6 degrees of derealization

Its a paradox of sorts, that the great technology of reproduction which ostensibly is supposed to serve memory, in fact tends to make us forget what is memorable: namely a real experience, a conjunction of thought processes and emotions reduced to simple appearance. The technology dominates resulting in a certain cannibalization. Allegedly democratic and populist, like say Andy Warhol’s art, reproduction serves a branding and cult of celebrity, a person and commodity, something between the living and the animate is fawned off as something particular and personal when its aim is merely a viewer pleasing personality.

Marilyn Monroe as a svelter version of Lillian Russell. Photographed by Richard Avedon in 1958. The bicycle is a replica of a famous gold plated one given to Russell by a manufacturer. Image:http://www.thisismarilyn.com/marilyn-monroe-by-richard-avedon-49606.photo

It is possible that in our  “society of the spectacle” from Guy Debord, that publicity is the only ideology, to which all others contribute, or at least it has a significance and importance of ideology. Its the ideology of trade and its impersonal trade, but one which does represent an entire attitude to life; glamorized robots interacting in a series of theatrical appearances. The entertaining celebrity, like a Marilyn Monroe is still fascinating as a kind of robot in a merchandising spectacle. In the realm of the iconic and the false, and the photo-shop type tool available, almost anyone can make themselves into a celebrity, a pseudo celebrity which is almost as good, and can be as seemingly good looking and attractive as the unreal thing.

---VIK MUNIZ “It’s my favorite photograph!” says Muniz, whose work often incorporates strange materials (jelly, thread, Bosco). “And the credits of The Misfits, one of my favorite movies, use puzzle pieces. This uses ten puzzles, with the image rotated at odd angles—like 37 degrees, 48 degrees, clockwise, and counterclockwise— relating the material and the idea.” ---Read More:http://nymag.com/news/features/31523/index4.html

ADDENDUM:

Labor and food historian Harvey Levenstein writes in Revolution at the Table that “Stage star Lillian Russell, ‘airy, fairy, Lillian, the American beauty’ – after whom America’s favorite rose was named – whose hourglass (while corsetted) figure with its ample hips and very full bosom was the late nineteenth-century ideal, weighed about two hundred pounds.” Even better, “her enormous appetite was almost as legendary as her beauty.”  She apparently also created spectacles of the two-wheeled variety. Monroe, Some Like it Hot notwithstanding, apparently never topped 140. She produced spectacles no less beautiful, but of a smaller, more tragic sort.Read More:http://bicycleresearchproject.blogspot.ca/2012/01/100-words-or-less-marilyn-monroe-as.html


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