Daredevil #177 and the Impact of Frank Miller

A Childhood Discovery and its Enduring Influence

by James Albert Barr

In the Fall of 1981, when I was thirteen years old, living in my hometown of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, I happened to walk into a convenience store that was located at the corner of Rothesay Ave. and McAllister Drive on the eastside of town where I lived with my young family. If memory serves, I was simply visiting the store with the intention of buying some candy (a not altogether unusual activity for someone around that age, certainly back then) but when I saw that they had a spinner-rack of comic books, I found myself helplessly gravitating towards it to peruse the collection of new comic books on display. 

The spinner-rack featured comics from the two main publishers - then and now - of superhero comics: DC Comics and Marvel Comics. There were also a few issues from the likes of Gold Key, Harvey, and even Charlton Comics, but DC and Marvel dominated the selection, no doubt. I saw the latest issues of, say, Batman, Detective Comics (the other Batman title, of course), Superman, Action Comics (the other Superman title, of course), Green Lantern, Amazing Spider-man, Incredible Hulk, Moon Knight (issue #14, in fact, which I would buy about a week or so later, thus introducing me to the fantastic artwork of Bill Sienkiewicz; a brilliant, multimedia illustrator whose work is second only to Frank Miller's, IMHO), Captain America, The Micronauts (a personal favorite of mine from the 80s), so on and so forth, until I finally came across an issue of Daredevil ("...in His Strangest Adventure", and it turns out they weren't lying!). It was a lone copy of #177, and it had an immediately eye-catching front-cover, as well as a very intriguing tag-line at the lower right-hand side of the cover that read: "Yes, we did...we dared to publish this, the most offbeat story of the year!" The title of this specific, personal watershed, issue was/is: "Where Angels Fear to Tread". That famous title (which E.M. Forster gave to his 1905 novel) comes from a previously famous line from Alexander Pope's 1711 poem "An Essay on Criticism". The full line reads: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 

The cover to this seemingly irresistible superhero comic book (which only cost a mere fifty cents in 1981, though the next issue - #178 - would cost me sixty cents when Marvel increased their prices to match DC's) featured our titular hero, Daredevil, in apparent peril attempting to escape the gaping, razor-sharp jaws of a huge and hideous, multi-eyed demon! Only on this issue's cover do we actually see Daredevil wearing his cowl (i.e., his mask); it hangs behind his shoulders like a hood all through the issue's interior panels, and with good reason. I picked up this issue and started flipping through its 20-plus pages with great interest and curiosity.

As I jumped from page to page, the speed in which I commenced initially began to slow down as each subsequent page more and more transfixed me and the burgeoning sensibilities I was unaware of inside me during those days of pubescence when the biological changes of a boy just entering his teens had begun to sprout, so to speak. I eagerly purchased that issue of Daredevil and brought it home to read it through excitedly, both absorbing Frank Miller's hardboiled-style writing and his engrossing art more thoroughly. I was immediately smitten with this man's work! I also learned that Miller's first issue on Daredevil was in 1979 with issue #158. He began writing the issues as well beginning with #168, in which introduced his very popular female character, Elektra.

To my mind and memory, at the time, I had never seen such a dark and weird, moody and mature looking superhero comic book before (the closest being Batman #251 a couple of years prior; the classic "Joker's Five-Way Revenge" issue featuring the amazing, realistic artwork of industry legend, Neal Adams), where the story appeared to depict the hero unmasked and fighting some sort of monster in his own mind. In other words, a superhero, in human alias-mode (blind defense lawyer, Matt Murdock), struggling with the psychological complexities of his internal world and past childhood trauma. In Jungian terms, Daredevil/Matt Murdock was fighting against his "shadow", his "personal demon". This kind of storytelling (the raw modern text, the taut, visual illustrating, creatively fluid and cinematic panel structuring, emotional texture and visceral, noir-like atmosphere) was something completely new to me at that understandably naïve age of thirteen. And in a subplot within the same issue there was a story involving the political corruption of a mayoral candidate who was being controlled by one of Daredevil's recently established arch-villains, The Kingpin (Frank Miller needed a crime lord for his developing, issue by issue, plot in Daredevil, and so appropriated The Kingpin from Spider-man's rogues gallery with complete impunity); political corruption was a concept which I was not very familiar with in the "real world" until I got older and more informed (as well as cynical, of course) about said real world.

To provide a relatively brief summary of Daredevil #177, it begins with Daredevil unmasked, fully exposing the head of Matt Murdock as he sports the rest of his costume only in the presence of his former trainer and master; a considerably older, rough and cantankerous man simply called Stick. A couple of issues back in Daredevil #175, our hero was nearly killed in an explosion. Though he survived the blast, Daredevil lost his "super radar sense", which he instantly developed after an accident years before that robbed him of his sight. However, all his other remaining senses were ultra-enhanced to a super-human level. In issue #176, Daredevil is seen struggling with the loss of his radar sense, as he clumsily goes out on patrol in New York's Hell's Kitchen, keeping close vigil of The Kingpin's actions and also trying to track down the deadly female assassin known as Elektra, who just so happened to be his ex-girlfriend from several years back. His girlfriend at the time, Heather Glenn, even witnesses him nearly falling to his death as he was jumping from building to building and slipped a bit.

So clearly Daredevil was in great need of some help in order to get his radar sense back, hence the sudden appearance of Stick. The two of them, at the beginning of Daredevil #177, are in a stuffy, old attic filled with old mementoes and such from Matt's past. He is holding a bow while packing a bevy of arrows. There's a target at the other end of the attic where he's been attempting to hit with arrows for three consecutive days unsuccessfully. He's tired and frustrated, and feeling utterly lost physically, emotionally and mentally. But Stick, who is also blind, is a hard disciplinarian and won't let Matt rest. Stick insists that Matt has to dig deep into himself, psychologically, if he wants to get his radar sense back, and that apparently involves being around familiar things in a familiar setting. And constantly trying to hit the target as he simultaneously travels back in his mind to his childhood where he lived with his single-parent father, a washed-up boxer, who urged Matt to study hard and "become somebody" unlike his father. Matt was also the frequent victim of bullying from the neighborhood kids in Hell's Kitchen. He wouldn't fight back because his dad didn't want him to become like him, which of course frustrated young Matt. After actually fighting back during one instance of getting bullied, Matt ran home, elated by his victory, only to incur his father's immense disappointment, further confusing and frustrating Matt in the process.

With each traumatic childhood memory resurfacing intensely, Matt shoots an arrow at the target only to miss it again and again, provoking Stick to whack him with his han bo (i.e., three foot wooden staff) to motivate Matt with, evidently, good old-fashioned negative reinforcement. It works because Matt takes yet another try at the target, but seems to get more and more frustrated, as well as angry with each increasingly futile attempt. Finally Matt confronts his father (who's been dead since Matt was about eleven) in his mind, in a boxing ring. As Matt (still in his Daredevil costume with the mask off) tries to embrace his father (who's garbed in boxer's shorts and gloves) he's punched in the face by him. This internal confrontation represents, in Matt's psyche, his father's continuing disapproval that still echoes deep inside of Matt even as an adult and superhero! When Matt's dad suddenly is shot in the back by an arrow, Matt is then confronted face to face with the psychological appearance of The Devil, his "personal demon", the very manifestation of all of Matt's hatred and anger, but most importantly, his fear that has been festering deep within him. After fighting the demon with little to no effect, it is at this moment that Matt has a revelation, an epiphany, thanks to the unrelenting taunting from the demon, who states: "This is the end, Mattie boy. I'm gonna rip the flesh from your bones, piece by piece...Scared?" He realizes, probably because he's just so damn exhausted by all his anger and frustration and fear that he isn't afraid anymore, that this is all absurdity and unreal, so Matt then picks up the bow and arrow, slowly and assuredly, and says calmly: "No. I'm not scared. And I'm not angry. Not anymore. And that's why I can kill you." He then shoots an arrow straight into the center eye of the demon. The demon instantly disappears and we then see an arrow stuck into the center of the target within the attic (which represents the human psyche) that Matt and Stick occupy. To be sure that Matt did indeed get his radar sense back, Stick shoots an arrow at Matt as he's pulling his arrow from the target. Matt easily deflects the incoming arrow and then grins.                              

