Sunday, May 05, 2019
Medusa The Porn Star, Jesus the Risen Star, Part 2
"The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden” depiction of Adam and Eve in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.
Here continues my blog series on Medusa and Porn. SEE LINK HERE for Part 1, where I began to tell the story of Medusa as it is re-enacted daily in our world that is saturated with images of the figure of the Porn Star. In Part 1, I started to connect the story of Medusa to our world, and I told of how my friend Kari both has been hurt by this story and sees value and need in its being told. The beauty of Medusa rouses men to competitive aspirations that leads to a jealous rage. Male “heroes,” who cast the figures of Medusa and the Porn Star into roles they can’t and aren’t meant to fill, are then faced with and shaped by suddenly “dark” powers they don’t understand and can’t control. After all, actual intimate relationality with human persons requires an image of reality that is totally foreign to the one “cast” by and in the habitus, practices, and upward-reaching aspirations of false worship in porn consumption. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, so what comes next?
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good…
- 1 Peter 2: 1-3
********************************************************************************
Medusa was the only mortal of three divine sisters. So, she’s the only one able to die. In most versions of her story, then she is eventually beheaded by the hero Perseus. Death rather than life reigns in this story because of the dreaded and feared danger she tragically presents to us. This is the tragedy of our false worship, our vainly-reaching aspirations, of our dis-ordered desires.
Perseus accomplishes this “heroic” feat of murdering Medusa the MONSTROUS Gorgon by using the reflection of a mirror to gaze upon her without himself being transformed into a coffin of STONE. Notably, he does not do so by relating to her in some way before unseen. He never overcomes her power to TURN him into STONE. He perceives the GIFTING of beauty, relationship, and intimacy as danger and threat to be feared. So, he “accomplishes” his task by never directly coming face to face with her in the first place. Such a “facing” or reckoning requires a confession and repentance that itself depends upon the GIFT of a whole other way of seeing in a new, larger, and recreated world where Morning Stars mysteriously and incomprehensibly rise from graves.
After Perseus’ feat, what then remains of Medusa after being abused and murdered is merely a fragmented, faceless, lifeless, body. She becomes an object of our gaze, external to and at a distance from our world and our reality. Outside of actual relationship, shamed and dishonored. Like the dead and disfigured body of Christ being placed in a tomb – notably, after we accused him of blasphemy.
********************************************************************************
I recently saw this viral video of a woman simply walking onto the crowded subway in NYC. She happened to be wearing an outfit that reveals her terrifying beauty that rouses men to competitively jealous aspirations. With no relationship with the woman whatsoever – not even so much as a hello or the knowledge of her name – a man sitting on the subway reaches over and slaps her ass.
When Perseus beheads the impregnated Medusa, a giant who wields a golden sword springs from her body. The woman on the subway’s response is to shame the man by violently and repeatedly slapping and screaming at him in the face. As she repeats herself desperately, she leans in and challenges him to do it again.
This woman’s response teaches us of the treasured, worthy, and honorable female GIFT being violated in Medusa’s rape. It speaks to the reason why, in the story, she’s raped by a figure of unhinged male rage inside the Temple of the female goddess of temperance and wisdom. It teaches us about the broken image of humanity in both male and female that results from false worship and thus from disordered desires.
The pain, humiliation, degradation, and disordered relationships associated with the predominance of porn in our world are not new to the “porn industry” that was introduced by the sexual revolution of the 60’s and grew to maturity in the consumer culture that budded in the 70’s and flowered in the 80’s. Perhaps we are reliving old traumas.
Notably, the man’s response to the woman’s wielding of, figuratively speaking, a giant golden sword, to her desperate challenge to the man’s humanity, was twofold. True to the story of Medusa, he first responded with the anger of Poseidon. He was then left in the utter paralysis born of our weakness and faithlessness, our faithlessness towards both God's Law of love and towards Eve. Towards the end of video, he was TURNED TO STONE.
There’s deep pain here embedded in the image of God, who “made them male and female”. None of the above women asked to be treated like they embody the figure of the Porn Star. I doubt any of them want to be Medusa, either.
********************************************************************************
The above viral video - demonstrating the brokenness of our pain, anger, shame, and guilt associated with our less-than-human and disordered relationships and desires - was posted on Instagram by a “stunningly” beautiful young woman the day after she had a man she had never met and didn’t know come up from behind her in a bar restaurant and, with his left hand, start caressing her neck and shoulders WARMLY AND INTIMATELY. In his blind arrogance, he did so repeatedly and for an uncomfortably long period of time, even after she made her discomfort readily apparent with her body language. With his right hand, he pulled out his STONE-COLD cell phone to ask her for her phone number.
