Friday, 4 May 2012

The Lure of the Replica.

I was thinking earlier about the prolific amount of spam I get in my inbox inviting me to buy a Rolex replica watch. They probably form the single biggest thread of junk e-mails, and I find that intriguing. The fundamental message seems to be:

You don’t have much money, right? So you can’t afford a proper Rolex watch. Right. So buy one of these instead, which you can just about afford, and then all those oddly deluded people who think that displaying the trapping of wealth makes you worthy of respect will be duly fooled and give you the approbation you crave. Good, eh?

Er, nope. It is nice to be respected, but not by those oddly deluded people who think that displaying the trappings of wealth etc, etc...

There’s nothing new about this, of course. It seems that during the European Bronze Age, those in possession of wealth, power and prestige were largely ranked in accordance with the number of bronze nick nacks they were able to display. I wonder whether anybody anywhere caught onto the idea of making bronze replicas.

*  *  *

I just read that Vogue Magazine has declared its intention to work only with ‘healthy’ models in future. No more under 16s or women apparently suffering from an eating disorder. Maybe they’ve just become the wrong sort of replica. ‘Healthy is beautiful’ was the Vogue statement.

Correct. But are we fooled?

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