SOMETIMES A DONUT IS JUST A DONUT
or, a proposed remedy for phallic intrusion
I’ve been thinking about that time a huge Homer Simpson, wearing Y fronts and holding a donut, appeared beside the Cerne Giant back in 2007. It came to mind as I considered antidotes to phallic intrusions, a mood induced by an unfortunate incident at the public pool.
I recently finished Beth Ann Fennelly’s astounding Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro Memoirs, which has a lot of penises peering around corners. I consider myself lucky in this small regard: I’ve been spared flashers and dick pics, the pathetic male exhibitions that plague my sisters. (Just typing this probably breaks any protection spell that might have been working all these years.)
And yet, had I been spared? I’ve brain wiped a lot of stuff, and now, over a half century on, there’s freshly cleared real estate where ugly happenstance once lived.
But you know what I haven’t repressed? That ithyphallic, Cromwellian doodle on a hillside Dorset, the Cerne Giant. The 180 foot figure belongs to the National Trust, and is made of trenches filled with chalk. Folklore claims it as a kind of forensic outline of a real giant. He’s naked with an erection and, in case you missed the vibe, he’s brandishing a big club.
I present to you a blog post about these things that I wrote back in 2007:
THAT TIME HOMER SIMPSON RAISED HIS YONI DONUT…
The temporary chalk Homer on the hillside next to the Cerne Abbas giant has some pagans claiming they will do a rain ritual to erase this bit of advertising for the upcoming Simpsons movie.
As someone who spends most of her free time hiking to neolithic sites and researching them with a great deal of reverence, why does this not bug me? I'm not really a big Simpsons fan. I usually hate advertising's pirating of public space. So what is it?
I like its Banksy-esque irreverence. (think of the port-o-let Stonehenge at Glastonbury this year). Maybe it's because the Cerne Abbas giant is not a sacred site. There are no records of this site before the 17th century*, and it is more akin to rude graffiti than a symbol of the divine. When I visited it, I found it muddy, macho and underwhelming.
[Devo’s That’s Good is the official theme song of this post]
The Giant is seemingly inspired by monumental chalk hill figures like the Uffington dragon-horse. When I visited the prehistoric dragon-horse it rose up, ghost-like as I approached, appearing to fragment from the hill where it resides. Like all magical things, it’s obscured by proximity, becoming increasingly abstract as one draws closer. It's set for the eyes of a sky-goddess, not a mortal.
So what of Cerne, this figure that’s been changed through the ages, its erection getting larger with ‘improvements’ over the course of the 19th century? Is he a fertility figure or political satire writ large? Archeology has yet to date him. (You wouldn’t date him either…amirite?)
Homer has appeared overnight in his Y fronts on a hill in Dorset, a bit like a crop circle. The Guardian has reported that this stunt has offended Pagans.** If we can't laugh at that, we don't really deserve our cakes and ale.
To quote Homer, "God bless those Pagans.”
*Since the writing of this post, new archeological findings involving luminescence dating have put the date of the Cerne Giant at the 10th century. Recent work has also determined the phallus was added at a later date.
**The figure of Homer was created with water-soluble white paint that washed away with the rain.
What are you doing THIS SUNDAY?
Why not get a jump start on your writing process? Come to my first writing workshop of the year, Writing as Ritual, online, January 28th at 7pm GMT.
20% off Discount code for paid subscribers under the cut:
