Perhaps the most controversial of carnival exhibits in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century was known in the argot of the freak show as “pickled punk,” the preservation and display of fetuses, usually with some pronounced and spectacular deformity. Such displays titillated a curiosity for “knowledge” of the abnormal and bizarre, but like carnival freak shows in general, the practice largely died out in the 1940s with advances in medical knowledge that offered scientific explanations for the freaks, as well as a shift in public attitudes about the propriety of putting such oddities and anomalies on public display. Pickled punk saw a revival in the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s, but was soon outlawed in many states.

I was reminded of the history of the freak show, and of pickled punks in particular, when I saw this photograph, the first image in the recent reprise of a 2005 slide show at the Chicago Tribune :

What you are looking at is the vascular system of a human head that is on display as part of a traveling exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry titled “Body Worlds.” “Body Worlds” is one of a number of different shows which exhibit human bodies that have been flayed, vivisected and “plastinated.” Plastination is a chemical process that removes waters and fats from a dead body, replacing them with reactive polymers that deny bacteria the nutrition they need to effect decomposition. “Body Worlds” exhibits have been shown throughout the United States and Europe in recent years and with the avowed purpose “to educate the public about the inner workings of the human body and [to] show the effects of poor health, good health and lifestyle choices.”

There is surely need for great scientific literacy in the United States, but one has to wonder if what animates these shows is really an interest in knowledge or a perverse desire to encounter the macabre. I’ve not yet attended one of these shows, but I have talked with several who have and they report that the displays include everything from plastinated body organs (often deformed or diseased) to a wide array of  human bodies performing a full range of activities that include kneeling, smoking a cigarette, dribbling a basketball, shooting an arrow, sitting at a table while playing poker or chess, emulating Rodin’s “The Thinker,” and so on. And with the exception of the “The Smoker,” whose blackened lungs stand as a warning against the use of tobacco, there seems to be very little display or discussion of knowledge about human anatomy that would otherwise be hard to come by, though there is a great deal of attention to the technology of plastination, as well as praise and celebration of its inventor, scientist-artist Gunther von Hagen, who comes across in many ways as a contemporary P.T. Barnum.

Knowledge or entertainment? What’s the big deal? And why shouldn’t the mass dissemination of knowledge be entertaining? It is, of course, hard to know quite where to begin here, but one thing that clearly gets lost in all of this is that we are looking at flayed and vivisected corpses that at one time housed living and breathing human beings, their nameless bodies thoroughly objectified and put on display for our visual consumption. Questions have been raised recently about where the bodies actually come from, but there is another point to be made, for it is hard to imagine how these displays are designed more to prime or sate our thirst for knowledge—or to inure us to the dead or decaying body as part of an avant-garde intervention against bourgeois taboos—than to titillate our desire for macabre spectacle. Indeed, in a slightly different register we might actually call it pornography. How else can we explain the reported “fascination“ with images like that of “The Skin Man“ holding out his own outer shell for our examination (and edification)?

In its own way it would seem to be a late modern form of pickled punk.

Photo Credits: E. Jason Wamsgans/Tribune; Gunther von Hagens/Body World

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Every year or so at election time we are reminded of how apathetic American voters are by one or another group that calls attention to the low U.S. voter turnout in comparison to other countries. The antidote to this condition is to be “rational,” for voting, we are told, is the rational thing to do: every vote can make a difference, by voting you have a voice in the political, use it or lose it, and so on. The problem, of course, is that no matter how rational it is to be rational, few of us live our lives exclusively by the standards of such a calculus (even when we can figure out what the rational thing to do is!). The question then, perhaps, is not why do so few people vote, but in fact why do so many actually choose to go to the polls?

One possibility, of course, is that voting is altogether irrational, contrary to one’s best interests according to a carefully calculated cost-benefit analysis. A different answer is suggested in this photograph that appeared in the NYT this past week following the parliamentary elections in Pakistan.

