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ACROSS
1 Set into motion
8 Golf alternative,
briefly
15 Red bowlful
16 __ Itzá: Mayan
ruins
17 Classic leading
man who
moonlighted at a
pharmacy?
19 Second of 24
20 L.A. Kings’ org.
21 Management
22 Fiji’s region
25 Pulitzer-winning
writer who
moonlighted in a
nightly news
studio?
32 Saying that often
goes without
saying
33 Breaks down
34 One with a
handbook
36 Tony winner
Huffman
37 Bolshoi outfit
38 Kitchen bar
39 “I’d strike the sun
if it insulted me”
speaker
43 Folklore threats
44 Actor who
moonlighted in a
brass band?
47 Makes
complementary
(to)
48 “Here Come the
__”: 1945 college
comedy
52 Actor Stephen
53 18-Down
competitor
57 English author
who moonlighted
at LensCrafters?
61 Enhances in the
kitchen
62 “That’s my
recommendation”
63 Reply to “That’s
enough!”
64 Pool workers

DOWN
1 Rhyme scheme
in many sonnets
2 Bear up
3 Moderate pace
4 Open org.
5 “__ du lieber!”
6 From that place

7 Rembrandt and
Picasso, at times
8 Obsolescent
family room fixture
9 Justification
10 Puzzle
sometimes
framed
11 Hose shade
12 Southeast Asian
language
13 Garden party
protection
14 Garden party
intruders
18 53-Across
competitor
22 Resistance unit
23 Collar
24 A-listers
25 City SSW of
Dallas
26 Praise to the
heavens
27 To help, to Henri
28 Piece of toast?
29 Expenditure
30 Activity of great
interest?
31 __ One: vodka
brand
35 Scam
39 Proper
40 In a lather, with
“up”

41 Words with take
or lose
42 Fund-raiser
43 Like “fain”: Abbr.
45 Poe of the
Baltimore
Ravens, for one
46 Certain agent’s
area
48 Mozart title
starter
49 General Motors
subsidiary

50 Substitute in a
list
51 Ph.D. hurdle
53 Both, at the start
54 Contests
55 Smithsonian,
e.g.: Abbr.
56 PD ranks
58 Italian diminutive
suffix
59 Venom
transmitter
60 Arguable ability

By Jeffrey Wechsler
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/13/15

11/13/15

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, November 13, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

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PARKING

Dear Gillian,
I love to paint, but all my best 

work is of nudes, and my mom 
doesn’t want

to hang them up in the house. 

I 
feel 
like 

she does not 
appreciate my 
talent

or worse — 

she sometimes 
seems 
embarrassed 
of 
my 
art. 

What should I 
do?

- 
Artist 

Under Wraps

*******

Dear Wraps,
The first thing we need to 

figure out is whether your mom 
doesn’t like your art or doesn’t 
like the nudity in your art. If it’s 
the art, there’s not much you can 
do. Though I’m sure your art is 
striking, everyone is entitled to 
their opinion when it comes to 
art appreciation and there’s no 
accounting for taste. I would 
say just ask your mom straight-
up if she thinks your nudes are 
pornography or just poor artistry. 

But let’s assume it’s the former, 

then I’d say your job is to help her 
work out her hang up and hang up 
your work out in the open. Don’t 
settle for a wall in the guest-room-
turned-storage-unit. Gallery space 
is difficult to score; you at least 
deserve prime real estate in your 
family home. 

While I can’t provide criticism 

on form and composition, I can 
comfort you with the knowledge 
that you are part of a timeless 
lineage of artists who have 
navigated the narrow straits 
between celebration and scandal 
when it comes to the nude 
subject (some have deliberately 
run aground on either side). 
Maybe your mom can take 
comfort in it as well.

