In rock videos, everything is literal -- and not only in rock videos. The reason that Jag Bhaduria, the Canadian Member of Parliament who was accused of having misrepresented his educational background, got into trouble was that he appeared to have done something that looked like what people look like they are doing when they are presented as crooks. A Reform Party MP was criticized for having a quote from Hitler in his literature, although the quote was clearly not meant to imply his support for Hitler -- if anything, just the opposite, for it was meant to warn people of individuals like Hitler. But, as in other similar cases, all that mattered was the appearance. The state of the language itself is another ominous indication. Idioms are lost -- no-one seems to know, for example, what "begging the question" means anymore. At "best," they imagine it means requesting to be questioned! Attention is limited to appearances and surfaces, without any apparent comprehension of what may lie beneath them, or even that anything might lie beneath them.
But culture and civilization begin where appearances end -- though this statement itself is probably incomprehensible to a modern audience. Postmodernism as a self-fulfilling prophecy?
No comments:
Post a Comment