A male student believes the following image depicts a lesbian love affair:
The man and the woman are supposedly married but the woman is cheating on the husband with another woman. The owl represents her mistress who is tearing the couple apart and tries to destroy the marriage.
It’s really curious to see how far imagination can get people. I’ve been staring at this image for years, and one word that never visited me in the process was “gay.”
Clarissa's Blog 
Maybe this man fantasized about lesbian sex affairs…
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Whenever I hear artistic interpretations like that, I assume that whoever’s making them is just projecting based on something else going on in his life.
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I think that must be it. Lesbian affairs were on his mind for some reason, and then everything started to look like a lesbian affair.
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Maybe he just found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him.
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Actually the owl reminds me of my gay daughter’s ex partner, so your student may be on to something.
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I am 100% convinced he must be reading this blog and rolling on the floor laughing.
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Perhaps they have a contest: Who can write or say something stupid or outrageous enough to merit a blog mention?
Now I’m wondering what the prize is (beyond the glory).
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You are very optimistic in this belief that there is a facetious intention behind all this. N. also always thinks that students are trying to be funny.
I’d like to believe that but I believe the truth is much more prosaic: the students do all this completely in earnest.
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Considering how bizarre the drawing is, trying to psychoanalyze the student’s initial interpretation is an entertaining waste of time without much more context. It’s like a patient’s first sentence when shown a Rorschach test.
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If the student had listened to my lecture and read the textbook, it wouldn’t have been very puzzling to him. 🙂
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My guess is that a discussion of gay marriage in US gave him that idea.
Btw, what is it really about? Something political, but what? My guess: 2 peasants / workers chained by aristocracy.
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Goya’s Caprichos often criticize the Catholic Church. This might be a metaphor for the Church forcing people to stay in miserable marriages.
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What I want to know is, where is the tree trunk? Owl is on a branch but is the trunk behind the couple, or is there none?
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I believe the tree is growing from out of the couple. Their relationship is so ugly that it has started sprouting monstrosities. This is just my reading of course. But at least it makes more sense than the lesbians.
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I thought they were both chained to the opposite sides of the twisted tree trunk.
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