Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Ordinary Aggression of Signs
Amazingly Amanda draws my attention to this. This mania for posting instructions is, indeed, a horrible thing. I now refuse to enter a famous fish and chip shop in Norfolk because of its monumentally depressing signs. But I'm not convinced by this site's labelling of the impulse as passive-aggressive. It's just normally aggressive as far as I can see. Of course, very occasionally, it can be poetry.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
yes, maybe your refusal is passive-aggressive behaviour towards the idea of a fish and chip supper.
ReplyDeleteprohibition is quite reasonable. what I find odd is signs encouraging you to do things you'd not once consider doing if left to your own initiative: ''break glass in emergency''; ''queue here''; ''ring bell once'' etc.
The signs don't bother me quite as much as they do Bryan; it's the quality of purchase that counts. The last fish (and chip) supper bought locally consisted of batter thick enough to use as flood defences - the idea that it contained a creature that once swam in the Atlantic is quite ridiculous. No, let them do their worse with their messages of enticement and prohibition, just give me something I can get teeth into without risk to the set of my jaw; now that would be poetry.
ReplyDelete