Kristen Stewart and Michael Angarano and then Rob Pattinson

I am a fan of William Burroughs cut-up technique. This is a variation on it of Kristen Stewart and Michael Angarano. He is bored with her. People that are bored with you are bored with you because they are boring, not because you are boring. I find these pics sad but very instructive. Many young girls are in a relationship with a guy who is bored with them. The girl will dress differently, try to look hot, do different things with her hair, her make-up, work out, try to get Megan Fox's body, do surgery, even acquire degrees and go to graduate school, all in the hopes of interesting him or the new guy, and on and on and on until you get too old to care anymore. One can look at these pics and interpret for pages and pages, and all that does is make you look smart. Interpretation is about Dominance. Who does it better. When you are good at it it is hard to let it go. Foucault takes you through his thinking on it, as does Susan Sontag in Against Interpretation, and by the time the two of them finish with your head, you have to give it up. So while I can think of dozens of reasons why Angarano looks so bored with Kristen Stewart, I'm just going to flip that kind of thinking off. (God I wish that baggage would stay in the trash for good. I'm getting better though.)

Bored Again

During this time Kristen Stewart films Speak where she meets Angarano when she is thirteen and begins to go with him at fourteen. She films Cake Eaters at sixteen and Into the Wild at sixteen. Stewart has said she does films that her heart chooses. In each of these three films she is longing and yearning and interested in sex. (She gets raped in Speak, but she is hot in the beginning of the film.) she is in Adventureland just before Twilight and while not so yearning in it, she  begins to look for intimacy. She is lovely in all of them, but   Cake Eaters is a performance she may equal in her career but she will not surpass it. She is that perfect in it. She is luminous in Into the Wild and tragic. She secures the lead in Twilight. The rest is history.


To the left is one of the Twilight premieres. This is Stewart's big night.

Cake Eaters to the left and below it Speak. On the
bottom right a still from Cake Eaters.

More Alive with Rob

Kristen Stewart as Tracy in Into the Wild

 

 Rob Pattinson is interested in her. Rob Pattinson is an interesting person. 

Kristen trying to be affectionate and well.....Michael is just bored.

If you have seen Kristen Stewart in Catch That Kid (can't find the pic I want) she climbs a wall. In this film she has beautifully molded shoulders, strong, lovely, straight.

Now look at her shoulders in the pic with M and K playing at musical instruments, and the rest of the pics with Michael. Her shoulders are slumping, her body is slumping. The Inscription of the Body in adolescence is beginning. Her shoulders turn inward, protecting her, just like Bella Swan's do.

You will see that she is thinking of herself as boring. The subject/object dyad cannot be separated. They are not independent. She is being slowly shaped, her body and her mind into thinking of herself as boring.  Just after Twilight she said that acting was the only thing she could do. This is the secret meaning of Country Strong. When Kelly Canter is not on stage performing, she BORES her husband to numbness. When she realizes that she is only a simulacrum, there is no original Kelly anymore because she is in fact boring when she is not performing, there are only flashes of who she once was, she kills herself. A beautiful beautiful way under appreciated film and a performance by Paltrow unequaled by even herself.


Kristen's Stewart's salvation lay in her marvelous films, and the recognition she received by other actors for her excellent performances: Sean Penn; Robert deNiro; Donald Sutherland; William Hurt; Maria Bello; The cast in Objects of Safety; Jody Foster; and so on. 

Fanfic Review: Soulmates, Feelings, Belonging By CaraNo

Soulmates, Feelings, Belonging by CaraNo

The Dominating Discourse in all of this genre of fanfic is sex, graphic hard porn sex in thousands of  stories based on Meyer's characters of Bella and Edward and the rest from Twilight. Although the names are the same, the characters are drawn with different attributes and qualities, different selves elaborated, changed, and different plots but always the true everlasting hot love between Edward and Bella.


People know what they do. They frequently know why they do what they do. But what they don't know is what they do does. Or: People know what they say. They frequently know why they say what they say. But what they don't know is what they say does. - Michel Foucault


You must change the way you think.   

