This post is about false-flag operations. Often international espionage requires the recruitment of patsies who believe they are fighting for their own often ill-conceived cause while being fed orders that serve a larger purpose about which they remain entirely ignorant. They fight under a false flag, but in which they sincerely believe, making the masterminds behind this sort of operation safe from exposure should the operative fail. In his novel The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad laid out the scheme for an archetypal false-flag operation. Perhaps inspired by that work, Carles presents a hapless youth in an athletic jersey, and intends to call our attention to a cultural false-flag operation. He wants to enlist our aid in determining who or what is responsible. (Or maybe Carles himself is unaware of who is pulling his own strings. Or maybe once we begin to do as he wishes we fail to understand the nature of the intellectual work we are performing at his behest, under a false flag of our own. There are levels within levels.)
Spycraft of this nature was once limited to state-affiliated entities, but the rise of the culture industry and its supremacy over politics in regions where it retains control of media outlets has allowed celebrities and athletic stars to be recruited into this most dangerous game. Carles protests this development and issues a warning: "I think that it is irresponsible to wear the jersey of an athlete who you know nothing about. Much like any celebrity, there is a point where an athlete no longer ’stands for himself’" The athletes no longer represent themselves or their teams or their own statistics in any straightforward way, but have become counters in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, where everything is not as it seems and the movement of the trace is quicker than the speed of light. What is irresponsible is to don a article of clothing so laden with significance that one can't possibly hope to control the various messages that one will be sending out to different audiences, each with its own interpretation and agenda. This hints at a much deeper problematic. How does one wear any sort of apparel whatsoever without losing control over the signs with which one associates oneself? Is fashion itself one gigantic, ongoing false-flag operation?
Carles details the uneventful career of failed professional athlete Grant Hill to make the point that the cover story always seems inconsequential and possibly even innocuous. "Grant Hill represents failed expectations," Carles suggests, but that is merely the alibi for the mobilization of untold millions in and around the idea that he represented. His failure masks a far greater success, but whose success that is remains unknowable to the extent that we remember Hill. The youth wearing his jersey, by extension, lays claim to this same ambiguous mantle. He perpetuates Hill's memory (as does Carles himself) further shrouding in mystery the machinations by which professional sports launders near uncountable sums, amassing mroe and more clout to the culture industry in the process.
So when Carles advises, "Always do ur research, and learn about what a brand means," we can't be sure if he is being ironic, and actually warning us that no amount of research will reveal the hidden significance of social symbols, and in fact research will only strengthen the cover stories, tighten our allegiance to our false flag. In a subtle, deeply freighted epigram, Carles concludes that failing to perform due diligence would be "like wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I <3 cock’ even if ur not ghey. Yall know what I mean?" Here sexual identity prefigures allegiance of all kinds, and Carles calls into question whether our patriotic impulses are genetic, beyond our control, as homosexuality is presumed to be, or whether, conversely, sexuality is a matter of preference, of prerogatives adopted for tactical advantages in given circumstances. Carles teases us with is final question, knowing full well that it is impossible for us to know what he means; that in fact the phenomenological status of all our impressions has been deeply destabilized. To wit: There are instances when feigning a love of cock will shroud one's sexual identity in the deepest of mysteries. Carles suggests one of the most nefarious paradoxes of all, one beloved of all double and triple agents: Who can fail to trust the man whose shirt declares "I'm a Liar"?
No comments:
Post a Comment