Unconscious Optics

This is from the Norton Anthology of English Literature headnotes to “The Sixteenth Century”:

Renaissance literature is the product of a rhetorical culture, a culture steeped in the arts of persuasion and trained to process complex verbal signs. (The contemporary equivalent would be the ease with which we deal with complex visual signals, effortlessly processing such devices as fade-out, montage, crosscutting, and morphing.)

If I were to distill modernity into one quality it would be the overabundance of morphing. I bet things are morphing into other things right in front of me – cats into dogs, regular people into powerful rangers – so much that I don’t even notice. It makes you wonder whether our culture has become so saturated with morphing that morphing has lost its affective power.



I can process this image with amazing ease; much like how a sixteenth-century person would have processed an elaborate peroration.

It's all a blog.

I was just thinking about political blogs and "The Daily Show" and old time political cartoons. That blog would really write itself, though. Just stew on it for a second.
My skills as a playwright of imagined histories -- though I prefer "situation creator" of imagined histories-- have really been growing lately [sound of all readers pretending like they didn't notice] so I thought I'd share with you this latest scene I wrote about hanging out with your friends during yesteryear...if one of your friends during yesteryear was an old time political cartoonist.

Political Cartoonist: Hey guys. I was just thinking: aren't taxation and tariffs almost exactly like two tiny pigs dressed in baby clothes? And what about these industrial monopolies? Could they be more a giant fat person with skinny legs and a top hat and a thousand arms?
Friends: [gales of laughter]
Political Cartoonist: And everything is well labeled!
Friends: [gales of laughter]

laughter dies down

Friend 1: On a more serious note, we have got to do something about this infant mortality rate.
Friend 2: Agreed.
Friend 3: Seriously. At the very least it's just incredibly depressing.

An Historical Reenactment:

A Response to the Republican Presidential Candidates' Debate.

In this historical re-enactment, the part of "Nick 5-7 years ago" will be played by Charlie Romanelli
.
The part of "The General Opinion of the American Populace" will be portrayed by stage veteran Swoosie Kurtz.



SCENE 1.

Curtains open. It is 5-7 years ago. Nick's apartment. The stage is bare, save a bong, a copy of "A Lover's Discourse," and some rare T. Rex on vinyl. "Nick," dressed in freshly laundered navy blue sweatpants and a plaid long-sleeved button-up, Polo and rendered in a color pattern subtly bolder than expected, sits upon a wooden stool, real "cool and casual." Sounds of popular songs, political speeches, TV sitcoms, and police sirens blare, simultaneously, in a cacophonous, disorienting, and familiar barrage of corporate media bullshit. "The General Opinion of the American Populace," dressed in a black unitard with a tinfoil-covered cardboard box on her head that creates the illusion that she is a "talking head" on a television news program, enters stage left. Silence.

TGOotAP: Is it just me or is John McCain the only one in Washington who makes any sense? He's the only guy who isn't playing politics and is just telling it like it is. I love him. Everybody loves him. I want to hang out with him so bad it hurts. It's a shame he isn't a front runner in the Presidential campaign, because he is exactly what Washington -- what this entire country -- needs right now. He was tortured in a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp for 6 years. He is the REAL. GOD. DAMNED. DEAL.

Nick: Hold. Up. If you were tortured in Vietnam for 6 years I'm gonna venture that I cannot understand you at all. I think you should be a candidate for maybe working on dealing with that(at your own pace), some serious relaxing, and just spending as much time as possible with your family. Your psyche is, as the least I can say, radically different than that of almost everyone else in the United States, and is probably extremely fragile and/or extremely volatile. I really don't think you should be trying to run a country.

TGOotAP: YOU WILL SHUT THE FUCK UP, NICK! YOU WILL SHUT UP AND NEVER SPEAK AGAIN! (in a robot voice) This message was sponsored by corporations.

Blackout



SCENE 2.Curtains open. Present day. Silence. Silence. Both actors enter stage right and stand tall before the audience.

TGOotAP: John McCain is so clearly clinically insane that I find it unnerving to watch him speak publicly.
Nick: I told you that guy was nuts.

Each slowly removes their wig and reveals a bald head.

Nick and TGOotAP: And we both have breast cancer.


THE END