As seen in the Washington Square News.
Disappointed that they weren’t the first Ivy snagged by snarky journalists, those exhibitionists at Harvard University had to go along and get naked for an article in The New York Times Magazine titled “Campus Exposure,” drawing the curiosity of this columnist and many others.
In the 5,000-plud-word March 4 feature, Harvard’s H Bomb magazine was one of a selection of sexualized, student-generated “literary” publications spotlighted as “a fact of campus life.” If you haven’t heard, H Bomb is a self-proclaimed “literary arts magazine about sex and sexual issues” founded by Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg and Camilla Hrdy (who, by their powers on the Scrabble board combined, are Captain Planet!), and is for all intents and purposes pornography meets The New Yorker in a way Tom Wolfe could only dream of. The pair are out to rebel against those Puritanical attitudes in Cambridge in exchange for the dawning of the age of Aquarius, or something like that, and they are doing it with the $2,000 rubber-stamped approval of Harvard’s undergraduate student government.
Yet the point concerning the relatively unsexy nature of the reputation of Harvard students still stands. Sexy Harvard? It’s not just politically untenable. It’s not apropos at all.
So when the Grey Lady picked up on it, I was intrigued. Harvard?
I don’t know what campus the Times writer, Alexandra Jacobs, has been to lately, but last I read in the Harvard Crimson headlines, people were falling out of dorm windows (first floor, Quincy House), discovering the power of the interwebs by Googling themselves (Nathan J. Dern in a feat of unprecedented technological prowess) and debating – no wait, “extolling the virtues of” – latkes and hamantashen (March 2, Harvard Hillel). For all that the Harvard seal stands for, sex doesn’t seem to be part of it. Yet H Bomb’s version of sex seems to skew more toward the Warholian, art-meets-porn-meets-culture kind of style (dick in a Campbell’s soup can? Painfully brilliant. Sorry, Yale.), and it seems Cieplak-von Baldegg and Hrdy are out to make literature sexy. But, last I checked, The Factory was located on East 47th Street – not in the quad – and closed nearly four decades ago. So I don’t know if I can buy Harvard’s brand of sex.
How about tasteful, then?
Well, the pictures (sorry, “artwork”) aren’t anything a Tischie photographer couldn’t do in the midst of a serious drug trip. Or sober. Depending on the guy. You know what I mean.
OK, so neither groundbreaking nor tasteful. Amusing, at least? How about the writing?
The fine fountain pens of the H Bomb contributors have produced pieces that ponder the big issues in life (“How could anyone continue to use such [free] shitty condoms [from the on-campus counseling service] on a regular basis?”), teaching valuable life lessons that The Learning Channel can’t shake a stick at (“They say sex is a kind of power, and that if you know how to use it, it can make you stronger.”) and waxing poetic (“I carved a snail. I ate like a sinner”).
Let me ask you this – what’s “eating like a sinner”? Devouring a half-gallon of Edy’s Slow Churned ice cream in 20 minutes, or haphazardly munching unborn children while watching The O’Reilly Factor? Either way, it’s not very sexy.
So let’s get it straight: H Bomb ain’t nothin’ but a big bag o’ tame lame expectorated by a bunch of Carrie Bradshaw wannabes who come to Manhattan on the weekends to get their Manolo Blahniks. “If you aren’t mature enough to tell the difference between playful nudity and pornography, you probably shouldn’t be reading H Bomb,” the editors write. Or, you know, leaving your house.
Looking Washington Square-ward (pun very much intended), it seems the Mark Rothko-fan club we call NYU has a dearth of student-run publications. And, to my knowledge, not one of them is about sex. For a school whose nightclub-turned-dorm Palladium once made it on a list of the nation’s most sexually active dorms, that’s a tragedy. A damn-near blasphemy, really.
NYU, it seems we’re at a crossroads. Boston University informally has Boink, a full-on pornographic endeavor; Vassar College has got the “smut and sensibility” of Squirm magazine; the University of Chicago has Vita Excolatur; and three Ivies have joined the sex pub orgy: Yale’s got their instructional SWAY (Sex Week at Yale! Woo!), Columbia’s got the unfortunately-named Outlet, and Harvard has the aforementioned Ana’s Nin-esque snob-job H Bomb. What’s an Ivy-envious Violet (Ms. Bobcat, if you’re nasty) to do?
Well, we can rely on our own hip form of snobbery, that’s what. So let’s publish art without nudity and call it porn. Cultural pioneers, there’s the upper hand in this predicament.
A publication that markets sex without any obvious reference to human anatomy or the current lexicon that involves sexuality – genius. It’s progressive. It’s more elitist, snobbish and coy than full-frontal nudity and monochrome, off-center close-ups combined.
In fact, let’s go even further – let’s eschew paper altogether. To pursue the true NYU brand of sexual vérités, we should all hop on the L, stroll north to Greenpoint and get aroused by a big pile of dirt in the corner of an empty loft. That, my friends, is sex. It’s art. And by not telling anyone about it – hell, it’s going on right now – we’ve elevated the publication of art sex to an experience of elitist nirvana.
God, we’re such trendsetters on campus, aren’t we?
