Ronnie Barker: Ronnie Ronnie Barker’s Book of Bathing Beauties (1974) A scrapbook of bathing beauties. Well, what did you expect? The majority date from around 1900 plus or minus a decade or two. They are oddly innocent to 21st century jaded eyes, but the themes embodied and expressed by them have no date: all women are beautiful, most men like to look at women, most women like to be looked at, and people who want to interfere with these elemental pleasures are blue meanies with neither a sense of humour nor an understanding of human nature. The date of the collection is significant: nowadays there would be a lot of fussing about objectification of women, and the book might not be published. Think of it as social documentation, a reminder that what we think of as erotic or naughty or sexy has a lot more to do with fashion than with morals. Anyhow, this is is clearly a "concept book", compiled and published to cash in on Barker's persona as a TV comedian. If you want to know more about Barker, see his obituary at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1499900/Ronnie-Barker.html
**
No comments:
Post a Comment