And Who Shall Peep The Peepers?
Remember the ambiguous French peep show art I had for you back in June? Well, I’ve got some more for you, this time by Georges Topfer by way of Kinky Delight:
Given the BDSM themes for which Topfer is known, and especially when viewed small as presented here, you might be forgiven for assuming you are looking at some sort of en mass bondage device capturing the heads and hands of eight young women. And, indeed, you might be right; without access (both physical and linguistic) to the French-language adult novel I suspect this originally illustrated, I can’t say.
But if you click the image for a larger view at Kinky Delight, doubt is cast. First of all, the devices do appear to be vintage peep-show boxes of some sort, without obvious restraints; although why the girls’ hands would be going inside the curtains with their heads is not clear, for viewing purposes alone. And then there’s the caption, which I lack the wit to translate properly. It reads: “Le spectacle était certainement unique de ces huit corps de jeunes filles libérés de tout voile.” Google Translate mangles that badly, losing an important word that apparently costs us the sense of the business: “The show was certainly one of the eight bodies of young women freed from any sailing.” Perhaps when one of my French-literate readers tells us what these young women were truly freed from (I’d guess their apparel, were it not so obvious as to make the caption rather pointless), we’ll have a better sense of what’s going on here.
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It almost looks as if they are being forced to watch sexual movies whild subjecting their vulnerable rear ends to both whipping, vaginal or anal stimulation or whatever interpretation a viewer may have. The lack of specificity is part of the charm of this illustration.
“Voile” means “sail” but also “veil”. . . “cloth” in general.
So the young ladies have been unveiled.
If my high-school french serves me well (a dubious proposition at best)the caption reads:
“It was certainly a unique spectacle of eight young ladies freed from their clothes.”
I thought from context that’s what it might mean … but damn if that’s not the most content-free caption ever.
Aye, I agree with the translation from madbadndangerous2know . Indeed it is light on providing any information or story surrounding the picture, but presumably, this is one in a series of images, or more likely meant to illustrate some text or story, and thus, doesn’t need to be particularly information-rich.
I’ve seen this many times in older books, where a book plate has very little useful text included – you’re supposed to be reading the text, then refer to the picture in addition to the text. A picture book often is the same: “See Jane run” is only an example aimed at younger children, but my perusal of older erotica books leads me to believe that the reading difficulty level of the captions stays about the same.
My guess (and I may be reading too much into this image) is that they are about to be spanked, or flogged, or caned, and the boxes are not holding them, but rather are for “privacy”. This way, none of those “punished” (perhaps a ladies’ school setting?) would know whom the others were, and thus would be less humiliated.
Of course, you could always look to see who was sitting a little tenderly, later.
The problem here is the “certainment unique de..” construction – what is meant is more “the spectacle was certainly only that of ” – there is an oblique reference to another spectacle (that which the girls are viewing) which has been so eclipsed as to no longer even count.
Also “voile” as it applies to clothing carries a nuance of light or flimsy (it would not be used to describe jeans or a sweater.) So “libérés de tout voile” is more like “without the least bit of clothing” – much more naked than simply “without clothes”.
Often when page numbers are referenced in older illustrations, the words that follow the page number are an actual quote from the text on that page i.e. not so much a explaination of the picture but the point in the text at which it is to be viewed. This was done because in these older books, illustrations were not necessarily directly adjacent to the appropriate text due to the limitations of how the books were printed and assembled. (different printing process and separate leaves for illustrations vs the main text.)
I get nothing here of a BDSM nature – no whipping or boundage however delightful that might be. It appears to be of a more of pure voyeristic nature – as Kinky delight put it “eight peepers, peeped”
Peter Grimm wrote:
> The problem here is the “certainment unique de..” construction — what is meant is more “the spectacle was certainly only that of ”
No, this construction means more something like “one of a kind”, extraordinary. If I’m not mistaken, English also uses “unique” in this meaning, as in “It was a unique spectacle”, meaning unparalled, unmatched by any other in one of its properties (such as quality, length, price, …) rather than “it was the only spectacle there ever was”.
@PeterGrimm: Excellent points about older books and the book construction process. And you could well be right about the peepers, peeped. But how do you get eight ladies to strip down to nothing, just to watch a peep show of some sort? And then, what’s with the hands having to be up? Hrmmm…
I won’t analyze too much, I won’t wonder what the text means… I’ll just enjoy the image. :)
My reaction was “They’re voting.”
Except for the black curtains over the ladies’ heads, those look remarkably like the portable voting booths usede in local elelctions here.
My own local polling place is held at a church several blocks away. I would guess it might be possible to have a situation where the only facility with space for a voting station would be at a nudist colony.
For you younger whippersnappers, here’s an old fogey’s take on what their hands were doing.
Being as this seems to be a drawing from around the early 1920’s, they are likely looking through some sort of lensed device like the stereoscope (which was invented in the late 1800’s), the photos of which needed to be swapped by hand and needed hand-focusing (due to the warping of the cardboard-mounted photos, which created a rather nebulous focal point, and due to the necessary amount of play in the holder that allowed one to change the photos).
http://en.wikip...ticon
http://en.wikip...scopy
Or, perhaps they were looking into a “beta” version of a wheeled device, which needed to be turned to each new photo. Such a device was perfected in the thirties, but being as porn drives technology, there may have been some early variations of this device in use already.
http://en.wikip...aster
The veiled boxes not only provided the viewer with privacy, but enhanced the experience by eliminating distractions and providing proper self-lighting as well.
It just occurred to me that your younger readers may not be familiar with this peep-show device:
http://upload.w...8.jpg