ABSTRACT
American popular art interweaves symbols of sex and hierarchy in many ways. Religious rituals become sexual rituals where sexual objects, or the sex organs themselves, are substituted for sacred vessels. In contrast to plutocratic sexual dramas, where sex is related to money, the sex act is symbolized as a grotesque sacrificial act in which the suffering and death of the woman on feudal altars enhances the glory of rank and the mystery of sex. Romantic love and Christianity enhanced the social drama of sex by creating new social types in the romantic heroine and the ascetic. Unlike the romantic lover of a later generation, Casanova turns to comic catharsis for love's frustrations. W. C. Fields and comediennes like Fanny Bryce reduce the hallowed American mother and her child to cold, greedy, arrogant "ladies" who mask their self-love with sentimental hypocrisy over "mother-love" and gentility.
