veryone is a sex detective now. A train entering a tunnel, a jutting skyscraper: in the post-Freudian age, readers and viewers are primed to spot innuendo and phallic symbolism. Along with death, sex is said to be art’s bedrock subject. But occasionally—and more interestingly—the imagery works in the opposite way. Instead of other things standing in for sex, sex is a metaphor for other themes. Take “Rivals”.