I didn't know it then, but that issue proved, I suppose inevitably, but no less pertinently, to be rather prescient for me personally, as I too would go on to battle my own "personal demons", and psychological impediments, through my beleaguered teens and early adulthood. But the lesson, nay revelation, learned from Daredevil #177 would stay with me, at least latently, throughout those years, becoming more and more manifest with each passing year of my own self-imposed auto-didacticism and investigations into human psychology and human history via my becoming an avid reader and talker/communicator, as well as an aspiring writer. That Daredevil issue and the many subsequent ones I collected over the course of the following year or two, coupled with the revelation that was The Police's 1983 "Synchronicity" album, inspired me to make my own comic books and characters, and write my own songs; to ultimately express myself and my growing world view.

Because of Frank Miller's memorable work on Daredevil I was compelled to seek out his other work, both past and present. One of the most unforgettable works by him, shortly after he left Daredevil with issue #191, was his groundbreaking six-issue mini-series published by DC Comics entitled Ronin. It was obviously a series meant predominantly for adults to read. However, I was only about to turn fifteen when issue one was released, costing $3.00 and was presented in deluxe format, with high quality paper stock, hence the much higher price. Ronin is about a disgraced Japanese samurai warrior whose master is killed on his watch by a demon named Agat. Hunting down Agat the ronin must kill the demon with his own blood, and so when the chance arises the ronin drives his samurai sword through himself and Agat, but before they both die Agat is able to trap their souls in the sword whereupon they are eventually freed eight centuries later in a dystopic, near-future New York City. The ronin winds up being reincarnated into the body of Billy Challas, an unfortunate born with no limbs and working for the Aquarius Corporation testing out cutting-edge prosthetics, and developing his telekinetic and psionic abilities. When the merge happens between the two, Billy's body and his powers artificially develop arms and legs, and the face of the ronin overtakes Billy's own. When the ronin realizes he's back and feels the full affects of disorientation by being reborn eight hundred years after he thought he died, and then learns of the demon, Agat's, diabolically supernatural ploy to escape death, he sets out to find him and destroy him for good.

Admittedly, the story in Ronin can be a little convoluted and unfocused, but Miller's artwork was beyond anything seen in comics before, certainly North American comics, as he displayed a manga influence hitherto unfamiliar to American and Canadian readers of comic books. And the graphic level of violence depicted within the series' six issues (especially issue #2! At the time reputed to be the most violent comic book ever made) was also an example of pushing the proverbial envelope in 1983-84 when comic books were becoming more and more adult-oriented.

This growing-up process in the comics industry culminated in 1986/87 with Frank Miller's monumental 4-part Batman mini-series The Dark Knight Returns, with its heavy political overtones, and returning the Batman character to his initial roots with his 4-part Year One arc in the pages of Batman #404-407. Miller had also perhaps written the most beloved Daredevil arc a year before with the Born Again set of issues. Miller also enjoyed substantial successes with his series of Sin City comics (where several stories were eventually made into a fine 2005 film co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Miller himself) and his 5-issue mini series 300 (which was also made into a highly successful film in 2006, directed by Zack Snyder). Alan Moore also played a pivotal role in comic books growing-up and gaining much more legitimacy outside the confines of the industry with his amazing graphic novels V For Vendetta and the groundbreaking Watchmen, which brilliantly deconstructed the superhero mythos. Other great writers like Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis would shortly follow in Miller's and Moore's considerable footsteps with their own outstanding, literary and mature works.

Admittedly, Frank Miller's latter-day work has been far less inspiring, or just plain bad. His highly anticipated sequel to The Dark Knight Returns released in 2001-2002 as a three-issue mini series and called The Dark Knight Strikes Again met with much disappointment, if not outright hostility, among fans and critics alike. His All-Star Batman and Robin would pejoratively give birth to the regrettable "goddamn Batman" slogan, and his 2011 Holy Terror graphic novel was a lurid exponent of off-the-tracks political propaganda (by his own admission no less!) and sheer lunacy. So Miller has apparently not escaped the fate that has stained the legacy of other great artists, musicians, poets, directors, and so on, who outlived their respective artistic peaks, and yet continued to produce subpar works. But for me, Miller's earlier and mid-period work made an indelible impression on me and influenced me greatly, not just as an artist in my own right, but as a human being and individual.

21st Century Poetry: The Library of the Sandman and other Poems by James Albert Barr

Here is a selection of poems that I have composed over the course of the last several years.

