In defining different types of political news photos, these fall into the category I call “the re-introduction.” As if calling this out, the pictures from Getty Europe seem to barely contain their contempt for Blair, Dubya’s Iraq War doppelgänger, as his book hits the shelves.

In related news, I received a listserv email this morning reminding me of Adam Curtis’s 2002 BBC series, The Century of the Self.

Welcome back from a long, much needed summer holiday. Unfortunately, I’ve had some admin/site maintenance problems with the site for several months which I’ve ignored until now. I believe I’ve finally worked them out. I have hardly had any time for blogging for over a year now, and certainly don’t have any to spare for meddling about under the hood. But it looks like I’ve just about got it sorted.

Daniel is working on a few pieces, including a review of Bent’s translations of Robert Gibbons. Anne also says she’s working on something tba.

As for me, I’ve been really struggling with what to do with America Adrift and just what my role should be, given all the other constraints on my time and energy. Now 6 months into my Ph.D. fellowship I’m working overtime just to keep up. I’m scheduled to present three conference papers already this semester, plus I’m teaching my first course, an MA research seminar on Obama, visual rhetoric and American culture. And I can’t confidently say I really know what I’m doing here, there or anywhere yet! I’m that lostboy drunk at AA meetings, trying to “fake it til I make it.” When I’m not working, I’m either with my family and/or working at our Colony Garden. That’s it. My wife sometimes gets worried at my ramblings on about “should have been a carpenter.” But postmodern pastoral longings and fantasies aside, I’ve got a primary job to focus on, which is the job that pays our bills. And that’s writing a dissertation, including all the other work obligations attached to my fellowship contract. Don’t laugh, but I really didn’t believe it would be this much Work!

I’ve decided that for the most part, when I do blog, I’ll be aggregating “news,” social and political commentary from around the progressive blogosphere. I’ll consider this move as a vehicle for mild (some would say toothless) political activism. But given that I’m already tuned-in and can spread some radical socialist propaganda with very little effort on my part, I figure it’s the least I can do to challenge the marching neo-liberal political forces increasingly shaping our local conversations about the US, both in Danish media and within the Danish academy. Yes, that assumes we still even have an audience!

Stay tuned, we’ll be back to our regular irregularly scheduled programming shortly.

Stuart

This bilingual volume introduces the work of American prose poet Robert Gibbons to a transatlantic audience. The volume shows how multifaceted a poet he is, effortlessly exploring political, aesthetic and emotional themes, such as war, poverty, exile, work, love and the archives of Time. Presenting Danish translations of 64 of the poet’s best pieces, juxtaposed with the American original versions, the book also contains a lengthy scholarly introduction by the editor and translator, Bent Sørensen, forming the first sustained academic study of Gibbons’ work.

As our regulars know, Robert has graciously allowed us to publish a rather jagged timeline of some of his work here. Bent’s own america adrift archive can be found here, including this excellent introduction to Gibbons’ work.

Jagged Timeline is available now at Amazon!

…

My friend Giese lives on Boessegade. When I went to visit him yesterday, to pick up a few things I had promised to deliver to his cousin in Rome, I found him passed out on the floor between his huge leather chair and the wry piece of wood, varnished, that he’s got perched on top of a few old crates, serving as a makeshift table. He was face down, flat on his stomach, and the back of his head was a pale and ghostly rough grey, like a place that was cropped short in preparation for surgery. At first I didn’t give this much thought, but then it hit me: where were his mangy curls? The curls that so many friends, on so many occasions, have pulled at and run their fingers through, those lion-like dark folds of musty hair that, these past five years, have sat atop his head like a black rag on a stick, radiating latino love.
As I rushed towards him, I could se his back pulsating. He was probably fine, and a quick ear to his breathing face quickly confirmed this. His eyes were shut tight, drool on his lower lip and on the wooden floor. The TV was on, tuned into some Italian soap, the sound very low. A hushed speedy yapper went from the speakers in the corners out into the room, and if I closed my eyes I could almost imagine myself standing outside a doctor’s office in downtown Verona, imagining the kind of lowbrow intrigue that would constantly flow from under such a door, in such a stylized Italian drama world. Giese was, and is, a sucker for these things. He was born in Denmark, but has always thought of himself as a genius expatriate Italian, a fine appreciator of his native land, and to be fair and honest, he was those things and more. He’s a few years younger than me, and prone to impulsive behavior and binge drinking, like his good friend, my younger brother. He was probably around here somewhere, Steven, his face buried in his own armpit, a scraggy beard on his twenty-two year old cheeks.
Giese makes to get up, but his arms shiver and he falls back onto his stomach. The second attempt gets him to his feet, and he walks slowly across the room to sit down at a straight chair, facing a table and a mirror. The look he gives himself in the mirror betrays no emotions, and not until he takes a cigarette from a pack on the table, lights it, and puts his left hand to his face, do I know if he’s noticed that his hair is missing. He pinches the bridge of his nose, shuts his eyes again, against the sun and dust in the room. The dust only visible when the sun beats through the large windows. He keeps rubbing his forehead.
“You look like your parents, now,” I tell him. He tilts his head back, and runs a hand across his cropped dome.
A light ruffle of paper behind us, I’m standing in the middle of the room. Steven walks into the room, along the walls, careful not to make too much sound. He sits down on the floor, still close to the wall, legs crossed. He’s got an espresso in one hand and a cigarette in the other and he’s sending out the vibes of a young man who, right now, doesn’t really have anything else to ask for. He has been given all. From behind his dark Ray-Bans he surveys the room, trying to keep a straight face, the espresso shaking slightly. He’s got patches of strange hair on his chest and arms.
“Thomas and I slept in Giese’s hair,” he says.

