Mannequin Devotion

For a time I was in the habit of going down to the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis to pray on weekdays over the noon hour.

Whenever I'm at the Basilica, I'm a little overwhelmed. I feel like I'm in a Catholic "playground" of sorts - there are so many chapels, icons, stained-glass windows and other means of prayer I don't know where to start.

After a somewhat disjointed first few trips down there, I decided to (go figure...) systematically make my way through the different parts of the building on different days in order to break it up into smaller, more digestible pieces. These experiences wound up being a great way to break up my work day. I would slowly walk around inside the building in silence, usually as the only one there, and study all the windows, or the Stations of the Cross, or the high altar, or the ceiling, etc. It was, almost always, somehow a simultaneously a very "grounding" yet uplifting experience.

On one occasion, after having already made several trips, my attention was drawn to the statues. Now, statues are among the most quintessential form of Catholic devotional art. They are ubiquitous and yet simultaneously controversial. I came to realize that for me, personally, the statues were just sort of "there" - they didn't bother me, but besides noticing that these in the Basilica were the fancy marble kind (as opposed to the more common painted-porcelain kind) I really didn't get what they were for. I had heard somewhere that statues were there to help us connect with whoever was being represented. I had also read that in the east the icons had a similar function, but were believed to have an almost sacramental character - that is to say as if the person represented were somehow mystically present thru the icon.

So, with this in mind, one noon hour I plopped down in front of the main altar in the Basilica and decided I was going to pray "with the statues". I noticed right away that around the main altar are statues of the twelve apostles. So, on a whim, I decided to read the gospel of Luke while looking at the statues. It was kind of a neat effect - every time one of the apostles had a line in the gospel, I looked at the corresponding statue. This somehow brought the story to life - in a way sort of like the old "film strips" we watched in grade school - a succession of still images with dialogue behind it. It was kind of cool - I felt like I was starting to "get" the statues.

On another occasion, I sat in front of the "Sacred Heart" statue of Jesus and read the words of Jesus in the gospel of John. Again it was a special experience ~ the statue really did have the effect of making Jesus seem somehow "more" present. It was as if my subconscious was being engaged by the physical image on some level.

Not long after, I had a very odd experience. I was shopping at the Mall of America and all of a sudden I was "weirded out". I had seen something out of the corner of my eye. My head snapped around and I found myself looking at a row of female-shaped mannequins in the window of a sporting goods store. As I continued walking, it dawned on me what had happened - in praying with with statues, my sub-conscious had become acclimated to connecting with physical images. In this case, as I walked by the mannequins and my subconscious tried to connect with them I was repulsed because none of the mannequins in the display had a head - something I would not otherwise have noticed.

Of course, the mannequins were not intended to represent anyone in particular, they were simply something to hang clothes on. But what was also weird was that the shape of the mannequins was somehow realistic enough to get my subconscious to try and engage with them. I don't think that the simpler mannequins from the 1970's would necessarily have done this. In fact, these particular mannequins were physically very realistic. I don't think I would be too far out on a limb to say that there was somehow a certain amount of eroticism intended in these images, in particular with the pose. It looked like they might have been made from a 3D scan of an actual female body builder or dancer - except for the missing head.

I'm not sure exactly what my point here is - it has something to do with the philosophical contrast between connecting with a real person through an obviously artificial image (the statues and icons of Jesus or the apostles probably don't look anything like they really looked) versus using of a accurate reproduction of a real person's body in a way that separates the personhood element out (what does it means for an image of a headless human body to have an erotic element anyway?)

I want to unpack this idea a little more. I think it is also related somehow to the notion that pornography and nudity are two different things. There can be pornography (even hardcore pornography) with no nudity whatsoever and there can be nudity that is not pornography. The issue has to do with personhood. If an image brings to mind the name (and thereby the identity) of a person, that image may not be pornographic, even if it shows the person naked. But even a fully clothed image (or, for that matter by extension, an actual person's fully clothed real physical body), if it succeeds in disconnecting the idea of personhood (as in, I no longer care WHO I am looking at, but rather it is only about WHAT I am looking at) from the image, then that image may still be a candidate for pornography.

In any case, I'm willing to wager that boys and young men these days spend a far greater deal of time looking at sexy headless mannequins in shopping malls than they do at religious statues in churches.

Great.