Apples and Oranges?
Sep. 14th, 2002 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaUnder-appreciated mural: Haight St. Whole Foods (NOT affiliated with the mega-chain) has a lovely fruit mural above the registers. A number of peaches (I think) are washing themselves in some kind of institutional shower facility. You know, school gym, health club, something like that. Anyways, they’re scrubbing themselves with long-handled brushes (How hard on their tender little skins!) while a carrot blow dries its carrot top, other veggies preen and assorted fruit looks on lasciviously.
It’s tricky to interpret. It has the classic feel of the homoerotic mural (e.g. Rolling Pin Donuts on Church and 24th) and it’s obviously "fruity". But are we supposed to assign gender to the produce? They’re pictured in a traditionally uni-gendered setting, and no bees lurk nearby, not even peeping through a hole in the wall.
But what does one make of the way the apple eyes the closest scrubbing peach? It becomes confusing when one is confronted with the traditional truism about "apples and oranges". If they are "opposites" then how can it be homoerotic? If they aren’t "opposites" than what are they doing in the same locker room? Maybe it’s a pro-polyamory mural, calling into question the whole concept of genderizing love and sex?
Or maybe it’s just supposed to mean their produce is really clean.
It’s tricky to interpret. It has the classic feel of the homoerotic mural (e.g. Rolling Pin Donuts on Church and 24th) and it’s obviously "fruity". But are we supposed to assign gender to the produce? They’re pictured in a traditionally uni-gendered setting, and no bees lurk nearby, not even peeping through a hole in the wall.
But what does one make of the way the apple eyes the closest scrubbing peach? It becomes confusing when one is confronted with the traditional truism about "apples and oranges". If they are "opposites" then how can it be homoerotic? If they aren’t "opposites" than what are they doing in the same locker room? Maybe it’s a pro-polyamory mural, calling into question the whole concept of genderizing love and sex?
Or maybe it’s just supposed to mean their produce is really clean.
