January 21, 2010

At the Forbidden Reflection Café...



... will you ever know who you really are?

ADDED: Thanks to Instapundit for linking to this — and, as you'll see if you clink on the "will you ever know" link — to Pogo for making the connection to Magritte and to Henry (the commenter) for the photoshopping.

42 comments:

Ernesto Ariel Suárez said...

Oh, he knows who he is. Those who didn't are the dupes.

wv: quirab

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I bet these days Obama wishes he was back in the Post-Impressionists wing.

Hoosier Daddy said...

He needs a new tailor.

Peter V. Bella said...

Well he can see his reflection so we know he is not the undead. However, since he sees it in reverse, we do not quite know what he is.

Ann Althouse said...

Does Obama have a bald spot?

Hoosier Daddy said...

Does Obama have a bald spot?

No that's just where Soros had the mind control transmitter implanted. It will grow back soon.

virgil xenophon said...

Being steeped in Marxist-Leninism from an child-hood via "Uncle Frank" thru college if we are to believe his own writings, I'm sure he is very familiar with fellow traveler Jean-Paul Sartre, who's existentialist mantra was "you exist only in the eyes of others." Thus I'm sure Obama considers it all just a matter of better PR and "staging." Time to double down....

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Does Obama have a bald spot?

Naaah. thats a sunset

Hoosier Daddy said...

Actually he needs to grow it out a bit overall. I'm not talkin Samuel Jackson afro big but a bit more fuzz up there. Right now he looks like a chia-pet that hasn't been watered in a few days.

ricpic said...

Gonna ask a stupid question here (what else is new). I understand that a man looking into a mirror and seeing his back has been a central image in surrealism but I don't have a clue what it means, or signifies. Do you?

Brad V said...

Upon viewing the image...

Thought #1: Magritte.

Thought #2: Putin.

KCFleming said...

" a central image in surrealism but I don't have a clue what it means, or signifies"

It means: Weird!!, but takes 53 pages to explain in a Foucauldian dialectic.

KCFleming said...

It was used to creepy effect in the Stephen King movie Dolores Claiborne, in this scene.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

..a man looking into a mirror and seeing his back has been a central image in surrealism but I don't have a clue what it means, or signifies. Do you?

It means he only looks after his own behind.

Hoosier Daddy said...

It means: Weird!!, but takes 53 pages to explain in a Foucauldian dialectic

Or if Ritmo was to explain it, 537 pages.

KCFleming said...

Obama seeing himself from behind:
"Does this suit make my ass look fat?"

AllenS said...

The only time looking at the back of my head was important, was when the duck tail was cool. How old am I?

Anonymous said...

Janet Napolitano says that this shows the mirror works.

William said...

Life, it is said, is lived forward and understood backward. We only see who we were and not who we are.

Henry said...

Julius -- Nice slice. LOL.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Julius @10:32 wins the tread.

Joan said...

Pogo, that scene from Dolores Claiborne always freaks me out. Great movie.

As to what it's supposed to mean, I thought it had something to do with our ability to hide ourselves, even from our own gaze. In the scene Pogo referenced, it's pivotal to the character finally confronting something from her past she had repressed.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."

Satchel Paige

David said...

This photo actually frightened me.

Is it the facelessness?

I felt like I had finally seen something real about Obama.

Unknown said...

My God (no, My Lenin), I really am an empty suit and, oh, no, can I be going bald and gray?

B-b-but I'm so young, so hip, so cool, so intellectual. I can't look like one of those bitter clingers. Oh, God, what next? A beer belly??? Wrinkles???

Not ME!!! It CAN'T be me!!!!

Michelle, Rahm, where's my portrait??

AllenS said...

The only time looking at the back of my head was important, was when the duck tail was cool. How old am I?

Put it this way, you remember when The Lone Ranger was a network TV show and you saw all the episodes first run (like me).

WV "mesole" What Barry sold a long time ago.

Chennaul said...

It's the ultimate CYA Portrait...

garage mahal said...

