Marcus Wood
ELBOW - 2008
Still from the Film - Elbow 2007
Within the layers of human sexual partialism the elbow fetish holds a delicate place. All parts of the human body male and female have been fetishized. Outside the obvious primary and secondary sexual organs hands, feet, ankles, hair (Trichophilia) bellies (Alvinolagnia) and arm pits (Maschalagnia) are big hitters. Noses are up there and there is even a sneezing fetish mucophilia. The elbow fetish is more refined, but it has become a central sign in some remarkable literature. For example Agafya’s elbows rule the roost in Goncharov’s Oblomov.
For one critic these sexy elbows are weapons:
"Agafya’s elbows are significant not only to underscore Oblomov’s ‘elbow fetish’ or to describe his vision of the landlady but also to characterize Agafya and identify her ‘strategies’ in the battle to win Oblomov’s heart. In fact Agafya Matveyevna with her fast rotating elbows can be seen as literally elbowing Olga out of Oblomov’s life (ottalkivaet loktiami, as Russians would say)."
For another the elbows are breast substitutes:
"Oblomov has a vision of his idyll in a dream that takes him back to childhood, and recovers it in the round, dimpled, nourishing elbows (breasts?) of Agafya. Goncharov’s art longs for a world marked by perfect sympathy and untouched by the conflicts of adult sexuality. My film Elbow longs for something similar it is very very innocent. The intermission is in homage to 2001 A Space Odyssey,