The Fashion Of Disaster: Vogue's Supermodel Sandy Shoot

To put your finger on the massive disconnect between our pop (and "high") culture and (the often grim aspects of) Reality, look no further than Vogue's latest fashion shoot featuring stick-thin models in expensive gowns posing amidst the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Entitled "Storm Troupers" (clever), the pics by famed photog Annie Leibovitz juxtapose willowy women in high couture with search-and-rescue dogs, military emergency food supply teams...

...and a flooded street in the Far Rockaways:

I suppose the message here is "Fashion Cares" -- and certainly, by donating funds for a Sandy charity Vogue "bought" the right to use one of the worst natural disasters to hit the United States as the backdrop to advertise Chanel and Ralph Lauren -- but I would have much preferred to see these models in the hand-me-down emergency clothing donations that so many people who were flooded out of their homes had to wear. You know: ill-fitting old pant-suits, oversized sweatshirts with holes in them, and (gasp!) OLD (though warm) SOCKS.

What you won't see in Vogue's photo shoot

It is almost as if we have reached the scenario presented in "Hunger Games," where the suffering and danger experienced by the "proles" are displayed as just another fashion accessory -- a rustic addition to the world of glitz and glamour:

Effie Trinket or Anna Wintour?

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Skyfall, Spyfall, And The Ouroboros Of Fantasy And Reality

Does anybody else find it strange that the U.S. military/government is currently embroiled in a spy scandal the same week James Bond spy thriller "Skyfall" is #1 at the box-office?

Is there any connection between these two narratives -- one real, one fictional?

We have the "Bond Girls" -- beautiful, at times treacherous:



And the "Bond Girls" are sort of like the "draw" for the movies, aren't they? They're like the "Godzillas" of the movie series. Like when you turn on a Godzilla movie, you're really tuning in for the monsters, not the exposition. The Bond Women are like the Monsters -- Distractors from the core elements of the plot.

What comes first in these queer intersections of the real and the unreal? Does the movie come first, and then reporters shape the narrative of real-life events to mirror the movie -- as to market the news?

Or is it all more a strange precognitive thing on the part of our fantasy-makers...no, to call it "precognitive" sounds too fanciful, too wacky. Is it like-energy attracting like-energy...the idea of the world outside ourselves as a mirror of our own lives?

Fantasy weaving into reality -- here's another example:

The Drudge Report, one of the most popular news sites in the world, links to an article called "Talk Host Calls For Second American Revolution":

The link to that news story takes you to (surprise!) Infowars.com, whose marquee headliner story is:



...and we are now back to a movie narrative, that of "The Matrix." (Click here for the story about how a bunch of Georgia GOP lawmakers recently discussed theories similar to that of Jones in a closed-door session that was conveniently videotaped). Another headline on Infowars today is this one:

A "storyline" that has been "predicted" months ago in a comic book:

Now let's go to another item on the same Infowars marquee:

This of course refers to the recent Hurricane Sandy. Which was eerily prefigured by last month's "Batman" comic:



...the widespread lack of power and "third world conditions" left in the storm's wake echoed in the NBC show "Revolution," heavily promoted this Fall:

And on, and on. What comes first here, the chicken or the egg? I subscribe to no hard-and-fast theories; if I had to guess, I'd say it's an omelet of many theories -- or perhaps something too weird to even fully comprehend. But it sure is interesting. I could just go on and on with examples, each leading into each...

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Revenge Of The Goddess: Athena Strikes

I only thought hurricanes got "people" names but The Weather Channel has apparently decided to name the current one smashing against my city "Athena" -- against the express wishes of the National Weather Service --

Giant Athena statue in Nashville (source)

As an added sync, the above photo was taken from a site called Trip Advisor, whose logo is an owl -- one of Athena's symbols:

Of course, Athena is a pretty prominent goddess, patroness of (quoting Wikipedia here) "wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill". She's also linked to a ton of other goddesses -- like the Libyan/Egyptian Neith (goddess of both war and the more domestic activity of weaving), who has been controversially (at least, in academic circles) been referred-to as "The Black Athena."

