As Roy & HG say, its all about not just any old cream.

I caught a bit of Roy & HG the other night---was it Thursday when the All Blacks creamed France?

The use of 'cream' does have sexual innuendo --as in creaming one's pants. Hence cumming from an
orgasim.

In the section of the show that I saw, there was nothing about sexuality in sport.Lots of biting humour about violence in sport but nothing to do with the sexuality of healthy bodies. The language of sexuality was notably absent,despite the obvious frenzy, rapture intoxication and exhaustion on the field.

Is there a taboo on this?

The closest I've seen to the transgression of this taboo is women basketballers (one of the Adelaide Clubs) doing a nudish calendar to raise money to keep their club going.

It is a strange silence given the importance of sexuality in our culture.

Gary, the Cream is an explicit reference to ejaculation. Roy and HG even gave out the 'Stain Ensemble' to all guests, which featured an Australian shaped 'stain' on the groin region of the shorts.

They also had a competition for the Cream Horn, which was a vote for an individual player.

Then there were the numerous rugby songs like 'my grandfather's cock', etc.

Those pictures are taking me back to earlier days of Roy and HG when they hosted Club Buggery.

Male footballers have released numerous calenders along similar lines to the one you mentioned. I suspect one of the reasons they may have stopped is that they realised that gay men were probably buying them just as much as straight women.

DJ,
Okay. Roy & HG make the sexuality explicit with the show's reference to cocks, ejaculation and the impurity of semen stains.

I presume that the Haka is a ritual of masturbation, masculinity, and cum over the body of the opponent.

You don't glean anything about their explicit use of the language of sexuality from The Cream website.

I guess that the show is a form of transgression of a taboo on gay sexuality: a playing with limits that crosses and recrosses a line which closes up behind it to the horizon of the uncrossable.

What is interesting is 'the what is tabooed' as it remains unspoken. Is it just gay sexuality?

Actually, the All Blacks Haka is a story about some guy hiding in a well. Other Hakas have different stories. It is not a war dance as some people suggest, even though face to face (and i have seen one face to face) it is very powerful.

What about seeing the emphasis upon sexuality as continuing the tradition of Pagan sexuality, the Green Man, the Maypole, etc? I'm not so sure that it does fit this tradition, but i think there are elements of it.

Gary, I actually don't like R.U. but watched Saturday's game and suprisingly enjoyed it.

In any case, for some bizarre reason - perhaps I am a victim of all those sublminal messages, even if I don't read the sports pages - rugby union always made me think of english public schools and fagging. So this post just made me laugh and laugh.

Tell me I'm dumb (I know I'm not bright) but I thought you were taking the piss!

p.s. I didn't find the French image 'sexual'. Just rather beautiful.

DJ,
those were very informative links. The All Black Haka would embody a different set of cultural meanings to the original ones' or the ones performed on the Maori Mai.

It is a dance of the whole body that expresses the soul of the person and the nation. Hence it has a sexual dimension. I'm quite happy to code that sexuality as pagan, in opposition to its all about masturbation or its about club buggery.

The Haka's erotic roots in pagan sexuality would now be overlaid by that of a consumer culture---the beautiful body.

I think Roy and HG milk the confusions about sexuality and eroticism for all its worth (pun intended). We tend to think of the erotic in either Victorian or commodified terms, which means that it is either 'dirty' or something to be sold. Traditions which don't fit into this schema sit uncomfortably, which is one reason for them being humourous.

Saint,
the post was tongue in check at one level. I grew up in New Zealand and went to a Catholic private school where it was compulsory to play rugby. So the spin about "the game played in heaven" has special connotations for me---I immediately think of hell.

At another level the rugby game was read through the eyes of Georges Bataille whom I'm reading, trying to understand, and writing about over at philosophical conversations.

Bataille is highly focused on the sacred and the intensity of emotion associated with some (mystical)forms of spirituality.Today it would in the Protestant US evangelical religion.

That excess is also found in sexuality. He spent a lot of his life in the old fashioned Parisian brothels. That sexual excess today can be found in S&M.

I saw the intensity, excess and anxiety in that rugby game. I thought. Hell,this is the emotional stuff that Bataille is talking about in connection with his idea of sovereignty.

DJ,
your're right about the way that sexuality is coded by Christianity as dirty (taboo) or by the market as a commodity(transgression)

Roy & HG are playing around with taboo-transgression stuff that I talk about on philosophical conversations

Gary - catholic school in new zealand reminds me of one too many catholic boy school stories from a kiwi friend who would have thought hell a better place.

Can understand what you're saying here...although I can't grasp Bataille's idea of sovereignty.

As to the 'excesses' of sprituality and sexuality a la S&M...hmm. What relationship does B see between the two? (happy with links to blog entries, or articles....you know the level of my intellect)

as to R&HG. i like those guys, but after all these years...you start wondering if the needle has stuck on the same track

Saint,
there are some entries on Bataille & sovereignty over at philosophical conversations by both Trevor and myself.