Psyops is advertising. Social control-based advertising.

[Sweejak]

Dang, Rockwell's rendition of a Pollock is awesome!

[Sweejak]

I don't see why Hugh's ideas and Barracuda's are mutually exclusive, assuming of course that artistic ideas are hijacked by hijackers, not invented by them.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Well, hello Dali. So nice to have you...but George CIA Lucas put the word "war" and "force" on birthday cakes for toddlers, for gawdz sake!

Consider the sociology of shaping a culture by shaping its children.



















http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Make-A-Star-Wars-Cake



Fascism is marketed like any other product.

Compare the social affect of an anti-fascist painting abstract, static and for intellectuals, with mass-marketed light sabers and jets for kidz at the psynaplex/burger dispensory-

[OP ED]

ha. i got exactly the opposite values from my childhood love for star wars, including, that is, the notion that the use of blind force for militant imperialism is a, y'know, bad thing.

Consider the sociology of shaping a culture by shaping its children.

consider that children are smarter than you give them credit for?


i find your assertion that children cannot read the alternative [intended and older] meaning in the word "force", as being personally offensive to my sensibilities.

[the "bad guys", btw, are referred to merely as "the empire" and/or "the emperor"]



[how is that anything but anti-imperialist?]

[just_dude]

At what point does it stop fascism?

the point at which, as a symbol, and in and of itself, it inspired the barracuda to stand against fascism.

[supposing "fascism" is your buzzword representing the causation of suffering]

this point, also, is the only relevant point to be made concerning art, its point of affect.

how is that not obvious?

It is obvious. For every Dali, there is someone with the same materially evident artistic genious who...garners a different kind of fame...and in it a wider range of point-of-affect. Now, I may have spoke in absolutes earlier, and for that I'm sorry. But hey, Red team, your serve

wrt the section i've added bold to: such as who?

who among Dali's contemporaries, being overt non-incidental apologists for militancy, can you name?

...

a sincere question. generally speaking, for-the-machine art tends towards the mediocre at best.

what is the primary non-political difference between John Lennon and Toby Keith?


OP ED's answer: your great-great-grandchildren will have heard of Lennon.

"Imagine" could be interpreted as an anthem of scientific fascism.

The point-of-affect is interpretation. Interpretation can be hijacked.

Hell, it can be institutionalized.

Toby Keith could be CIA for all we know. He could be Senator in 15 years, president in 30, even without affiliation. Just ain't no tellin.

Marketing is the big art game now. Even in Dali's day it dominated. Images that spurn people to act vs. images that spurn people to think. Fear and Pride based vs. Introspection and Paradox.

No contest in America at least.

Are you a Red Stater? Or are you a Pepsi drinker? Are you a defense contractor who regularly donated to the Left in '00 and '04 but poured all your resources into Romney and McCain in '08? What's the matter--don't want to pay higher taxes on that Dali you just sold? It kinda belies your corporate logo to vote Red now. Huh. Co-op or a Cousin.

"I believe that the moment is at hand, when by paranoia and active advances of the mind, it is possible (simultaneously with automatism and other passive states) to systematize confusion and thus help to discredit completely, the world of reality".

Now that's fucking ominous. Can be construed different ways. Where you may see a warning I may see a license. Indeed, if I were born to the higher class, I would be susceptible to that! Thank Bog for suffering!

per Dali's contemporaries, I'd rather not invoke, cuz it really doesn't matter.

We're talking about government by secrecy, aren't we? Isn't this Hugh's thread? Why the fucking rug-pulling and diversions? Again and again and again. He's derided as a lonely paranoid. That's the sum of the argument. Nevermind actually contributing to his malaise, just cut him down, divert, ad hom, whatever and ever.

Hows about, instead of answering his posts with "you're a tard and your shit's all fucked up" or "this is how I disprove your notions with one fell swoop" you simply say "maybe" or don't say anything at all--or even better, contribute to the subject matter.

[just_dude]

Twitter is CIA for semantic agents

"Samantha" and advertising...post-black list 1962 lawsuit by John Henry Faulk against advertising firm Young and Rubicam for enforcing the witch-hunts and ending many careers...

See this is crazy. Now why would I want to tell Hugh he's nuts for this suggestion? If I do that, there might be someone watching who has something important to say, and might not because of that precedence.

Instead, I'd rather come up with something that tempers it's insane reach. In a constructive and civil manner.

Or just keep my mouth shut, which is what I do, cuz I just don't know.

[Sweejak]

Many years ago, in the 70's, the USAID picked up one of my etchings and sent it to Europe as part of a show. At the time I thought that was an odd choice, funny too because I used to go up there for hours and hours and just watch the sky all day, often with a bit of pot, but I went back to playing with my buds and buddettes. Here is the etching, it's called View From Cat Mountain.


I'm not sure what the USAID wanted to say with it, but for me it was a depiction of Austin before the McMansions which I knew were coming and what a really hot summer day feels like from Cat Mountain and probably a lot of other unconscious things. It's actually pretty representative aside from the blown away sky. It's obviously not political and certainly not intended to whitewash anything., but maybe just the fact that it isn't political is their idea.

I've thought about it and figure it just got caught up in their system and they had to send off something, you know to justify budgets, altho I don't think the USAID is really worried about that. So what am I missing?

[RomanyX]

"photo unavailable"

[Sweejak]

Why don't the image tags work.
Here, from Image Shack.

[just_dude]

How come you didn't tell me Dali went into advertising, Barracuda?[/url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupa_Chups[url][/url]

[just_dude]

I think they liked your etching, Sweejak, because it is awesome.

[Sweejak]

Yeah it is pretty good!

Thinking about Pollock and the general perception that the the US was a provincial and imitative backwater the USAID really did score with advancing abstract art/action painting and setting the cutting edge in the US. Now I can see how doing so would take away from a trendy Eurocommunism but I'm not sure about taking it further and saying that it was used further to kill off social realism, political murals and the like. I wouldn't be too surprised to know that some, at some levels, saw that as a goal and it may be that one led to another, and that in other cases that it was indeed the agenda.

I do know Russians who were totally fed up with their brand of Soviet Social Realism and rebelled at any chance.

Disinfo points to an article about Pollock.
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/do ... index.html

[barracuda]

Sweejak, I think it is at least worth considering (and probably waaay more than at least worth considering) that Abstract Expressionism in its heroic stage presented an artwork that was simply more fully realized, more advanced wrt its core modernity (that is, evidenced a natural extention of modernity theory), and finally simply more beautiful than Mexican social realism to just about anyone who had eyes. I mean, it's not as if A.E. sprang full-blown out of nowhere, suddenly eclipsing everything else on the scene. Many, if ot most, of the greatest painters of the modern era had been painting in an abstract or non-representational manner for nearly fifty years already. There wasn't some period preceeding the abstract expressionists in which Mexican social realism was seen as the next big trend, or as being at the forefront of high-ticket painiting. Really, for the manipulations you're talking about to have occurred, some godlike force would have to have been slowly nurturing Kandinsky, nudging the Blue Rider Group, giving small suggestions to Arp and... ach, the whole notion is ridiculous. Abstraction had been the hot gallery and auction seller since before WW One. The artform practised by the post-war New York abstractionists evolved in a completely organic fashion over decades of incremental changes in theory and practise until the power of the fully formed work and the evident scale of the "movement" was undeniable, and the marketplace did what it had been doing for half a century - selling abstract art. Siquieros? Sorry, but it's no big secret that Rothko and DeKooning were simply much, much better painters.

How come you didn't tell me Dali went into advertising, Barracuda?

This isn't really an art history class. Dali sold everything from neckties to couches to perfume, what of it? He was Dali. As I said, his example is representative, but certainly not the sin qua non of my argument, which is simply that culture has a much larger influence on life as you experience it than psyops. Psyops is just a small part of culture. Really, is that so hard to fathom?

[monster]

http://tinyurl.com/n9h8a2

[OP ED]

"Imagine" could be interpreted as an anthem of scientific fascism.

it could.
although this is an interpretation i've only ever heard from christians who are fearful of a world with no heaven.

note: OP ED is not nearly as intimidated by scientific fascism as he is by blind-idiotic-pseudo-fascism, which is more common.

[Nietzsche was a scientific fascist, ole Uncle Adolf was a blind idiot with delusions of grandeur. also a mediocre artist]

The point-of-affect is interpretation. Interpretation can be hijacked.

Hell, it can be institutionalized.

only temporarily. that is, only as long as the empire, or its current Caesarian regime's action plan, manages to survive. Which is never as long as it envisions.
[see again: Hitler]

btw, van Gogh terrified the nazis, for some reason, but his art reproductions are more widely purchased than Adolf's mostly plagiarized little book.

(he only gets a third as many google hits by name, but i'd imagine his are more sympathetic on average)

...

the point being that "Dali is immortal" and will outlast the American empire. He said so himself. it was on teevee so i'm sure you can cross-check that somewhere.

Toby Keith could be CIA for all we know. He could be Senator in 15 years, president in 30, even without affiliation. Just ain't no tellin.

either way, without killing a few million people, he has no chance of being remembered by anyone in a century or two.

Marketing is the big art game now. Even in Dali's day it dominated. Images that spurn people to act vs. images that spurn people to think. Fear and Pride based vs. Introspection and Paradox.

No contest in America at least.

i do not have as low an opinion of americans as you do, it seems. i am an american, after all, born on a military base, and i have exceptional taste in art. inherited from a long line of soldiers, no less.

Are you a Red Stater?

Michigan is an overall purplish state.

Detroit is Indigo.

Or are you a Pepsi drinker?

i drink mountain dew sometimes.

mostly because caffeine is addictive and because that shade of green is my second favorite color on most days.

Are you a defense contractor who regularly donated to the Left in '00 and '04 but poured all your resources into Romney and McCain in '08?

no?

why?

What's the matter--don't want to pay higher taxes on that Dali you just sold?

Dali was recently, on and around my last birthday, because god loves me more than you, exhibited at the DIA, and i got in with a free pass i had recently received in the mail, and took pictures with my overpriced cellphone of paintings that were already available for free on the internet. printable at higher resolutions than my eye could attend to, and in that sense, superior to the uber-expensive originals.

It kinda belies your corporate logo to vote Red now. Huh. Co-op or a Cousin.

my corporate logo is a redesign of a Blake engraving. I made it myself, with wood, paint, and sulfuric acid.

"I believe that the moment is at hand, when by paranoia and active advances of the mind, it is possible (simultaneously with automatism and other passive states) to systematize confusion and thus help to discredit completely, the world of reality".

an admirable goal. I'm sure Blake would agree with me.

Now that's fucking ominous. Can be construed different ways. Where you may see a warning I may see a license. Indeed, if I were born to the higher class, I would be susceptible to that! Thank Bog for suffering!

i see nothing but an opportunity, personally.
i wish more people were susceptible to see it [reality] my way.

"Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the LORD'S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!"
(numbers 11:29, i think)

per Dali's contemporaries, I'd rather not invoke, cuz it really doesn't matter.

clearly i disagree or i wouldn't have mentioned it. harder than you thought, heh?

We're talking about government by secrecy, aren't we?

on one hand, on the other we're talking about mass distributed media of many sorts. which, by its very nature, is most obviously open to public interpretation. which can fail to be hijacked as well.

Isn't this Hugh's thread?

this is a public forum for debate. if you are seeking universal agreement, i'd suggest you try a different realm. [domain]

besides, Hugh is much stronger than you seem to see. If criticism about KWH-theorizing was going to get to him, it'd have happened by now.

Why the fucking rug-pulling and diversions?

such as?

Again and again and again. He's derided as a lonely paranoid.

that wouldn't be much of an insult if i levelled it, as i consider myself a lonely paranoid. or at least a severely cautious hermeticist.

That's the sum of the argument. Nevermind actually contributing to his malaise, just cut him down, divert, ad hom, whatever and ever.

actually, what you just did was a diversionary argumentative appeal often called a "straw man". You've cleverly inserted an easily overcome pseudo argument in place of those things i've actually said and addressed it instead of my actual positions.

Hugh never does that to me, btw.

Hows about, instead of answering his posts with "you're a tard and your shit's all fucked up" or "this is how I disprove your notions with one fell swoop" you simply say "maybe" or don't say anything at all--or even better, contribute to the subject matter.

I'm fairly certain i only rarely react with name calling, and it is almost exclusively towards those i'd consider myself on friendly terms with. nobody's perfect, of course, so i flame from time to time i'm sure.

if I had the notion that HMWs was merely an idiot, i'd have never spoken to him, and i'd have stopped reading his threads several years ago. (i've been posting here somewhat regularly since around 2004 or 2005) I have had many exchanges wherein Hugh and I were more or less on the same "side" as well. An example(s) being any and/or all of the "feminist" threads we've both engaged in for at least the last, say, ten months or so. In that context, as in many others, i consider our resident Manatee to be well placed in the land of obviously demonstrable reality the vast majority of the time.

i take issue with somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of his output at any given time, depending on the weather, as it largely entails the specialized concept he appears to have invented (or deduced) known as "keyword hijacking" which, before there was a rule against it, he often interrupted ongoing discussions to dysangelize about. see a thread i chose below, as one i remembered participating in, for an example of this:
(p10 or so is where our discussion took place)

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... sc&start=0

i recall this interaction, btw, on account of what i considered to be highly unlikely assertions surrounding art that i was familiar with in an not-quite-intimate fashion. which is to say i took it semi-personally.