Voting in this election might have been the rational thing to do, although the caption points out that those going to these polls did so “fearful of violence,” but what the photograph features is a moment of unfettered, collective joy and celebration. The figure dancing in the middle is a cipher of almost pure affect, channeling the emotion that courses up and down the street. This election is about more than aggregating personal preferences: in the process citizens have become part of something that is larger than individual self-consciousness. The joy of voting here is an almost transcendent act; it is not inconsistent with a rational appeal to aggregate one’s votes and thus gain the power of numbers, but it is clearly more than that—a ritual of social life and collective being.

In the U.S., of course, we worry a good deal about the influence of such demonstrations of public affect on the voting process. And so while political campaigns themselves seem to be acceptable occasions for public spectacles, parades, and overt displays of collective emotionality, voting itself is rendered as an individual and isolated moment of private reflection. This photograph from this past week’s Washington Post is typical of how the voting process is ritualistically represented by the mainstream media:

Nameless and faceless individuals visually and physically segregate themselves from the influences of the public as they register their voice and opinion guided by nothing by conscience—and, presumably, rationally calculated private interest. Indeed, there are no signs of the public whatsoever, a point underscored by the high angle and long distance of the image that would ordinarily contextualize the setting in a public space, but here only emphasizes the stark, drab, emptiness of the room which could be anywhere—and nowhere.  Note too how the image highlights the fragmentation and separation of private individuals. What the picture shows us then is a scene that symbolically underwrites the autonomous individuality featured in contemporary liberal-democracy, and one that mutes the affect or joy that goes along with being members of a community of strangers. Good reasons aside, it is little wonder so many people choose not to vote.

Photo Credits: Tyler Hicks/NYT; Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

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The latest theme among the punditry–and once again, one serving conservative interests–is that Barack Obama is a silver-tongued, spell-binding, mesmerizing, messianic orator whose powerful rhetoric is creating a cult of personality. (They really are saying this.) Charles Krauthammer is the latest to weigh in, although largely to summarize his colleagues’ profound insights. One might think it would be an understandable response if the current president had been a model policy-maker, but that obviously is not the case. And it wasn’t that long ago when conservatives were telling us that Ronald Reagan ought to be celebrated for how he made us believe, after the doldrums of the Carter years, that it was “Morning in America.” That message of hope has been conveniently forgotten, it seems. So what’s up?

The convention of capable writers attacking eloquent speakers goes all the way back to Plato. In brief, the cautionary note against demagoguery is an important warning in any democracy, but one often used on behalf of oligarchic interests. And there are two very important considerations: whether the charge is correct in the particular case, and what the alternative is. Furthermore, it can be difficult for some people to tell the difference between bombast and eloquence, and the alternative often gets a pass as one assumes that other speakers with different styles are somehow more substantive, or those with less ability are nonetheless adequately effective.

But those are not the problems we have at the moment. No, the problem is that the currently regnant ideological regime has acquired enormous power, influence, and wealth through the politics of fear. No wonder they now are afraid. Obama isn’t just an orator, but his oratory has done something far more important than enchant his audiences. He has given voice to a new, rightly hopeful America that already exists. If you want to see them, take a look:

These are faces in a crowd that was listening to Obama last month in South Carolina. I liked this photograph the moment I saw it. That response is cued by the smiles in the center of the frame, but by more as well. To the extent that faces can tell the story, these people aren’t just watching, they are listening and responding, and actively so. They are not being snowed but rather attending intelligently and liking what they hear. They are in a good mood because they are responding in kind to a speaker who respects them enough to appeal to their intelligence and their belief in a good society. They are neither stupid nor poor, nor vulnerable to a demagogue because of that. But that is not the whole of it.

The profound beauty captured in this photograph is that they are comfortable with one another. Black and white, young and middle-aged, Southerners all, they are pressed together and yet each is completely at ease. The good vibe comes not from seeing Obama’s luster reflected in their faces, but from who they already are individually and together. This is the America that has been emerging, however fitfully, in that last twenty years. This is the America that wants to hope and deserves a president who can recognize and respect and strive for all that hope represents.