The theme  of Twilight is Time as in Proust. Without this slow time, an earlier time, and the leisure time that goes along with it, we cannot have the story of gazing, seduction, imagination, contemplation and growing feelings. Most of the authors do not know where to go when this has run its course and sexual penetration has taken place. Time then accelerates, plot enters, and the soap opera, mystery, excitement and denouement begins and ends.  As soon as time accelerates, they all fall apart. So they go for the normal HE, usually with marriage, house and children. Car too. Even Meyer could not sustain the internal dialogue for her entire series, but the uneven saga is still absorbing and addictive.

Foucault has given us a toolbox to use to change our thinking. The toolbox is genealogy. He got it from Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals but so reviled is Nietzsch from the poison of Hitler's admiration during the Third Reich that even the brave Foucault said he did not fully acknowledge him earlier and wished he had done so.

But once Foucault has convinced you, and if you read him seriously and thoroughly, you will be convinced, because his exquisite powerful prose leaves you no place to hide from his devastating logic. So linear time, history, progress, Marxism and Freud's developmental theory go down into the  dirt. To think differently requires you stop thinking in the dialectic ( Vija Kinski in Cosmopolis) and think genealogically. Until you find Baudrillard and his Forget Foucault, but don't find him too fast. Stay with Foucault until you are saturated. Or until your panties are soaked.

In CaraNo's Soulmates, Feeling,  Belonging a Foucauldian eye  trains you to see within the folds (pun intended), the words, thoughts, feelings, nuances, subtleties that pass quickly and don't return. The parts you are barely going to notice which quickly get submerged. This is the part of history that hides in the archives and reveals the Dominating Discourse of an era, the part that was censored. All that was so hidden invisibly, it was smothered or not allowed to be heard or seen. When an irruption occurs, it appears as a 'cut' in the DD, but while you are in the DD you will not become aware of the cut until much much later. I assert that Twilight is just such a cut. bringing with it an entire change in thinking for many women concerning their sexual feelings and practices and their choices in men.

Back to Soulmates and CaraNo. Hidden within the folds of this story are rather amazing treasures that few are going to notice. Put on your Foucaudian glasses if you don't have Fouauldian eyes, and look with me.

It opens with Bella in a boring unhappy marriage with Jacob. They have been childhood friends, married after high school, go away to NYU to university and come back to Forks. Bella is in a kind of zombie state as in New Moon and decides to see a therapist. So her relationship with Jacob has progressed in linear time, developing, with no transgression.

I should feel frustrated. I should miss writing. I should be sad for not caring. But I'm a robot. I feel nothing. Chapt 1

Here she is mirroring Eric Packer in Cosmopolis: He didn't know what he wanted. And of course Packer indulges in some hot sex with different partners during the day. But DeLillo is going to break this open for you.

On her way in to her first appointment she meets Jasper, whom she knew in high school, had a crush on, and who has returned to Forks, and her therapist is Edward who lives in a loving homosexual relationship with Jasper.

I decided to tease him to relieve the tension, "So, how was lunch? Did you enjoy him- I mean it… I mean, was it mindblowing… the food, that is," I smirked.

 "Wow, good looks and a smooth talker. Jasper never stood a chance, did he?"

"Okay, Bella," he chuckled with a shake of his head, "How about we start, huh? I need to prove myself now that I am in fact a professional."

"Oh, I'm sure you are," I smiled innocently. Chapt 1

So far its not bad. The therapy sessions are handled well. It's basically pop psychology but decently done. Edward asks questions and Bella talks with her eyes closed. This Bella is funny and assertive and witty when she occasionally comes out of her torpor during the therapy hour. When they get to discussing sex these amazing vignettes come out.

I continued, "I've never been satisfied by him, and I wanted us to try new things. He didn't want that. I gave up trying. Chapt. 1

"That's when I first realized that I didn't just want more, but I needed it. I recognized myself in what they were doing. So, I started reading about some stuff online that I wanted to try, and I would also talk to Alice. I would bring it up with Jake, or sometimes surprise him, but he never responded well."

"Well, yeah, I brought it up. The first time it wasn't really anything special. Just some sexy lingerie, a vibrator, the suggestion of trying more positions. That was Alice's advice – to start off slow – and I agreed.

