The Apotheosis of Aniconism

Photographs are often a propaganda tool.

Great self-esteemers think alike when it comes to idols and icons and cartoons and a’ that.

Easy to see the pleasures of membership in some happy few that esteem themselves far better than they esteem MacLuhanite proles who are so taken with pictures that one cannot be entirely sure that they could decipher the circumambient chickentracks correctly if they wanted to.

'Tis far better to be a tool user than fodder for tool users -- nobody elect or élite or neoteric is likely to dispute that self-evident truth.

Unfortunately this one self-preference is not an adequate field guide to Natural Mastery of the Universe, because MacLuhanated proles come in at least two different flavours, those who are with ‘us’ (bless their little hearts!) and ... the other sort. In a holy-Homelandic™ context, one ought to include a third class, perhaps the most important of all, call them "swing proles," MacLuhan victims whose politics is up for grabs, available to be grabbed by ‘our’ pictures, provided ‘we’ can do better pictures than ... the other sort of picturemongers.

Though I write merrily, as usual, there really is a lot to be said for using idols and icons as a Key to all political mythologies, as long as one gets beyond the unidimensional view of their significance. "Thousand words, good; one picture, bad!" sounds so silly that I doubt anybody really believes it, not even up at Castle Podhóretz -- not even at the New York Times Company and The Wall Street Jingo, where obviously the real basis of all the insufferable self-superioritisin’ is nothing more complicated than exclusion of cartoons. [1]

Iconocratic analysis (so to christen this hitherto neglected backwater of Soc. Sci.) must therefore be two-dimensional: on the Y axis, we have Aniconic Uppers over the losers of MacLuhan. On the X axis, we have the usual left and right, with or without an intermediate category of wishy-washies. However there is little point in admitting a category of Moderate Uppers to accommodate only Senators Collins and Snowe, a footnote would be adequate for that purpose. So draw a horizontal line across a blank sheet of paper and then divide the upper half into two parts and the bottom half into three, and there you are: clockwise from the first quadrant, (1) Wingnut Uppers, (2) wingnut proles, (3) swing proles, (4) Democratic proles, and (5) Democratic Uppers. [2]

With that paradigm borne in mind, the student should be better able to gauge certain practical difficulties that could result from an injudicious application of the insights of Neocomrades P. Wehner, ‘ian’, and K. Gjermani. The effect of exhibiting pictures to the proles, or withholding pictures from them, is likely to vary as between (1) loyal supporters of the neocomradely Party and Ideology, (2) welfare queens, union thugs, et hoc genus omne , and (3) intermediate specimens.

It is plain that the actual scribbler much prefers that the Abú Ghurayb (&c.) pictures should be withheld, but I fail to see exactly what calculation lies behind his announced druthers. "[O]bfuscating what occurred by the power of an image to influence and distort the general perception of events" could do with some disobfuscation itself, unless "general perception" means "everybody's perception." That interpretation is possible verbally, but it strikes me as unlikely. Furthermore, if it is what the neocomrade meant, he errs insofar as a large number of Aniconic Uppers are not going to change their minds about any issue of importance no matter what is in the peep show -- includin’ the neocomrade himself.

If "general perception" meant "the vulgar perception," the perception of everybody except Aniconic Uppers, it would be a little more plausible, but not much. For that proposition to possess any practical significance, one would have to suppose that it matters what the iconodule proles en masse make of the pictures, a supposition for which no support is offered and one that is probably wrong. It would be a mistake to claim that the opinions (as opposed to the interests) of Democratic or Wingnut proles *never* have any impact on their Democratic or Wingnut betters, but it does not happen very often. One would not expect it to: obviously it is for political Uppers to instruct their clients what to think rather than the other way around.

However the ‘general’ in "general perception" may have been originally intended, the principal objection to it is that lumps all the client classes together indiscriminately. It does not take a Nostradamus to predict that Party Neocomradess A. Coulter and Maureen Dowd of the Times (who both affect proledom even if they do not actually possess it) will not respond uniformly to the stimulus. That prediction does not even require knowledge of what the stimulus substantially consists of, i.e., exactly what is in those feelthy peekshures.

One learns as one scribbles: if the student were to start from the perfectly predictable divergence in reaction between wingnutettes and wingnuts on the one hand and the rest of US on the other, he would get these things in better perspective. The reason why these responses are as predictable as knee jerks is that for practical purposes they have already happened. That is to say, reaction to the *idea* of publishing the pornography in question is of more political significance than whatever fuss may arise eventually when the real McCoy leaks out at last.

This results in a sort of Apotheosis of Aniconism:

let it be stipulated that a thousand pictures are worth a million words, but then advance to Square Two: the idea of one picture is worth a thousand pictures, and therefore worth the same million words. Q.E.D. [3]

***

At this point I once again decided, Mr. Bones, not to bore the sweet puppies of Endarkenment with a scribble both rebarbative in its form and hostile in its matter. Entre nous I can speak of the late Dr. Cartoonoclastes , of whom I was naturally thinking to myself throughout.

Cartoono the Magnificent managed to fall off Dr. Luther’s horse on the far side, exaggerating aniconism to a point at which it becomes ludicrous. For that matter, Cartoono never, that I recall, referred to literal pictures of any sort, only to figurative or allegorical ‘cartoons’ made entirely of words. Crudely made of words.

He thus distanced himself from MacLuhanoid loser proles as far as possible, but at the high price of being around the bend and out of sight for most of us Aniconic Uppers as well.

Requiescat in pace! Lux æterna luceat!

Happy days.



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[1] I have recently heard a rumor, however, that the proles attach as much or more importance to a good horoscope column as to idols and icons. "A cat may look at a king"; this keyboard may observe that it doubts that Princess Neoterica Herself could find anything more alien and bewildering than a taste for journalistic astrology. But God knows best.


[2] Arrogance demands that one mention oneself last, naturally.

More important, it is necessary to admit that the present keyboard had already evolved essentially this scheme fifteen or twenty years ago without the conscious thought that it is aniconism that constitutes the upperness of Uppers. And even today it would be silly to pretend that aniconism is the only salient shibboleth. Nevertheless it makes a very good one, and the earlier scheme did not commit itself to some other Upper-defining factor or factors incompatible with this revision. Upperness was taken to be "self-evident," sort of.)


[3] A historical account would have to make room for the complication that there have existed Uppers who at least pretended to be picture people. In the annals of specifically Christian Christojudæanity the issue is notorious. The present keyboard, being decidedly a Prod rather than a Papish, has always had its doubts about the iconophilia of Rome. The same First Estate gentry who proclaimed that the graphic arts were perfectly OK for the piety of lay sheep did not just prefer books themselves, but books in an extinct language.

And can it be just an accident that no elaborate society has ever seen fit to make painters and sculptors (or even Danish cartoonists) its political élite? Whereas the rule or, or by, or for, or out of some Book is commonplace. But God knows best.