Despite being “beheaded,” though, Medusa still holds us captive in her power. Images we worship - images we craft by and with our own hands, on our own terms, and using our own disordered desires – have power over us. This occurs whether we come face to face with her beauty in actual relationship or not, even and especially where our desires are not ordered properly toward appropriate ends in mutual relationship. This is precisely the story of Medusa, Perseus, and Poseidon. Porn tends to shape us into and reify that same old tragedy.
The men on the subway and in the bar restaurant reaching out of their hands, aroused to jealous aspirations by creative, fertile beauty, aspiring to intimate touch of women they don’t know from Eve, affirm this power held by Medusa even after her beheading by Perseus. Is this power GIFT, or is it crafted deceit into a world of death?
In the mythology, Perseus, then, because of that power, is later able to use Medusa’s head, her face, as a weapon. It still has the power to turn men into STONE upon sight of it. The woman in the bar restaurant is still “stunningly” beautiful in the STONE-COLD, blind gaze of the arrogant man who, himself shaped by aspirations to “TASTE and see” the goodness of the figure of the Porn Star, doesn’t understand how relationships work with actual women. Again as a sign of the violation that leads to the deceitful transfiguration of her form into that of a MONSTER, as well as to her more recently being silenced, objectified, and finally slain, Medusa’s weaponization continues until Perseus finally somehow decides to give Medusa’s head to the goddess of Wisdom to be placed on Wisdom’s shield, which Perseus had previously used as a mirror to be able to murder Medusa.
********************************************************************************
Medusa and the Porn Star, then, tell and embody a story of how originally creative desires for a treasured and GIFTED beauty are shaped into jealous envy of other suitors, as well as into raging coercion, deceit, control, and violence wielded upon the image of humanity out and because of our weakness and faithfulness that come about when we participate in worship of, give power to, and (like the fruit of a tree) reach up in aspiration towards false gods who are not gods – images of powers like Medusa and the Porn Star.
I do believe there is, however, hope. That’s, at least, what God seems to be forming me into lately as I come to Him in my STONE-COLD PARALYSIS, my pain, and my suffering that have come to me in our disordered and broken world of bloodshed between “male and female.” The lifeless, abused, and objectified body of Medusa is claimed by and into that of Jesus in His baptism into our blood. At the Table of Grace, Fellowship, and Forgiveness, murderous blood spilled to the ground is transformed again into a resurrected body of Life.
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good…
- 1 Peter 2: 1-3
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good…
- 1 Peter 2: 1-3
********************************************************************************
Medusa was the only mortal of three divine sisters. So, she’s the only one able to die. In most versions of her story, then she is eventually beheaded by the hero Perseus. Death rather than life reigns in this story because of the dreaded and feared danger she tragically presents to us. This is the tragedy of our false worship, our vainly-reaching aspirations, of our dis-ordered desires.
Perseus accomplishes this “heroic” feat of murdering Medusa the MONSTROUS Gorgon by using the reflection of a mirror to gaze upon her without himself being transformed into a coffin of STONE. Notably, he does not do so by relating to her in some way before unseen. He never overcomes her power to TURN him into STONE. He perceives the GIFTING of beauty, relationship, and intimacy as danger and threat to be feared. So, he “accomplishes” his task by never directly coming face to face with her in the first place. Such a “facing” or reckoning requires a confession and repentance that itself depends upon the GIFT of a whole other way of seeing in a new, larger, and recreated world where Morning Stars mysteriously and incomprehensibly rise from graves.
After Perseus’ feat, what then remains of Medusa after being abused and murdered is merely a fragmented, faceless, lifeless, body. She becomes an object of our gaze, external to and at a distance from our world and our reality. Outside of actual relationship, shamed and dishonored. Like the dead and disfigured body of Christ being placed in a tomb – notably, after we accused him of blasphemy.
********************************************************************************
I recently saw this viral video of a woman simply walking onto the crowded subway in NYC. She happened to be wearing an outfit that reveals her terrifying beauty that rouses men to competitively jealous aspirations. With no relationship with the woman whatsoever – not even so much as a hello or the knowledge of her name – a man sitting on the subway reaches over and slaps her ass.
