an illustration of plagiarism

In California Politics Today #171: "Rising above a mere consideration of plagiarism, we encounter the 'Spectacle'," we first learned of "the Spectacle," the real illusion set up by the Masters to maintain and expand their control. We don't have the time or space here to deal with an important question in regard to the Masters and the Spectacle in detail, but it should at least be mentioned: It's not clear if the Masters generate the Spectacle or the Spectacle the Masters. (Is that the Buddha dreaming it is a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming it is the Buddha?)

In either case, here, not plagiarized, but quoted and attributed, is how Debord begins the text of his The Society of the Spectacle, quoting, but not plagiarizing, because clearly crediting, what the German philosopher Ludwig Feurbach wrote in 1843 in the Preface to the Second Edition of The Essence of Christianity:

"But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness."

This latest, and relatively trivial, example of generating very minor spectacle relates closely to the creation what the very talented film critic and essayist David Thomson, in his brilliant volume Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts dubbed the " 'life-like,' a level of reality different from but partaking of both 'real' life and the fictions that are projected on the screen in films." (a self-plagiarizing quote).

(You can listen to this reporter interview Mr. Thomson in 1999 about "Beneath Mulholland" [which real Drive is only, according to MapQuest, only three miles from where this text is being composed] by clicking here. Please bear with the "audio collage" that begins around 13:20, mixes in another interview about Kabbalah, obscures a discussion of Jessica Rabbit, and ends around 14:15.)

By combining what Senator McClintock thinks with the on-line, print-generated idea of Mel Gibson saying it, there emerges the "life-like" image of Braveheart-Mad Max-Martin Riggs-Fletcher Christian-Rocky the Rooster Mel bravely, engagingly, inspirationally leading the "No on 71" troops into battle against yet another terrible enemy, in this case the possibly-overmatched California Proposition 71.

In a generally negative review of Mr. Thomson's book, an anonymous reviewer from Kirkus Reviews grudgingly gives him some credit when s/he writes:

"When he steps back and analyzes the roots of his fandom, he begins to verge on astuteness: 'Just the fact that photography is modern and technical does not prevent its fostering superstition. To believe in faces we never meet, and to let their moods affect our lives, depends on irrational faith.' "

What the book reviewer is saying about what sometime-movie reviewer David Thomson is saying about film stars is no less true when applied in such instances as the recently-omnipresent countenances of George W. Bush and John Kerry.

With so much "life-likeness" being concentrated on the question of whether Californians, through Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Initiative, ought to be investing $6 billion dollars in bio-medical technologies that may soon be capable of producing ultra-"life-like" transhuman beings, genetically-enhanced and genomically-superior, we should probably all just savor the privilege of actually being alive at such a time, and get about fearing or enjoying our real/imagined futures in the manner we deem most fitting.