Rockwell and Santa Claus

I had the weirdest moment of synchronicity this week. During my archaeology class on Thursday Dr. Hale had mentioned his views on the Santa Claus myth and how it sets up this societal schema in the United States wherein blind belief = good and praiseworthy behaviour. I liked this thought, and was pondering it later on my way home; as I did so, I was listening to a podcast I had downloaded of last week's episode of a show on NPR called "On the Media" from WNYC radio. They were interviewing a guy called Richard Halpern who teaches English literature at Johns Hopkins University. He just published a book called Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence, in which he focuses on the art of Rockwell to talk about the American Innocence mystique. He posits that Rockwell was actually subversive in his paintings, and rather than upholding the idea of innocence and Americanism, he challenges it in subtle ways. It's an interesting idea; I'm hoping to get the book.

Anyway, the oddest thing was that the interview used as a focal point this painting by Rockwell. It depicts the discovery of the
falsehood/nonexistence of Santa on the part of this little boy and shows his subsequent shock at the realization. Professor Halpern, however, had doctored the painting to reveal photos of the torture and abuse at Abu Gahreb instead of a santa suit, as in the original, in order to draw parallels to the American public as a whole.

It was a striking juxtaposition not just because of the truth of Halpern's doctored version--that Americans have such short attention spans about what is done in their name and their lack of ability to think critically about the government--but especially because we had just been using the Santa myth to discuss that very problem earlier in the day during class! What a coincidence.

If you're interested, the interview with Prof. Halpern is short and can be found online (along with a picture of the altered Rockwell painting) at: http://onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/10/05/02