I'll start off with a series of four highly symbolic sonnets I call my "bird sonnets":

BLACK SWAN IN SNOW

As if, it seems, in order to reverse the sky
With one dark star alone for a constellation
To mock its ancient matter of worn dispersion,
The Black Swan poses with virgin pride not to fly.

Encircled, and on, by the bitter frozen blank;
Not a single spark to stir up a husky spume
Before an eye to see a sole ebony plume
Would the bird condescend for the ruffled and rank.

Perhaps in the curved space of its long, slender neck,
With an ashen bill, it once strew a noted speck
That sang upon a white leaf to unveil a code.

However now, in the never of its reserve,
While in the shiver of the bright cold of the nerve
That preserves its secret sign, lies the flame and lode.


OWL IN DARKEST BLUE

Who but the Owl, given the rank magnitude
Of its private depths, can peer, free of reprisal,
Into the night's exquisite, remote apparel,
And stay firm in relation to its solitude?

Like the sullen Prince in a blue midnight motion,
The 'ply's fair sign comes with mote-infested Silence
Upon a breach in the hymeneal violence
Between two Orders; this bird-of-prey gives notion.

The night remains even in the wake of days born
It seems, not discerning the mourning from the morn.
(All the modern devices distract from their flaw).

The doubleness of action in this hunting time
Gives the redoubtable yet unspecified line
To reverse the army of unalterable law.


RAVEN IN THE WHITE UNKNOWN

The scrupulous syntaxer of the dark plumage
By the woodside pines by the marble monument
Of one through many interred, offered in message,
Croaks in the full air of a midway's document.

Perched on the bold penumbra of indecision
Above a writing desk holding aloft pure space
Enfolded in the white canvas to fan precision,
The Raven holds within the text of unmarked face.

No sign so pure could the flyer dispense so long
From those Tuesdays of lore, like smoke-rings in a throng,
But death to those moments past has lingered to look.

Still within the stillness of a lone die's allure,
The daemon will not rue to roam the sky's azure,
Thrown in search, perchance at last, to find the Great Book.


MAGPIE IN THE RED DOOR

In the crisis since the Great Dissociation
Of the once wedded sensibility in time,
And of a time in Europe, like an equation,
Balanced on both sides, time now is a blameless crime.

With an eager wing and exclaimed tail-feather,
The Magpie of the dream takes its place in between
The open door to pry the contents of whether
A text from the Broken Age can be pinched unseen.

This place has never taken place in the waking
Realm of dusty shelves for filling and forsaking,
But the binary bird sneaks awake in this sleep.

The sleep of the unwritten in forbidden red
May be correlated with the living and dead
To restore time jointly, to foster and to reap.

And here's some miscellaneous poems beginning with perhaps my most ambitious poem yet:


THE LIBRARY OF THE SANDMAN

Enter lucid, by chance, and you may not emerge
From those shelves defended, the books never wrought.
The Dream motes ease on a volume missing from all
The earthen libraries contained by wearied flesh.
The true freedom of all the books is nowhere in
The touch of ennui and anomie bound in time,
But the keeper of the catalogue, with no sleep
Behind his specs, keeping the order of the shelves;
No bookworm in the Dreaming for a bird's-eye view,
But a book in an annex plucked when Lucien exits.

All begins there in the nothing of desire:
An object in the infinite white before words.
Full many a book is born there to be unread,
And bound its timber in a void of breathless air.
No waking can access the night's eternal hoard
Of the Magpie's text sent sleeping in sub rosa.
Did a Madame read One below a lava sky
For a mystic truth in a chrysalis unveiled?
The science and the nature still withhold the terms
To confirm one another in cosmic harmony,
Therefore nothing begins but a drifting off to...

A sleep disordered by leaves of wandering words
That echo downward, a delirium mounting.
So endless the dizzying mind searches the text,
So parched in a semi-oasis of the net.
There is a door, a door before and once for more,
For more to mirror a gift or more to reflect
No more but dust and ash and forget the airs fold.
To chisel in an instant upon some moon plate
A too subtle and pure meaning for the barren;
To balance upon that threshold the shadow's keep,
And dare to flirt awhile with the curator's heap!