When Perseus beheads the impregnated Medusa, a giant who wields a golden sword springs from her body. The woman on the subway’s response is to shame the man by violently and repeatedly slapping and screaming at him in the face. As she repeats herself desperately, she leans in and challenges him to do it again.
This woman’s response teaches us of the treasured, worthy, and honorable female GIFT being violated in Medusa’s rape. It speaks to the reason why, in the story, she’s raped by a figure of unhinged male rage inside the Temple of the female goddess of temperance and wisdom. It teaches us about the broken image of humanity in both male and female that results from false worship and thus from disordered desires.
The pain, humiliation, degradation, and disordered relationships associated with the predominance of porn in our world are not new to the “porn industry” that was introduced by the sexual revolution of the 60’s and grew to maturity in the consumer culture that budded in the 70’s and flowered in the 80’s. Perhaps we are reliving old traumas.
Notably, the man’s response to the woman’s wielding of, figuratively speaking, a giant golden sword, to her desperate challenge to the man’s humanity, was twofold. True to the story of Medusa, he first responded with the anger of Poseidon. He was then left in the utter paralysis born of our weakness and faithlessness, our faithlessness towards both God's Law of love and towards Eve. Towards the end of video, he was TURNED TO STONE.
There’s deep pain here embedded in the image of God, who “made them male and female”. None of the above women asked to be treated like they embody the figure of the Porn Star. I doubt any of them want to be Medusa, either.
********************************************************************************
The above viral video - demonstrating the brokenness of our pain, anger, shame, and guilt associated with our less-than-human and disordered relationships and desires - was posted on Instagram by a “stunningly” beautiful young woman the day after she had a man she had never met and didn’t know come up from behind her in a bar restaurant and, with his left hand, start caressing her neck and shoulders WARMLY AND INTIMATELY. In his blind arrogance, he did so repeatedly and for an uncomfortably long period of time, even after she made her discomfort readily apparent with her body language. With his right hand, he pulled out his STONE-COLD cell phone to ask her for her phone number.
Despite being “beheaded,” though, Medusa still holds us captive in her power. Images we worship - images we craft by and with our own hands, on our own terms, and using our own disordered desires – have power over us. This occurs whether we come face to face with her beauty in actual relationship or not, even and especially where our desires are not ordered properly toward appropriate ends in mutual relationship. This is precisely the story of Medusa, Perseus, and Poseidon. Porn tends to shape us into and reify that same old tragedy.
The men on the subway and in the bar restaurant reaching out of their hands, aroused to jealous aspirations by creative, fertile beauty, aspiring to intimate touch of women they don’t know from Eve, affirm this power held by Medusa even after her beheading by Perseus. Is this power GIFT, or is it crafted deceit into a world of death?
In the mythology, Perseus, then, because of that power, is later able to use Medusa’s head, her face, as a weapon. It still has the power to turn men into STONE upon sight of it. The woman in the bar restaurant is still “stunningly” beautiful in the STONE-COLD, blind gaze of the arrogant man who, himself shaped by aspirations to “TASTE and see” the goodness of the figure of the Porn Star, doesn’t understand how relationships work with actual women. Again as a sign of the violation that leads to the deceitful transfiguration of her form into that of a MONSTER, as well as to her more recently being silenced, objectified, and finally slain, Medusa’s weaponization continues until Perseus finally somehow decides to give Medusa’s head to the goddess of Wisdom to be placed on Wisdom’s shield, which Perseus had previously used as a mirror to be able to murder Medusa.
********************************************************************************
Medusa and the Porn Star, then, tell and embody a story of how originally creative desires for a treasured and GIFTED beauty are shaped into jealous envy of other suitors, as well as into raging coercion, deceit, control, and violence wielded upon the image of humanity out and because of our weakness and faithfulness that come about when we participate in worship of, give power to, and (like the fruit of a tree) reach up in aspiration towards false gods who are not gods – images of powers like Medusa and the Porn Star.
I do believe there is, however, hope. That’s, at least, what God seems to be forming me into lately as I come to Him in my STONE-COLD PARALYSIS, my pain, and my suffering that have come to me in our disordered and broken world of bloodshed between “male and female.” The lifeless, abused, and objectified body of Medusa is claimed by and into that of Jesus in His baptism into our blood. At the Table of Grace, Fellowship, and Forgiveness, murderous blood spilled to the ground is transformed again into a resurrected body of Life.
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good…
- 1 Peter 2: 1-3
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