In 2009, the online-sales giant Amazon.com observed a 2300% increase in the quantity of orders for a trite depiction of three wolves howling at the moon on front of a hand-dyed cotton t-shirt... as black as the eternal nightsky.
This haunting mystic image stirs the hearts of young children, trailer park Tolkien fans & faded hippies who idolize the late Paleolithic era. On the surface, this is the worst kind of Kitsch.
Why was it suddenly so popular?
A random (sic) swarm of online shoppers had spontaneously become a popular movement that consisted entirely of giving this one t-shirt supreme ratings and brilliantly retarded "surrealist" customer reviews. According to raves for the product, this remarkable t-shirt:
(1) "has wolves on it, attracts women"
(2) helps you fight crime (by transferring powers from role-playing games into real life)
(3) is totally sweet because it has wolves on it.
Dig?
Unfortunately this textile masterpiece suffers one grievous defect, "[You] cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed."
This is a recognizable strain of populist humour familiar to fans of Robert Hamburger, "Tom Goes to the Mayor," the Paul Bunyan-esque status of Chuck Norris, and the irresolvable cold war between Pirates and Ninjas. Despite this, we would be remiss to identity this as primarily a comedic affair.
We are dealing with spontaneous public art. Like soundwaves, this art escapes the museums and resonantes beyond the visual cage into which we put our most dangerous paintings and photographs. This is the art of McLuhan's cyber-acoustic era -- on display in the prestigious Gallery of Amazon.com Customer Reviews. The exhibit of this work is currently travelling the globe and may soon be available at your local branch of the National Museum of People You See Wearing T-Shirts.
Neither satire, sarcasm or homage can capture this strange extrapolation from the aesthetic experience of this clothing item. Ironists and naive idealistic dopes are blurred indistinctly together in the affirming and purchasing of Three Wolf Moon t-Shirt. The original artist belongs among those persons who find true aesthetic frequencies and simply stash them into generic commercial artworks. The comedy is produced by the incongruity between the t-shirt's apparent attempt to be natural, evocative and spiritually deep with its utter shallowness. It's depth IS shallow. Like the virtues of young Mormons, this potency is genuine but suffocated by its narrow and uncomplicated experience of culture. This comedy -- pathos revealed as bathos -- is collateral damage, a side-effect of the obstacle which the online post-dadaist shoppers have been trying to overcome.
In order to mine the original "gold" quality, isolating it aesthetically and extending this theme across media (a reasonable definition of all art). The affective intensities are transduced from one slice of a body to another. What???
I said: art.
All the easier to accomplish, in this case, since the title "Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt" demonstrates the same aesthetic -- helping to isolate it as a common quality shared between words and images. To say the name of this product is like meeting a celebrity in person and using his full name. Yes, thank you Tom Hanks, I would like that back rub now....
It has that quasi-mythological and post-cultural "ring" to it -- like the bad English translations of Aboriginal titles (Chief Runs-With-Bears-and-Squirrels) and cute Japanise marketing slogans (Super-Karate Feel-Good Happy Time Shoes!).
Word and Image are co-revealing an authentic mood, an aesthetic blessing-force, which is recognized by the soul of the child and elevated into cultural complexity by the sharp ironic instincts of a generation raised in the ultra-mediated amphitheatre of the modern "world."
Next step?
Get a tattoo of "Coach" from CBS SURVIVOR: TOCANTINS.
Yeah, that's right
-- the Dragon-slayer!!! *
-- the Dragon-slayer!!! *