"I think it was the third year in college, and Alice was once again the inspiration. She wasn't with Alec anymore. She was with Tanya. And I found it very erotic. That was my trigger to bring it up with Jake again. I thought that maybe what I suggested wasn't enough… maybe he wanted more. So, I suggested more toys, and also a threesome."

"The last time I approached Jake was when I was writing my fourth book. It was about a man and a woman this time, and my hopes were to involve Jake a little. There was one thing in particular that I really wanted to try – and because I was writing the book from the female character's point of view, I wanted to be thorough, and explain the feelings in detail. But when I brought anal sex up with Jake, he was repulsed."

.... "Yeah, so he didn't want that. But I didn't want my book to suffer, so I did extensive research on the subject instead. I interviewed Alice, Tanya, and a few of their friends – both male and female – I read books, and Tanya also hooked me up with a bunch of toys I didn't even know existed.

"Since she and Alice had agreed on not seeing men together – but still wanted to feel something more than fingers – they had a fucking room full of toys." I grinned at the memory of them showing me. "So, in order to get as close as I could without cheating, I used the toys Tanya gave me… on myself. It wasn't easy but still very pleasurable, and I really wish Jake would've been there… but he wasn't. I gave up after that. Chapt 5

Bella is longing for intimacy, and feels sex is the doorway to it.
But what if?
Suppose Jacob was really a good guy, didn't cheat, compatible with Bella, worked every day, reliable, nice but there was no hot loving feelings between them, which is the case in Soulmates. You know like all the married couples you see at the mall and the supermarket. The guy you look across the room at while watching TV. What you are craving is intimacy, lustful affection and sex, those feelings Rob Pattinson gives you. But you're never going to get that from DH, a contemptuous term, the initials these fangirls give their hubby.

So you go out and buy sex toys. Maybe you even plan a threesome or foursome. Something to add spice to the conjugal sex, married or not. Buy magazines at the supermarket checkout counter. They always have articles on bringing back the passion in your marriage or relationship. Have an affair. Get a divorce. Remarry and find the same-old, same-old. Shop until you drop. Consume not cum but toys.

And folks that's what most people do. That's the sad dirty little secret. And there it is hidden in this fanfic with its hard core porno sex.  Hyper-sex is porn and there's no sex in it, just the production of seduction and sex. Just go shopping for sexy stuff, get a facial, get a makeover, do some surgery, read some fanfic, change partners, shop, have another kid, whatever, to produce seduction. But you can't. Seduction cannot be produced. 

Twilight Premiere

Patti Smith - Because the Night

This is what CaraNo's Bella wants, so go to youtube and watch and listen to it

Fanfic Review: Isla de Cullen By CaraNo

Warning: Porn links ahead!

Edouard Manet - Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe 1863 Salon des Refuses

The above painting was a huge scandal in 1863 when it was first exhibited as is the photo in the fanfic story in our time. Some things never change. 

fanfic: Isla de Cullen - Lolypop82 photo MANIP

Isla de Cullen has moved to wordpress

This fanfic is fascinating in a variety of ways. Reading Isla de Cullen through Baudrillard invites the reader to contemplate what Baudrillard has written about sex, femininity, women, and the unequal relationship between women and men, as he describes it, because this fiction is fictionalizing Baudrillardian theory. This in itself is enough to recommend reading it, although there are many other compelling reasons, such as very erotic and graphic sex that is vanilla NOT.

Here is a LINK to the readable version in b & w. Why a fanfic on Twilight should be so cutting edge in post modern theory is an enigma to me. Unless this means that women are starting to see that their liberation since the pill has some serious flaws. Of course Stephenie Meyer started it, but fanfic on Bella and Edward has often gone beyond the original Twilight in scope and detail. The immediate reason is that Meyer's Twilight and certain fanfic fiction based on it, challenges the PC Feminist Dominating Discourse, and arouses the ire of PC feminists and authors of young adult fiction for girls. The PCFDD has effectively censored most of what is seen and heard by women forcing popular authors, filmmakers, directors of films and screenwriters, advertising agencies, textbook publishers, and all and sundry that pitch their wares to girls and women to embrace the dogma of PCFDD, consciously or unconsciously. It is a fact that the Dominating Discourse is invisible to you while you are in it. The fish and water analogy, eh?

