During this latest “financial crisis” there have been some fascinating images which communicate possible alternative narratives to the daily press stories. The image above from this NYT article particularly caught my attention. Here, despite whatever giveaway, formerly known as the bail-out, “rescue” the Senate may approve on Wednesday, the message in this photo seems clear. We are staring down the abyss. Not only are we looking down the cliff but from this angle, we’ve already walked out past the ledge. This is the moment Willie Coyote realizes he’s about to free fall into oblivion.
More after the jump, click on image for better resolution.
I also appreciate how all those electric green symbols on the giant electronic ticker are cascading down to the floor were there are more wires, screens and computers than human beings. This theft was not created by machines, but it is the machine that’s been employed for all those “complex” unregulated investment instruments which lie at the center of the “crisis.” The Matrix thus serves as another appropriate metaphor (borrowing from Baudrillard) as the “code” merely supports the illusion of stability.
I’m drawn back to a scene from Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis in which the protagonist, a billionaire Wall Street speculator converses with his “Chief of Theory.” At one point in the conversation his theorist says, “We are not witnessing the flow of information so much as pure spectacle, or information made sacred, ritually unreadable” (p 80). Earlier in the conversation she states that, “Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself” (p 77). A paragraph later she continues:
“And property follows of course. The concept of property is changing by the day, by the hour. The enormous expenditures that people make for land and houses and boats and planes. This has nothing to do with traditional self-assurances, okay. Property is no longer about power, personality and command. It’s not about vulgar display or tasteful display. Because it no longer has weight or shape. The only thing that matters is the price you pay…The number justifies itself” (p 78).
Is this what Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paulson told Congress when asked about the number, seven hundred billion dollars? Congress (and the American people): “Why do you need that much money? How did you come to that figure?” Secretary Paulson: “I know its very difficult for all you untrained economists to grasp the complexity of it all. But you see, the number justifies itself!”
I can’t know the complex, inter-dependent, and highly subjective process that went into this photo ultimately finding its way to the pages of the New York Times. But neither painting nor any other art form has “lost its narrative quality.” Even right now, where money is just “talking to itself,” art is still talking to us. We ultimately don’t suffer from a lack of alternative narratives but a lack of meaningful political power.
Just over twenty two years ago Paul Simon released his album Graceland, an album which has never found itself in “the old stack.” Six years into the Reagan financial revolution (aka the beginning of the end of the regulatory state) Mr. Simon clearly saw the writing on the wall. In 1986, the first track on Simon’s album illuminated some of the simple truths that DeLillo would visit in Cosmopolis and Justin Lane asks us to consider in the photograph above.
I dedicate this song to Secretary Paulson, “the boy in the bubble.”
And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
Thats dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And dont cry baby, dont cry
Dont cry
Image: Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency
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