“I’m having a liger tattooed on my shoulder.”

Silence, then hopefully a word out of Rome.

by Robert Gibbons

As if travel & imagined fixed destinations were cures for these dissatisfactions,
the World suddenly offered up
three Central American immigrant fugitives straddling railroad tracks
that run at a bad angle
through the City,
each carrying heavy green plastic bags balanced Old-World style,
talking & brave, even as the cop car rode past
at said bad angle keeping him from seeing them as I did, still
in my longing to get away,
but now, tempered by these wise guys & the soon-to-be-found Old Man hobo
vagabond down by the waterfront I haven’t seen since this Time
last year, sadder than practically All
the homeless I’ve noticed over the years because so utterly alone
with his stone-cold boldness not giving
in to Death.

Earlier, I had to go to town more than once, dissatisfied with what I’d witnessed
first Time round, what with all the working squares
in fine clothes on coffee
breaks leading into lunch hours, no,
& the only tanker visible, Overseas Shirley, a regular
in port, & nothing to write home about, so I returned later, instinctively
knowing the World would offer up tangential evidence
meaningful just in Time in order
to keep me going on
in language,
if not actual travel to all the places pictured in my longing, places outweighing
those I’ve already lived in, or visited,
all rushing swirling mixing Paris
with Madrid, Glasgow/Fez, Gloucester/Seville, Naples/Tenerife, Nice/Bergen,
Olympia/Santorini, Belgrade/Trenton, Berlin/Vancouver, Amsterdam/Barcelona,

whereupon I rendezvoused with the Politisa Lady licensed in Monrovia lifting
her white-water-wake petticoat & skirts to carry me
out of personal doldrums & overwhelming desire to travel in order
to mix movement with language, instead of at this solitary
desk, where the fish stone from the trek along the path to the cave at Pech Merle
stares, urging me on, or the one from under the foundation
of Winslow Homer’s house on Prouts Neck down the road here in Maine, no,
or postcards from friends sent from Hegefjell, wherever the Heaven or Hell,
or Alcimcao, Sao Paulo, Brazil, or
the White Cat asking, “Are you writing?”
from her own desk in the apartment on Boulevard St. Michel, or,
again, David, from Buenos Aries, or, again, Bent & Camelia, my constant
companion the collection of Goya etchings sent from Manchester, England,
of all places, like taking fellow teachers to see Hair
at the Wilbur in Boston in 1969, yes,
my life swirling round me with the reminder that so much has gone on before
than the Time left ahead, unless I continue to live in the moment

as hard as Eternity, & stop
worrying that I may not see the Whole World before I see the Other Side,
as I saw three Central American immigrant fugitives earlier today straddling
railroad tracks that run at a bad angle
through the City,
each carrying heavy green plastic bags balanced Old-World style,
talking & brave, even as the cop car rode past
at said bad angle keeping him from seeing them as I did
without now any longer needing immediately
Copenhagen, per se,
but preferring the poem Robert Hellman generously sent from there
in 1974 before I embarked on a number of cross-country journeys
suffering under eight-inch rain in the tent in the park in the center of Memphis,
then driving non-stop till we hit Elk City, Oklahoma,
of all places, where the first of a number of former Hollywood starlets

kept the knick-knack shop on the main drag.
My father prepared me well for the brutality of the World.
In Zihuatanejo that year, when Bernardo tried to strong-arm us out of our $40-
a-month-shack, I let nothing but body language
& a handshake speak, never to see him again.
Neruda called from Chile, but I failed in my quest to see him,
although Anna & her husband, Sonora, remembered him reading in Mexico City,
finding him afterward eating oysters alone.
Breaking lines is a waste of Time.
Break bread with me, fellow poets, brave enough not to gasp at having to give
a correct answer.
I’d swear if I could in a poem as much as I do in real life, but what’s the point, if
it’s to be read after one’s dead? Come in Veracruz, come in Oaxaca,
where Manuel is giving advice in the café, that if anyone betrays me,
even once, to cut them with scissors motioning two fingers
across the high air of Oaxaca, the cutting
of scissors, as if to say in body language,

not just in Spanish, take my word for this,
Robert, which I did, the shortcut
to dealing with all betrayals,
lures, & phonies.
Where can one go to school for an education
like that? Which is why Travel is such
scholarship. Shit, I’m sorry.
That’s rude, & uncalled for but for some reason can’t help it, the Travel secret
exposed made me do it: take Time out of classes, say no
to professors. I once tried to organize a boycott of Professor Barr from Alabama,
Phi Beta Kappa, & formerly of Harvard, who wanted
us to pronounce words exactly like he did in Linguistics 401, & had the gall once
to say the worst thing to happen in America
was the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown versus the Board of Education!
No shit, I heard it, & received a “D”.

Barr came into the classroom while I tried to organize the boycott against his
bullshit. What was I supposed to do, back down? Stop talking?
Fuck, no, Man!
I spoke to the shivering chickens in class looking him straight in the dropped-jaw
face.
My father prepared me well for the brutality of the World.
He carved a wooden dagger on board ship in the port of Casablanca with all the
Time in the World during his five years in the Navy in WWII, which I now
own & treasure.
It speaks to me on occasion like Manuel Avila Camacho, known as the Bad Boy
of Mexico, friend of Orson Welles,
whose house in Paris he lived in during the summer before we met in 1974,
when as attaché to President Echeverria, they planned
to meet with Nixon in DC the middle of August,
too late!

