Showing posts with label parking lot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parking lot. Show all posts

Monday, March 03, 2008

The Empire Never Ended

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


The Subversive Mass MediaPeople of the Western World, WAKE UP!
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.

You say you want a revolution?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.