But some fanfic authors, perhaps because they are publishing on blogs and internet sites, show far more independent thinking.  CaraNo, the author of Isla de Cullen is definitely challenging, defying, and dueling with PC feminist dogma in violating the censorship that always occurs within the Dominating Discourse  in any area during the length of time it dominates. Michel Foucault explicitly details and lays open the crushing domination of this Dominating Discourse beginning with The Order of Things, The Archeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Clinic, The History of Sexuality (vol 1,2,3) and everything else he wrote. During his extraordinary career he changed the perception of all the human sciences and made inroads in architecture, painting and sculpture and in fact there is little he did not influence. He was considered the leading intellectual force in Europe until his death from AIDS in 1984. Foucault was open about his homosexuality and his consensual S/M practices.  He is not anywhere near mainstream in the US. This is what makes Isla de Cullen so startling.

Foucault's first major challenge came from Jean Baudrillard in his long essay/book Forget Foucault. Baudrillard states in it that Foucault spoke so perfectly about power only because power was over, finished, done. He added that Foucault's prose itself was a spiral of power. Going on from that insight he says that whatever you are writing about, your prose must mirror the subject even more. Stephenie Meyer wrote about seduction and her prose is even more seductive than the seduction she is writing about. And she wrote so well of seduction ritual because the ritual of courtly love, is finished, done. Twilight. Good title. And it is Baudrillardian theory that we see fictionalized in Isla de Cullen, probably without any awareness at all from the author. What is interesting is that CaraNo breaks with the Dominating Discourse of PC Feminism and then leaps across the abyss to follow Baudrillard all unknowingly, which, of course, is exactly why she succeeds. Baudrillard has drawn the hatred of PC feminists in far greater degree than Stephenie Meyer, but CaraNo in her Isla de Cullen has come under the real threat of having her fiction removed from the fanfic site, forcing her to go to blogspot, but it looks like they didn't remove her after all. I am sure the feminist outcry was serious. She says she is from Sweden and perhaps this is why she is different. Or maybe she is just more of a visionary with courage than other writers of fiction for women. IMO I think men should be reading fanfic for the benefit of the girls/women in their lives.

While most of the fanfic starts with Edward as super controlling, they regress Edward to a state of dependency on Bella. Bella either develops into a more acceptable version to PC feminists (as in the screenplays by Melissa Rosenberg in the Twilight films) or Edward has serious addiction problems, to weaken him. The masculine male is in serious difficulties in real life, in fiction, in non-fiction, in the workplace, and he responds with all the strategies that women used to use to sabotage male power.

CaraNo imagines a different kind of man. Not at all complex and complete, but he is a beginning. He is assertive and masculine, often tender and compassionate. The PCFDD will see him as sado-masochistic and he can be seen in this way if one wishes to enter the psychological swamp of interpretation. (Just think about the incest between Lot and his daughters in precession. Do you really want to go there?)There is no doubt that he is erotically seductive. Why? What are his qualities that stimulate this response in women who read this story? Is part of the reason that men are too PC feminized for us? Female adoration of Rob Pattinson has a great deal to do with Stephenie Meyer's invention of the new male in her fictionalized character of Edward. Baudrillard has proposed the invention of the new masculine out of the hysteria of the female, as the femme fatale was invented our of male hysteria. Only now the femme fatale can find no one to seduce or who is worth her time to try to seduce. CaraNo adds additional dimensions to Edward in sexualizing him. Her drawing is not perfect and that is a real plus. Writers have a way to go with male characters. I wonder where they will go next? DeLillo gets constantly trashed -  by guess who? -  for his male characters.

CaraNo's Edward remains a strong male figure throughout. And Bella is truly Other. She is the Baudrillardian feminine who plays a double game consciously. She understands her feminine power, and chooses to display submissive signs, which this Edward demands.  Baudrillard makes the distinction between liberation and free. He says that women have been falsely liberated (only slaves can be liberated) and have lost their freedom. Now seduction must be produced with products and surgeries, but Baudrillard tells us as does CaraNo, that these "floating signs" of seduction are empty signs or they are "signs" masking gender ambiguity. The great power of seduction is that it cannot be produced. And clearly Rob Pattinson is producing it NOT. That's Judith Butler on the left, the go to person on gender. Gender Trouble and the rest of her books at Amazon.