When seeing the Old Man hobo vagabond down by the waterfront covered in his
camel hair coat,
we purposefully walked in the opposite direction, knowing
ahead of Time, & from the Past, the extent of the inextricable Sorrow in his Soul.
We carried our own misery down
to Portland Wharf, where at the end of the pier at the edge of the harbor,
we had the whole place to ourselves.
She said she loved the clouds. We distinguished the distant flight of osprey
from that of gulls simply by expanse of wingspan & rapidity of wing-beat.
Can you tell I haven’t written for days?
Easily angered, but not as bad as I used to be in the lineage of Irish Warrior Poets
followed down through father preparing me for the brutality of the World,
via his Grandfather, Edward Walshe, who wrote the book,
The Mermaid of Cape Ann, which included a photo
of him atop Whale’s Jaw in Dogtown, published in 1904.

Undeclared war Olson claimed society is. Barbarism every document of history
is, according to Benjamin, along with our duty to protect anonymous
names of the dead
from continuous-victorious-powers-that-be.
Not everything is learned on the road.
Deep, deep research & study.
Reading is experience. Writing, if it’s done well, is nothing other than exactly
that: Merci, Monsieur Proust, Thanks, Hem. When one thinks about it,
there’s little difference between reading, travel, the experience
of either, if done well.
Kristeva, whose Desire in Language I picked up at Village Voice Bookstore
in Paris in 1987 has made all the difference in life.
Merde, now that I think of it, I asked for Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past
to be shipped to me from the East Coast to Long Beach
just before we crossed the border into Mexico.

Thank you, friend, it’s meant everything to me!
Why would anyone have anxiety over influence? Nothing,
but gratitude.
Sui generis? Ahhmmnn!
My desire is.
Otherwise,
don’t tell me we’re going to shape a writer in the classroom?
We’ll find out for ourselves
with a little help from our friends.
Stones, Trees, Names, our teachers. Rembrandt, deep stroke,
Goya, black depth,
Titian’s, The Flaying of Marsyas, the first painting I saw in DC,
when we moved there in 1990, where de Kooning’s Woman was
flesh made of flesh as oil paint was made for flesh.
Rothko, tomb sculpture. Francis Bacon, truncation.

Rauschenberg, all-encompassing, funneling everything into the Vortex
of the World.
Pound, not forgotten.
Celan. Li Po. Vallejo. Pavese. O’Hara, Lorca, Apollinaire, Cendrars, Ponge,
Bolaño, but where are the Brits?
I don’t know. Yeats & Synge & Lady Gregory.
Where do I go from here? If I had money, I’d be everywhere:
Aalborg, Bremen, Corpus Christi, Durban, Edinburgh, Finistère,
Galway, Helsingør, Istanbul, Jersey City, Kabul, Luvov,
again, Madrid, again, Naples, Oslo, St. Petersburg,
Quincy, Randolph, again, Salem, Toronto, Utica,
Ventura, Weymouth, Xihua, Yuma, Zagreb.
My father prepared me well for the brutality of the World.
I’m in Portland. My tattoos & traumas are my Passport
to the World.

In recent years, Clint Eastwood has emerged as a darling not simply of the Hollywood industry – with no less than 10 Oscar nominations in 18 years, winning five including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for which there is no nomination – but also as the darling of left-wing, bleeding heart members of the “pussy generation” as he refers to them in his 2008 Esquire interview (Fussman, 2008). It is this perception of Clint Eastwood as having changed from a gun-carrying, vigilante-supporting, hard-ass Republican to a cuddly humanist with sensitive insight into those living on the fringes of society, which this paper will focus on.

While there are many examples of people revising their perception of Eastwood, what I find particularly interesting here, are a number of media texts which explicitly refer to Clint Eastwood and his iconic status as an actor and celebrity: the virtual band Gorillaz with two songs, “Clint Eastwood” (2001) and “Dirty Harry” (2005) and Danish comic artist Thomas Thorhauge’s small comic book Clint Eastwood (2008). These three texts circulate and so transform Eastwood’s image, typically in ways that emphasize only certain aspects of Eastwood’s career and status.

A useful method for discussing this circulation of images is that of imagology – a relatively recent theory which draws together much earlier research into stereotypes, national and ethnic images. However, as imagologist Anthony Johnson argues, imagology is much more versatile by focusing on the broader iconosphere in question, and investigating the material images that are circulated. Johnson points to the concepts of resurfacings, accessibility, displacement, portability and loss as the significant aspects of a broader and more inclusive imagology. The most basic argument of imagology is that images matter and that we are not simply discussing visual images, but a broader conceptualization of images as falling into five semantic categories, following W.J.T. Mitchell in his Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986): graphic, optical, perceptual, mental and verbal. Beller goes on to argue that imagology is the elucidation of the textual codification of these images in texts.

Images may be distinguished as either auto-images, or self-images, and the hetero-images, our views on others. In both cases, we are dealing with what is referred to as an imaginated discourse – characteristics and attributes which are not statements of facts but of sentiment, and often deal with explanations of cultural difference and identity (Leersen 2007, 27-28). To clarify the division between what is actual and what is imaginated, imagology speaks of the spected (the described) and the spectant (the textual description). One needs not work hard to see that this is in fact the Saussurean sign of signified and signifier, and it is also obvious that semiotics is in many ways parallel to imagology, although imagology is usually more interested in the circulation of images and the following effects.

