Links
Archives
Thursday, September 30, 2004
|
IS THE BLIMP ORWELLIAN?
A university professor glances out of her sixth floor windows at the low rooftops of Washington DC. A white blimp jammed with surveillance cameras circles a large area which includes her office. She is immediately reminded of the opening scene of the film 1984, in which surveillance helicopters buzz Winston Smith's apartment. Is the blimp, then, Orwellian? Should UD find scary, oppressive, and objectionable the big white blimp? Hell, I don't know. It doesn't feel scary, though it's certainly creepy enough to have the thing bobbing about taking pictures for hours. Round and round she goes... Unlike Winston Smith, I don't revile and fear my government. I'll vote for Kerry, but the prospect of four more Bush years doesn't horrify me. My responses to the big white blimp have more to do with how vulnerable the city is than with how endangered my civil liberties are, or feel. But the blimp is quite a thing. Part of the emergent atmospherics of Foggy Bottom, a sky ghost for Halloween. |