Here is Passion for real by Patti Smith:

Because the Night youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0brHGJ6xqbk  Or paste it in

You are watching and listening to pure passion without all the "floating signs" of femme.

Many of the concepts discussed above are already embedded in my other blogs. Maybe I will get around to linking for you. Maybe not. I did some anyway.

W Spread on Kristen Stewart is GLAM! Cloning Amy Winehouse!

Amy Winehouse

NO NO NO NO NO !!!!!! Do not enter the world of Verblen's Conspicuous Consumption. You have not so far and there is no need for you to do this. 

Kristen Stewart on W's September 2011 cover.

Hair by Luigi Murenu for John Frieda; makeup by Lucia Pieroni for Clé de Peau Beauté; manicure by Lorraine Griffin for Chanel.
Fashion: Max Mara’s mohair and wool sweater.
Beauty: Dior Forever Flawless Perfection Fusion Wear Makeup in Light Beige; Diorblush in Vintage Pink; Diorshow Brow Styler in Universal Brown; 1-Couleur Eyeshadow in Argentic; Crayon Khôl in Black; Rouge Dior lipstick in Angélique Beige.

Photographs by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott
Styled by Edward Enninful

September 2011

Read More http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2011/09/kristen-stewart-twilight-breaking-dawn-cover-story-ss#ixzz1Uxqzj0tq

People know what they do. They frequently know why they do what they do. But what they don't know is what they do does. - Michel Foucault

Junya Watanabe’s leather motorcycle jacket; Dolce & Gabbana’s silk bodysuit. Elizabeth and James sterling silver bangle set.
Beauty Note: Stewart gets sultry bedroom eyes with Clé de Peau Intensifying Cream Eyeliner. “A modern take on this look is keeping the eye makeup intense, but in a clean and not smudgy way,” says makeup artist Lucia Pieroni.
Read More http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2011/09/kristen-stewart-twilight-breaking-dawn-cover-story-ss#ixzz1UxqWnPMH

Now I'm gonna tell you: Question: Who chose this LOOK for you? Who advised you to do this? (Fire them right now!) Now WHY did they choose this LOOK for you? Any guesses?

Theory’s Scotia angora polyamide blend sweater.
Beauty Note: For gorgeous hair with serious height, try Pantene Flowing Body Mousse for Medium-Thick Hair.
Hair by Luigi Murenu for John Frieda; makeup by Lucia Pieroni for Clé de Peau Beauté; manicure by Lorraine Griffin for Chanel. Production by Lalaland; set design by Happy Massee; digital capture by Dtouch Paris. Photography assistants: Maurizio Bavutti, Gareth Horton, and Matt Easton. Fashion assistants: Felicia Garcia-Rivera, Laura Jones, Jack Borkett, and Lucy Kebbell.

Photographs by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott
Styled by Edward Enninful

September 2011

Read More http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2011/09/kristen-stewart-twilight-breaking-dawn-cover-story-ss#ixzz1UxqqGhzk

Hint: Who just recently DIED with this look? Exaggerated, but definitely this look?

Junya Watanabe’s leather motorcycle jacket; Dolce & Gabbana’s silk bodysuit. Elizabeth and James sterling silver bangle set.
Beauty Note: Stewart gets sultry bedroom eyes with Clé de Peau Intensifying Cream Eyeliner. “A modern take on this look is keeping the eye makeup intense, but in a clean and not smudgy way,” says makeup artist Lucia Pieroni.
Read More http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2011/09/kristen-stewart-twilight-breaking-dawn-cover-story-ss#ixzz1UxqWnPMH
Got it yet???

Gucci’s silk chiffon gown.

Photographs by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott
Styled by Edward Enninful

September 2011

Read More http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2011/09/kristen-stewart-twilight-breaking-dawn-cover-story-ss#ixzz1Uxpux9HD
You got it!