Whether it be bound, or whether it be dreamed,
Concealing the written book of what one harbors
Cannot escape the one purview of the Sandman,
And of its word-form birthing will not be judged
From the fringe of the waking to the door of sleep.
The fate of destruction extends to the desktop
Of only those works prepared for publication,
Only those works in the market of the critiqued.
Evoked by the marked quintessence of nothingness,
However, the Prime Edition bears a silence
Too grievous in some to loom in the temporal.

In the mingling realm of thought and idea,
Of conception and purpose, the impossible
Summation of its history, and signs, divine
A mediator who between worlds preserves all
That is formless and unspeakable, sequestered.
In the despair of human solitude and pain,
The fear of belatedness continues to haunt
The vast, modern shelves that would fain leave it outside.
Significant feeling in the restrictive frame
May pass between the coarse words like a hermetic
Cry, and communicate under sound within sound.

They are all here inside the knowing world of dark,
Where the slumber of one can peep behind their eyes,
With a fugitive dare, at works which are not, and
To improvise some estimation of a book
Before the stirring light begins the erasure.
In death these authors cannot be ruined by the
Dull privations of a living world too afraid
To write beyond the outlook that marks wonted roots.
The never composed are transposed invisible,
And converse among the material lot to
Echo the murmurs of a past that might have been.

Forever never now in preserved catalogues
Buried deep in the Dreaming of Lord Morpheus,
The alluring enigma of the lost volumes
Will resume as if to live out their destiny,
To house what truth or falsehood they cannot disclose.
Crossing over antithetical planes, the new
Tomes can be produced with great or easy effort,
But the complicity of the masterpieces
Await in stubborn contemplation for the night
To at last slip out of its folds the hidden ones!


DREAM DESERT SONG

This moon so luminous sits upon a dune,
And night is replete with constellations.
There is an Arabian song below the desert breeze,
Yet she is not far away.

Haunted by some whispered beauty
Above my silent and sleepy mind,
This night calls upon me from beneath
Where eyes can reflect within.

Desire, like home, I've fought so long
To crawl away for a second's respite
Only to advance once more eternal
With details beyond the ken.

This sand so abstract and timeless
Rolls under my thoughts with
Words that have never rubbed together:
I hear their new conversations.

In the arid folds a monad keeps vigil
Always within the hushed womb;
A comfort, like the smell of old books;
A time not time, before and after: the song.

And it sang of a mystery never solved,
And it called forth in a couplet deciphered:
"In the leisure of this tragic story
Lies a fissure of some magic glory".

There is something to this nothing.


REFLECTIONS AT NIGHT IN THE URBAN FOG

There is no sign of a Ferris rendering from here on the concrete,
No vista worth admiring from on high in the business zone as the
Fog catches the spotlight's projection just above a dull skyscraper.

Now decked-out as artless, mirrored columns, these giant verticals
Echo down the boulevard like hypnotic doppelgangers of commodious
Illusion; averting a cracked mind before this pavement's crystal bloom.

Below the weathered brim of this bygone fedora, I see, ghostly before
Me, a perfect stranger, perhaps another somnambulist of the city wander,
Imperceptibly, past a neo-Victorian streetlight long beyond the gaslight.

Like an animated version of "A Couple in the Street" by Angrand, or
The transitory figures of Seurat, I remain indiscernible to the other:
Apparitions lost outside of history in the chilled mist of an urban ruin.

Trees in captivity are studied like botanists by the mannequins in the
Window display; their steely, soulless gaze paying homage to the plant
World like frozen shadows dressed in fineries befitting the new nature.

Downtrodden denizens drip into a shabby diner like street drainage
Mumbling to themselves in Chandleresque haikus, the two o'clock
Blues: a case-worth of stories for any old typewriter 'n' pack 'o' smokes.

I holster no hardware and exhale a yellow fog, chewing a cheap memory's
Ramifications down these overexposed streets strewn with the typical
Detritus, and the promise of 1001 more images from night's program.

In the waning distance above a static horizon of the avenue's vanishing
Point, I see a figure in soft focus like a sepia-toned secret harboring a
Clue to this dimensional crisis as time and space are once again rebooted.


