Oh yes! A friend was as nice as to take a picture of Saint Sebastian in Paris for me. She knows how happy hot semi-nude men tied up in public make me. And look at how happy he seems, too! What a cute smile!
Isn’t he beautiful? Isn’t he delicious? Doesn’t he look delighted?
It seems strangely contradictory that these images of proud male submission originate from within a religious discourse so rigid when it gets to gender roles. Heteronormativity not only means that there are two sexes – and only two – and only reproductive intercourse is allowed. It also implies which sex plays which role, which part is to be fulfilled by a man and which by a woman. Passivity equals feminity – one of the reasons why the above statue shows not only boyish but feminine features. As if submission of men – masculine submission – was unthinkable, a contradiction in terms, impossible.
But funnily there is something about depictions of Saint Sebastian like the above that is often missing from contemporary imaginations of male submission. It is that pride and joy he shows. He is not ashamed. Submission is not a source of shame, unlike so often believed and depicted in erotica. Sebastian here not only sought out his situation himself, but created it; he acted according to his desire (even if it isn’t explicetely sexual but rather meant to be tortured and die at the hands of a heathen to find fulfillment and salvation – which, obviously, is not recommandable). Sebastian is not a passive victim, neither of himself nor of others. Just look at him, how he’s openly beaming with joy.
Of course, talking about kink and killing seems very much out of place, but then Sebastian can so easily be read in different lights, can be misread or read as queer. After all, this is a story, a myth, and I believe that myths hardly ever tell the story they pretend to do. And so many of the aspects of the Sebastian-tale allow for different interpretations – be it his nudity, his beauty, the arrows as signs of Eros or the phallus even, and a long history of gay artists interpretating the motif. And death, of course, being le petit mort.
So, it looks like I have after all managed to write a short version of my long promised Saint Sebastian post. What would I do without my friends sending me these nice pic posts late at night? Oh yes, I know… stare at Sebastians instead of writing… in my bunk… did I mention I love hot naked guys tied up in public who’re proud of their sexuality?
