The SnowQueen Meme, Contemp TV, and its Undoing - Part 1 3 comments

22 Jun 2003 @ 13:03, by Max Sandor One of the most profound and startling impacts in my early childhood was H.C. Andersen's tale of the Snowqueen, a tale in seven parts. There was something in there that I didn't understand but I felt compelled all my life to solve this riddle. Now, nearly half a century later, I am still puzzled. But today, I can't claim the innocense of a little child anymore, just letting the tears flow with Gerda and Kay, and delegate the solutions to all of these crazy things to the next fifty years. Or can I? Andersen, from the land of Kierkegaard and Ming the Mechanic, a world citizen nearly 200 years ago, described a Meme that now rules American TV, infesting and conquering the rest of the world, country after country. The antivirus still has to be developed. A call to arms for Bloggers (hint, hint)? And who, if not me, is writing the Eighth Story, the tale of how the goblin's mirror was redesigned, patented, and dropped over the hills of Holyweird? But here is the beginning of the seven-fold magic tale, a tale that doesn't exist not just in the fantasy of some old storytellers, but in our living rooms, every day, every hour. Decide for yourself: "The Snowqueen, by Hans Christian Andersen, In seven stories. The First Story, which is about the mirror and the broken pieces. Look, we are beginning now. When we are at the end of the story, we know more then now, because it was an evil goblin! It was one of the very worst, it was the devil! One day he was in the right mood, because he had made a mirror which had the property that everything Good and Beautiful, which was mirrored in it, shrunk nearly to a Nothing, but that which wasn't worth any good and was a bad example, was emphasized and became even worse. The most glorious landscapes looked like cooked spinach in it and the best people became nasty and stood on their head without body, the faces were so distorted that they were not recognizable und if one had a freckle, one could be convinced that it would reach across nose and month. This is certainly amusing, said the devil. If now a sacred thought entered a human, a grin showed in the mirror, so that the devil had to laugh about his artificial invention..." Did Andersen time-travel and got a cable-TV subscription? Or was he another Nostradamus? Or is this the story of the beginning of the end of Atlantis, surviving the tides of time as a fairytale? In any case, who can win the fight against the SnowQueen? [to be continued] Note: Andersen's complete text (in German) is at [link] , translated into English by mx for the BLOG).

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