Thanksgiving Week Selfie

Ancestors looking down

Mirzoeff, How to See the World, Chapter 5


Quote "As the German writer Walter Benjamin beautifully put it: Paris was once “the capital of the nineteenth century” (1999). It is now the largest museum in the world, the museum of the nineteenth century. As Woody Allen’s hit film Midnight in Paris (2010) captured very well, many tourists come in search of a city that has long gone, whether it’s the surrealist era of the 1920s, or the Impressionist heyday in the 1870s. (p. 163). Kindle Edition. 

Response: I've never thought of Paris as a museum but think more about it is true. People have this look that they envision whenever they think of Paris. If this were disrupted then to many Paris would not be Paris. Yet is natural for any city to change in history. To try to keep an idealized version of a city from nearly 2 centuries ago is ridiculous. The past must be preserved but to the detriment of those living in the present.

Quote "Sharpeville changed nothing at the time. It convinced many black South Africans of the need for armed resistance as the only way forward. South Africa at that time was based on legalized white supremacy and until that came to an end, no single event was likely to change it. The visible distinction of “race” overwrote all other issues and priorities in defense of the social hierarchy. (p. 181).  Kindle Edition. 

Response: People like to think of history as a set of key moments that caused a turn, a change in the status quo. And yet there exists a multitude of events that to an outsider observer would be the catalyst for change but were not. History is the build-up of events that at times can lead to rapid change or primarily slow and steady change unnoticeable until looked upon in the future.


John Berger, Ch 7

Quote "It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more.
This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer - even though we will be poorer by having spent our money."

Response: This message is even more overt than it was when this book was published 50 years ago. Today's advent of near instantaneous shopping and being able to get what we want in a day or less has fed this behavior. We can buy so many goods and services without leaving our homes and thus clutter our homes with these riches made by some poor workers thousands of miles away. Yet we ourselves the rich of the world are still quite poor even with all of this materiality around us. Our lives are truly not changed by buying so much junk just as Berger said poorer.

Quote "The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way: the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product."

Response: Products today want to sell us an experience a feeling that we lack. Yet we ourselves can provide such things without having to pay money. The little bit of narcissism we feel for ourselves is somehow commodified and sold to us. If we don't get this product then we don't love ourselves. It is a paradox in it self as healthy narcissism is predicated on us loving ourselves irrespective of outside sources.