Flags

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Leading on from Why are Amurkin Southerners so uppity about their flag? , who feels allegiance to a flag? It feels a bit ridiculous/anachronistic/for meatheads on the one hand but on the other I weep for our lost gang membership. Maybe I am just an asshole. I guess if I were persecuted or something then a flag or some sort might get important to me but ultimately we'd win and we'd laugh at flag waving again. I hate cycles.

N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 03:15 (twenty-two years ago) link

Symbols are rendered useless when they no longer reflect the reality they were meant to represent.

Scaredy Cat, Wednesday, 8 January 2003 03:27 (twenty-two years ago) link

But some people must still live in that reality.


IMPORTANT NOTE: I still think Britain is brilliant.

N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 03:28 (twenty-two years ago) link

After 9/11, a UK friend asked me if all the American flags in my neck of the woods were creepy. Of course they were and they always are whenever associated with America at its worst, in that I saw the flags not so much representing an outpouring of feeling as it did a sign of closeminded anger in response.

And yet.

For all the idiocies and follies, for all the negative associations, the flag, more so than the seal with the eagle or whatever, represents to me a potential towards an America where all the dreams finally come true without hurting others, something that can be, even if it isn't or isn't always. Momus may have gotten a slam on another thread about investing the Constitution with a mythical tinge, but I think there's something to be said about the tinge in something so obviously keyed towards countrywide feelings.

My dad flies the flag every day and always has, and no blind superpatriot he. I don't fly the flag myself, but I understand the impulse.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 03:30 (twenty-two years ago) link

Symbols are rendered useless when they no longer reflect the reality they were meant to represent.

Quite the contrary, Scaredy. It's only when the symbols become completely divorced from ideas that they become important, and hence even more useful than before. I hate to drag the whole civil war/confederate flag dilemma into a new thread, but the very fact that people are willing to sue or scream and yell in protest over where they can or cannot hang a flag, when they most certainly would not seriously entertain the thought of attempting to assert the right of a state to suceed, seems to imply that the symbol has precious little to do with any ideas that it may have once represented.

In the same vein, note that any flag can mean an infinite variety of things to an infinite variety of people. What Ned said about it representing the possibility of all dreams coming true, I'd never thought of. This makes it versatile in a way concrete ideals never can--think schoolchildren pledging allegience to a flag, soldiers carrying it into battle, religious groups gathering around it to pray, Americans who pin Canadian flags onto their backpacks when going abroad (and not just cuz they're prettier)...

Basically, I guess I'm saying that flags are great propaganda tools, but completely meaningless in and of themselves. Gee, that seems self evident. But I haven't the hear to delete this whole post, so off it goes. :-/

, Wednesday, 8 January 2003 04:01 (twenty-two years ago) link

Ah, true enough. I was referring to any symbol's original meaning at its moment of conception. In other words, not actually "rendered useless" for ALL intents and purposes, but forever transformed by history and loaded with additional symbolism.

Symbolism is indeed a powerful control device. That's why I feel the way I do about flags. I grew up in an anti-flag family, though, so that's to be expected, I guess. I never saluted the flag after 3rd grade or so.

scaredy cat, Wednesday, 8 January 2003 04:40 (twenty-two years ago) link

"Everything I am, I am part of what I have seen. That's nothing, any, analysis, pscyhoanalysis -- just logic. When they run up that flag -- in the movie, sometimes the music swells -- and I go 'mm!' Because of recall. Cause one time that impressed me. When they run a washcloth up I don't go that way. Yeah, this MEANS something to me sometimes, it does. That's wild - yeah, uh, the flag - [microphone feeds back] Those are BATS! You'll be fed later. Okay." - Lenny Bruce, Carnegie Hall 1961

Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 07:50 (twenty-two years ago) link

Just to bring another comedian to thread, Bill Hicks said that to stop patriotism all flags should be just our parents fucking.
The Australian flag is horrid, because of the union jack and it's relationship to the Brit Monarchy. It also reminds me of the cricket which is a bad thing, unless I think of New Zealand spin bowler Daniel Vettori.

*goes off into a daydream*

nellskies (minna), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 08:42 (twenty-two years ago) link

i think the flag flying thing that americans do is something that brits will never quite get, because only freaks fly the union jack (and, although the st georges makes appearances in relation to football, only freaks would actually fly that either - even though the more unsavoury links that come from the unionjack are not really associated so much with the st georges)

BUT...

when i was in america october 2001, i understood the american impulse to fly the flag, the context is different. now, of course, i realise that i was there only a few weeks after 9/11 so that was an unusual time, but even so, the flying of the flag seemed to me not to symbolise aggression at all but community/society, something that we like to say americans dont do. even if it is only in symbolism, the fact of the matter is, it was there, it was palpable. the flying of the flags didnt bring to mind for me the same nagative associations it would in britain.

and it was interesting that the flags were flown by colombians, dominicans, poles etc

gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 10:25 (twenty-two years ago) link

in most countries extreme nationalists seem to have hi-jacked the national flag - in my own if you go round with the tricolour people assume you are some kind of provo.

so I have adopted a foreign flag and feel great affinity to the Palestinian one.

DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 10:32 (twenty-two years ago) link

but even so, the flying of the flag seemed to me not to symbolise aggression at all but community/society

My point is really it's a piece of cotton dyed into a coloured pattern. I think it's just the concept of affiliating yourself with a patterned symbol (be it that of a street gang or a nation) that I find so weird.

N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 11:06 (twenty-two years ago) link

eh? since when is focus on signs/symbols/image strange, why is this stranger than something tangible/concrete.

why are you being such a rockist about this?!?

gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 11:08 (twenty-two years ago) link

I never thought I'd say it, but I think you have stretched the concept of rockism beyond ripping point.

since when is focus on signs/symbols/image strange

It is strange to me. What can I say? It seems obviously strange. I always thought it was funny when people copied band logos onto their satchels at school too.

It perhaps relates to the contempt for the Starsailors, Withnails and Ashton Lanes mentioned on this thread too.

N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 11:15 (twenty-two years ago) link

For me, flags = laziness. It seems like a lot of people use them as a substitution for actually doing something useful for the country/community. Flag stickers on car = "See, I care." But I think for most people, this is where the effort stops. This may be unfair, but I work in a upper-class neighborhood, and I see all these Lexus SUVs with the flag stickers, and these are my prejudices.

Nick A. (Nick A.), Wednesday, 8 January 2003 14:25 (twenty-two years ago) link

three years pass...
As the Union Flag reaches its 400th anniversary, a Welsh Conservative wants to add "a good splash of green" to it.

Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 12 April 2006 08:34 (eighteen years ago) link

nine years pass...

flegs

irl lol (darraghmac), Tuesday, 14 July 2015 13:59 (nine years ago) link

Why would anyone want to tread on a snake, been wondering that for years.

It may as well say DON'T EAT ME UP! or DON'T PICK ME UP BY THE HEAD!

pplains, Tuesday, 14 July 2015 14:57 (nine years ago) link


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