Anthony Weiner as a Dionysian sacrifice. Dragged from the fields of Alba onto a sacrificial pyre.As James Frazer in the Golden Bough remarked, was the later pretence of treating the sacrificial victims as if they were human beings was merely part of a pious and merciful fraud? It is something which palmed off on the deity less precious victims than living men and women. This interpretation is supported by many undoubted cases in which animals have been substituted for human victims, though occasionally Moloch seemed to require more authentic substitutes in the form of Lincoln, Kennedy, and so on. The Weiners and Spitzers can be regarded as mediocre hors d’oeuvres .
image: http://totallycoolpix.com/2011/06/coolest-pix-of-2011-week-24/ Photo Mike Segar Reuters. ---Frazer:However, a tradition of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in child-bed. At Rome a shegoat was sacrificed to Vedijovis as if it were a human victim. Yet on the other hand it is equally possible, and perhaps more probable, that these curious rites were themselves mitigations of an older and ruder custom of sacrificing human beings, ...
As James Frazer wrote in the Golden Bough in 1922:
This was the practice in Chios and Tenedos; and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted. At Orchomenus, as we have seen, the human victim was taken from the women of an old royal family. As the slain bull or goat represented the slain god, so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him….
Read More: http://www.backtoclassics.com/gallery/caravaggio/narcissus/ ---Narcissus was arguably painted by Caravaggio, apparently during his years around the Contarelli chapel; it marks a unique theme for Caravaggio, that of illusion versus the real world, seen here as two halves of the artist's canvas. Theme inspired by Ovid's "Methamorphoses". Oil on canvas; currently hanging at Gallerie Nazionale d'Arte Antica.---
…The legends of the deaths of Pentheus and Lycurgus, two kings who are said to have been torn to pieces, the one by Bacchanals, the other by horses, for their opposition to the rites of Dionysus, may be, as I have already suggested, distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing divine kings in the character of Dionysus and of dispersing the fragments of their broken bodies over the fields for the purpose of fertilising them. It is probably no mere coincidence that Dionysus himself is said to have been torn in pieces at Thebes, the very place where according to legend the same fate befell king Pentheus at the hands of the frenzied votaries of the vine-god. Read More:http://www.bartleby.com/196/pages/page392.html
The contemporary argument is that somehow Twitter and Facebook represent the apogee of the “me generation” that marked the transition to a mentality of baby boomers and their affluence. Joseph heath called this the “rebel sell” where individualism is paramount, encouraged and commodified as an endless chase to appease personal vanity and a sense of status. To many, Twitter is a virtual “loud hailer”; Twitter is basically an internet based “loud hailer” system. The information you put into Twitter is instantly transmitted to your “followers.” Once the information, in Weiner’s case, bad and ugly is gone, it’s sayonara! No undo button available to retract a comment. Facebook is a bubble bursting repressent. If there was a dislike/indifferent button, ego’s would suffer from the absence of positive only opinions. Its doubtful that Americans are more self-absorbed or eager for approbation that previous generations as sociologists like Jean Twenge have claimed; rather this is the end game of Abraham Maslow and the excessive humanization of needs,arranged on a pyramid, the highest being self actualization; as well as a broad range of societal critiques ranging from Erich Fromm to David Riesman’s Lonely Crowd, all of which exalt the forms of flamboyancy incarnated by Weiner as a “rage against the machine”, a lonely battle against conformity and the homogenous.
Waterhouse. Echo and Narcissus. 1903. ---Sam Vaknin:This is a private case of a more general phenomenon. The narcissist likes to belong to groups or to frameworks of allegiance. He derives easy and constantly available Narcissistic Supply from them. Within them and from their members he is certain to garner attention, to gain adulation, to be castigated or praised. His False Self is bound to be reflected by his colleagues, co-members, or fellows. This is no mean feat and it cannot be guaranteed in other circumstances. Hence the narcissist's fanatic and proud emphasis of his membership. If a military man, he shows off his impressive array of medals, his impeccably pressed uniform, the status symbols of his rank. If a clergyman, he is overly devout and orthodox and places great emphasis on the proper conduct of rites, rituals and ceremonies. The narcissist develops a reverse (benign) form of paranoia: he feels constantly watched over by senior members of his group or frame of reference, the subject of permanent (avuncular) criticism, the centre of attention. If a religious man, he calls it divine providence. This self-centred perception also caters to the narcissist's streak of grandiosity, proving that he is, indeed, worthy of such incessant and detailed attention, supervision and intervention. Read More:http://www.matrixbookstore.biz/article4.htm
Ross Douthat:Writing in the late ’70s, Lasch distinguished modern narcissism from old-fashioned egotism. The contemporary narcissist, he wrote, differs “from an earlier type of American individualist” in “the tenuous quality of his selfhood.” Despite “his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem.” His innate insecurity can only be overcome “by seeing his ‘grandiose self’ reflected in the attentions of others, or by attaching himself to those who radiate celebrity, power and charisma.” Read More:http://prontherun.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/photos-that-dont-lie-giffords-and-weiner/
ADDENDUM:
Douthat:Facebook and Twitter did not forge the cultur
Interestingly, but perhaps coincidentally, the Weiner scandal broke and was concluded during the Hebrew Shavuoth holiday.It is the second of the three major festivals and comes fifty days after Passover. It marks the giving of the Torah by God to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai 3323 years ago. In Hebrew, the word “Shavuot” means “weeks” and stands for the seven weeks during which the Jewish people prepared themselves for the giving of the Torah. During this time they rid themselves of the scars of bondage, and who knows, maybe Weiner is a scar of bondage to be tossed to the wolves, at least metaphorically.
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