For this reason, Clint Eastwood is interesting because not only has his image circulated for several decades and holds a special status as all celebrities’ images do – he has also himself engaged in the circulation of images quite deliberately. Consider two of his latest movies; Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Flags of Our Fathers can almost be seen as a cinematic essay in imagology; the deconstruction of one of the most celebrated images in US history, questioning and criticizing not simply the construction of the image but also its entrance into and circulation in popular culture and national imagination (creating a cultural memory, even), especially at a time when US images of war hold very special significance, is a powerful and incisive statement.

All the more disappointing is Letters From Iwo Jima, which casts a rugged individualist – not unlike Eastwood’s own earlier roles – against the madness and bureaucracy of a doomed nation, the naive but foolish honor of the common Japanese soldier and the underlying sense that even though the Japanese soldiers were misguided, they were still overly cruel and merciless in their defense of their land. This film, like the first, is very much seen through American eyes, casting the conflict in the generic terms of US war movies with little sensitivity to Japanese culture and national identity.

In imagological terms, Flags of Our Fathers dissect the auto-image of American World War Two involvement and the resultant cultural memory, which is circulated first in visual media (the photo and the resultant war memorial) but then inevitably creeps into US and Western culture’s mental images of the conflict as heroic and simply of the image as authentic and real. Eastwood bravely tears this image – the spected – apart through his film – the spectant. However, Eastwood’s hetero-images of the Japanese are maybe more sympathetic than previous attempts, yet never fully engage with the complexity of the battle or the war as a whole.

For all that, Eastwood remains deeply aware of the power of images as well as his own status within the Hollywood industry, in particular his image as grim anti-hero in the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergei Leone. He clearly draws on this image, resurrecting it and displacing it not only in Unforgiven (for which he received his two first Oscars) but just as much in Gran Torino. Being image conscious for Eastwood has entailed more than standard typecasting and capitalizing on the symbolic capital of previous characters and roles. Eastwood has remained just as interested in undercutting and renegotiating his celebrity image.

From an imagological point of view, then, Eastwood has constantly problematized the association of his material image as constructed through films, interviews, articles, etc with his “true” self – what Chris Rojek refers to as the veridical self in his book Celebrity, following social psychologist George Herbert Mead. Yet, Eastwood is certainly no chameleon and does thrive on a consistent image, with an intellectual capacity to navigate the pitfalls of celebrity culture. Potentially, this is one reason for his broad appeal; he remains on the one hand authentic and recognizable, while on the other he is often reflexive and even ironic about his tough guy image.

Little wonder, then, that the generations growing up completely in a world of endlessly circulating images, are so attracted to Eastwood’s image – and more than simply the authentic Eastwood image (do we really believe that Eastwood stared down his political opponents during his job as lawyer in Carmel with the words “go ahead, make my day”?), they engage with the complexity of image and use it not simply to say something about Clint Eastwood (which of course they do) but they also say something more and different and in the process they alter his image. In this way, we are talking about the portability of Eastwood’s image – how can his image be made to speak in different contexts and what can his image say in these different contexts, all the while retaining parts of Eastwood’s imaginated status.

The first example is usefully Gorillaz; useful because they themselves are extremely aware of the circulation of images and employ this circulation to generate the image of the band. Gorillaz is referred to as a virtual band, because its main band members – 2D, Murdoc Niccals, Russel Hobbs and Noodle – are not real but cartoon characters. Instead, the band was created by Damon Albarn of Blur and Jamie Hewlett, the artist of comic book Tank Girl. This awareness of the significance and impact of images may have been the reason that they released “Clint Eastwood” as their first single in 2001.

Neither the music nor the lyrics seem particularly associated with Eastwood in any way. The music is a mix of hip hop, rock and dub resulting in a breezy, feel-good pop song, sung mainly by Del tha Funkee Homo Sapien, very far from the jazz and blues which we know are Eastwood’s favorite genres. The lyrics are filled with dichotomies and dreamy images that suit the music well but not Eastwood’s image. The chorus goes:

Oh oh oh oh oh

I ain’t happy,

I’m feeling glad

I got sunshine in a bag

I’m useless but

Not for long

The future is coming on (Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood”)

While the verses are not very coherent, there does seem to be some taunting going on, with Del tha Funkee Homo Sapien rapping

All you different crews

Chicks and dudes

Who you think is really kickin’ tunes?

Picture you gettin’ down in a picture tube

Like you lit the fuse

You think it’s fictional

Mystical? Maybe

Spiritual

Hearable (Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood”)

Originally, the creators of Gorillaz remained anonymous so the lines above seem to teasingly question the audience about who they are really listening to. Here we can see the awareness with which Gorillaz has been created and how Albarn and Hewlett themselves attempt to move away from their own celebrity status, in addition to engaging with the image conscious world in which they exist. In itself, this challenges our celebrity driven culture and denies what Chris Rojek refers to as mediagenic generation of desire (Rojek 2001, 187) and serves as an ironic statement about celebrity.

The resurfacing of Eastwood’s image which Gorillaz employ may seem an odd choice, considering that in 2001, it had been a while since Eastwood had starred in a prominent movie. In reverse order, he acted and directed Space Cowboys, True Crime, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Absolute Power and The Bridges of Madison County in 1995, which was at the time his most well-received film of his career. Being dangerously close to a has-been in 2001, we might best understand the choice of title as a matter of dissonance: the associations of Clint Eastwood in 2001 would mainly have been of his classical Westerns and his career as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series. This gritty image corresponds poorly with any part of the Gorillaz song, and this then seems to have been the point. Looking more broadly at the Gorillaz phenomenon, blending many different elements, styles and musicians to a particular style, we may even regard the titling of the song as part of its aesthetic expression – a deliberate undercutting not just of Eastwood’s particular image, but by contrasting the images the music conjures with Eastwood’s stereotypical celebrity image, the distortion all images perform is highlighted. Celebrity images – whether Eastwood’s or Albarn and Hewlett’s – are problematized and subtly criticized.

