Post #13602 by tikibars on Wed, Nov 13, 2002 10:59 AM

These are amazing.

They fall firmly into the "I wish I had thought of that" category.

In addition to being sort of funny, they are making a very important, if obvious, statment about American consumer culture invading and destroying every other culture on earth, and about unchecked capitalism ruining the beauty and integrity of small and unique socities world wide.

In the Chicago Filed Museum of Natural History, they have a 19th century ceremonial mask from New Guinea that has a bowler hat incorporated into the wood carving. This illustrates the influence that missionaries and other western vistors had upon the natives.

If there are any undiscovered Oceanic cultures remaining, we can be sure that their first contact with Europeans or Americans would influence them similarly, and it is certain that our crass and all-pervading consumer culture icons would work their way into this theoretical Oceanic art as surely as the bowler hat did in the 19th century.

This is so sad, that Ronald McDonald, a vacuous icon created to sell unhealthy food to naive children, has the power, world-wide, to influence the culture, art, and religion of socities that don't understand the icon's true (lack of) real importance.

I realize that the art works posted above are by western artists of course, but they demonstrate an eerie could-be reality, that has been, thus far, only narrowly avoided as reality.