THE DEBASING OF THE SPECTACLE

"The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself........the spectacle is the main production of present-day society" - From 'The Society of the Spectacle' by Guy Debord.

Michael Adebolajo goes public.

There is a sad and shocking inevitability to the events in Woolwich, London. The savage killing of off duty soldier, Lee Rigby, in broad daylight was carried out in the full knowledge that maximum global publicity could be guaranteed.

It was a chillingly efficient act of terrorism; the death of one man was all that was required to get the warped message across. The perpetrators knew that there was no need to issue a warning to ensure worldwide press coverage.

We no longer have to wait for film crews to arrive on the scene for such events to be beamed across the world as breaking news in the most vivid visual terms.

ONE NATION UNDER A FORMAT

In November 2010, Zadie Smith wrote about the movie Social Network for the New York Review of Books.

This was not just a review, but a brilliant critique of the whole communicative, ‘let’s share everything’ propaganda machine which Facebook epitomizes.

Reading it again, makes me think how on the nose she was. Here’s an extract:

“With Facebook, Zuckerberg seems to be trying to create something like a Noosphere, an Internet with one mind, a uniform environment in which it genuinely doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you make “choices” (which means, finally, purchases). If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out. One nation under a format. To ourselves, we are special people, documented in wonderful photos, and it also happens that we sometimes buy things. This latter fact is an incidental matter, to us. However, the advertising money that will rain down on Facebook—if and when Zuckerberg succeeds in encouraging 500 million people to take their Facebook identities onto the Internet at large—this money thinks of us the other way around. To the advertisers, we are our capacity to buy, attached to a few personal, irrelevant photos”.

You can read the whole article here.

DAVID ICKE’S MAD DREAMWORLD

Last week on a newstand at my local train station in Cesena, Italy, I spotted a copy of a big fat paperback about ‘the lies behind 9/11′  by David Icke, entitled ‘Alice nel paese delle Meraviglie e il Disastro delle Torri Gemelle’ (Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Centre Disaster’).

If you are a Brit of a certain age, this author’s name will be forever associated with a notorious interview on the Terry Wogan show in 1991 where he claimed to be the ‘Son of the Godhead’.

Well, to be fair, he didn’t actually say this in so many words; he just didn’t deny that this was his calling when the question was posed.

Not surprisingly, the British public were not prepared for the second coming to be announced on prime time TV by an ex-sports presenter wearing a turquoise shell suit.

The fallout from this interview was immense and immediate. Icke, at that time a soccer correspondent for the BBC and Green Party spokesman, was subjected to a massive level of ridicule.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if, after this experience,  he had gone to ground for ever or fled the country. Instead, and against all the odds, he weathered the storm and has gradually reinvented himself as a  visionary figure whose self-appointed role is to awaken global citizens from a living nightmare of false illusions and mind manipulation.

THIS IS A SICK OLD WORLD

The Pentecostal Children’s Minister, Becky Fischer says this is a sick old world but can her summer camps really be part of the cure?

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s documentary Jesus Camp looks more like sustained child abuse than proof of the healing hand of the Lord.

What do you think?

(Image courtesy of atheistmemebase)

RELIGULOUS REVIEWED

RELIGULOUS directed by Larry Charles (USA, 2008)

“Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so”. The words of the Christian hymn are as simplistic as a nursery rhyme and far from being a deep reflection on faith, yet this entertaining documentary shows that the majority cling to beliefs based on arguments that are rarely more complex than this.

The movie’s clunky title - a portmanteau word combining ‘religious’ and ‘ridiculous’  – makes it plain that it doesn’t set out to be a balanced academic analysis. Written and presented by comedian Bill Maher, whose background is half Jewish – half Catholic, it is a shamelessly opinionated piece in the  Michael Moore mould.

Mayer is a smart and articulate agnostic but since the whole one hour forty minutes is centred on him, his smug, self-satisfied manner gets a little tiresome at times. He makes a lot of good points but also has a tendency to be heavy-handed. For example, when one man says that he is looking forward to the afterlife, Maher bluntly asks him what stops him from committing suicide.

Despite these flaws, Maher reveals how otherwise intelligent, rational minded individuals have a knack of reading of the bible with blinkers on, conveniently glossing over the holy book’s inconsistencies, inaccuracies and absurdities.