Martyrs and Masturbators

I had this dream in which a tyrannosaurus rex has been shot full of arrows. He could also talk. The arrows made me think of Catholic saints and martyrs. I remembered seeing a depiction of a saint shot through with arrows somewhere.

So I googled "arrows" and "martyr" and found out that the saint full of arrows was Saint Sebastian. Some emperor named Diocletian ordered him to be shot full of arrows until he looked like a hedgehog.

I'm not at all religious, so the idea of saints and martyrs means little to me. Saints die gruesome deaths, much like Jesus dying on the cross. Somehow all that pain is supposed to be good for us. I've seen the movie "The Passion of the Christ," and as an atheist it just seemed like a really boring horror movie. That anyone could watch it and think, "Wow, this is so moving and religious," horrifies me.



Whenever I think of Jesus, and how Christians say he died on the cross for us, I have to wonder if Christianity is a masochism cult. There's this idea that enduring great pain and torture is somehow holy. How many people in Western culture are prone to embracing pointless pain because of the Jesus myth?

If you stick your hand in the fire, and it burns you, take your hand out of the fire. There's no reason to hold your hand in the fire for as long as you can.

In art, there are many portraits of Sebastian skewered with arrows. It appears to be a favourite theme. Wikipedia shows quite a few of these paintings, and they're all vaguely interesting.

Then I saw this one...


Sebastian with one arrow. Click for larger photo.

In this painting, Sebastian is basically naked, except for a tastefully draped robe. A single arrow is sticking out of Sebastian's crotch, suggesting it's an erect penis. Sebastian is holding the arrow like it's his boner, and he's masturbating. And the way his head is thrown back, it's as if he's experiencing sexual ecstasy, not pain. Is this a man who has been shot in the gut with an arrow? Or is this a young man jerking off?

Dying for god is a very old idea. Here, we're being show someone dying for Christianity, being martyred, his face turned towards heaven. And he's basically wanking. I suppose the painting is meant to serve as a connection dying for god and physical pleasure.

Trying to find out more information about this painting proved difficult. I did come across someone in a forum talking about how artists would paint "bible scenes" which would allow them to create erotic paintings under the guise of being religious. This reminds me of how in the early 60s, sex films would have to add some "educational" element to their films, in order to sneak past censorship laws.

Is that what's going on in this painting? Did the artist want to paint a homoerotic depiction of a young man masturbating? He took the Sebastian myth, removed most of the arrows, stuck one on the crotch, and took it from there?

The idea of confusing pain, pleasure, death throes of ecstasy, sexual ecstasy, and the ecstasy of god creeps me out. These things probably should be kept in separate boxes, where they can't get mixed together.

That is all.