March 15th, 2025

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Seeing through the screen

Spectacle and Blue eyes

Shorter post today. Travelling. Currently in an airport.

I finished The Bluest Eyes earlier this week. Morrison's writing tends to linger underneath, slowly revealing itself over time long after the actual act of reading it has concluded. I don't think this is any different. I was surprised by how much the narrative does not seem to be about Pecola, despite the title pointing to her importance. Rather, it uses narratives of the people who surround her, who ultimately abuse (victimize?) her at every turn. It's an approach that felt especially powerful whilst working through the novel's harrowing ending, when the sum of that horror is intimately exposed.

I'm sitting next to a window, with a blind pulled over it. The blind is a mesh, thin yet still revealing the blurred colors and shapes that exist beyong it's sheild. Although the mesh is the first thing before my eyes, my focus is not drawn to it. Instead, only the pseudo-reality it creates, that sits behind it, hidden from my view, is what my attention spends it's time on. I began reading Guy Deboard's The Society of the Spectacle a few days ago. I wonder if it's even possible to fully divest myself of the attention I pay to the Spectacle.