September 17, 2008

Horse 917 - You Can Judge A Book By It's Cover



You're supposed to.

Penguin Books have even gone to the effort recently of retrofying their covers so that they again look like what they did in the 1930s. They were supposed to look vaguely art deco and cheap just so people standing around in train stations would buy them.

Serious text books aren't likely to have pictures of UFOs, Giant Eyeballs or Dragons on them are they? Period books are likely to show people as they dressed in that era; and likewise Mills and Boon, and Harlequin books are deliberately styled so that people who buy that sort of thing know whats inside.

Labelling things and judging things at a snap helps cut down on time and effort. Added to this is the simple fact that when applied to people, people dress a certain way deliberately to look like their peers and thus gain acceptance. Even goths who dress in black do so to alienate society at large but be accepted by other goths.

Is the clothing or wrapping something comes in a valid form of self-expression or not? What about communicating what we wish to be? Police and Fireys dress that way to be recognised and respected and also to be identified.

Even my style of stymied and continual arguing about petty crap in a blog instantly tells you that I'm a cynical bum who thinks that this could be vaugly funny but in reality fails miserably... so stick that in your non-judgemental pipe and judge it.

No comments: