This Is What Power Looks Like

Posted: December 2, 2010 in Uncategorized
6

‘Parlement’ (Parliament) by Thomas Demand, 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/dec/02/deutsche-borse-photography-prize-shortlist#/?picture=369283171&index=6

BORING, ISN’T IT?

Comments
  1. hmm says:
    December 3, 2010 at 7:31 am

    Dropping by here because the wikileaks cablegate site is down yet again. dailymail News says Assange will supposedly be arrested sometime today (and very insightfully noting, “in the midst of mounting american anger at the release of cables”).

    Power is not this. This is just the tool for power. Power is using something that looks like this while hiding the fact that it buys you a mansion in the hamptons and a private island. Most people who inhabit this image, however, are just functionaries who have no such power. Even restricted to the painting’s title, “parliament”, most parliamentarians are under the thumb of their party’s directorate, in the hopes that someday they’ll rise to that directorate. If they aren’t already grafting.

    However, for the few rebellious who fight their small good fight anyway, whether as a freshman in parliament or a low level office clerk, they probably feel like they have the most power, despite having the least.

    Isn’t it curious how second wave feminist ideas about “how sexual relations should be” keep rearing their ugly head to ruin the world? With assange (who cares if the facts aren’t “all in” yet), it resembles a date rape or a sexual harassment case. Woman talks to man, doesn’t like that he gets grope-y about it, babbles with some authority figure or feminist “sister” who never gets any and convinces her she was molested/assaulted/objectified/”made to symbolize the degradation of modern woman by chauvinst pigs everywhere” and she goes running and sobbing enough to bring the cops into it. And it happened twice.
    Seems like feminism of the man-hating, patriarchy bashing, PC genre is alive and vociferous in sweden. (and I’m well aware that it is, through the misty memory these past few years of stories about swedish “anti-sexism” that sound like nothing but a uni course in woman studies).

    It proves that most North Americans are just out of their mind in love with the blonde aryan ideal (like nazis!) that they project all their lust onto it (despite how ugly the swedish bikini team has always been). Or that the swedes are the most “anglo” of all scandinavians.
    You know how few swedes look like ethereal models, either male or female? Aside from how many have black hair, they all look like mean germans. If there’s any country where sex harassment and male bashing has such currency outside the puritanical world anglo network (USA, Canada, Australia, England) , it’s sweden.

    then again, maybe all the menacing, hazy and not-so-hazy threats just made assange more daring than most guys tend to be in civilization. If I thought I might have a bullet with my name on it at any time, I might try and score a few barbarous assaults too.
    Don’t want to die without scoring the months leading up to the end.
    And I don’t even have the history of moral heft to fall back on for a rationalization based on a “role” I fulfill.

    anyway, we’ll see just how internally patriarchal wikileaks is or whether they’re organized to survive and operate headless for a while.

    Reply
  2. hmm says:
    December 3, 2010 at 7:34 am

    like the borg!

    Reply
  3. Caroline Hagood says:
    December 5, 2010 at 3:53 pm

    Boring-o!

    Reply
  4. hmm says:
    December 6, 2010 at 6:55 am

    oye!
    I read about this before and COMPLETELY forgot. Who can follow our endlessly changing yet endlessly revealing BS pumped western news cycle?! Not I, not I.

    http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2010/12/04/assanges-chief-accuser-has-her-own-history-with-us-funded-anti-castro-groups-one-of-which-has-cia-ties/

    http://www.counterpunch.org/shamir09142010.html

    title is :
    Making a Mockery of the Real Crime of Rape

    although this should probably go in the rape culture post. but rape and boring power have so much to do with one another. not so strange bedfellows!

    Reply
  5. hmm says:
    December 6, 2010 at 7:46 am

    also, it adds support to my position (and against it) that although feminism of the past several decades may be blameworthy for much,
    it is very easy to overstate is destructive power and ignore other aspects of the real world in the process. bureaucratic power and other interests, for example.

    Reply
    • quiet riot girl says:
      December 6, 2010 at 11:57 am

      Indeed, hmm. That’s partly why I posted this photo. To keep things in perspective.

      Tho feminism is part of the bureacracy I’d say, especially in countries such as Sweden and Norway.

      Reply

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