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Faces & Poses "Seeing. We might say that the whole of life lies in that verb -- if not ultimately, at least essentially. Fuller being is closer union...But let us emphasise the point: union increases only through an increase in consciousness, that is to say in vision. And that, doubtless, is why the history of the living world can be summarised as the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is always something more to be seen." -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man
Left: Anyone's kid sister. Right: Kid sister, school sweetheart, best friend. The "real" girl seems to be captured by this shot: there's no posing, no effort to create a certain look. Warm eyes, too, and smile: what teen boy, just knowing the girl, just seeing her face, unwitting of the blossoming body and subsequent sartorial shenanigans, wouldn't want her to be his forever?
Growing up in the household of the marketplace...The interior of a kid sister, of an innocent girl, but the exterior of a highly salable woman, merchandise of sorts. The girl's beauty masks what may be her greatest allure: i.e., her vivacity, her ebullience (what we seek in life isn't a meaning, Joseph Campbell once said; it is an experience of being alive).
Déesse de sexe: either lusted after, idolized, or detested. This is the same girl in photo 2 despite the clothes and breasts and adipose-free figure. The mystery here of feminine beauty fused with a certain toughness (masculine toughness?). The flat, firm abdomen, the athletic frame...The belt serves as both adornment and whip -- whip adding a motherly and minatory touch. (What else would the picture lose without the belt?) Note, too, the enticing contrasts: the eyes suggest an innocence and vulnerability while the hair and navel and breasts bring sex into the picture. Talk to this girl for a few minutes, and what you'd get is nervous laughter, giddiness, playfulness -- behavior that is hardly consonant with that of a dangerous woman. The image above is as likely remote to the girl's sense of self as it is to the male stranger taking a look. The soul of the "real" person beams out of the mouth and eyes in the second photo but absconds in the fourth. Does market-savvy imaging bleach the authentic self out of a person?
1. The cigarette, the coat, the icy stare -- the suggestion of what, coolness? virility? The pitch as image rather than idea (why a pitch at all, why not simply title and byline?) Imagine a Voltaire or an Emerson so garbed and imaged, posing as hit man or stud, and that in order to get to the prose one had to put up with such puffery. Accommodation here to the culture of self-commodification, self-construction: what depths would you expect to plumb in a soul that has lent itself out in this way? 2. Old-fashioned book cover. No mediating symbol here between written word and reader; no sales gimmicks either.
And another one:
Friendly fire? Collateral damage? Unfortunate civilian casualties? The aftermath of the use of "calmatives" (a Pentagon term)...?
$11 billion-a-year industry. Grump's lament: if the nation cared as much about its history and the humanities and arts as much as it cared about its waistline and hips....Would such an industry exist if people didn't loathe themselves? Or does it exist to exacerbate pre-existing loathing and to "offer a solution" for it?
TO BE CONTINUED NOTES: The images above have been copied from various websites under the aegis of "fair use" (see esp. the first criterion of "fair use" practice). Much recent controversy has arisen over the precise application of "fair use," especially concerning web content. See, e.g., Maryly Snow, "Digital Images And Fair Use Web Sites" and NOW Transcript: Fair Use Controversy. 1. Sources for Britney Spears: 2. Book cover of Christopher Hitchens, Letters To A Young Contrarian (Basic Books, 2001). 3. First Santayana publication of The Sense of Beauty: Rare And Beautiful. 4. War picture from the Hidden Side of the Yugoslav War. 5. Treadmill (Advanced Fitness); Man & machine (www.bowflex.com); Woman & gadget (Advanced Total Trainer); Strong man (www.bodylastics.com).
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