Let’s Talk About This Picture
I really, really need to talk about this picture.
It appeared on a friend’s Facebook page (I deliberately cropped it to make that apparent) in a repost from some man named Sohit about how women are beautifully complicated in all their wonderful ways, and there’s no wrong way, and you’d better love your woman, you men you, because or else.
Except: this picture went with it.
Why?
I’ll tell you why: there is no why.
And here’s the really astonishing thing: somehow, amidst the thousands of comments and reposts of this otherwise fairly banal bit of Facebook wisdom, nobody seems to be commenting about the picture. I think they aren’t talking about it in the exact same way that people don’t talk about the loud fart somebody ripped in a crowded elevator.
Or, I don’t know, maybe a lot of people think this is exactly the perfect image to accompany wisdom like, “
If you choose a working woman, you have to accept that she can’t take care of the house full time.”
But somebody really has to talk about it. That person is us. It’s going to be weird. But we have to go there. We owe it to our own existence.
First, just stop and take a good long look at the drawing. Meditate on it. Really soak in it.
Do you see it? This drawing is the artistic equivalent of one of those hilariously off-putting stories written by an AI bot after being forced to digest a thousand mediocre novels. In short, I am just shy of refusing to believe this was drawn by a human. If I had to guess, I would say it was crafted by an alien who learned about human romance by decoding tabloid covers in a checkout line. Or a set of IKEA instructions.
But let’s zoom in a little. The first thing we are forced to notice is the remarkable amount of effort put into not showing even the slightest hint of a face. Why? Perhaps you are thinking it’s because the artist doesn’t know how to draw faces. That was my first thought as well, but I quickly rejected it.
The faces are hidden because– stay with me here– the faces are not there.
Clearly, there is nothing on the front of these people’s people-heads but perfectly smooth, blank nothing. They’re like moons. Or like Schrodinger’s cat, perpetually in a state of waveform flux between alive and dead– only in this case between howling nothingness and a swarm of eyes, snouts, beaks, and gills.
How can I be certain of this? Zoom in. Look really close. Do you see it? Of course you don’t because there’s nothing to see. Not a hint of an eyebrow, not a shadow of a smiling cheek, not so much as a lonely freckle. What artist would go to such painstaking lengths to refuse to show even the slightest intimation of a single human feature?
Again, if I had to guess: the alien artist was shy, and always stood behind the humans he observed. A more audacious alien artist might have feigned a guess at what human people had on the front of their hair, but not this one. This artist chose the craftier, subtler, safer approach.
Next: let’s drink in the environment. Where is it? When is it?
My first, breathless guess was: starship. Why else is the ceiling canted so low over the figures, and embedded with a window showing the romance and absolute terrifying zero of perpetual cosmic night?
Look at those stars. Those aren’t the twinkling stardust of any earthly evening. That’s the brittle black of stellar oblivion.
Which changes the context completely, doesn’t it? Perhaps these are the last two people awakened from a thousand years of hyperspace, still woozy with hibernation sickness, clumsily trying to relearn the act of human love in the name of perpetuating the species.
But then: there are records on the table. Which is definitely a table, not a bed or a couch. Definitely a table. With records on it. And a portable record player, which is apparently playing one of the records.
You’re probably tempted to think the record is playing some old romantic song, something performed by some variety of Neville. But again, I believe we have to reject this first impression.
Why? Because look at the man’s posture. The suggestion is that he is helping the woman’s top off. But is that really what’s happening? He has one hand pushed awkwardly up her back. But the other is pressed to the table next to her. And I am almost willing to swear that the knuckles are white and there is a thin sheen of sweat between palm and table. This is not the posture of a man lost in the heady throes of passion. This is the posture of a man firmly thinking “I WILL NOT REMOVE MY LEFT HAND FROM THE TABLE TOP UNLESS I AM TOLD EXPLICITLY TO DO SO.”
Which perhaps explains the record player.
Is it not playing music at all? Is it maybe playing one of those old instructional records, the kind with a stern but smiling voice that guides the listener through dance steps, or Italian cooking, or, in this case, the step-by-step tactics of maneuvering human beings into the reproductive act?
Now let’s look at the clothing. The figures are both wearing long-sleeved white form-fitting tops. Is that coincidence? Does the artist only know how to draw one kind of top? If we could see the right front breast of each shirt would they bear matching logos of identification? Are these poor people members of the Clonus Project? Or are they both just unimaginative dressers?
So many unsettlingly unanswerable questions!
But then we come inevitably, inexorably to: what is she wearing on the bottom?
Are those pants? They can’t be pants, right? They’re way, WAY (ahem!) way too clingy and… there’s no other way to put it… cleft-defining to be pants.
One is tempted to say this is nearly Not Safe For Work (or Facebook). And yet it… it is?
Is it actually, technically, “sexy”? Why is it, somehow, so thoroughly and emphatically not sexy? It’s like the porn equivalent of the uncanny valley: close enough to be almost erotic, but inexplicably off-putting just enough to be as sensual as drinking paint.
The (pants??) are clearly drawn in such a manner as to immediately demand the viewer’s gaze. In fact, the composition itself is extravagantly designed to accost your eyeball by force, drag it to the divided globe of this anonymous, faceless woman’s rump, and make you trace sticky trails of optical juice all over it.
I can’t help picturing the artist quietly weeping as he drew the lady’s hind-parts, moved as he was by the sheer beatific power of his creation. I believe, with ironclad conviction, that the artist spent more time lovingly shading and smoothing those gradient cheeks than he spent on the rest of the drawing combined (especially the not-faces).
So, they can’t be pants. But are they pantyhose?
Why pantyhose? Maybe yoga pants? Jogging tights?
But if so– if any of those– look at the knee. There are wrinkles there. Pant-wrinkles! They are pants below the waist!
Is that possible? Is this some sort of reality where a man’s touch in the small of a woman’s back magically transforms her slacks into pantyhose, and we are witnessing the event in progress?! Have I lived a life worthy of gazing upon this mystical vision?
At this point, it would be understandable if you needed to take a little break.
But believe it or not, we aren’t done dissecting.
Why are the man’s hands outlined so adamantly? What is the artist demanding that we see about his hands? Is he trying to distract us from his inability to draw faces by making us look really, really hard at the hands?
Hands are hard to draw. And these ones are only sorta OK. I don’t know what’s happening with the man’s right thumb, for example. It appears to be a sort of flipper extending along the entire length of his palm. And honestly, do any of those fingers look capable of bending? I don’t think this is evidence of bad art. The fingers are obviously deliberately drawn that way! They are drawn as solid single-bone digits!
This is a universe where hands are equipped with unforgiving flesh rods instead of fingers! And the artist is watching us watch, demanding that we reckon with it!
We must reckon with it!
The wine bottle and glasses are very nice, though. I think it’s probably a Merlot. This seems like a Merlot kind of scene. Don’t you think?
G. Norman Lippert's Shiftlock 