The Dream Of The Fisherman's Wife (1) - Tentacle Porn & the Symbolic

It has many names but it's certainly the most famous image of the Kinoe no Komatsu series, first published in 1814 and there are many attributions to this image, the kind widely cited in Wikipedia et al (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife) but... these necessarily miss the point, I think... and attempt a literal understanding when a symbolic one gives everything we need.

And besides, people know what this image means... even if they can't quite elaborate on it...

When it's used in Mad Men, for instance, as an image in Cooper's office, it could be dismissed as tokenism, an arch little symbol to show what we already know about him: orientalism, oddness, obesity but the Mad Men writers are cleverer than that, I think, and are tapping into a grander purpose, one attached to the image since it was first rendered and one that Picasso et al also understood: this is sex itself, in all it's fleshy transcedence... this is sex as the sea, as saltiness (as we Brits say), as all-encompassing, uncontrolled ecstatic union... and that is essentially what the Mad Men are always selling: sex qua sex, sex as Art, sex as happiness, sex as contentment, sex as envy.

Yes, it's an octopus performing cunnilingus.... but it's also that eye-closed it could be an octopus moment where everyone abandons themselves to the other... you don't always have to look down; sometimes you can just let the waves take you away...

The sea, of course is an obvious metaphor... almost too obvious... which is why people have strained to see what was always there: her eyes are closed, the octopi are open; they are engaged, she is lost... the sea itself is hills, is claws...

Walerian Borowczyk uses the Sea (sans octopi) as the subject of one of the short films from his Immoral Tales series... it's so simple, just a blow job on the beach, which we don't even see because the point is that it's the sea, the beach, the waves, the salty air itself that is where all the action is. Human flesh is just flesh, the Sea can rage...

A simple wet mouth makes all the difference... and Borowczyk uses it to tell the whole story. Mouth, eyes... she will devour like the Octopus devours... the gender placement makes no difference in the realm of the symbolic.

We hardly need a course in Lacanian therapy to figure that one out...

Early interpretations saw it as a kind of rape but it's the opposite; this woman is abandoning herself to having no power... she is strong because she is overcome with desire... and is letting the octopus devour her. This is all her, her desire is forced through Nature, like a vine. She is being held because she wants to be.... there's nothing remotely forced about this. She is a supplicant, a force for Nature, not against it. She wants to take the sea inside her because she is the Sea, even if her life sometimes lets her forget.

She may be a Princess, or a hero, or a warrior-soul... but she is still the Sea.

The image makes entire sense as it stands, and this is perhaps why it has resisted interpretation. It happens to be oriental but it's theme is universal.