On the ceiling of the Sistine 

Chapel, Michelangelo depicts 
the Temptation and Fall of 
Adam and Eve with two scenes 
in narrative sequence. On the 
left he paints the original couple 

blissfully nude, possibly in the 
middle of a shame-free sex act. 
On the right side is the moment 
after Adam and Eve have eaten 
of the forbidden fruit; the newly 
self-aware pair are leaving Eden 
shamefully covering their naked 
bodies. Art historian Kenneth 
Clark is great on the distinction 
between naked and nude: “To be 
naked is to be deprived of our 
clothes, and the word implies 
some of the embarrassment 
most of us feel in that condition. 
The word ‘nude,’ on the other 
hand, carries, in educated usage, 
no uncomfortable overtone … a 
balanced, prosperous and confi-
dent body.” This, Wraps, might 
be helpful in determining the 
interpretive 
framework 
with 

which your mother views your 
paintings. Are you rendering 
human vulnerability and eroti-
cism, or do your canvases glow 
with divine idealized beauty?

To follow one art historical 

thread down this path: Botticelli’s 
Birth of Venus is celebrated as an 
elegant and natural depiction of 
a nude, a goddess — an idealized 
form of a woman — and her 
sexuality is soft and unobtrusive. 
Titian’s Venus of Urbino takes 
one step toward the risqué 
plucking Venus from her heavenly 
surroundings and placing her in 
an earthly bedroom. Yet Titian’s 
soft application of paint and 
the graceful body language of 
Venus allow viewers to hold on to 
highbrow associations. Eduoard 
Manet 
steps 
defiantly 
over 

the nude/nakedness line with 
Olympia, first shown at the 1865 
Paris Salon where it was met with 
harsh criticism and outrage. With 
the same composition as Venus 
of Urbino, it’s the black choker 
of a prostitute and challenging 
gaze that render Olympia overtly 
sexual and shocking — viewers 
are forced to confront the sexual 
naked body and can’t hide behind 
the pretense of ideal beauty. It 
gets worse with Sally Mann’s 
Venus After School (1992), but we 
won’t go there.

I don’t know your gender or 

that of your nudes, but the naked/
nude division applies equally in 
depictions of the male body. From 
Michelangelo’s sculpted David 
in the early 1500s celebrating 
human beauty and excellence as 
those humanists liked to do in the 
Renaissance to Robert Mappletho-
rpe’s silver gelatin print Dan S. in 
1980 that toes the line between 
art and pornography. No discus-
sion about the history of nudity in 
art, not even in an advice column, 
is complete without a word about 
the gender dynamics of the artist/
subject relationship. I don’t know 
if the objectification of gaze is the 
right foot to start off on with your 
mom, but it probably affords the 
most insight into the topic.

In the visual arts, it is usually 

the subject that is nude. But 
in some of the other creative 
disciplines, 
it’s 
the 
artists 

themselves. Dance is a stark 
example. 
The 
(sometimes 

controversial) 
dance 
critic 

Alastair Macaulay approves of 
nudity in dance where it advances 
the artistic intent of a piece, 
such as by conveying intimacy 
or 
highlighting 
musculature 

where those are among the 
choreographic 
themes, 
but 

condemns it where it is purely 
prurient, raunch for raunch’s 
sake. He repeated ballet dancer 
Robert 
Helpmann’s 
famous 

observation 
of 
the 
problem 

with nakedness in dance: When 
you stop on the music, not all 
the parts of your anatomy stop 
at the same time, which leads 
to the conclusion that slow 
choreography can be done nude 
but a fast dance, only buck-naked.

So, my dear artist U.W., not 

to get too psycho-sexual, but as 
Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable 
Lightness of Being” teaches us, 
there can be engrained personal 
aversions to the human body. In 
the novel, Tereza’s greatest fear 
is being reduced to nakedness 
with no way to distinguish herself 
from anyone else’s fleshy body. 
If your mom’s aversion is not as 
deep-seated as Tereza’s, take the 
most nude and least naked of your 
works, bring images and source 
materials of the great nude works 
of the creative arts and open the 

debate with your mom. I’m sure 
she’ll come around. Unless your 
work is all down by the naked end 
of the spectrum. That’s cool too, 
but you might have to get your 
own apartment.

 *******

Dear Gillian,
I sent my boyfriend a nude photo 

of myself and he didn’t say anything 
back.

