Eternal Returns #10, Extreme NSFW Edition

Don’t worry, it’s not hard­core or any­thing. Still. Below the jump. 

Irm Hermann (top) and Karl Scheydt (bot­tom), Handler der vier Jahreszeiten (The Merchant of Four Seasons), 1972, Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Cynthia Nixon (top) and David Eigenberg (bot­tom), Sex and the City, 2008, Michael Patrick King

My Lovely Wife and I were watch­ing the Blu-ray of SATC the oth­er night, more out of rank curi­os­ity than any­thing else, and about five hours in, I was ask­ing, “Where’s the much-vaunted nud­ity that was from what I under­stand a reg­u­lar fea­ture of the TV series as it played on HBO?” Sure enough, I was very soon sorry I asked. This is not a dis of Ms. Nixon, mind you—the nud­ity star­ted com­ing in a bit before the unfor­get­table and yet, I would say, unne­ces­sary image repro­duced above. Still, when the above-reproduced image did appear, I was staggered, and thought, “Where the hell have I seen that before?” And, yes, it was in the Fassbinder. Only, of course, minus the awe­some Jesus paint­ing. (Over to the right in that room is a big cru­ci­fix, which we see in the shot after the little girl play­ing Hermann’s daugh­ter walks in on her mom hav­ing sex with that guy who’s not her hus­band. Tasty.) Although I under­stand that Fassbinder has a sub­stan­tial gay fol­low­ing, I insist that the resemb­lance here is com­pletely coin­cid­en­cid­ent­al. Although I’m from here­on in only ever refer­ring to Cynthia Nixon as “the American Irm Hermann.”