Jealous Venetian Blinds
Photography is full of clichés. I have always maintained that they are clichés because they usually work.
I stop at photographs of beautiful women (with our without angel wings) posing on railroad tracks or by a Harley Davidson.
One often used cliché is the projection, a natural one with real blinds, or an artificial one using gobos, of Venetian blinds on a lithe human body. Gobos, which were used frequently in Hollywood noir films, are metal discs with designs of clouds, blinds, etc which are projected with optical spotlights.
Because I am bilingual I think in two languages, Spanish and English. I am constantly comparing the origin of words in both of them.
In Spanish a blind is a persiana. You might think that this has to do with Persians. I know that the Spanish word comes from the French persienne. But as for the etymology of that word in French I have not found its origin.
It all becomes that more interesting when to translate Venetian blind to Spanish it is a persiana veneciana.
Worse still is a celosía (also a blind in Spanish) that comes from the French jalousie. In Spanish celos translated to jealousy and a jealous person is a celoso. I am perplexed at all these lovely confusions.