Later, 
he 
replied 
via 
text 

message: “No thank you.” It’s hard 
not to

take this personally. Should I 

try again? Maybe from a different 
angle this

time?
- Laid Bare

********

Dear Laid,
I see how you would take this 

personally. Your gesture was 
one of giving and vulnerable 
commitment. 
In 
Federico 

García Lorca’s poem “Casido of 
a Reclining Woman,” he writes: 
“To see you naked is to remember 
the Earth, / the smooth Earth, 
clean of horses, / the Earth 
without reeds, pure form, / closed 
to the future, confine of silver.” 
 

Your body represents a lot, if not 
everything, and its gift should 
be accepted joyously and with 
wonder and gratitude.

A nude photo may serve the 

same purpose, after a fashion, 
as Walt Whitman’s poem “Song 
of Myself” in which he sings the 
song of himself, representative 
of his being, and shares it with 
the implied listener/reader of the 
poem: “I celebrate myself, and 
sing myself, / And what I assume 
you shall assume, / For every 
atom belonging to me as good 
belongs to you.” He, too, makes 
the distinction between naked (“I 
will go to the bank by the wood and 
become undisguised and naked”) 
and nude (“Who goes there? 
hankering, gross, mystical, nude”) 
in this piece. So I completely 
understand your resentment and 
your instinct to refuse to take no 
for an answer.

To my eye, L.B., your boyfriend’s 

response is not to the angle of the 
photo — I’m sure your photo was 
stunning — but rather is born of 
prudence. Perhaps he assumes 
you are opening up a graphic 
conversation in which he is meant 
to respond with a photo of his own 
nude body, and is rejecting the 
suggestion of this sext exchange. 
This particular art can be toxic, 
having felled its practitioners from 
teenagers — see the novelist Helen 
Schulman’s “This Beautiful Life” 
— to Congressmen, not to mention 
the effects on their loved ones.

“Nudity 
quickly 
becomes 

unremarkable 
when 
generally 

practiced,” wrote the philosopher 
Martha Nussbaum in “Hiding 
From Humanity.” Compared to 
the feelings stirred in the midst of 
your physical presence, the effect 
of the nude photo might just not 
do it for him. Worse, the prospect 
of having it available all the time 
might rob your intimacy of its 
specialness.

This, L.B., is not to say that 

nude selfies, well executed, cannot 
be artful and worthy forms of 
expression — they can. Look 
at the early expressionist Paula 
Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait 
(1906) or Latoya Ruby Frazier’s 
Self Portrait United States Steel 
(2010). So maybe the solution 
here is to put your artistic all into 
your next photo, paying attention 
to lighting, focus and frame, not 
just exposure. Consider black 
and white or other monochrome 
effects. Try to achieve an image 
that conjures a mood much larger 
than the bare sum of the parts. 
Then, once you’ve got it firmly 
on the art side of the nude-naked 
continuum, send it via Snapchat!

Send an email to DearGillian@

michigandaily.com or 

anonymously here describing 

a quandary about love, 

relationships, existence or their 

opposites. Gillian will attempt 

to summon the wisdom of the 

arts (literary, visual, performing) 

to soothe your troubled soul. 

We may publish your letter 

in the biweekly column with 

your first name (or penname). 

Submissions should be 250 

words or fewer and may be 

edited prior to publication.

CULTURAL CURES COLUMN

Dear Gillian: 

The art of the nude

TV NOTEBOOK
How ‘PC’ shapes 
our TV watching

PC culture has 

changed acceptable 

humor

By SOPHIA KAUFMAN

Daily Arts Writer

There is one phrase I use at 

least once a day that is guaran-
teed to make my roommate roll 
her eyes every time: “That’s not 
PC.” (Of course, it could be pos-
sible that she’s rolling her eyes in 
frustration at the fact that I say 
it a lot when she’s watching “It’s 
Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” 
but I’ll get to that in a minute).

“Politically 
correct” 
is 
a 

phrase that has subtle differ-
ences in different contexts. If 
something isn’t PC, it’s offen-
sive or non-inclusive; a com-
mon example would be using 
certain words to refer to a per-
son’s identity (race, ethnicity, 
gender, sexual orientation, etc.) 
that aren’t socially acceptable 
anymore based on their history. 
The qualifier “political” stems 
from the fact that not using the 
PC term for something is a great 
way to find yourself with your 
foot in your mouth, at best — not 
a very dignified or comfortable 
position.

