As a long-time Susan Stamberg listener and fan, I was disappointed in today's radio report on her visit to the National Gallery's exhibit of Joachim Wtewael's work. I undersand that Wtewael painted lurid scenes from the Book of Genesis as well as tales from Roman mythology. But I thought it unfortunate to choose imagery of Lot touching his daughter's breast as a main focus. This goes doubly because of both the painter's point of view and curator's seeming agreement with that viewpoint, unchallenged by Stamberg.
If the story of Lot was the plot of a movie and I described it this way, what would you think? A man looks around at a town, sees lust for his sons in the eyes of all the men of the town (sound like any voices we've heard in the news recently?), so he safeguards his male children and gives his daughters to strangers to abuse sexually. Then he commands the family to leave the city, telling them that God has ordered this. His wife disappears during the journey, and he says she was instantly turned to stone because she didn't obey his command not to look back at her home. Once he has segregated himself with his traumatized adult children, who have just lost their mother, at an outpost, Lot has intercourse with all his daughters. His version is that the young women forced him to become drunk and then they danced around seductively. This is after he's recently given them to strangers for the purpose of sexual assault. He says their goal was enticing him to father children with them.
Again, I do understand that the Bible, both the Christian and Jewish versions, is full of terrible behavior. I'm no censor. Artists have always needed to paint whatever they wanted to express, and the National Gallery should cntinue to display work on challenging themes.
Where I object is that both Stamberg and Arthur Wheeler Jr. of the National Gallery see the story of Lot and his family from Lot's point of view. Talk about your unreliable narrator, right? He sees gay predators everywhere, he gives his daughters to strangers in the same manner as a modern cult leader, he claims God killed his wife and turned her into a natural rock formation, he drinks heavily and he blames his traumatized daughters for being seductive to him. All of his daughters, one at a time.
Every listener who ever suffered within crazy family dynamics just heard the perpetrator's assertions validated by the National Gallery's curator. And we all heard Susan Stamberg sounding -- what word should I use? intrigued? - by the image of a father fondling his daughter's body.
All that was needed here to make this art report acceptable was for someone -- anyone - to say that Lot, with his gay paranoia, fear of his daughters marrying and leaving home, and perception of his daughters as debauched creatures, had some issues. But Wheeler Jr. and Stamberg sound more like Lot's defense team.
It's not at all difficult to find Biblical scholars who see things from the daughters' points of view, as in the site I've linked here, but one doesn't have to be a religious scholar to wonder why the re-telling of this already-disturbing tale of insanity was told from the madman's viewpoint.
For alternative (make that sane) interpretations of the story of what happened to Lot's family:
I'm really unhappy with both long-time household favorite Susan Stamberg and in "Morning Edition" today.
Marion Seltzer
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