Image Control

Fascism comes to life as a mood, not a platform; it slips in through the cracks of a culture on the level of art and language itself, too often undetected. The deluge of images across all our various screens never stops-one second you're looking at a photograph of Syrian children suffering in the wake of a chemical attack, the next you're feeling bad about yourself because of someone else's pristine Instagram selfie. And before you can process or properly weigh either of those feelings, a meme momentarily captures your attention. This endless scroll through a sea of visual content overwhelms and often numbs us. By and large, we no longer critically examine the images we consume, how we consume them, and how they affect us. Mixing the literary, personal,and political, Image Control examines recent cultural episodes as well as the ancient roots of language and myth to understand how images have been used and misused as propaganda throughout history. In one instance, Nathan recounts what it was like to grapple as a queer thirteen year old with the implied violence in the photograph of the fence on which Matthew Shepard was left to die. In another, he lays bare the isolating perils of seeing only the curated highlights of a life on social media. By exploring our connection to language and image, Nathan builds toward the idea that if fascism exists first on an intimate aesthetic--