The concept of political cor-

rectness isn’t new. The third 
most 
popular 
definition 
of 

“politically correct” on Urban 
Dictionary is “the idealogy of 
weird left wing liberals who 
want society to be nothing but 
accepting of all perverts and 
freaks everywhere. The main 
basis is not to offend anyone 
with one little incorrect word,” 
written in 2003 by “John J. Cock 
Oiler” (The top definition was 
gross so I’m not retyping it).

However, the level of group 

censorship based on political 
correctness has been rising 
— and so has the level of 
impatience from those who 
think 
political 
correctness 

just means tiptoeing around 
the truth (at best) or insidious 

censorship (at worst).

Intellectual communities like 

universities and think tanks 
have been engaging in discourse 
about how a renewed emphasis 
on political correctness is bleed-
ing into our classrooms; Obama 
spoke on this himself recently 
in Iowa, disapproving of “cod-
dling” college students. And 
with the rise of social activism 
on social media, PC culture is 
spreading.

We could talk about the 

causes and effects of PC culture, 
and how they play into identity 
politics for weeks without run-
ning out of material, but some-
thing I have been thinking about 
recently — especially as the 
characters from my roommate’s 
shows like “It’s Always Sunny” 
or “30 Rock” are constantly 
screeching in my head nowadays 
— is how PC culture is affecting 
our TV shows and habits.

When I hear some of the jokes 

that made it onto the final scripts 
for episodes of shows like those, 
I sometimes find myself laugh-
ing in shock at how not PC they 
are. I know that “30 Rock” is sat-
ire, but I still can’t help but won-
der if many of their jokes that 
rely on tropes and stereotypes 
and would make the cut these 
days. This question is especially 
relevant for anything marketed 
as comedy. The line between 
satire and jokes that aren’t OK 
is becoming thicker and thicker.

The first time I fully realized 

this was after I watched the first 
episode of Amy Poehler’s “Dif-
ficult People,” a newish show 
on Hulu, in which a horrible 
character tweets a joke about 
Blue Ivy soon being old enough 
for “R. Kelly to piss on her.” The 
joke felt uncouth, even though 
I understood that the writers 
meant it to be a reminder of how 
R. Kelly was accused of urinat-
ing on and having sex with a 
teenage girl in 2002. I could 
understand why Black feminists 
especially were angry — jokes at 
the expense of Black women’s 
bodies are still all too prevalent.

Yet the show was slammed 

much harder than it would have 
been had it aired even three 
or five years ago. Similar jokes 
have made the cut time and time 
again on older, more established 
shows. People are more likely 
now to watch their shows online 
rather than live, and more peo-
ple engage in discussions pub-
licly online about what they’re 
watching. But when shows with 
cult-like followings air, discus-
sions about them often trend 
on Twitter immediately. So if 
something happens or some-
thing is said that isn’t PC, people 
quickly find out about it.

PC culture is changing our 

TV viewership habits in that the 
population of a show’s audience 
that is likely to engage in criti-
cal analysis about what they’re 
watching is growing — and they 
have access to media platforms 
from which they can spread 
their ideas. People are more like-
ly to take offense at things that 
weren’t meant to be taken seri-
ously, and some feel that they’re 
being unfairly treated by those 
that police political correctness.

What started out as trying 

to make sure everyone feels 
respected is sometimes turned 
into an exercise in hyperboliz-
ing satire and at times silencing 
those who don’t hold popular 
liberal opinions.

I have to bite my tongue some-

times and remind myself I’m not 
the PC police, but at other times 
I simply can’t help myself — I 
know, I’m everyone’s favorite 
classmate (or roommate — #sor-
rynotsorry, Rebecca). But I think 
that’s OK. PC culture represents 
good intentions that are some-
times taken to extremes, and it’s 
up to all of us to educate our-
selves on what those extremes 
look like. Our TV shows are 
sometimes the best examples of 
where the bounds of PC culture 
should be: we should know when 
to point something out for not 
being PC, and when to just shut 
up and have fun watching the 
damn TV show. 

GILLIAN 

JAKAB

6A — Friday, November 13, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

