"But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day,
In a moment (of this I am sure),
I shall softly and suddenly vanish away —
And the notion I cannot endure!"
The last, fateful words of the Baker-cum-Lewis-Carroll before he is smothered by the inky depths of the night, suffocated by the relentless Amorous Gigantism of Inanimate Things, transfixed by the icy glare of the Snark-Is-Eye lurking in the wardrobe — obliterated, in short, by his memories of the future!
This whole Boojum business is what literary boffins like to call Catharsis, a purging and expelling of unsettling emotions, a process which results in a post-Boojum state of relaxation, mental ease, gleaming white teeth and little or no underarm perspiration. In this state of enlightenment all of one’s troubles softly and suddenly vanish away and one is left with only the minty fresh after-taste of … Boojum-Orientalism!
Boojum-Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Boojum because the Boojum is weaker than the Baker, a doctrine which elides the Boojum’s difference with its weakness. . . . as a cultural apparatus Boojum-Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge … the whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some Boojumistic essence — in which I do not for a moment believe — but that it operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting …
All hail the postsemiotic Second-Grade-Fresh-New-World-Order! Aided only by my trusty giant power-packed pen and buckets of thick, reheated cafeteria-style ink, I have deconstructed a Boojum-ridden, prostrate Baker into a resurgent postcolonial Boojum reasserting his alienated Snarkhood and casting aside the dehumanizing typology of the oppressive Victorian bourgeois Snark Hunter … (pauses for breath) …
… until that time when that fickle Wheel of Fate turns again and allows a resurgent postcolonial Baker to reassert his alienated manhood and cast aside the dehumanizing typology of the oppressive Victorian bourgeois Boojum … (dabs brow with gin-soaked compresses) …
… hurrah for the disappearance of the Author-Function! Hurrah for the justified tyranny of the Reader-Boojum! Hurrah for everybody!
This time, Sir, you have surpassed our expectations...
ReplyDeleteThank you, david … I see that on Caminando en círculos you are looking at Ralph Bakshi, whose work is worth a look for all young artists
ReplyDeletethere was some pretty good animation in the 60s & 70s … but for me, the best is John Coates-George Dunning & Heinz Edelmann's "Yellow Submarine" … there is some lovely rotoscoping there also
cheers!
oh, yes, I forgot … I do owe an apology of sorts to Edward Said … for despite surface appearances, I think there is a lot of worthwhile thinkery in his work … in fact, current politcal events seem to prove that he was being conservative in his estimation of the malevolence of Orientalism
ReplyDeleteYeah, lately it is being quite common to create images of reality and then forcing reality to conform to those images...
ReplyDeleteNo need to apologise, sortishly or otherwise, to Said, I think: his shade (his Said-shade) is probably reading this blog with great pleasure. As you have yourself said on occasion ... Nuff Said.
ReplyDelete