There'a An Elephant In The Room

I suppose the opposite of "Emperor's new clothes" is "elephant in the room" when we ignore the obvious.

Dejeuner by Manet

 Dejeuner is a painting by Manet where 4 people are having a picnic lunch and at least two of them are inappropriately dressed for the weather.

Gabrielle d'Estrées

Here's a painting in the Louvre collection of Gabrielle d'Estrées and her sister. People have been looking at this picture for 500 years trying to figure out what it means.

Speaking for all men, let me tell you there is an elephant in the room, the main subject is unmistakably sex and the artists had pornographic intents. These are extremely successful paintings and we all recognize them, in fact, the second picture was hung in my office wall for a year and everyone just considered it high art.

Another elephant is the consensual best Chinese novel 紅樓夢, it's obvious to me it was written as a parody. A satire like Voltaire's Candide and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, they are meant to be funny. Author 曹雪芹was such a jokester in real life, it is a stroke of genius precisely because he made biting commentaries through humor. Take a look at 賈寶玉, his lousy poems, his messed up teenage sex experiences (both heterosexual and homosexual), and how he brown nosed everyone in power, he was nothing but a good looking brat -- the exact opposite of the author.

I suspect some of the people that can see Emperor's new clothes also don't notice the elephant, at least I am that way when it comes to certain things.


Update (3/19/11):
It occurs to me all the books mentioned were published at about the same time, turns out it's closer than I thought:

Gulliver's Travels - 1726 - 1735
 紅樓夢 1754 - many versions
Candide 1759

I'm not saying they had any influence on another, but sometimes things did go viral before the Internet, not just substantive things, also styles and feelings. Very strange.