One of my favorite contemporary artists is Camille Rose Garcia, who’s just illustrated a new version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
There’s a really interesting interview with her on Suicidegirls. Here’s a sample:
NP: And if you look at most of the set-in-suburbia dramas and soap operas on TV, they set up very unreal expectations. For example in Desperate Housewives, Mike Delfino is a plumber yet he lives in this gorgeous, million dollar plus suburban home. Kids have grown up with this promise of what suburban life should afford that they have no way of attaining for themselves.
CRG: Yes, and it’s already crumbling because their parents are now in foreclosure and can’t afford those houses. It’s kind of like the collective fantasy of suburbia. It’s not real. It’s not working. This façade is falling apart. These kids that have grown up in those cultures aren’t prepared at all for what’s coming, for fighting over resources globally and global economic collapse. They’re just not prepared at all for any of that.
NP: Talking of the American fairytale that’s come crashing down, I was reading an interview you did that was first published on Sept 16, 2006 on a website called Crown Dozen where you very specifically predicted the global economic crash.
CRG: Well I had a lot of other people I was reading that were talking about it long before it happened. All these bankers, now the big lie is “Oh, we didn’t know.” They knew. It was written about extensively. They knew exactly what was happening and they knew how they were going to get their money out. It just becomes part of the collective lie. That’s the thing, I think American culture is just a series of collective lies presented to us.
NP: I agree. When people were signing these mortgages that they never had any prospect of being able to afford, they were signing on the back of a fairytale. They were sold a fairytale.
CRG: Yeah, and along with the mortgage you get the anti-depressant drugs. It kind of reminds me a lot of Philip K. Dick stories where the characters, they’re taking these drugs because they’re living on Mars and they want to pretend they’re living on earth. It’s like you need the drug to continue the fantasy of the lie. You can’t have the lie without the anti-depressants.
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