The Krauthammer column appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Presidents Day. The Republican claim to be the “party of Lincoln” became ever more strained with the the continuation of Nixon’s “Southern strategy” throughout the Karl Rove era. Now it appears that it was not enough to abandon Lincoln’s vision of America; his eloquence has to be rejected as well. But let us not forget the challenge he has set before us forever. Politics may not be able to escape vicious partisanship, but it should not succumb to it, and the highest calling of the political leader is to bring people to respond to their common problems by drawing on what is good and true within each of us. As Lincoln knew:

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Photograph by Jim Wilson/New York Times. You can read all of Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address here.

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Question: is an icon one or many? On the one hand, an icon is supposed to be unique, representing the singular achievement, the ne plus ultra of a field of human endeavor. Michael Jordan is an icon, not Scottie Pippen or many other top-tier players. Babe Ruth, not Hank Aaron or Sammy Steroid. Einstein and Picasso, not Bohr and Braque. The Mona Lisa, not . . . Well, that gets to the other hand, which is that the icon is iconic because it is widely distributed, something that may have become distinctive through constant reproduction regardless of individual merit. Thus, the icon appears to be both singular and the latest iteration of a series, both unique and the characteristic instance of a type. Nobody understands this better than Madonna:

Here she is posing with actress Holly Weston at a publicity shoot for their movie “Filth and Wisdom.” The combination of title and double image invites snide remarks, but that’s taking the cheap bait. I like the photo because of how it captures Madonna’s genius for making herself heir to all the blondes produced by the Hollywood dream factory. We have realized since Warhol’s Marilyn series that the blonde du jour is performing a type, but Madonna makes that a virtue rather than a dirty little secret.

This photograph captures the visual iteration beautifully. Madonna is in focus and set forward at the head of a series. The younger woman is somewhat fuzzy, as if still in the process of formation. They seem to be perfectly sequenced in space and time, the one rightly receiving the spotlight that eventually will be on her successor. Above all, each is one of a series that can extend indefinitely–and will, as all that is required is processes of reproduction that obviously are well in place. Image, publicity, bone structure are all a sure thing. The “mechanical reproduction” of the camera replicates the culture machine and genetic mechanism alike.

According to Walter Benjamin, mechanical reproduction destroyed the “aura” of the individual work of art as well as its relationship to tradition. Absent this anchoring in “ritual,” artistic production becomes politicized. For all his brilliance, Benjamin’s observations can get in the way of understanding how culture depends on constant iteration of visual forms. To see this, one might shift from fine art to vernacular practices and pagan rituals, like this one:

You are looking at a photo from this year’s annual convention of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas. If there is a rival organization of Fake Bearded Santas, I haven’t heard of it. This group meets every year in Southern California, which no doubt it just the place for letting your hair down after the Christmas rush.

I get a kick out of this image for several reasons. Their easy association with ritual is mirrored in their behavior for the camera, where they all lean together and smile on cue for the group snapshot. The photographer may have asked for a big “Ho Ho,” but they probably smile easily. We also can smile at the few outliers in the group: the Lord of the Rings afficiando in the front right, and the wary ball cap guy in the left rear. The real comic effect, however, comes from the photo being a study in duplication. Santa Claus should be a single, iconic figure, and he is–but only because there are Santa Clones in every department store in the country.

And so we get to the dog show. To get some distance from Benjamin’s anxiety about the mass media, we might consider how it is that humans are continually reproducing images of visual iteration. Like this:

These are Old English Sheepdogs lined up for judging at the Westminster Dog Show. I won’t doubt that each of these dogs are individuals, but the photograph highlights their species identity and regimented styling. The most distinctive Old English Sheepdog will be the perfect iteration of the type, which stands behind that dog in a long series issuing from the twined processes of nature and culture.

Despite the attempt by these photographs to put a good face and good vibe on cloning, I’ll bet that the anxiety about mechanical reproduction remains. Celebrity culture, vernacular culture, subculture, all are exercises in the reproduction of the same. Cloning isn’t something that emerges unbidden from modern technology, but rather one more instantiation of something humans do all the time. If you don’t like it, there still is reason to blame the camera, which is both an apparatus of reproduction and a means for naturalizing cloning. But I wouldn’t, for these images and others offer more than apparatus and ideology. They are how we see ourselves as we are, seriatim.

Photographs by Markus Schreiber/Associated Press, Karen Tapia Andersen/Los Angeles Times, and Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

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