lost track of all my points
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Me too.
We should just leave the burden of summary to Le fanu. He is the original poster. He should do work!!! ^_^

Cat* said:
You're right. That bit with the beginner's expectations was confused. I blame it on less-than-perfectionist editing (and maybe some tiredness) on my part.
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No, no... you were correct. Mine was just a whining "but" :)

Sapienza said:
I guess the thing is that everyone's idea of a idealized world is different.
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An idealized world is not the perfect world. It is more abstract. Even more extreme. It's not that poverty does not exist, it does, and it is the dinstillation of poverty. In an "idealized" world, love is true love, knowledge does not mean 2+2, but the inner workings of the universe, etc...

Tarot should be a mirror of the real world, but not a photography of it.
You need the power to link to your experience and to that of the Querient.
But it must happen timeand time again. So a "love" card should embrace many different experiences of love.

Anyway, if you feel that some kind of idealizations are really distorstions of your experience, I understand all too well why some decks do not work with you. I'm not really sure that a certain way of portraying women is turning them into sex objects (like the Initiatory Golden Dawn) but it's just normal to see things differently.

As I said, I'm concerned about this underground currents. I think it's necessary to breath life to decks. But sometimes it is not what it should be, or ends up bringing imbalance to a deck.

I may say that - if I want to make a celtic deck to sell, I just just place a raven haired mysterious beauty as the Morrigan (and so on), and I would have my seller. On AT, I guess, we are all minority ^_^
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WolfSpirit

Shade said:
Dove has always been a top seller
and
The general public (yes those people ruin everything) found the ads distasteful
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The general public, aren't they the ones who think tarot was invented by the devil ? So what would they have to do with what we want to see on a card ?
 

Le Fanu

WolfSpirit said:
The general public, aren't they the ones who think tarot was invented by the devil ? So what would they have to do with what we want to see on a card ?
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Yes, and and as George Bernard Shaw said; the majority is always wrong, the minority sometimes right... :)
 

The crowned one

Comparing Dove soap adverts to tarot art work does not really make sense to me. I doubt there is much overlap in demographics ;)

Personally when we are talking stylized, idealized, fantasy nudity, I like the "does not exist perfect bodies" artist often draw for men and women.
 

Splungeman

My feeling about the whole male nudity vs female nudity thing is that the male genitalia are simply humorous.

WHY don't you see a lot of male nudity in movies? Well...think about when you DO see male nudity in movies...No matter what is happening in the scene, it instantly seems to make the whole thing funny. For example, the shower room fight scene in "Eastern Promises". Here this man is fighting for his life, but all the audience (in my theater anyway) seemed to notice was Viggo's little fella thwacking around and the giggles were non-stop.

Monty Python recognized the ridiculousness of the male accessory and made it, in many cases, an inspiration for silliness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGRPFUYUUdQ
 

Tomsde

I think there is a glimmer of hope for the male nude, the English have been showing penises in movies for years. Although no American movie can show one without the dreaded NC-17 rating; but we can go to see tasteful, artfully done Enlgish films with penises. On the cable shows, Rome and Oz, most noteably, penises are definitely to be seen and glimpses of them in Tales of the City. I think society is definitely not as shocked by the male anatomy as it once was. In Tarot cards one can exspect a shift as well I think. There are male nudes in the independently created Brotherhood Tarot, which are tastefully done in a non-sexually explicit manner. I guess the market will decide, if such things are popular others will follow with imitations.

I'm not buying into the penis is obscene school of thought, the human body and all it's parts are beautiful. The thought of any part of your body being obscene is a culturally contrived phenomenon. You'd be surprised about the debate that rates on the 3D community about anatomically correct human figures. One of the leading sellers, Daz, does not release anatomically correct females and there is quite a controversy as to whether or not a fully poseable male member should be included or excluded in a upcoming release.

People are talking and debating and stretching the envelope. This is the only way change will take place, it is the seed of change and things are slowly changing.
 

WolfSpirit

Splungeman said:
Monty Python recognized the ridiculousness of the male accessory and made it, in many cases, an inspiration for silliness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGRPFUYUUdQ
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Monty Python also made fun of Margaret Thatcher's naughty bits ! And although she was formidable, I don't think she had a penis ;)
 

ilweran

Shade said:
As to "real" bodies. I am reminded of the Dove "Real Beauty" soap campaign in which we saw people who did not have perfect bodies - most of them would be described as overweight - in just their undies selling soap. People HATED these ads.
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In my opinion the fact that people think the women in the picture you posted a link to are overweight is a sign of the problem! All those women looked normal and healthy to me & I'd be happy to see any of them used as models for art in a tarot deck - but then I'd like to see more realistic portrayals of both genders in all media.

I have no problem at all with female nudity in decks, but it would be nice to see more attractive men - although I'm sure my boyfriend would disagree :D
 

Le Fanu

Splungeman said:
My feeling about the whole male nudity vs female nudity thing is that the male genitalia are simply humorous
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This is just proof of a certain discomfort with the issue, surely? Laughing at something shows we are ill at ease about an issue doesn´t it? It never crosses my mind to think of the male penis as laughable any more than I find - say - trees, laughable. And nudity is the whole. Surely only when we stop looking at disembodied parts do we see the beauty of the whole?

O and I think the generic "movies" you mention is pretty US-based. European cinema has been showing "normal" nudity, unfazed, without making an issue of it for years.
 
I am now OFFICIAL!! :D Saying what you see