Image credit: teotwawki on Flickr.
To finish off, I want to go back to where I started, to spectacle, sex and death, and just redeem that argument a little.
I was reading some old electricity journals from the 1880s last year. That was the time when electric light was new, and so was the telegraph. It was an exciting time. They were trying to find a word for electrician (this was the reference I was following up, after reading about it in ‘When Old Technologies Were New’), and debating whether somebody who executes by electric chair should have a different name from somebody who executes in the usual way. They would list all the people who had been hit by lightning that fortnight, next to the next about patents and experiments and the laying of new cables.
The London Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review, August 30th 1884 issue, included in it the speech made at the laying of the corner-stone of the Statue of Liberty.
This isn’t the Statue itself, by the way. This is a replica paid for by the Americans and given to the French.
The speech goes:
“And when, from the beacon which crowns it, shall shine forth the electric light, the consumate fruit of labours in which Franklin was the pioneer, wrought out to perfection by patient toilers who followed in the path in which he led, it will be indeed a fit emblem of the torch of Freedom, kindled by a celestial spark, guarded and kept alive by historic service, and at last lifted up to the safe and serene height—a light to lighten the world.”
So I really like that. Yes it’s spectacle, and in fact it’s the spectacle, but it’s an appropriate use of the spectacle. It’s really saying something. Forget the present-day problems faced by the West; I can’t think of a modern use of a modern spectacle which has such noble – and meaningful, appropriate – sentiment.