Like a mezzanine, but for genitals.

Look, I'm no museum curator, but this is dumb. Just...dumb and I-huh? What's dumb? Oh, this replica of Michelangelo's David on display at the World Expo 2020 in Dubai. It's not dumb in and of itself, but hang on, let's talk about this whole World Expo 2020 thing first.

Didn't we give up on World's Fairs decades ago?
Like when we all realized that we couldn't get along?

God, if you're there, now would be
a great time to Rapture these people.
It'd really help the rest of us out.

So savvy readers, or people who know how calendars work, might have caught the fact that the World Expo 2020 is for some reason happening in 2021 and is even planed to run into March of 2022. Well, you can blame COVID for that and by extension, people who made simple and vital precautions like wearing masks and getting vaccinated into some weird political thing which they then, preposterously, turned around and blamed on the rest of us. But we're not here to talk about the idiots who ruin everything, we're here to talk about David's dick. Yeah, you heard me. 

So Dubai. The Expo is being held in the largest city in the United Arab Emirates. A place known--according to an incredibly lazy internet search--for rich people and shopping...for rich people. Like, private jets for their dogs rich people.

"Luxury shopping, fine dining and a dismal human rights record, Dubai has it all!"

-Dubai Tourism Bureau

Here's hoping the exhibit glosses
over our tiki Nazi problem...

Anyway, like any world's fair, Expo 2020 has a number of pavilions, each representing a different country from around the world. We have one. Its theme is "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the Future" and it's about how our freedom inspires uh...innovation or something. Italy has one too, which brings us to the five inch marble dong. Yup, five inches. And bear in mind that the statue is seventeen feet tall so now you know that.

Statues back in the Renaissance were modeled on the Classical Greek style, which, while totally down with full frontal dudity, also valued, uh, self-control? 

Although I suspect it's difficult to get aroused while being attacked by snakes.

Pictured: Just the tip.

Anyway, I said marble dong, but really it, and the rest of the Italy pavilion's replica of David, was recreated out of marble dust and recycled plastics using three dimensional scans of the original so it's supposedly quite accurate. Which is great, except the UAE is a somewhat uptight culture and dicks just won't fly (figuratively speaking) so the solution here was to display David in a sunken shaft designed so as to make the offending five-inches invisible from the top, even if you lean over the side. Unless you're rich. 

No really. If you have a VIP pass, you get access to the lower, more crotch level of the exhibit. It's like a mezzanine, but for genitals. Plebs on the other hand, just get is a chest-up view of this loving recreation of one of the most famous pieces of Italian Renaissance art. The whole thing is just, ridiculous for a number of reasons. 

Rich or poor, everyone deserves the opportunity
to titter at the Bible's most amusing willy.

Ah! Got it! Italian Star Wars
knock-off Starcrash starring David
Hasselhoff. Where's that pavilion?

For one, as one of the most famous pieces of Italian Renaissance art, it's not like people in Dubai are unfamiliar with the statue and its Goliath-induced terror-shrinkage. Secondly, all the trouble of 3D scanning the original seems rather wasted if they were just going to show the replica from the top up. And thirdly, why bother with any of this? Has Italy not produced any culture worthy of export since the Renaissance? Like...uh...ok, fine, I can't think of anything, but that doesn't mean there isn't something.

The answer is, of course, that the United Arab Emirates is a cautionary tale of what happens when you let misogynisitic, hypocritical theocrats run the show. And while that may sound incredibly judgmental of me, remember that as hilarious as the squeamishness towards five inches of marble flaccidity is, this is a country that jails protestors for protesting, stones people to death for blasphemy, prosecutes women for reporting sexual assault. So it's basically Texas in five years or so. 

Pictured: Greg Abbott signing a bill that puts a bounty on people
who help women exercise control over their own bodies.