It's ironic that Whitman, who had such an enormous appetite for direct contact, for breathing flesh, touched or just seen, was also inspired by photography, a brand new invention during his time. In "Pictures," a poem written before Leaves of Grass, Whitman compares the mind to a gallery of photos, and when his masterpiece came out, he explained in an unsigned review, "Its author is Walter Whitman, and the book is a reproduction of the author. His name is not on the frontispiece, but his portrait, half length, is. The contents of the book form a daguerreotype of his inner being ["] "
Well, we've arrived at that hell universe where sexed up reproductions have eclipsed what's real, where we're hypnotized and titillated daily by a bombardment of hallucinations produced by Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Washington DC. It's all P.R., all the time now. Last week, we saw Obama and Sasha bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico. It's curious that only one photo was released. Judging from the light, a shutter speed of 1/200 would suffice, so maybe they were only in the water for one two hundredth of a second, with a nervous Michelle, just outside the frame, beckoning, "Get the hell out of that Corexit stew, honey!!! Quick!"
Looking at that image, I immediately thought of Mao in the Yangtze. At 72-years-old, The Great Helmsman covered nine miles in 65 minutes, according to state propaganda. No one ever said Communists were subtle. When it came to suckering and lulling the masses, however, they always had much to learn from Capitalists, and China, at least, is catching up fast. Don't harangue. Seduce! Don't ban "cultural poison." Facilitate it! It has just been announced that China will allow some web porn, both foreign and domestic. With a billion (hairy) hands newly preoccupied, less energy will be left for griping, that's for sure. It's instructive to remember that a poet, Bei Dao, was at the heart of the Tienanmen protest in 1989. In the new, media-saturated China, this would be highly unlikely.
The propaganda we're fed doesn't have to be as crude as, say, a cheerful Bush feeding turkey to troops, or a young, attractive woman without nose and, "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan." More insidious is the beamed appearance of normalcy, the goofy jokes, dancing contests and fried chicken ads, etc, that's masking pervasive rot and despair. As more crimes are committed against us and in our names, look for more trivia to drown our exhausted minds.
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