Keep staring at a photoshopped picture of Obama, weirdos! Talk about ODS.

Chennaul said...

Nobody knows where he's going , and no one knows where he's been.

He's the man of the moment!

He's the man in the mirror!

He's the MAN.

traditionalguy said...

Seen from the front or from behind is all the same in the mind of a narcissistic personality type. That personality type must exist in the eyes of a "narcissistic supply source" that only sees good in him. Obama sees his job as the role of a new kind of President that is wildly popular. That demaded image has been rewarded without reservation by all real news organisations. Obama's worst enemies are the non-real news organisations like Fox News and any other traitor in the MSM that dares to show him as an unpopular failure. He sees the recent losses in NJ, Va, and Massachusetts as the fault of those candidates ONLY. Even at the Tedddy Kennedy's funeral you could see Obama was very uncomfortable at an event wildly Praising anyone with a different skill set from his own skill set as the great negotiator of the poor black peoples demands for their money back. Therefore Obama will "GO After Fat Cat Capitalists" with a vengeance for refusing the offer he made them to let him set the terms of all economic life, or else.

MamaM said...

Lem...your comments made me look and laugh, in that order. The Sunset comes a close 2nd.

Shifts in thought and perception run a continuum from skewed reality, to distorted, then on to delusional.

"A delusion, in everyday language, is a fixed belief that is either false, fanciful, or derived from deception. Psychiatry defines the term more specifically as a belief that is pathological. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, stupidity, apperception, illusion, or other effects of perception."

It looks like the view of the man standing in front of the mirror is currently somewhere between distorted and delusional.

Fen said...

The Mirror is an appropriate companion for Historical Obama.

I I I me me me my my my ad naus.

Everything is "all about me"

Fen said...

Garage: Keep staring at a photoshopped picture of Obama, weirdos!

What, you do the same every day, with the NYTs.

AllenS said...

Mirror, mirror, on the wall
who's the best...
wait a minute
why did you turn around?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Does Obama have a bald spot?

Not since he tried Good Looking Hair

avwh said...

"this nation is now in a position where it cannot believe a word that he says, and that amounts to an unprecedented crisis of confidence in the Presidency. Democratic government will atrophy if we allow lying on this scale to count as the business as usual of politics. When will the press and the Congress hold him accountable?"

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/01/21/lies-of-obama/

TMink said...

May I say that this is a brilliant image. Outstanding idea and execution.

Trey

Lincolntf said...

Obama is showing us all what happens when an empty suit gets undressed.

LordSomber said...

Thought #3:

I'm Starting With The Man In
The Mirror,
I'm Asking Him To Change
His Ways
No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer...

Henry said...

If we're quoting lyrics, how about this chorus:

There's a stranger in the house; nobody's seen his face
But everybody says he's taken my place
There's a stranger in the house no one will ever see
But everybody says he looks like me

Full Lyrics:

This never was one of the great romances
But I thought you'd always have those young girl's eyes
But now they look in tired and bitter glances
At the ghost of a man who walks 'round in my disguise

I get the feeling that I don't belong here
But there's no welcome in the window anyway
And I look down for a number on my keychain
'Cause it feels more like a hotel everyday

There's a stranger in the house; nobody's seen his face
But everybody says he's taken my place
There's a stranger in the house no one will ever see
But everybody says he looks like me

And now you say you've got no expectations
But I know you also miss those carefree days
And for all the angry words that passed between us
You still don't understand me when I say

There's a stranger in the house; nobody's seen his face
But everybody says he's taken my place
There's a stranger in the house no one will ever see
But everybody says he looks like me

Howard said...

Magritte and other accomplished surrealists and cubists may be expressing the complex concepts of relativity and quantum mechanics through visual art:

Art and Physics

You can forget the Foucauldian dialectic Mr. Pogo, if you can understand Feynman.

Amos said...

That's his father in the mirror.

Nom de Blog said...

"It's not often you see a horse with TWO rear ends!"