It is clearly a very discreet way of engaging with images and their effects, yet it seems to me that Gorillaz are extremely self-reflexive of their own production, use and recycling of images. Indeed, in late 2004, Gorillaz inserted the slogan “Reject False Icons” into the music video for “Rock It” and later launched the website REJECT FALSE ICONS, which is in essence a culture jamming project and so certainly gives credence to the idea that Albarn and Hewlett dislike celebrity culture.

Furthermore, on their second album the Gorillaz return to the image of Eastwood once again, yet to very different effect and with a very different Eastwood image circulating in the iconosphere. Eastwood has by point directed Mystic River, which catapulted him back into the limelight of directors to watch and parallel to Gorillaz’s release of the first single of their new album “Dirty Harry”, Eastwood released Million Dollar Baby in theaters, which went on to win Best Director and Best Picture. Gorillaz, however, explicitly invoked the old image of Eastwood, clearly associated with violence, vigilantism and even overtones of misanthropy, yet their ire seemed less directed at Eastwood and more at a different gung-ho Republican.

The song opens with the chorus:

I need a gun to keep myself from harm

The poor people are burning in the sun

But they ain’t got a chance

They ain’t got a chance

I need a gun

Cos all I do is dance

Cos all I do is dance (Gorillaz, “Dirty Harry”)

Immediately, we are in the iconosphere of violence and guns, certainly reminiscent of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character. The poor people in the sun make less sense taken in this context, yet at the end of the song we are given more clues about the iconosphere in which the song moves

The cost of life,

it seems to get cheaper

out in the desert

with my street sweeper

The war is over

So said the speaker with the flight suit on

It seems evident that these lines are referring explicitly to George W. Bush’s fateful statement “Mission Accomplished” on May 1^st, 2003 which took place on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. In itself a very discussed event, we can argue that this is another image which has reached a high degree of circulation and as such holds a prominent place in our iconosphere, whether we view it critically or celebratory. It is precisely the titling of the song “Dirty Harry” which engages critically with the mediated event and does so through the use of Clint Eastwood and the Dirty Harry character.

Whether Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech is an auto-image or hetero-image depends on ideology and political persuasion. Seen through the lyrics of Gorillaz’ song, it is evidently presented as a hetero-image in two ways. First, the poetic voice of the song seems to be an American soldier dissatisfied and frustrated with his presence in Iraq, evident in lines such as these:

I got a 90 days visit

And I’m filled with guilt

From things that I’ve seen

Your water’s from a bottle

mine’s from a canteen

At night I hear the shots

Ring so I’m a light sleeper

The cost of life,

it seems to get cheaper

out in the desert

with my street sweeper

The difference of life as a soldier in Iraq and life back in the US is emphasized with a sense of resentment and bitterness, along with a lack of respect for life. The poetic voice seems to cynically not believe the message that the war is over and still relies on his (or her) gun to be safe. This hetero-image is generated through the distance between reality and politics: in fact, the situation in Iraq did not change after Bush’s speech and the attempt at rhetorically creating a difference is the reason why the event is a hetero-image for the poetic voice – things are not perceived as such for him (or her).

The other way of seeing this event as portrayed as a hetero-image, is through the title of the song. While Dirty Harry could refer to the poetic voice, it seems more likely that the title – and association – is directed at the speaker with the flight suit on: George W. Bush. This interpretation, however, is interesting in itself and depends a lot on the image construction of the Dirty Harry character. On the one hand, in the original film Dirty Harry is a rebellious figure who is certainly violence prone. However, he is not only portrayed sympathetically by the film, he is also seen as being more concerned about justice and morality than his incompetent superiors. Harry Callahan might be dirty because he transgresses the law, but he never transgresses moral law – is not on the take (another meaning of the phrase ‘dirty cop’) and always choses what is shown to be the moral high ground. At the time of its release, the film for obvious reasons sparked debates over violence, vigilantism, police brutality and perpetrator rights. Yet at the same time, it was one of the most popular films in 1971 and was also well-received by critics, even if Roger Ebert denounced the film’s “fascist moral position”

In the years since the first film, both with the four sequels but also the image of Dirty Harry circulating freely in popular culture, the imaginated discourse surrounding the Dirty Harry image has become more focused on excessive violence and extreme force. Certainly there is very little in the Dirty Harry image which connotes justice or fairness; instead, it has been subsumed into the typical anti-regulation image so typical of American action films. It seems ironic, then, that the very image of government regulation and control – the President – is associated with such an image. While this is the likely aim of titling the song “Dirty Harry” it also points to the well-established Republican image of being anti-government, even when in office. Indeed, considering Ronald Regan and his approval of the first Rambo film First Blood, it becomes easier to see why drawing a connection between Dirty Harry and George W. Bush makes sense.

Not that Bush has anything to do with the titling, of course, yet we can see how Gorillaz choose exactly this image to describe their hetero-image of the war, which Britain was and is involved in as part of the “coalition of the willing”. The maverick image of Dirty Harry as a loose cannon always choosing violence over words is used critically to destabilize the image of President Bush. The recognition value of Dirty Harry is highlighted, rather than the actual original character in the first film. At the same time, fortuitously if accidentally, Eastwood himself gravitated towards a more humanist view of the world, where vigilantism is viewed with tragedy rather then the glorification of the Dirty Harry films. Taken together, it provides a peculiar depth to the title of the song. We can see how the circulation of images against each other help generate a particular kind of subversion, adding even further to the possible identifications of the Dirty Harry image. It also reveals how no image can escape portability, resignification and recontextualization.