Art porn? Harvard’s H Bomb is more of a bottle rocket
As seen in the Washington Square News.
Disappointed that they weren’t the first Ivy snagged by snarky journalists, those exhibitionists at Harvard University had to go along and get naked for an article in The New York Times Magazine titled “Campus Exposure,” drawing the curiosity of this columnist and many others.
In the 5,000-plud-word March 4 feature, Harvard’s H Bomb magazine was one of a selection of sexualized, student-generated “literary” publications spotlighted as “a fact of campus life.” If you haven’t heard, H Bomb is a self-proclaimed “literary arts magazine about sex and sexual issues” founded by Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg and Camilla Hrdy (who, by their powers on the Scrabble board combined, are Captain Planet!), and is for all intents and purposes pornography meets The New Yorker in a way Tom Wolfe could only dream of. The pair are out to rebel against those Puritanical attitudes in Cambridge in exchange for the dawning of the age of Aquarius, or something like that, and they are doing it with the $2,000 rubber-stamped approval of Harvard’s undergraduate student government.
Yet the point concerning the relatively unsexy nature of the reputation of Harvard students still stands. Sexy Harvard? It’s not just politically untenable. It’s not apropos at all.
So when the Grey Lady picked up on it, I was intrigued. Harvard?
I don’t know what campus the Times writer, Alexandra Jacobs, has been to lately, but last I read in the Harvard Crimson headlines, people were falling out of dorm windows (first floor, Quincy House), discovering the power of the interwebs by Googling themselves (Nathan J. Dern in a feat of unprecedented technological prowess) and debating – no wait, “extolling the virtues of” – latkes and hamantashen (March 2, Harvard Hillel). For all that the Harvard seal stands for, sex doesn’t seem to be part of it. Yet H Bomb’s version of sex seems to skew more toward the Warholian, art-meets-porn-meets-culture kind of style (dick in a Campbell’s soup can? Painfully brilliant. Sorry, Yale.), and it seems Cieplak-von Baldegg and Hrdy are out to make literature sexy. But, last I checked, The Factory was located on East 47th Street – not in the quad – and closed nearly four decades ago. So I don’t know if I can buy Harvard’s brand of sex.
How about tasteful, then?
Well, the pictures (sorry, “artwork”) aren’t anything a Tischie photographer couldn’t do in the midst of a serious drug trip. Or sober. Depending on the guy. You know what I mean.
OK, so neither groundbreaking nor tasteful. Amusing, at least? How about the writing?
The fine fountain pens of the H Bomb contributors have produced pieces that ponder the big issues in life (“How could anyone continue to use such [free] shitty condoms [from the on-campus counseling service] on a regular basis?”), teaching valuable life lessons that The Learning Channel can’t shake a stick at (“They say sex is a kind of power, and that if you know how to use it, it can make you stronger.”) and waxing poetic (“I carved a snail. I ate like a sinner”).
Let me ask you this – what’s “eating like a sinner”? Devouring a half-gallon of Edy’s Slow Churned ice cream in 20 minutes, or haphazardly munching unborn children while watching The O’Reilly Factor? Either way, it’s not very sexy.
So let’s get it straight: H Bomb ain’t nothin’ but a big bag o’ tame lame expectorated by a bunch of Carrie Bradshaw wannabes who come to Manhattan on the weekends to get their Manolo Blahniks. “If you aren’t mature enough to tell the difference between playful nudity and pornography, you probably shouldn’t be reading H Bomb,” the editors write. Or, you know, leaving your house.
Looking Washington Square-ward (pun very much intended), it seems the Mark Rothko-fan club we call NYU has a dearth of student-run publications. And, to my knowledge, not one of them is about sex. For a school whose nightclub-turned-dorm Palladium once made it on a list of the nation’s most sexually active dorms, that’s a tragedy. A damn-near blasphemy, really.
NYU, it seems we’re at a crossroads. Boston University informally has Boink, a full-on pornographic endeavor; Vassar College has got the “smut and sensibility” of Squirm magazine; the University of Chicago has Vita Excolatur; and three Ivies have joined the sex pub orgy: Yale’s got their instructional SWAY (Sex Week at Yale! Woo!), Columbia’s got the unfortunately-named Outlet, and Harvard has the aforementioned Ana’s Nin-esque snob-job H Bomb. What’s an Ivy-envious Violet (Ms. Bobcat, if you’re nasty) to do?
Well, we can rely on our own hip form of snobbery, that’s what. So let’s publish art without nudity and call it porn. Cultural pioneers, there’s the upper hand in this predicament.
A publication that markets sex without any obvious reference to human anatomy or the current lexicon that involves sexuality – genius. It’s progressive. It’s more elitist, snobbish and coy than full-frontal nudity and monochrome, off-center close-ups combined.
In fact, let’s go even further – let’s eschew paper altogether. To pursue the true NYU brand of sexual vérités, we should all hop on the L, stroll north to Greenpoint and get aroused by a big pile of dirt in the corner of an empty loft. That, my friends, is sex. It’s art. And by not telling anyone about it – hell, it’s going on right now – we’ve elevated the publication of art sex to an experience of elitist nirvana.
God, we’re such trendsetters on campus, aren’t we?