Simon Vouet - Psyche Discovering Cupid's Identity (early 1600s)
'Psyche is forbidden to look at [Cupid]. When she can resist no longer and breaks her prohibition, lighting a candle to look at her lover while he sleeps, he vanishes, and with him all her enchanted surroundings. But Eros, mysterious, unknown, feared, exceeds all imaginable degree of charm when Psyche sees him in the night:
Psyche's failure to trust, and to obey, has cost her his adorable presence.'
From The Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner
There lay the gentlest and sweetest of all wild creatures . . . his golden hair, washed in nectar and still scented with it, thick curls straying over white neck and flushed cheeks and falling prettily entangled on either side of his head . . . soft wings of purest whie . . . the tender down fringing the feathers quivered naughtily all the time. The rest of his body was so smooth and beautiful that Venus cold never be ashamed to acknowledge him as her son.
Psyche's failure to trust, and to obey, has cost her his adorable presence.'
From The Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner
The Week in Review
Reading:
Immortal Monster: The Mythical Evolution of the Fantastic Beast in Modern Fiction and Film - Joseph D. Adriano
Interpreting the Moving Image - Noel Carroll
Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture - Cynthia Erb
Kiss of the Beast: From Paris Salon to King Kong - Tedd Gott and Kathryn Weir
The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film - (ed.) Barry Keith Grant
The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle - Fatimah Rony
From the Beast to the Blonde - Marina Warner
Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time - Marina Warner
Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance as Social Criticism - Thomas E. Wartenberg
Viewing:
Rebecca - d. Alfred Hitchcock (1940)
Shadow of a Doubt - d. Alfred Hitchcock (1943)
Rear Window - d. Alfred Hitchcock (1954)
The Wrong Man - d. Alfred Hitchcock (1956)
Vertigo - d. Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
North by Northwest - d. Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
Psycho - d. Alfred Hitchcock (1960)
Listening:
Murder Ballads - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
The Boatman's Call - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
The Good Son - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