In many ways, this is also the case with Thomas Thorhauge’s small comic book Clint Eastwood based on an interview Eastwood gave Esquire in 2008. Thorhauge reworks parts of this interview into his comic – obviously translating it into Danish but also changing the context by having Eastwood speak directly to the reader rather than a journalist. First off, the interview itself is slightly different in that there are no questions listed and Eastwood’s replies come across more like statements and beliefs, without any form of context to frame them. The only frame is a photo of Eastwood – at the time 78 years old – facing the viewer and pointing his finger in a mock gun, obviously mimicking the original Dirty Harry poster and publicity shots.

This image makes sense in the way that most of what Eastwood says in the interview really is a criticism of current (American) society, rhetorically pointing the gun at the generations that came after him, particularly the current generation which he labels “the pussy-generation”. Again we see how the tough guy image of Dirty Harry not only clings to Clint Eastwood but is also used to connote dissatisfaction and social frustration. Also, Dirty Harry is conflated into our hetero-image of Clint Eastwood; he is supposedly “like” Dirty Harry. Equally tough on crime, upset with the breakdown of social norms and unaccepting of bureaucracy. This is certainly the image which Esquire gives us, but Thorhauge’s is slightly different.

Significantly, Thorhauge is Danish and not American (as we can assume the Esquire journalist is) and so we are not simply dealing with a hetero-image of Clint Eastwood (which we all have, only Eastwood and very close friends and relatives could have what would be an approximate auto-image), but also a hetero-image of USA. The Esquire journalist Cal Fussman employs the conflation of Dirty Harry’s and Eastwood’s images to generate a particular auto-image of USA; it is difficult not to read the entire interview as a critique of US society year 2008 and an attempt at portraying a sense of the “real” USA as being fed up with the state of the country.

Thorhauge’s comic book instead circulates what is a typical hetero-image of the US: not only through his portrayal of Clint Eastwood but also the setting and images which he uses to portray the USA. This is evidently quite deliberate, as can be seen from Thorhauge’s website, where he contextualizes the comic as a “dose of Americana” (To read the first half of the comic book, go here). It is interesting, then, to see what constitutes Americana in Thorhauge’s view. Evidently, Clint Eastwood must be considered to be somehow archetypically American, since he is chosen as the vehicle for this Americana. The previous comic book in this series centered on Jørgen Leth, yet did not discuss Danishness or Leth’s relationship with Denmark, so there is no reason that this comic book deals with images of USA, yet it clearly does. This is a way for us to see what hetero-image Thorhauge generates.

Let it be said right off the bat, that I do not believe that Thorhauge has any kind of ulterior motive in presenting Eastwood in this manner, nor do I believe that his comic book represents any kind of attack on the US. Rather, most of what Thorhauge associates with Americana seems to be a rather nostalgic view of the US, in this way not unlike the views expressed by Eastwood himself and so there is definitely a likelihood that Thorhauge attempts to match the views expressed by Eastwood, rather than express his own. Yet, the images chosen are obviously not innocent and revolve around events, objects and places which are considered inherently American, just as we get to see a specific representation of Eastwood.

Starting by judging the book by its cover, we see a drawn close-up of Eastwood’s face, although very stylized. The drawing emphasizes Eastwood’s wrinkles along with his characteristic squint and hard-set mouth, certainly echoing some of the expressions he is well-known for, particular from Leone’s films. In later drawings, we see Eastwood dressed in white button-down shirt with black pants – a rather relaxed and informal attire, giving off a distinct “every-man” feel to this version of Eastwood. There is definitely no connotation of Hollywood celebrity in this attire and helps to align Eastwood with the reader, along with a particular working-man connotation. Eastwood is relaxed, at ease, just like us and the common American. In this way, we are invited to read Eastwood not as participating in Hollywood glamor but in the more rugged individualist image which his characters usually represent.

The first image inside the comic book is also very telling: Eastwood in a car, surrounded by other cars. Cars are an obvious association with the American society, also the more frustrating experiences of gridlock and traffic jams, and seeing Eastwood in this environment furthers the alignment of Eastwood equals America. Furthermore, Eastwood is of course driving the car himself, which is significant not just because him having a chauffeur would reduce his alignment with the every-man American, but also because the car represents something very basic for the American culture – freedom and control. Eastwood forges his own path ahead, moves wherever he wants to, he is in control of his environment and where he is going. He is a maverick, a loner, an individual. Just as in High Plains Drifter, the Eastwood of this comic book answers to no one and goes where he chooses.

Of course, the place he chooses is a diner – not a franchise, not a restaurant, but John’s Coffee Shop, complete with an “Open” sign in the door and “Today’s Special” advertised in the window. As Eastwood enters the diner, we see that this is “Home of Hamburgers,” that most America cuisine. He has breakfast – toast, eggs, sausages and coffee – presumably served “All Day”, and we see the distinctive Heinz ketchup bottle along with salt and pepper. The booth set-up along the windows and the counter with bar stools; everything signifies American-ness and oozes Americana, down-to-earth, working-class, friendly and welcoming.

