Friday, January 30, 2004

Wooly swamp-love: At Ninth Art, Audrey Ference explores sexuality in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing:

"Though obviously the two are never shown having intercourse (and it's not clear that they do), we see their bodies 'joining together' in trippy sex-vision. Instead of an external sexuality for the delight of the readers, the two share a private sexual fulfillment that the reader is allowed to observe. Their communion is beautifully rendered on the page, awash in swirls and spirals and full-page sparkly 'orgasms', without showing anything that could be considered titillating or censorable. In what may be a bit of a wink to the Comics Code, Moore reverses a typical 1950s movie and television censor trick: instead of showing character eating a piece of fruit to allude to a sexual act, Abby must literally eat Swamp Thing's fruit to commit the sexual act."