Breaking Olympic News: Ancient Greeks Had Small Genitalia!
These past two weeks, every communication included something along the lines of “How are the Olympics,” or “hope you’re surviving the Olympics”. The answer: smothering, and just barely.
Now that they have concluded, I feel that ominous burden slowly melting from my psyche, and I realize that I was truly not “coping well” with the games. I was instead lying low, playing dead, unable to watch or even comment on this historic event. Instead, I escaped the steamy red and yellow fervor emanating from the Bird’s Nest stadium by flying off to Yunnan province, a necessary act of “self-protection” (a Chinese pun on “avoiding the Olympics” and “contraception”) but the fervor pursued.
The NYT headlines mocked me in my inbox, conflicting and paradoxical news “angles” from American and Chinese news sources accumulated, champions wept or chomped on their lead-tinged gold medals over the endless highlights montages that were repeating on televisions across China, on every CCTV station, in the airport, in the bus station, waiting for elevators…
From 29, 49, to 51 gold medals––this news tracked me down even at 2000+ meters above sea level. Perhaps it wasn’t altitude sickness at all that left me vomiting in the bathroom. The record-breaking conclusion of the games was a victory for the Chinese spirit, for which I extend my true congratulations.
After returning to Beijing, and while browsing one of my favorite stress-relieving Chinglish sites, the Century Online China Art Networks, my “unprotected” eyes were despoiled by an unusual, but seemingly Olympics related headline: “Why does so much ancient Greek art feature males with small genitalia.” An English article posted on August 22, 2008 and signed “CL2000.com.” Here, among Beijing exhibition reviews, a feature on Buddhist sand mandalas, and a piece on the Jewish Museum, was this seemingly out of place reportage on the heft and quality of ancient Greek genitals as evidenced in statuary.
As a classic over-reactor, (and having once passed through an “everything is reduced to phallic obsession” phase in my college days) I immediately read this to be an attempt to subvert the popular opinion on the “importance” of size. Could this insignificant online news article be hinting at some more deeply rooted national obsession? As if the excitement of watching the physique of the world’s finest athletes wasn’t enough, on CL2000.com, a fairly respected Chinese-language art portal, we learn that to those ancients, also coincidentally the original Olympians: “Long, thick penises were considered […] grotesque, comic, or both [….] A circumcised penis was particularly gross.” In case you were wondering what form was preferred in the perfection of male Greek anatomy: “The ideal penis was small, thin, and covered with a long, tapered foreskin.”
In the shadow of the Games has Greek sculpture becomes a vehicle for dispelling the myth that bigger is better? A paradigm shift is happening, and in case you missed the opening ceremony, you can look instead right in your very own pants. What you see there could be a vulgar, out of date physique. Are the perfect standards of Greek statuary be a metaphor for contemporary Olympian heroes, all 51 of them? We’ll never know.
In a vulgar and yet brilliant way, this special report sums up what I’ve been trying to express to those friends and relatives who asked me how I was holding up during the games. Now that Beijing has succeeded in dazzling visitors, they will be increasingly confident enough in assert their position as the “other,” a culture and people that the Western milieu slowly must understand, and accept.
My one complaint, this was an unnecessary blow, a little too far below the belt.
另外还有一个可能，就是从雕塑的创作上讲，如果突出了生殖器，一定会吸引观众的视觉，就没有人关心作者真正的用意了：雕塑整体的美感，动势等等。以上论点如果走上极端也会有问题，就是如果把生殖器做得太小，也反而会更加吸引眼球！所以希腊雕塑家在斟酌鸡巴的尺寸上太不认真啦！
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