Michelangelo’s David: Is His Penis a Thing of Beauty?

Recent news item from what some wags (not me, of course) call the EVANGENITAL [sic] South:

Florida Principal Forced To Resign After Parents Decry Michelangelo’s David As Pornography

In my advanced AP French class, I used to teach a unit on beauty— in which we viewed and analyzed many art works generally considered beautiful. In this context, Michelangelo’s David was of course canonically “incontournable” and, accordingly, I devoted a full lesson to him.

One of my objectives for David Day was to get the class to see that the sculptor had deliberately distorted proportions in order to emphasize David’s intelligence (head too big) and his “handiness” with a slingshot (hands too big). So, quite innocently, I asked kids to look for elements of David’s anatomy that were “disproportionnés.” 

Unfortunately, what they noticed, giggling, was NOT the hands and head, but rather the classically “discrete” penis, which they didn’t know the French word for, but which they were happy to point at and pronounce “trop petit.” I was embarrassed—not because of the statue’s genitalia, but because I, an experienced teacher, had carelessly not foreseen this reaction. 

The kids were totally cool, though. After I rather awkwardly explained what I had actually intended, one of the them tried to comfort me by saying (in pretty good French) that it was OK, Monsieur, and that I shouldn’t be upset because, after all, they were “adolescents, et nous pensons comme ça.”

They were also super kids, who had both good brains and common sense. In Florida I might have been fired.

I’ll Bet “Shakespeare” Is a Drag Name

 Update, March, 2023: Tennessee has outlawed “drag shows” in public places and Florida has made it illegal for teachers to “say gay” or teach subjects that might “confuse” children about real, and therefore complicated human behavior. I suppose, then, it’s only a matter of time until both states, in their evangelical fervor, decide to ban Shakespeare—ALL of it— since all of Shakespeare’s female roles were performed by males (boys, at that) in, er, “drag.” 

Moreover, special opprobrium will undoubtedly be reserved for As You Like It—in which, as one scholar notes…”the crossdressing scheme is very complex, as we encounter a boy actor who plays a girl, who pretends to be a boy, who performs in the role of a woman. Moreover, there is a direct reference to the real sex of the actor playing Rosalind towards the end of the epilogue. Rosalind steps out of her role, the male actor has just finished playing a part of a woman and addresses the audience in his own voice announcing what he would do if he WERE a woman…” (Lucie Johnová, Charles University, Prague) 

These facts—should they ever become widely “known” in the dim reaches of bible land—could trigger an alarming resurgence of stocks and pillories in public squares (or Walmart parking lots). Crossdressers and playwrights beware (doesn’t matter how famous you are). 

I’ll bet “Shakespeare” is a drag name.