Sontag is no Conservative, not in the sense that we use the term
across the Pond. There is no way that this appellation could fit.
Unlike Christopher Hitchens, she has never repudiated the Radical
Left. Sontag will always and forever be as much an intellectual guru
of the RadLibs as Donald Rumsfeld will be a paradigm of American
Conservatism grounded in the study of history and political science.
> >I remember years ago, when photoshop first moved into newspapers, one
>photographer telling me very seriously that no one seemed to realise
>what it was, how it now changed the whole issue of the verisimilitude
>of photographs. He thought it was a disaster. Once, even though
>photos have always been faked, a photo was considered proof of
>something. Now that is simply not the case: photographs are read in
>many different ways. Even though they are still used as propaganda
>by governments (we had a particularly cynical use of pictures by the
>Australian government, with a scandal called the "children
>overboard", a picture of children in the sea that their refugee
>parents had allegedly thrown into the water. the Howard government
>won the election on that. So it's not as if photo manipulation
>doesn't work, still...)<
>
>Voila, Alison, a nub statement. I can't comment on Sontag's recent book for
>the very good reason that I haven't read it, I am puzzled by the reports
>I've heard of it though. I can't imagine, this for Tom, that she's become a
>conservative, but I am aware of how some of her contemporaries have done so,
>since, as Tom mentions, that crucial date in a certain September. One of the
>things that have struck me re Sontag is the amount of her emphasis on the
>visual, rather than the verbal, which ghostly but breathing intimate area is
>exactly where poetry happens, gawd help us all!!!
>
>
>Best
>
>Dave
>
>
>
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Leicester, England
>
>Home Page
>
>A Chide's Alphabet
>
>Painting Without Numbers
>
>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 4:30 PM
>Subject: Re: Sontag, art, erotics (LONG POST)
>
>
>At 7:11 PM -0500 5/6/03, tom bell wrote:
>>I don't really hold it against her that she is
>>evading dealing with something like this - it's the normal response. I'm
>>just disappointed.
>
>Yes, it's only one of the things missing. Though as I said earlier,
>given a large part of it is a rewrite of her early essay on
>photography, and concerns itself with how the image has changed
>modern consciousness, maybe that's asking for a different book. BUT
>I agree it begs many questions, and there's a lurking nostalgia
>there, which is hard to put your finger on. I don't find her recent
>essays as a whole as stimulating as her early ones; I'm sort of
>struggling through Where the stress falls (where she says, btw, some
>odd things about poetry).
>
>And one huge element missing from Regarding the Pain of Others is the
>whole issue of the computer manipulation of the image, which to my
>mind has totally changed how images (film and still) are perceived.
>I remember years ago, when photoshop first moved into newspapers, one
>photographer telling me very seriously that no one seemed to realise
>what it was, how it now changed the whole issue of the verisimilitude
>of photographs. He thought it was a a disaster. Once, even though
>photos have always been faked, a photo was considered proof of
>something. Now that is simply not the case: photographs are read in
>many different ways. Even though they are still used as propoganda
>by governments (we had a particularly cynical use of pictures by the
>Australian government, with a scandal called the "children
>overboard", apicture of children in the sea that their refugee
>parents had allegedly thrown into the water. the Howard government
>won the election on that. So it's not as if photo manipulation
>doesn't work, still...)
>
>Well, looking at my own kids and their friends, who are
>extraordinarily sophisticated readers of the mass media, it seems to
>me there's a profound change: they watch movies like The Matrix and
>then watch, with equal fascination, documentaries on how the movies
>are made. They do not accept anything on tv at face value. So some
>of her comments, in ignoring that whole issue, both its potential use
>by media and governmental powers, and in the reading by a generation
>raised with the manipulated image, are missing a huge dimension.
>
>Best
>
>A
>--
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Editor, Masthead
>http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
>Home page
>http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
--
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