Yet this is all movie Americana. The ketchup bottle gives it away. No American diner would dare to offer their customers only one condiment. That is only one choice, which is no choice at all. American diners overflow with every imaginable condiment, with no consideration for whether it is appropriate for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If someone wants Tabasco sauce on their eggs, they can have Tabasco sauce on their eggs. The rustic simplicity overplays its role in signifying Americana and ends up revealing a hetero-image of America; this is our perception of USA, not USA as it really is (whatever that might be

After Eastwood wakes up, he walks out of the diner and disappears into the multitude of cars, leaving us only with his sage comments about the current generation and the state of US society. He does not walk up the mountain but the effect is much the same. His words are framed only by the focus on Americana, essentially a nostalgic view of USA, which is clearly also very much the case of Eastwood’s arguments in the interview, remediated here in comic book form. The images brought to the surface here thus support the nostalgic mode which Eastwood himself employs, framing Eastwood simultaneously as the every-man American, yet also drawing on the mythology which surrounds him: the tough guy, the straight-talker and the loner who goes against the power of the bureaucratic system. Casting Eastwood as all-American and placing him in an all-American environment, grants his words a special status, one which is not present in the Esquire article. This is, in the words of Warren Ellis, a slab of culture and it is one which communicates Americana very clearly, presenting a very specific image of the US.

So, to conclude, Eastwood is used in all three cases to provide a very specific and concrete image of the USA, whether it serves subversive or affirmative ends. For Gorillaz, Eastwood’s image becomes a way of articulating a criticism of specific events and cultural states – celebrity culture and war – and so the otherwise conservative image of Eastwood is used for subversive ends. For Thorhauge, Eastwood is framed very similar to his film roles and the entire comic book functions much more like a homage or an instance of cultural participation, where Thorhauge attempts to provide a view of a cultural moment, a distinct corner of the US society. In any case, imagology serves us well by providing a tool-box for talking about the uses of images, their cultural history and origin, as well as what happens when images resurface and interact, whether they are critically investigated or reproduced. It is worthwhile considering the image-construction generated by specific and particular uses of a culture’s iconosphere and the material manifestations which take place within cultural transfers and cultural traffic.

For a humorous approach to the debate check out Jon Stewart comparing the Arizona immigration law with the laws that targeted free blacks in the 1860s.

Over at Stewart’s favorite target, FoxNews, John Lott argues that the law includes provisions that will protect citizens against racism and that if you are a law-abiding legal resident you will have nothing to fear.

The law has sparked a strong reaction, not just among liberal media and Hispanic groups, but among other states as well. Even in California, another state with illegal immigration issues, politicians have argued for an economic boycott of Arizona.

It might be easier for Obama to win support for his immigration reform (when and if it comes) if Arizona becomes an example of what happens when this issue is left to the states. However, the case of Arizona also shows that something needs to be done and if national leadership is not provided, states will indeed engage extreme measures to deal with it. One of the best arguments in the discussion comes from Clarence B. Jones, former advisor to Martin Luther King, who argues that the problem is not Arizona, but Mexico. In order to solve the illegal immigration issue, poverty and security in other American countries must be addressed. He says it better than anyone else:

Let’s face it: right or wrong, the Arizona legislation is treating the symptoms of an international disease that needs much stronger medicine.

The Republican warning? That Obama better not nominate anyone too ideological. Republicans continue to act as if they were the majority party, threatening President Obama not to do anything without their consent. Jeff Schweitzer makes an interesting case of exposing the hypocrisy of the right-wing by revisiting the decisions of conservative justices Antonin Scalia, John G. Roberts and Samuel Alito.

GOP leaders are insisting that President Obama must nominate a moderate justice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; they want a mainstream jurist who will decide cases impartially. And in other news, Republicans demand that Democrats give up the White House to Mitt Romney. The second demand is obviously ridiculous but has no less credibility than the first, which is real.

Many commentators agree that Elena Kagan, Solicitor General and the former dean of Harvard Law School, is the most likely nominee. As a result they are already assessing her credentials. The opinions cover everything from Kagan as the next Earl Warren (Linda Monk on the Huffington Post) to Kagan as a potential justice that doesn’t believe in rights (New American). To make matters worse she even made the decision not to allow military recruitment at Harvard Law School. Some argue that she is a lesbian – both issues are commented on at The Daily Beast (Linda Hirshman and Peter Beinart).While Kagan is an tolerable candidate for some conservatives because she is not a judge, many will fear that she will judge in favor of gay rights just like they were certain that Sonia Sotomayor hated both men and white people.

The Nation offers an interesting list of possible contenders for the seat. Only one of their suggestions is a white male, all others are female or ethnic minorities. Is Obama supposed only to nominate minority justices because he’s a minority president? One of The Nation’s suggestions is Pamela Karlan from Stanford Law School. However, she is openly gay…Dream on, Obama!

“Picturing Obama: Visual Politics and Patriotic Culture in Contemporary US Society”  (KA E10)

Photo-illustration by James Porto, New York Magazine

Starting from the question, “is Barack Obama the most visible president in history?” this course explores the role of visuality in U.S. patriotic culture, paying special attention to the ways that images function persuasively as political communication and how those images reflect ongoing contestations over participation and representation in American democracy. Through a “visual culture” approach the course provides an overview of the forms of media, cross-mediation and inter-textuality that constitute contemporary US visual culture. Working within a broad interdisciplinary framework from multi-methodological perspectives students will acquire skills for conducting interdisciplinary visual research in practice. Readings will include seminal works in American studies, semiotics and discourse analysis, rhetoric, political communication, cultural theory, geography of media, and contemporary theories in the visual arts.

