Are the pants suspicious of something, or are they suspicious themselves?

Before my first class of English 203 Professor McCoy had us look at a tweet that I personally found comical. It was a picture of a pair of pants hung over a chair, and the pants pockets looked very much like eyes that were slits. This gave the pants a type of suspicious appearance. I honestly looked at it, giggled a bit, and put it away without even thinking twice. On our first day of class, she asked us to interpret this picture of a pair of pants. Each group came up with different interpretations of these pants hung over a chair, but the big question that arose from each group was as follows :

Are the pants suspicious of something, or are the pants themselves a suspicious being?

This is something I have been toying with since the first day of class, along with all of the different interpretations that my classmates had offered that day.

Much like the discussions we had in class, each person can interpret something differently than the person next to them for many reasons. One part of our discussion on this led to origins and how they can affect how we interpret things individually. Much like how I pronounce the word elementary as elemen-tary and individuals from down state often pronounce it as elemen-try. This discussion just leads to show just how much our origins can affect our interpretations of things. Much like in The Baccae, Dionysus’s origin affects how he interprets the world around him. Dionysus was born of a god (Zeus) and a mortal (Semele) and believes that he should be worshiped as a god, much like his father is worshiped. In order to do this Dionysus is ” changed, of course, a god made man” and decides to return to his home town of Thebes to restore glory to his name. Dionysus clearly interprets the world as something that he owns, or should be worshiped in, while clearly many of the people of Thebes do not interpret this same thing. Pentheus is the ruler of Thebes and actually comes up with the idea that no one should worship Dionysus and does not actually interpret him as a real god.

The Baccae has many references to origins much like the one I mentioned above and these origins are important to our individual thoughts and how we perceive things. These interpretations are critical to our thinking and to our knowledge of the world.

I still have yet to interpret correctly whether the pants themselves are a suspicious being, or they are suspicious of something else around them. I do not think that there is enough context to answer that question still, but by studying this image I have learned so much about interpretation and how it differs in societies.

Suspicious Pants Tweet.jpg

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