In The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, how is the Influence discussed?
The image is often cited as a forerunner of tentacle erotica, a motif that has been popular in modern Japanese animation and manga since the late 20th century, popularized by author Toshio Maeda. Modern tentacle erotica similarly depicts sex between women and tentacled beasts; the sex in modern depictions is typically forced, as opposed to Hokusai's mutually pleasurable interaction. Psychologist and critic Jerry S. Piven is skeptical that Hokusai's playful image could account for the violent depictions in modern media, arguing that these are instead a product of the turmoil experienced throughout Japanese society following World War II, which was in turn reflective of existing, underlying currents of cultural trauma. Scholar Holger Briel argues that "only in a society that already has a predilection for monsters and is used to interacting with octopods such images might arise", citing Hokusai's print an early exemplar of such a tradition.
The work influenced later artists such as Félicien Rops, Auguste Rodin, Louis Aucoc, Fernand Khnopff and Pablo Picasso. Picasso drew his own private version in 1903, which was displayed in a 2009 Museu Picasso exhibit titled Secret Images, alongside 26 other drawings and engravings by Picasso, displayed next to Hokusai's original and 16 other Japanese prints, portraying the influence of 19th century Japanese art on Picasso's work. Picasso also later fully painted works that were directly influenced by the woodblock print, such as 1932's Reclining Nude, where the woman in pleasure is also the octopus, capable of pleasuring herself. In 2003, a derivative work by Australian painter David Laity, titled The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, sparked a minor obscenity controversy when it was shown at a gallery in Melbourne; after receiving complaints, police investigated and decided it did not break the city's anti-pornography laws. Hokusai's print has had a wide influence on the modern Japanese-American artist Masami Teraoka, who has created images of women, including a recurring "pearl diver" character, being pleasured by cephalopods as a symbol of female sexual power.The so-called aria della piovra ("Octopus aria") Un dì, ero piccina in Pietro Mascagni's opera Iris (1898), on a libretto by Luigi Illica, may have been inspired by this print. The main character Iris describes a screen she had seen in a Buddhist temple when she was a child, depicting an octopus coiling its limbs around a smiling young woman and killing her. She recalls a Buddhist priest explaining: "That octopus is Pleasure... That octopus is Death!"The scene is recreated in a "surreal, slightly horrific form" in Kaneto Shindo's 1981 fictionalized Hokusai biopic Edo Porn. The print is featured briefly in Park Chan-wook's film The Handmaiden and is intended to illustrate the perverted nature of Uncle Kouzuki's oppression of Lady Hideko to Sook-Hee. The print is given more air time in several episodes of the television series Mad Men, first on the office wall of a senior CEO, perhaps as a symbol of "monstrous alpha male power"; the print is given to Peggy Olson by Roger Sterling, Jr. near the series' end. Olson decides to hang the print in her office, part of the culmination of her storyline of becoming comfortable as an executive.The print has been cited by Isabel Coixet as influential in a sexual scene in her film Elisa & Marcela, as a "non-masculine sexual reference".
Roger Sterling tentacle erotica Toshio Maeda Louis Aucoc Pietro Mascagni Elisa & Marcela Park Chan-wook Edo Porn Kaneto Shindo Museu Picasso limbs World War II Pablo Picasso Octopus manga Peggy Olson Félicien Rops Auguste Rodin woodblock print octopus Iris Mad Men Masami Teraoka Hokusai Fernand Khnopff Luigi Illica The Handmaiden series' end Isabel Coixet David Laity ca Roger Sterling, Jr.