Thought for the Day (Dec 29)

Subject: Thought for the Day (Dec 29)
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:15 AM

The character begins in "The Count of Monte Cristo" -- the cloaked seeker of revenge in a newly capitalizing world -- receives a boost with the Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel, and finally a snazzy costume and a batcave with Zorro. The basic book on pop culture in capitalism, The Emperor's New Clothes (by the Chliean Ariel Dorfman, author of "Death and the Maiden"), singles out The Lone Ranger for the apotheosis of what it all means.
First, the masked man represents the ordinary anonymous person in the modern world, who has a secret identity beneath the business suit, and whose capacity for violent rebellion cannot be openly shown. The mask hides, and symbolizes that ordinary person; the Clark Kent hides the Superman. But he is on the border of good and evil...
Even more subtly, the masked man supports the system by allowing us to believe that the problems are problems of good and evil, of bad people and good, and not structural inequalities that only organizing and analysis can overcome. When the Lone Ranger comes to town, there is evil brewing, bad men, rustlers, wicked cattle barons. Does the Lone Ranger suggest that land practices are repressive, that conflicts between owners are irrelevant to the hired worker/cowboys, that native people are systematically being forced off their lands? No: even to say this shows how absurd it would be to bring it up. The Ranger fights the bad guy, the bad guy loses, goodness returns to the valley, and the Ranger rides off to the next valley. He may be conflicted, but he is a force for good, harnessing the knowledge of the bad, as symbolized by the mask.

Thus the Marxist Dorfman. Still, I wave a hat in the direction of the dust cloud disappearing over the far horizon, and can provide an answer to that most important of all questions -- "Who was that masked man?" "That, ma'am, was Clayton Moore!!!!" (died yesterday, at 85).

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 29)
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:34 AM

Well that last line kinda' killed off the smart-ass comment I was about to make..............

One of the facts of aging seems to be that I am ever more frequently reminded of my lost youth. Sometimes I wish I'd had an awful childhood instead of the loving and happy one I was given. Maybe I wouldn't miss it so badly.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 29)
From: annamill
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 12:13 PM

My childhood just passed away for good (big lie). There is nothing left. The Long Stranger is dead.

'Spaw, your job, as I see it, is to pass on that loving and happy childhood and from what I've read here, you're doing a wonderful job. When my children thank me for something, I always tell them to remember that something when they have children. Peter, beautiful, as usual.

Love, annap