Pondering the defining icons of the 20th century.
"Icon see clearly now"
Just what ARE the symbols that our world will be remembered by?
Dateline: 00:10, Sunday, September 1st, 2002 - Sheen Road outside the Black Horse pub.
It's another of those "Good Samaritan" moments. I'm outside taking an hour off from my Saturday night hobby job of lampie at the rock night at the pub. I decide to step outside to get a breath of fresh air. (The place can get stinking hot.)
Stepping outside I find that the doormen aren't (at the door that is). Looking around I notice them signalling me from across the road. There is a small car in an awkward position with its hazard lights flashing (sound familiar?), with a young woman at the wheel, clearly not having a lot of luck with trying to re-start it.
This has already been a weird night featuring unco-operative cars. One of the guys I work for discovered - at a critical time - that his car won't start. It turns out that his dog has chewed through the wiring to the back of the car including to the fuel pump. I spent the previous hour off patching up the wiring loom for him whilst someone else gives him and the offending mutt a lift home.
Anyhow, to cut a long story short - because it's the catalyst not the message - the young lady has run out of fuel and needs to find the nearest garage (here we go again), which is about half a mile's walk each way. She gets out of the car and sets out on her own, after one of my doorman colleagues has assured her that the car will be safe under their watchful eye in the meantime. Realising the time of night, we all consider it unwise for her to be wandering around on her own (chauvanist, perhaps, but there you go), so I chase after her moments later and convince her to accept a lift. A few minutes later and she's already standing in the garage forecourt filling a diesel can. Whilst she's standing at the pay window I'm thinking that Lara Croft has a lot to answer for in current fashion. Not quite a non-sequiter - the young woman, whose name I never did bother to ask, is dressed in cropped hoodie, desert shorts, socks and desert boots. During the brief run back it turns out that the Lara Croft thing is actually deliberate and that she'd been in character just 15 minutes earlier, although again I never asked why but it sets me thinking about the icons of modern life.
Obviously, there's Coca-Cola. Everyone in the world, practically, knows about that and recgonises it instantly. Then there's Mickey Mouse, only a little way behind. And McDonalds? Hmmm... Probably - lets face it, they're in Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai (Bombay) and who knows where else. Of course one of the pivotal figures of the 20th century is going to be the megalomaniac who had ideas about the ruling supremacy of a single lineage across the entire world. Bill Gates - love him misguidedly, or hate him - the latter 20 years of the 20th century have a lot to blame him and his abominable creation. Then there's that other megalomaniac whose face with black toothbrush moustache everyone recognises. And I think most people in the western world would recognise, if not be able to name, the Porsche 911 series. And finally, that late-comer of the last decade, the escapee from the world of computer games into the wider conciousness - so much so that young adult women choose to emulate her - the unfeasibly chested Lara Croft.
So icons of the 20th century: Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Bill Gates, Adolf Hitler, the Porsche 911 and Lara Croft. Worrying, isn't it?