With a focus on shifting understandings of nationhood, transnationalism, citizenship, democracy, identity, and representations of “American patriotism,” students will learn to critically analyze political images and connect them to broader socio-political and cultural debates. Who are the image makers and what are their agendas? How do various social actors interpret, appropriate and enlist these images? How do images interact in relation to other types of texts, memories and places? What constitutes the space of democratic deliberation and how do questions of access, power, race and identity shape the public sphere and inform American patriotic culture? How are images used for remembering and memorializing; confronting and resisting; consuming and commodifying; governing and authorizing; informing and imagining? The course will be divided between theoretical readings and in-class analyses of images contextualized around key themes in American patriotic culture.

Lady Liberty Calavera by Jose Pulido

“Border Crossings: Mexican-Americans in Contemporary US Popular Culture” (BA E10)

The main goal of this course is to offer a broad and comprehensive understanding of the Mexican-American experience as mediated in and through popular culture in the United States. The study of popular culture focuses on uncovering meaning from the wide range of cultural production, from highly produced entertainment (television, radio, film, magazines, etc.) to everyday life scenarios (family custom and ritual, language, identity, etc.). Today Hispanics constitute the largest ethnic minority in the United States with 1 in every 7 Americans claiming Hispanic or Latina/o origin. People of Mexican descent are by far the largest Hispanic group, roughly 65% of all Latinos, over 30 million people representing the fastest growing population in the US. Understandably, Mexican-American culture(s) claims an increasingly important position within popular US national (and global) culture represented by a diverse range of social actors from transnational media corporations to community artists and Chicano activists.

The course places the Mexican-American experiences in a comparative perspective whereby we will survey some of the general themes in US popular culture studies through the excavation of a variety of texts ranging from Hollywood films, TV sitcoms and various news media to literary texts, music, urban graffiti, muralist artwork and online social media. We will examine the influence popular culture has on forming identity, shaping culture and as a mode of revealing, producing and reproducing ideology and political struggle. It is intended that students will develop valid concepts and generalizations regarding the contemporary Mexican-American experience, an appreciation of Chicano media and artistic practices and an understanding of the tensions between dominant cultural producers and Chicano modes of self-representation.

"Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf: Away with These Stultifying Bandages!"

In the dark, after the violence, the dream strayed from that Hollywood nonsense,

& lent a hand to the project, presenting an array of sources, appropriating certain

tracts of texts & imagery. An uncommon phenomenon, although not unknown to

writers, artists, it led the way here: in 1936 Walter Benjamin hears jackboots of

Fascism marching in the background of his Letter from Paris, in which he

reports, almost jumpy, anxious, that art as commodity delivers itself over to the

enemy. He’s taking on the Third Reich in words the way John Heartfield, George

Grosz, & Otto Dix did visually. He knows that photography will have a lasting

social impact, but not without the caption & inscription, that strike fear into those

wanting total control.

~

Recently, we attended a university art exhibit, titled War & Remembrance.

Modest in quantity, powerful nonetheless. The two smallest images tore the place

down, right before my eyes. Picasso’s Untitled, from the series Sueno y Mentri di

Franco (The Dream & Life of Franco), 1937. Picasso, too, was in Paris at the

Time, accepting the position of Director-in-Exile of the Prado Museum after

Franco bombed the building rather than have contents fall into the hands of

Marxists. The Untitled image is a cry in the mode of Guernica & a companion

poem by Picasso reads, “… cries of children cries of women cries of birds cries

of flowers of timbers & stones cries of bricks cries of furniture of beds chains of

curtains… .” The other is Goya’s brutal image matching the brutality of War,

Estos es Peor (This is Worse), where the corpse, most alive, arms severed, head

holding onto the shock & awe of it all, body propped up by a sharp tree limb

piercing butthole through intestines through heart & lung to topnotch where spine

turns to neckbone.

~

Then, there’s a color photo of a blonde American female soldier handing out

candy to two children, while mothers in scarves look on from behind. The only

caption is that of place & date: Tarmiyah, Iraq, June 2008, along with the size of

the digital photograph, & the artist’s name.

———————————–

When Robert sent this to me a few days ago I was moved to tears. Earlier in the day I had been discussing the horrific scenes from wikileaks video of US military attacks on journalists and children after looking over Michael Shaw’s video stills. The progressive blogosphere was ablaze with condemnation cloaked in sighs of, oh well, what can any of us do about our dying empire gone mad!? That night, turning on the first TV channel on the remote, a DR1 newscast (the Danish PBS) was underway with the story. They then segued with a brief spot about the Obama administration’s meaningless ‘new’ PR campaign for nuclear non-proliferation. “Candy for the children!,” I replied.

This is already yesterday’s news, forgotten in the space of a few days where Glen Beck claimed Obama was abandoned by his mother for “Marxist political theory” and Sara Palin drew a crowd of 10,000 candy eating support-our-troopers. And the Southern Republican Leadership Council is being held today in New Orleans of all places, an obvious beneficiary of Republican leadership. Though Martyn Bone, who is also in the no longer so Big and Easy, claims Palin et al. are in town to hear his lecture on “casino capitalism and immigrant labor in Cynthia Shearer’s last novel.”

Today Robert sent another poem, or was it yesterday? with a personal greeting in that poetic cadence of his suggesting no salvation (sigh, what can I do?) but rather a path to redemption through text and texture in this life. “I take things slow in life in order to get things down in language good & fast, if not abruptly.” This summer I’ll ride out to the Danish West coast, far away from the sounds of marching jackboots and cyber noise. I’ll remember to take things slow and meander along the rolling dunes, gaze out West across the Vesterhavet and send my greetings with the tankers as they disappear over the horizon.