{"id":59705,"date":"2018-06-22T17:55:26","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T17:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=59705"},"modified":"2018-06-22T17:56:55","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T17:56:55","slug":"puppetry-cascades-or-art-is-theft-and-three-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=59705","title":{"rendered":"Puppetry cascades, or “art is theft”"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — and if you experience vertigo reading any of these cascades, feel free to hang in there vertiginously — or let go ]
\n.<\/p>\n

Alright, here’s a DoubleQuote<\/strong> in images:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t believe there’s a direct borrowing <\/strong>(aka plagiarism, theft<\/strong>) here, but both images rely on a shared puppet cascades<\/strong> convention.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

It’s been a bit of a yawn <\/strong>to say art is theft<\/strong> — at least since a few borrowings past Picasso<\/strong>, and maybe before him — what makes this pair of puppet cascades<\/strong> interesting is:<\/p>\n

First, that each depicts a portion of a cascade of puppets — in the earlier, My Fair Lady<\/strong> version, Bernard Shaw<\/strong> puppeting Henry Higgins<\/strong> puppeting Eliza Dolittle<\/strong>, while the recent New Yorker<\/strong> graphic might as well be X<\/strong> (unshown) puppeting Steve Bannon<\/strong> puppeting Trump <\/strong>with Jeff Sessions<\/strong> and Scott Pruitt<\/strong>, maybe. <\/p>\n

Second, note the X<\/strong> (Bernard Shaw) in the later version, and then ponder the idea that cascades may have a source, or may continue backwards ad infinitum<\/strong>, but Someone <\/strong> or Thing <\/strong>implicitly or explicitly needs to fill that X<\/strong> space. In the earlier version, Bernard Shaw<\/strong> does it, but that only begs the question, is Something <\/strong>puppeting Bernard Shaw<\/strong>? Deity<\/strong>, perhaps, or Muse<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

And in the contemmporary version, where the upper puppeteer is cut off from vision, They<\/strong>‘s a good guess for the X<\/strong> Who<\/strong>‘s puppeting the Bannon <\/strong>figure, because Bannon<\/strong>, They<\/strong>, and Puppetry<\/strong> are all widely associated with conspiracy theory<\/strong>. Oh, and think, X-Files<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

Hey, in reality Lerner and Lowe<\/strong> were making musical out of Shaw<\/strong>‘s theatrical Pygmalion <\/strong>out of Gilbert and Sullivan<\/strong> — and the cascade theft goes on and on, back into the mists and myths of antiquity..<\/p>\n

The actual figures in the New Yorker<\/strong> cascade are X<\/strong>, Lord Bell<\/strong> (representing Bell Pottinger<\/strong>, the PR firm), and, below, the brothers Atul, Ajay<\/strong>, and Tony Gupta<\/strong>. The article itself, The Reputation-Laundering Firm That Ruined Its Own Reputation<\/a>, is well worth a read. And look at the illustrations careful documentation of the ownership-lineages it’s pilfering from: <\/p>\n

Illustration by Ben Jones; photographs by (clockwise from top): David M. Benett \/ Getty; Martin Rhodes \/ Gallo Images \/ Business Day \/ Getty; Foto24 \/ Gallo Images \/ Getty; David M. Benett \/ Bell Pottinger \/ Getty<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

Property is theft<\/strong>, now — that’s Proudhon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — and if you experience vertigo reading any of these cascades, feel free to hang in there vertiginously — or let go ] . Alright, here’s a DoubleQuote in images: I don’t believe there’s a direct borrowing (aka plagiarism, theft) here, but both images rely on a shared puppet cascades convention. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[384,53,526,309,627,480,626,187,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-britain","category-charles-cameron","category-criminals","category-doublequotes","category-music","category-patterns","category-politics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59705"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59787,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59705\/revisions\/59787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}