Perhaps, you, reader, in your recent perusals of my previous blog posts, have noticed an increasing tendency towards the absurd. Well, let me assure you that this was quite intentional and not, rather, the quasi-physical manifestations of the very breaking-down of my mind. No, the randomness you might have perceived to be present on this url of unrivaled magnificence was not the "rambling" of a "crazy" "person" - it all leads to a point! An absurd point! Well, actually, no - the absurdity was done for the sake of absurdity, myself being a fan of the word of the absurd. But, I figured, with such absurdity already wafting through the blogospheric atmosphere (the kids still call it that, right?) like a nonsensical phermone (or aphrodesiac - wait, no, that just sounds weird), I would write a post dealing with the absurd in a rather-more-than-cursory way. And so, I end this absurd introductory paragraph, in which I have used some form of the word "absurd" over 7, no 8 times (rather absurdly I might add - oh no! 9 times!), and thus begin the meat, the crux, the meaty crux of what I am trying to say...............absurdly...............(10 times!)...............
As I read what might have been the section of the MEH textbook assigned for tomorrow's class (being syllabus-less, I cannot be sure), I found myself chuckling, nay guffawing, at John Heartfield's "Have No Fear - He's a Vegetarian" on page 944. The picture itself, though literally/photographically crazy (...absurd...) is nonetheless quite true and, more to the point, incredibly chilling (it's meaning is explained in the textbook). Heartfield was a communist and dadaist (or at least sympathized with the movements), and, according to the online brochure for a Heartfield exhibition at the Getty Museum, he "unleashed his sharpest satire on Hitler's Führerkult (cult of the leader), the basis of German Fascism. These montages parody Hitler's most iconic poses, gestures, and symbols to create the impression that one need only to scratch the thin surface of Fascist propaganda to uncover its absurd [!!!] reality."
It seems to me Heartfield was one of the many Europeans who had lived through World War I, seen the rise and spread of fascism and Hitler's ascension to power, and thought, "How is Mussolini in power? Why are so many people listening to what Hitler says? Why are the rest not paying attention to him? This makes no sense. How could this possibly be happening? Did we spend four years fighting in World War One, at the cost of millions of lives, for nothing? This is absurd!" Of course, the dadaists had already acknowledged that the world was an absurd place during World War One, when Marcel Duchamp's forays into what-the-hell?-ness were at their strangest and strongest (see page 930 or any of Duchamp's works from that period). Hitler and everything he represented, not to mention the allies appeasement of him, just cemented these views.
Heartfield's picture also reminded me of Max Ernst's "Une Semaine de Bonté" or "A Week of Kindness," which I discovered randomly at Green Apple Books (a quality bookstore). A book full of collages, it is divided into 7 sections (for each day of the week) with some theme or common image running through all the collages of a certain section. And it really doesn't make any sense, at least to the conscious mind. It is instead meant to appeal to the reader's feelings and emotions, and there is definitely a "mood of catastrophe that pervades this collage 'novel'"that every interpretation attributes to the fact that Ernst was putting this together in Italy (remember, that's fascist Italy) and in 1933, just after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of Germany. Yes, it's crazy, it's absurd - not just the book - Hitler, Europe, history - that's what's damned absurd - the world is absurd.
(17 times!)
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