A perfect symbol for today's political environment
Just two weeks ago, this was the headline:
‘Fearless Girl’ Dominates the Clios, Winning the Grand Clio in 5 Categories
McCann New York is named Agency of the Year
Feminists embraced this bronze symbol.
Fearless Girl is a powerful symbol to women young and old. Empowering women shouldn't be temporary - she must be a permanent piece of NYC pic.twitter.com/wsZLYQr3Ez
— NYC Public Advocate (@NYCPA) March 27, 2017
Every liberal around immediately fell in love with the statue.
Here is the narrative being spun about “Fearless Girl”: An advertising firm and a financial services firm got together to drop a “remarkable,” “guerrilla” sculpture of a young girl in front of Wall Street’s famous “Charging Bull” in the middle of the night. The girl is part of a campaign to encourage companies to increase the number of women on their boards. The girl “is a remarkable evolution for Wall Street.” The girl might even represent “the turning point of gender equality in corporate America.” The girl “celebrates all the people who resisted by staying in place.” If installed permanently, the girl would be “a constant source of strength” for women who work in the vicinity.
There was just one eensy little problem - it was all bullshit.
As it turns out, the bronze statue was a symbol ― not of girl power, but of the empty corporate feminism that Wall Street has managed to turn into an art form and that first daughter Ivanka Trump has ridden all the way to the White House.
On Thursday, State Street, the $2.6 trillion dollar investment firm that funded Fearless Girl and unveiled her to great fanfare on International Women’s Day in March, agreed to shell out $5 million to settle claims that it pays its female and black executives less than white men at the firm.
The real give-away of the phoniness in this gesture was never hidden. All you had to do was look at the Wikipedia page.
The plaque below the statue states, “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference,” with “SHE” being both a descriptive pronoun and the fund’s NASDAQ ticker symbol.
It gets funnier. Check out this article.
At least two locally based companies earned votes against their board members from State Street Corp. this year because they did not have any women on their board of directors, according to an analysis of new securities filings.
As if State Street was in any position to judge anyone else.
Comments
Identity Politics cast in bronze.
I read the stories referred to above a couple of days ago, and had a chuckle. When this thing first turned up, something felt very 'iffy'.
Doubtless, a bronze of a female OWS protester would not be so popular/welcomed.
(Edited... spelling cock-up)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
A quick search of GOS and Fearless Girl
My 'Identity Politics' Are Here To Stay. Deal With It. Or I Won't Deal With You.
Onlookers gasp as a 'Wall Street Bro' humps the acclaimed 'Defiant Girl' statue on Wall Street
Dry Humping Fearless Girl statue
and then my favorite...
NYC artist added a statue of a dog urinating on 'Fearless Girl' on Wall Street as 'retaliation'
Wow! n/t
They just figure we're all ignorant
and will never find out the truth.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Well, We Were Up Until a Few Days Ago...
I actually saw something on the corporate marketing nature of the piece several months ago, not sure if it was the whole story or not, but it was enough to let me know she was a bullshit corporate ploy.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
I dunno, I wasn't
From my standpoint, a FREAKIN BRONZE STATUE depicting a challenge to Wall Street appears there and it isn't removed instantly?
That right there told me everything I needed to know.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Heh, Me Too! SAME Friggin' Thing. The Statue Staid. It Could
not be protest...
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
They have to maintain the charade
“He may not have gotten the words out but the thoughts were great.”
Read this a few days ago. I just figured
"Typical", and went on my merry old way.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Somebody could make a bronze
Somebody could make a bronze street sweeper guy and put him behind the bull, sweeping up the bull's shit. It would make a nice bronze triptych.
"Bi-polar? I'm Bi-winning!!!" -- Charlie Sheen
I Could Totally Have a Giant Bronze Pooper Scooper Made.
I got the metalsmith connections...
That'd be the shit...
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Like this?
Street sweepers get a bad rap. Where would we be without 'em?
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
More whitewashing for the bourgeoisie.
And I'm with Bollox Ref on this one:
I would also include working class female in that statement.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
It's just yet another example of
self-congratulatory, meritocratic bullshit. Kinda like the Clinton campaign..... or DKos.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
@Bollox Ref Yep, from the campaign
Self congratulatory indeed.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szYdTxmER5o]
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
As it turns out, the bronze
I myself will have
a symbolic quintupling in my income that I promise to one day spend on free beer for everyone. Damn, I feel so much better.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
I think it's ironic
It looks like Fearless Girl went down to Wall Street and told them to "cut it out."
Surely, women on Wall Street
Are just as enthused by a money-making, bullish market, as their male counterparts.
What does the statue even mean?
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Basically means this:
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
perfect.
It was a Thomas Kinkade Statue.
Cookie cutter, meaningless, and yet bought by the ignorant because it makes them feel good.
I'm amazed how much stuff is put out by the corporate slime with zero interest in doing anything other than patting themselves on the back.
Honestly, the assholes might as well just invest in a giant hand flipping you off, because that's their most honest opinion.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Ok...
Some 'crafty' leftist should craft that girl a sleaveless tee (velcro for quick attachment?) that says 'Occupy Wall Street'. So there.
I want a Pony!
@Arrow
And cement it on, so they can't remove it in horror. Or 'tattoo' it on her chest and back.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
There's nothing overtly political
about the statue itself. Only its context and placement make it political. If it was in a park in Queens somewhere, no one would be paying much attention to it. Not that it's all that great of an artwork anyway, but I don't think the poor Fearless Girl deserves nearly as much calumny as she's been getting.
native
In fact I'm inclined to applaud
the boldness of the gesture. The juxtaposition of the girl and the bull speaks a purely visual language that, divorced from contemporary political concerns, is actually quite eloquent.
native
@native
Except that, looking at it, you know darned well the Wall St. bull's going to stomp her. Just as with Occupy, the rest of America and the world. She needs a spear-gun.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I have to disagree.
The Girl's vulnerability is precisely her strength...the two are inseparable in that context. I don't know what the motivations of the sculpture's sponsors were, but really they are irrelevant to the final effect that was created. If you subtract all the words said about any given artwork from the substantial reality of the work itself, you are left with something inexplicable and controversial and thought-provoking-- which is exactly what good art is supposed to be.
native