A Dumb Smart Picture

This picture comes from a Birmingham News report on an Alabama-Florida game. Notice the face of the kid in the stands (click the image for a larger version if you can’t see it here). He’s making the same face as the larger version of his head he’s holding.

There’s something to be said here about the reproducibility of our personalities and images, about how the digital age abstracts and commodifies our bodies in the service of late capitalism. These dehumanizing processes become all the more insidious when internalized and re-presented in the performance of the athletic spectacle. We must “make faces” thrice over (when taking the picture, when holding the head, when performing the face live) to have our “selves” seen. Maintaining the self, then, is an increasingly labor-intensive practice.

But seriously, just look at this doofus. He’s awesome.

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