Richmond

The Empire Never Ended

This was in the parking lot when I left for lunch yesterday:



When I first saw it, I thought it was just high-schooler who defaced her car with poster paint. But then I read what it says (it accuses me of being an ignoramus!), and if that is the case, girl has some issues with paranoia.

I'm not sure I agree with the car. (I can't believe I just typed that!) A brief definition comes up as:

overthrow something: to undermine or overthrow a government or other
institution

Um, what is it subverting? The mass media seems, if anything, to encourage complacence. To overthrow is an action; the milk that flows from the media teat is all about remaining passive. This undermines our political system, but, if anything, can be used effectively by a cunning government. But I'm also interpreting it as someone who is slightly to the left; I suppose a relatively convincing argument could be made for a proponent on the right.

Coincidentally, I am also rereading (for the umpteenth time) Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, a media product that actually is very conscious of trying to be subversive -- if not of any particular government, then of the concept of identity and time itself. Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics actually discussed the book in depth, and suddenly a lot of the peculiar bits sort of fall into place. It is one of the few books that actually does aspire to be a graphic novel: reading it now, you definitely get a sense that Morrison knew how he wanted it to end. That's not to say that the trajectory was a clear one, but he always had the end in sight.

For some reason, I'm getting a lot out of it this rereading.