Tunnel slides
are a common sight in Seoul. Korean toddlers enjoy them in apartment complex playgrounds just like their American counterparts do at McDonald's.
Every time I pass by one of these, though, I cannot help but recall to mind the art of H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist who revolutionized the face of horror science fiction by designing the monster in the movie Alien back in 1979. He is famous for the unique style of his paintings, which manage to combine the grotesque yet somehow sleek and erotic, with quasi-mechanical imagery. While I know absolutely nothing about his private life and proclivities, it seems to me that Giger must have been at least somewhat familiar with the theories of his countryman C.G. Jung, the great Swiss psychologist who popularized, among other things, the concept of the Shadow, the repressed negative aspects of the mind that are largely locked away in the unconscious and that Jung believed needed to be recognized and integrated in order to round out a mature personality. I believe Giger was well aware of the basic principles of the Shadow -- but of course, Giger the Artist loaded a whole lot of other baggage onto that framework to work out his visual œuvre, such as Freudian sexuality, vagina dentata, the Devouring Mother, rotting babies, and just plain pervy obsession with body parts.
But anyway, what strikes me visually about the tunnel slides is that dark opening/exit that looks disturbingly like a wide-open mouth (good thing the one pictured here is blue, but I have seen RED ones). Which tends to remind one (me, that is) of other bodily orifices as well as sexuality in general, whose literal and figurative depictions abound in Giger's art (and that's an understatement); it was easy enough for me to find a particularly apt sample online.
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And of course, I couldn't resist the impulse to manipulate my slide photo to "Giger-ify" it (naturally). I rather like the result -- in fact, I'm proud to note that for a brief moment I actually mistook its thumbnail for one of Giger's own. Think of it as a droll but earnest tribute to the master from one of his fans.
