LITMIR.BIZ

      THE PLEASURE OF SEEING A MAN NOT KNOWN FOR SEXINESS EXHIBIT A SUDDEN SEXY STIGMATA: THEORETICAL DIGRESSION ON SCISSORS, THEIR PARADOXICAL DOUBLENESS I enjoy masculinity doubling itself, especially when it’s not very masculine to begin with. Example: Harpo has lost his socks. We see his sexy calves. He inserts himself between two half-unclad dancer bodies—male and female—and, framed by their limbs, as if by a scissor’s twin blades, he whistles and waves to the audience. Newly born, he emerges between the woman’s legs and approaches the male dancer’s naked chest. Harpo plunges into a triangle formed by two other bodies and desexualizes them. He lightens their appearance of athletic effort by indicating, playfully, “I’m here”—a silent insistence, directed at us.

      Scissors consist of two blades attached at midpoint. Scissors pose as One but signify Two. Scissors cause Solomonic separation (I cut thee in twain). Harpo epitomizes the One, but his weapon is a Twofer.

      HARPO’S CUTENESS AS INCOHERENT ADDENDUM: THE SWINGING STAR’S DEMAND Is it strange to call a glimpse of Harpo’s muscles an “incoherent addendum”? They flash by. They don’t contribute to the story. No one mentions them. But I imagine a mother noticing her child’s well-fed healthiness, his immunity to rheumatic fever or meningitis: I imagine a Jewish mother’s consciousness of the child as food, like edible Hansel and Gretel. Muscular calves (visible when Harpo climbs a rope) can’t be faked, can’t accommodate the wishes of others, can’t impersonate or pander. I see Harpo’s calves from his mother’s point of view.

      Harpo, like a monkey, swings in space, just as the tenor begins singing: the scene juxtaposes Verdi’s cultured melody with Harpo’s animal freedom, his lawless suspension. Harpo believes that the rope will hold him. Distortion: how big is this universe, this spacious field, in which Harpo madly swings? What is a swinger?

      Harpo performs, with his body, the musical leaps that the tenor performs onstage: a silent fool’s physical eruptions parrot operatic paroxysms. Harpo catapults toward us, as if into our arms. Thus, he makes a demand. The star, assaulting the audience, without warning, insists on being received. As compensation, the star—an ambience—provides a holding environment, a container, around the beset, impinged-upon beholder.

      HARPO ON THE LAM: HIS BODY ALWAYS TELLS THE TRUTH Unfashionable, to claim that a body “tells the truth.” And yet Harpo’s body authentically defies society and family, the mad demands of the other, of conversation.