Meme. Aeron Bergman ROBOCARBS #13

Transcription

1 Fist Meme Aeron Bergman ROBOCARBS #13

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3 Joe Louis The Joe Louis Monument is a giant bronze fist suspended over Detroit mid-punch. History-myth: our hero went on to knock out Aryan champion Max Schmelling after an initial defeat. Louis said: I knew I had to get Schmeling good. I had my own personal reasons and the whole damned country was depending on me. Imagine a fist, which also came to symbolize the working class and black power struggles, suspended over our alien ideology. Imagine the whole arm hanging like a jamon in a charcutería.

4 Defense Black Fist Raising a fist indicates that anger has risen suddenly, without time to grab an alternative weapon: a strike with a blunt object. A fist is not as deadly or premeditated as a gun, an air strike or an act of congress. The fist is the first line of defense during a street-level conflict. A person using a fist aims for immobilization, not annihilation. A fist could inflict serious physical damage, but it is usually used to humiliate. Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, struck Aryan supremacy like Jesse Owens did in track and field in These humbling blows were answered by the supremacist meme: exclusion....their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games. The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there s money inside. There s where the power lies. * Owens understood the difference between strength and power, but if we follow his image, we realize that a fist full of cash is also not so powerful: how much can you carry in one fist, $1500, $2000? That amount is the spoils of a street-fight. Hegemony does not need to hold cash with its hand. Boxing is the aesthetic dance of violence, symbolizing a potent mix of natural gifts and training. Training is evidence of an environment where one s natural abilities can be refined and exploited. Joe Louis lived in a country during a time where black men, even talented, were feared and despised. However, he lived in Detroit, a city that drew a major black workforce up from the south, creating large black working and middle classes able to enjoy class privileges. Louis mother wanted him to play the violin, symbol of European leisure and prosperity. However, Louis wanted to box, symbol of street-level dominance. By demonstrating one individual s physical domination over another, the results of boxing are expanded to reflect and evaluate whole groups of people represented by the boxer. The case of Louis v. Schmelling is particular because while the American public usually supported the whitest boxer in the ring, they had come to realize that Aryan supremacy had gone too far: it was even more foreign than black skin. That was a long time ago, right? We Americans have learned to embrace extraordinary individuals of every color, no? * Jesse Owens 1968

5 Horizontal The fist meme gets picked up and passed around under many circumstances. The Occupy Wall Street movement uses it. Adbusters used the fist in their original advertisement to occupy Wall Street on September 17. Now it is visible as an unofficial logo on amateur YouTube videos. Retailers who want to be edgy are selling wares with the fist. One UK based online retailer is selling their revolution t-shirts for 18 Euros a hit. How quick and easy is it to co-opt a meme? Stripping its contents, the symbol can be applied to anything: we want a can of coke! Look at Barack and Michelle bumping fists in the White House! Check out LaBron and Kobe! The protesters in Cairo also raised their fists. What exactly did this meme mean to them? The battle appeared to be street-level, waged from block to block. The might and obstinance of the people eventually defeated and humiliated Mubarak, the individual. But the power net remains intact: professors appointed by Mubarak sit in their posts, ministers appointed by Mubarak slide into other positions, and the same corporate interests are protected. Pyramid scheme, what a funny name! Take your pick! In Spain, 30 years ago, Franco s men hung around in power positions for years: Manuel Fraga remained a governor of Galicia until 2005 and is a senator today going from military dictatorship to finance capitalism. He is known among other things for his statement La calle es mia. Or in English translation: the street is mine. He believes that the street belongs to the state, not to the people. This distinction is a fundamental issue. His party, the party that won the 2011 Spanish national elections, is the Partido Popular. Their name indicates something about popular ideals (the people against the elite), but their actions will demonstrate exclusive ownership in direct opposition to public ownership. One has to admire their circus-grade contortion act. The online stock image company Shutterstock has a copyrighted image for sale called Spain Fist (Flag of Spain). It s keywords show a complete range of ideology: aggression, anger, barcelona, borbone, break, conflict, conquistador, crack, crown, democracy, fight, fist, flag, freedom, glory, government, hand, hit, iberian, independence, juan-carlos, land, madrid, monarch, movement, nation, national, pain, party, patriot, patriotic, patriotism, peninsula, political, power, pressure, pride, propaganda, red, resistance, revolution, sign, spain, spanish, strike, supporting, symbol, uprising, victory, yellow.

6 Suspended Failure Detroit s Joe Louis Monument is a fist SUSPENDED IMMOBILE FROM A PYRAMID WITH THICK CHAINS. Is the pyramid the same one we see on US currency? Isn t that a freemason symbol? Conspiracy theories eat time and energy better spent. But a severed fist chained to a pyramid is a very clear symbol, there is no ambiguity in Detroit. Subtlety is left to civility strolling civilized capitals. The lone fist is the essence of the failure of lower class struggles. The fist clenches uselessly, alone, expending energy and brief, impotent violence in a show of strength that also demonstrates complete lack of power. This leads us to ask who erected the Joe Louis Monument? Time Inc. the news agency, according to the artist, Robert Graham. Time Inc. has a portfolio of 21 US magazines and 25 US websites, nearly all of which run Detroit stories fairly regularly. Since Detroit has given the media so many juicy stories and helped sell so many papers, is Time Inc. just giving something back to the community it has taken so much from? Why then does it feel so celebratory, and so much like a warning: like the staked, severed heads of heretics lining the roads and guard towers of medieval cities?

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8 A Better Symbol Century Modern Power comes from group action. But action must be codified into norms. There is more than enough legislation written to control street level violence, small scale property theft and vandalism. A better symbol is one that will stand for the legislation that will control board-room level violence, mass property theft and the vandalism of our public sphere. It is true that in the nineteenth century, when there was so little art and so much talk about it, there was a theory that art and imaginative literature ought to deal with contemporary life; but they never did so; for, if there was any pretence of it, the author always took care... to disguise, or exaggerate, or idealize, and in some way or another make it strange; so that, for all the verisimilitude there was, he might just as well have dealt with the times of the Pharaohs. * * William Morris. News from Nowhere. 1893

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