personal glorification in the aught's

just remembered being on a flight from chicago to la, when i got into talking with the lady sitting next to me. we talked a bit, laughed at each others jokes and so on, and got to the inevitable gestures of social behaviour: so what's the reason for your visit to la? (think the 'security' officer at your local airport, but than less paranoid)

i explained my sci-arc study plans, explained about delft and architecture and the whole ram-bam. next was her turn. she told me she had a documentary film production company in chicago. nothing special, going to la for movie production people is like going to the toilet for you and me. the best part however, was that it was no ordinary documentaries she made.

whenever somebody contacted her to make a documentary, it would be about somebody else.

say you are filthy rich, and think your better half/best friend/father/mother(/pet for i don't know who's sake), really deserves a nice tribute video for his/her/its birthday/graduation/first teeth/..., al you have to do is contact the nice lady's company and they do the rest. they hunt down old high school loves, interview the subject's favourite college professor or car salesman, all to turn it into a nice video, to be given to the person in question.

nice...?

personal glorification is not new. it's been around since the year zero. roman emperors liked to have their face everywhere, have their own temples erected or even name a wall after themselves. cut to the twentieth century, we had mr. hitler trying to turn berlin into one major ejaculation of personal ass-kissing, stalin tried to do it, but got destalinized after his death, and of course we have the body of chairman mao (is it one, two, three or four of them?) on tian'anmen square, with long lines of people paying their last respect, even thirty years after his passing.

and so now we have personal glorification on a slightly smaller and less lethal level. i haven't tried it, but google-ing for 'one-person shrine' or 'ass-kissing through video' and you might just find the chicago-based company.

written over the pacific #1

oh, the lady was flying to la to interview benicio del toro, who was - yes i'm not kidding - the high-school sweetheart of the person subject in the video (a google-hotshot).

and if you want to read more about people with power or money trying to glorify theirselves, try reading 'the edifice complex' by deyan sudjic.