Neith

Neith, from "Wonder Woman"

Another goddess was invoked today, in relation to both the rather violent weather and the Election -- Mother Nature. A Twitter topic as I write this, she was apparently referred-to by the erudite documentary maker Michael Moore, who blogged the following:

"And you, Mother Nature, with all your horrific damage, death and destruction you caused last week, you became, ironically, the undoing of a Party that didn't believe in you or your climate changing powers. Perhaps they'll believe now."

Probably not the most sensitively put thing I've read at the moment, considering so many are still suffering from our previous storm. But it syncs perfectly with the idea of Athena as a storm. The revenge of the Goddess.

Yes, this is an actual comic book

Moore makes the "triumph" of women during the recent re-election of President Obama a focal point of his post, including thanking Sandra Fluke, who started the trend (by being a target) of GOP leaders and conservative pundits saying absolutely crazy-ass things about women and rape -- what was to be "branded" by the media as "The War On Women":

"Thank you Sandra Fluke for enduring the insults hurled at you and then becoming an important grassroots leader against the war on women. Thank you Todd Akin for...well, for just being you."

The real Sandra Fluke Vs. depiction by Far-Right

"The War On Sandra Fluke" Sets Off "The War On Women"

Another sync, another angry storm "goddess" -- Sandra and "Sandy."

Todd Akin, one of the out-of-touch GOPs who I believe hurt Romney in a huge way, was actually referred to as being "raped" by his female opponent: quoteth Jon Stewart: "Well it looks tonight like, in Missouri, Claire McCaskill has legitimately raped Todd Akin. Electorally speaking, obviously."

("Rape" never seems like a cool word to use in a joke, regardless of the context -- but that's just me)

Indeed, with last night's voting, more women are in the senate more than ever before, 20. Most of these women would share attributes with Athena, who is highly intelligent and a strategic "warrior."

Again: the unbelievably crass remarks by the GOP regarding females pretty much killed Romney's campaign. Suppressed Goddess energy has literally overflowed, burst out:

"When you open a flood gate, how can you undo it?...There is no undoing; it must run it's course."
-- from "The Craft," 1996 

Or maybe that wasn't the reason Obama won at all. Maybe it was, as some people wrote, "Flag Head Lady":

"Flag Head Lady"

Neith

I'm not a huge traditional feminist, but I don't want to be forced to carry my rapist's baby either (neither did Athena, after Hephaestus attempted to rape her; she "foiled" the rape and his semen fell on Gaia/"Mother Nature" instead, who got pregnant by default. Those wacky Greeks!).

Women in my field, and especially in the field of gaming, were horrifically targeted with abusive language and threats of rape and murder this year, far worse than I observed in any other year since the Internet was a "thing." As I watched this mass exodus of women from blogging -- citing feeling unsafe and unprotected in the midst of what was default stalking that made its way offline -- I wondered what set this off? Why this year? And this doesn't even count the women overseas who are getting shot in the face and acid thrown on them for daring to get an education or talk about "rights."

I go back to my post on the comic book "goddesses" Phoenix and Pandora.

These female deities "ruled" the mainstream comic book world this year -- this, in a field dominated by male characters. Phoenix in particular is interesting, as she is, in a sense, a "bird-goddess" -- as is Athena and a whole "class" of goddesses:

This whole business has a lot of personal meaning to me as well -- the violent climate change inspiring me to do everything from questioning living in NYC anymore, to questioning what my purpose is in life, to a greater realization that there is a bigger community out there that needs help (and that, in the face of this and worse situations, the city's infrastructure might not be able to withstand).

But I, also, have an energy -- mostly creative and intellectual -- that needs to burst through:

And so I'll continue analyzing and writing. I feel I shall have no lack of topics in the weeks ahead.

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