Amy Winehouse - Love Is A Losing Game - youtube link

For you I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game

One I wish I never played
Oh what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand

Self professed... profound
Till the chips were down
...know you're a gambling man
Love is a losing hand

Though I battle blind
Love is a fate resigned
Memories mar my mind
Love is a fate resigned

Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

Now how did that girl with no makeup in the skinny jeans and Converse sneakers ever catch the sexiest, most desirable man on the planet at this time? 

No makeup! Moisturizer? LIpstick, what kind? Nail polish? Fingernail extensions? Designer clothes, no a goddamn hoodie! Stilettos? Hair? Jesus Fucking Christ! How are we gonna sell this stuff if she didn't use it to get HIM? Well, she just needs to get taken in hand by us experts. Given a complete make-over Oprah style. Her momma didn't teach her about style so we are gonna do that. Give her a look the way Vogue just gave Emma Watson a new look. A NEW LOOK for Kristen Stewart so she looks hot! So she looks sexy! Looks like the kind of woman for Rob Pattinson to adore!

What! He already adores her? Without all this stuff? Well, we are gonna make him love her more after we Barbie dress her up OUR style! And then she won't lose him Amy Winehouse style.

The Medium Is the Message Don't forget this. What is the message here? Making her up like Amy Winehouse. Identifying Kristen Stewart with Amy Winehouse without saying a word. Suggesting her love is going to flame out, that she can't hold him. Be happy with him? These are not  PC Feminists, although they may be very successful business types within the fashion industry. Deep down they are fucking jealous to have done this to her. I suspect some are misogynistic gay guys who have the hots for Pattinson deep down in their crotch. Let's trash his gf.

Amy Winehouse is/was a major major talent. Anyone next to her pales. This look was Winehouse's individual, singular expression of herself. It must not be cloned.  So any insecurities Kristen Stewart may have are intensified for this shoot. Twilight shooting is over. Maybe she can't sustain this relationship. Maybe, maybe, perhaps, perhaps................ The world is watching......... Can it last? (nice lyrics,eh)

Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse

I got news for you W Zine people. See my blog Kristen Stewart Is Not Pretty, Not Hot, Just Beautiful (with pics) and your vicious photo shoot of her did not escape my eye. The Dominating Discourse of the mass fashion media is in question. When Kristen Stewart's au naturale look is being copied by starlets and actresses everywhere, you want to destroy it for her. Make it look like you made it up? Emma Watson got a Vogue LOOK like Kristen's with just a dash more lipstick and makeup. Whereas Vogue's recent Kristen Stewart cover was the way she wanted it. Just her beautiful self. The way Rob Pattinson loves her.

This is how you try to symbolically kill someone. It's easy. You clone them the way you want them. More on guerrilla blogger.

A Different Kristen Stewart from W Zine

Jacob Imprinting on Renesme:The End and Loss of Representation

Nothing to do with paedaphilia

Nothing to do with sex

Nothing to do with taking Edward's daughter from him

Stephenie Meyer has fictionalized one of the major Foucauldian "cuts" in Western thinking. The end of representation:in language;science;economics;art;music;history;sex

Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the tiny porceline face of the half-vampire, half human baby. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was __ my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self__disconnected from me in that second__snip,snip, snip__and floated up into space.

I was not drifting. A new string held me where I was.

Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing__to the very center of the universe.

I could see that now__how the universe swirled around this one point. I'd never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain. 
The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood.
It was the baby girl in the blond vampire's arms that held me here now.
Renesmee. (BD 360)

It would seem that Meyer is saying that the only tie is love. At the same time she is quoting Orson Scott Card:

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after

all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone

  you love is a hostage, sapping your courage

and corrupting your judgment

 Orson Scott Card

 Empire

The balloon ties are "cut" from their origins, floating up into the air, filled with a lighter than air substance, helium, - read "hot air" - empty balloons, empty signs, signs "float free" referring only to other signs. "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

I detail it here. It's pretty simple and sound-bitey so don't be afraid. Lots of pics.

This puts Jacob in simulated reality,, no referents, just "floating signs" i.e. images :

Such would be the successive phases of the image.
it is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality;
it masks the absence of a profound reality;
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum...
The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point. The first reflects a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs.) The second inaugurates the era of simulacra and of simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection...(Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation)


And the above applies to all of Rob's images and papp pics.