"Grasping the Ontological Significance of Janet…"

"Congratulations," writes Bright Lights Film Journal Associate Editor Alan Vanneman re: my recent piece on TV and radio regulation, "on, um, grasping the ontological significance of Janet's jug. I wrote in a similar vein at http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/49/batman.htm."

I recommend highly Vanneman's bit about Batman Begins, where he mentions Jackson along with the Caped Crusader's anti-areoline makeover Snippets:

Were you, like me, drawn as a moth to a flame to attend the premiere of Batman Begins by the iconographic publicity shot of a brooding Batman holding a recumbent Katie Holmes in his arms, a picture seemingly formed by waves of radiant energy spreading from Katie's magnificently erect right nipple? If so, mon ami, you don't need me to tell you that you've been hosed. You've been hosed, you've been posed, you've been diddled, dished, and done, because it ain't in the picture.

It's been a long time since the American public has been hustled in such a crass and craven manner. Roger Corman built a career out of making third-rate films to accompany first-rate posters, but the collapse of middle-class prudery in the sixties, coupled with rising production budgets, rendered such petty fraud unnecessary. But now, it seems, the bitch is back. The question is why.

Whole thing here.

Or, hell, just read the footnotes, which are pretty damn funny:

1. Male tits, dismissively described as "neither ornamental nor useful" by that galloping hetero Roscoe Conkling, simply don't arouse the same passion in the public mind. You can see, if you want, George Washington's nipples in a statue in the American History museum in DC. You won't be seeing Laura Bush's nipples for a long time.

2. If you're willing to risk it, there's more of Janet's nipple in her recent DVD, Janet in Hawaii, which is definitely an above-average concert film.

3. One presumes they went the same route in Spiderman 2, but I took a pass on the sequel. I just couldn't get excited about "Doc Oc." I mean, it wasn't like he was a real octopus.

4. And no one can tell me anything about the original comics. I read every Batman (all Batman and Robin), Detective Comics (Batman and Robin and assorted lesser DC deities like Aquaman), and World's Finest Comics (Batman and Robin and Superman!) ever printed between about 1950 and 1960. But I never could get into the "angst of the Dark Knight" graphic novels of the past twenty years. Angst? What angst? Batman didn't have angst. He was fucking Batman.

Update: In other breast-related musings, National Review's John Derbyshire, channeling Monty Python's Dirty Vicar, lets it all hang out re: "Jennifer Aniston's bristols." The Javert of homosexuality writes, "While I have no doubt that Ms. Aniston is a paragon of charm, wit, and intelligence, she is also 36 years old. Even with the strenuous body-hardening exercise routines now compulsory for movie stars, at age 36 the forces of nature have won out over the view-worthiness of the unsupported female bust….a woman's salad days are shorter than a man's–really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20." Alas, Derb's clock ticks even for the Olsen twins. More here.