Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Never Forgotten: The Day America Was Born
Update: My attention has been drawn to this lovely "patriotic shopping" photo essay posted at kos, the mind-blowing highlight of which is this:
Seen a lot of shit, but never an exploding Twin Towers lighter.
Giuseppe Abote breaks it down (from the Comments):
Does anyone think there's a connection between a) the fireball coming out of the south tower on the face of the lighter; and b) the flame made by the user of the lighter? Look at the positioning. And the proportions of a) and b) would be about the same, right? If anything b) would be even bigger proportionally than the actual 9/11 fireball in the photo.
Is that a way of never forgetting -- symbolically re-enacting the 9/11 attacks, and in fact symbolically taking part in them? And then using the lighter flame, now imbued with this special and complicit meaning, to light a stick of tobacco that will eventually kill you?
You could almost compare it to one of those primitive rituals in which some great, long-past castrophe is re-enacted in order to benefit or purify the group, or to return it to some supposed Golden Age. Except in those days the rituals were generally designed to, like, *ward off* disease and pestillence and civil commotion. In this case it seems like the objectives are to increase those things: cancer, war, obsessive fear, societal divisions.
Get informed read Mircea Eliade "The Myth of the Eternal Return"!!
I mean, of course the lighter is mostly a sort of bumper sticker meant to signify one's membership in the guild of assholes, or else just to piss other people off. But beyond that, what kind of sick fuck would want to gaze at that picture every day, or actually more like *20+* times a day -- while slowly giving himself CANCER?!?
posted by Blicero : 7/04/2006 06:46:00 PM
