To say that Tango is a sexual object doesn’t seem absurd.
Starting to think that there is a sexual super valuation in Psychology of this beloved object, that extends unavoidably to everything associated with it, would be to paraphrase Freud himself when he wrote back around 1905, about the sexual aberrations in his Three Essays for a Sexual Theory.
It´s important to note that the word perversion is not pejorative, nor it implies a pathology. The father of psychoanalisis stresses that these practices integrate the sexual life of the average person. Freud explains, in his essay, that is common in normal love a certain degree of
fetishism, specially in the enamorments where the sexual aim postponed or sublimated.
In the choice of the
fetish, the experiences of childhood are involved, normally those with the mother. The object represents her, and her loss or her distance hurts less. The aberration of the sexual thought is fixed in an object.
Freud points the shoes as symbols that correspond to the female sexual genitals…If women, in general, like shoes, the
milongueras worship them. They choose them sensual, eye-catching. The first thing that a woman does when she starts to take lessons is buying shoes… and they are not looking for comfort but identity. Tangueros don’t stay behind. Shiny, with heel, colorful. The explicit in the handling of the feet is proven with the excellence of the figures but…the psychoanalysts can’t help to doubt…The fetishism extends to the women’s stockings, gloves, clothes that looks like lingerie, satin and silk…making possible that the accumulation of evidence will help us sustain our first theory: Tango is fetishist.
The look makes the risk of
sin flow. The look awakes the
libidinous arousement when it goes in search of that which is concealed on purpose. Nudity does not motivate as much as hinting at a suggestive cut, at a cleavage, of the morbid laces…
Tango provokes the look, it incites it, and it needs it to feel.
The milongas in full light, to be seen better.
The couples embraced, being exposed…copulating in three minutes…with no shame.
Some being exposed others that watch.
To contemplate or to be contemplated.
The look fixed in a couple embraced in the street, is disturbing, indiscreet. But we sit in the first row to observe thoroughly the embrace in a couple dancing Tango.
Tango is exhibitionist and
voyeuristic, that’s why it needs Championships, contests and all kind of opportunities to show off, to be exhibited.
We all know that in the sexual act there is something of
sadism. Lovers play, mixing between aggression, submission and domination. In the love exchange there is neither winners nor losers.
In the Tango that we see interpreted on a stage, we usually see the intimate ritual. The woman is dragged along, the man is scorned. There are encounters and rejections. Tenderness and violence. A passionate dialogue of two bodies that are turned to each other.
I like to maintain that Tango is sadomasochist, but i hate the caricature, the exaggeration that turns it into aberration, when we export it, shameless, over stages worldwide.
The Tango shows us all the possibilities of the polymorph perverse, but in the same manner as an innocent kid, it only plays with them.
It is very interesting to think why it is consumed, abroad or by the tourist a Tango that brags about being perverse and libertine. Maybe in the European illusionary it is still necessary to project in us, the South Americans, those others…the desires that their unconscious can not repress any longer.
Mónica Peri
