An Exercise in Artistic Observation: An Encounter and Indecent Exposure
1. What is the story of the encounter in each incident in other words, what do you think the real experience might have been to make the boys run away from and the woman to run after these men?
The experience in each is sexual in nature: the man in An Encounter is obviously deriving sexual pleasure from his dirty talk with the young lads, and the public nudist in Indecent Exposure is looking for attention for some kind of sexual pleasure. Both seem to be masturbating at some point. But the boys who run in An Encounter do so because they are both repulsed and afraid; yet the narrator is also strangely entranced by the man who is revealing something adult that the boy has never before seen or realized. It is like he is given a window onto something that is not yet meant for him to see. Yet isnt that what the boys have been looking for after allan adventure denied them? However, this kind of adventure seems imbued with perversity rather than with danger or honor. In Indecent Exposure the experience is jolting and jolts others because it...
Yet the narrator seems drawn to it, almost appreciative of the mans sportsmanshipwriting about...
…memories other than one of a
film I saw years back called Observe and Report, in which a mall cop is trying to catch a man who goes around exposing himself to
women at the mall. It was played for laughs like in the poem. So I wonder if there is something about that kind of exposure, in which there is no attempt to
rape or seduce but only to get people to look, that makes for good comedy. It is certainly nothing comedic in Joyces story. In fact Joyces story is sad rather than funny, while Moffetts poem is funny rather than sad or frightening. That shows a lot about what voice and perspective…
