Sexy silliness

The Kinsey Institute's "Sex and Humor" collection of images is eroticism at its most ridiculous.

By Douglas Cruickshank

May 6, 2002 | The danger of a serious study of silliness is that it is likely to rob the silly thing of its silliness, which is, after all, a silly thing's reason for being. Consequently, "Sex and Humor: Selections From the Kinsey Institute," 42 images -- photos, old engravings, etchings and cartoons -- from the organization's vast collection of sexually explicit materials, is best approached with what the Homeland Security Advisory System terms a "high," or orange, level of caution.

Whatever you do, resist the temptation to read the short captions that appear opposite the book's splendid dirty pictures or you'll run into something like this, accompanying a French etching of a woman examining a man's genitals with eyeglasses: "Woman examining man's genitals with eyeglasses."

Such curator-speak declarations won't enrich your experience of the book, but they will remind you of my friend Anne's story of traveling around Europe with a companion she later dubbed Jonathan, Master of the Obvious. Jonathan, M.O., was given to pulling up in front of, say, Notre Dame Cathedral and brightly announcing, "That is a big church!" Or looking down from the uppermost platform of the Eiffel Tower and exclaiming, "This thing is tall!" Jonathan, M.O., survived the trip, but just barely.

Still, one must hand it to the creators of "Sex and Humor" for having the courage (or recklessness) to tackle salacious silliness seriously and, at least occasionally, be entertaining, even enlightening, while doing so. The book begins with six (count 'em, six!) essays, followed by the plates, ranging from an 18th century engraving of a man examining a woman's buttocks with an eyeglass (care to guess the caption?) and a 1950s photo of a voluptuous female made of turnips, to an etching from the 1920s depicting nude female warriors firing giant penis cannons and a 1940s photo of a baby lying on a sofa perusing Kinsey's groundbreaking study, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male."

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