Without prior knowledge, a candy cane’s just a candy cane

When I stumbled across the January 12th issue of the Muse, I was surprised by the angst contained in the letter from “M. Flanders”.

I immediately thought that Flanders was overreacting, even though I didn’t see the image of the “blatantly suggestive and extremely distasteful” phallic symbol being sucked in front of the Christmas tree.

Having since seen the image, I still feel that Flanders overreacted.

Aside from the pleas not to be viewed as homophobic, there were two lines in particular that caught my attention: “…And for the love of candy canes realize that this newspaper could fall into the hands of anyone, including my 5-year-old nephew. Please don’t ruin candy canes for children.”

Flanders, the offending image of a man and his candy cane is by no means free of meaning and intent, but in order for us to be in on Nathan Downey’s joke, we have to bring something to the image: Knowledge of sexual/pornographic positions and faces, which can then lead to the ‘knowledge’ that there are less ‘suggestive’ ways to have something situated in one’s mouth.

Because this knowledge is required, the image is not in itself blatant. If your 5-year-old nephew understands the image, there’s a problem.

Suggesting that the Muse or Downey take the blame would be misguided. This is even more misguided than thinking that they should apologize for reflecting our own knowledge of sexual acts back at us.

An apology is not going to undo our own ‘perversions’ or protect anyone’s innocence. In that image, we saw what we already knew.

Of course, sucking a penis could be a self-evident truth – an axiom of sorts – and if that's the case, then I’m way off.

Kyle Turner