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Disposable Manufacture
Nov. 15th, 2009 03:38 pmBuddy and I watched Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent last night. It was the first time we were properly introduced to his ideas and what he stands for, which is (I think) a form of socialist anarchism that has the potential for being true democracy. The documentary is now dated, filmed when the internet didn't exist and people still permed their hair. Chomsky looks a lot like Buddy's dad and made a lot of sense to me, especially in his criticism of North America's news moguls and blunders by the American government in the past decades. The documentary even presented some of the accusations levelled at Chomsky over the years and then proceeded to destroy them in the best John Stewart way possible, allowing the man to come out intact in the end.
It got us both thinking about politics and why we don't engage more with it. Any of it. And how a lot of Chomsky's predictions in the 80s have come true nowadays, but also how a lot of good has been done (his help to expose, for example, the atrocities in East Timor.)
Have you noticed around London these posters about benefit thieves? The ads are on TV too (saw one last night during The X Factor.) Here it is. These ads show people from working class backgrounds who realistically don't make more than 10 grand a year portrayed as criminals. Let's suppose, theoretically, that the people in these ads stole one grand in benefits. They get caught, prosecuted and ordered to pay back. Perhaps they even get sent to prison. Then let's suppose that in prison they meet 498 other benefit criminals who also stole a grand each. That's 500 thousands pounds in total.
Well, why are there no ads around town, especially in Canary Wharf, targeting bankers who manipulated the financial system for their own greedy reasons until we were all in a mess, and who are now still walking home with millions of pounds in bonuses? Surely one of those bankers is worth more than 500 working class benefit scroungers? These ads strike me as so prejudiced that I'm left wishing the best of luck to any dole scrounger and benefit thief out there.
On a lighter note, I learnt in The Guardian yesterday of this interesting photo game played with Flickr accounts. It's called noticings. I think some of you photographers would enjoy it. To me, it's a good exercise in paying more attention to the environment around you within a set of rules and structure (this month, for example, you get bonus points for photographing red things). It looks like I'm the only person in my borough playing the game so far. Won't you play with me?
It got us both thinking about politics and why we don't engage more with it. Any of it. And how a lot of Chomsky's predictions in the 80s have come true nowadays, but also how a lot of good has been done (his help to expose, for example, the atrocities in East Timor.)
Have you noticed around London these posters about benefit thieves? The ads are on TV too (saw one last night during The X Factor.) Here it is. These ads show people from working class backgrounds who realistically don't make more than 10 grand a year portrayed as criminals. Let's suppose, theoretically, that the people in these ads stole one grand in benefits. They get caught, prosecuted and ordered to pay back. Perhaps they even get sent to prison. Then let's suppose that in prison they meet 498 other benefit criminals who also stole a grand each. That's 500 thousands pounds in total.
Well, why are there no ads around town, especially in Canary Wharf, targeting bankers who manipulated the financial system for their own greedy reasons until we were all in a mess, and who are now still walking home with millions of pounds in bonuses? Surely one of those bankers is worth more than 500 working class benefit scroungers? These ads strike me as so prejudiced that I'm left wishing the best of luck to any dole scrounger and benefit thief out there.
On a lighter note, I learnt in The Guardian yesterday of this interesting photo game played with Flickr accounts. It's called noticings. I think some of you photographers would enjoy it. To me, it's a good exercise in paying more attention to the environment around you within a set of rules and structure (this month, for example, you get bonus points for photographing red things). It looks like I'm the only person in my borough playing the game so far. Won't you play with me?