CHILDREN AFTER CICERO

Like a Gregorian bug (not the Pope), history gathers moss
In the stagnant corners of contemporary minds,
Punctured in the back by a discarded apple
(With sharpened stem), rotting away, with a conquered worm,
All memory of ever desiring the sustenance of knowledge.
History now is re-imagined, renewed and
Remade daily from a revised script
Awaiting the sanitized approval
Of the here-and-now people:
Inheritors of a time all but lost;
And "good riddance" they collectively imply
In vain whispers.

Remembrance without possession or culpability
Is the order of the day, and keeps certain doctors away.
In selective waves turns the transmission
Of yesterday's minutes, filtered and edited
Like an air-brushed, digital photo.
Can there be wisdom in savvy business smarts
While confusing it with "usable information",
As opposed to tradition's former Justified True Belief
In a knowledge understood not as mere alchemy?
The generational divide of fear has produced
Exotic children for a 21st century meme,
Voracious for games and play and profitable distraction.

Caught between the Sphinx and the Unicorn, can we both
Be forbidden in our knowledge and our ignorance?
What forgiveness indeed can even be considered
In a serpentine world beyond the sacred and the real?
By the sword 'n' words of a cyber warrior
Reflecting back CGI medicine for blue-suited patients,
An ever-present system's efficiency batters
Its way through the time barrier, leaping from
Age to age, and world to world, with absurd beauty
For its own sake, and a fiscal projection.
In the two millennia since
After Cicero, there appears no need of maturity.


IF THE OX SAYS IT'S O.K.

I will cross the bridgeless gorge of the great divide
                           that separates thought from action...

I will fly to Singapore without the aid of a passport...

I will write the next "Ulysses" upon a fractal of immensity
                              where day cannot express the sun's rays...

All this and more to more this day, if the ox says it's o.k.

I may race the African cheetah or lasso the arboreal python in my remote jungle
                                                                        for the heart of some fictional bliss...

I may, waylaid by the sabled gaze of tears assorted upon those undone days,
                                                                  swim the fabled channel of chance...

I may, to stay, climb to flay an early morning's birch away, and nest beside some anchored
                                                   silence, holding with spite, a cellaphaned King James bible...

All this and more to score this day, if the ox says it's o.k.

I can bleed through the rusted conduits of yesteryear's dreams...

I can dredge a December dawn for oysters sutured with
                                   black pearls to kiss with impunity...

I can examine silhouette whales in the broken porcelain
                                                      of my secret vivarium...

All this and more to bore this day, if the ox says it's o.k.

I must confirm the stories, so whispered blue, behind the moon's brilliant subterfuge...

I must avert the kiss inside the candle's entrancing flame drawing
                          the pen of Aubrey to burn with nocturnal poise...

I must mend the spine, and restore, like glissandos from a harp,
           what sun this techno-romantic rabble have left behind...

All this and more to mourn this day, if the ox says it's o.k.


THE POET'S PARDON

Would there be an I to scold
Upon this earth as days are cold
Below the skies who know it not
Above the seas where I will rot
I should think this hate too old.

Men have come and gone to death
Without the peace blew from their breath
Withheld from love that could not save
Within their dark and barren cave
They had no joy to bequeath.

Once a life has spent its course
There is no time that you could force
Here unto a grief of sorrow
Where another chance could borrow
What was lost in the first source.


I hope you have enjoyed these strange poems of mine, one and all.  :-)

Dead Malls and the Irony of Nostalgia

The Changing Landscape of Commerce and the Human Element Affected Therein

by James Albert Barr

"I'm a product of my generation." - Peter Blackbird: Deadmalls.com

The very first fully enclosed and functional shopping mall opened its doors in 1956. It was called the Southdale Shopping Mall, and it was located in Edina, Minnesota. The influential architect who designed that mall was Victor Gruen. Years later Gruen would become disillusioned and even abhorred at what eventually happened to his original, allegedly more utopian and human-friendly, vision of the mall. He was quoted as saying during a speech in London in 1978 (two years before his death at age 76) that the prolific development of shopping malls had "bastardized" his ideas. It would seem that the shark-like forward momentum of dispassionate commerce and capital had other ideas for the shopping mall complex and the strategic enticement of its, mostly suburban, clientele.

Before the modern shopping mall, there were "strip malls", or shopping plazas, that featured open-air businesses all set in a row and connected by a sidewalk where customers could enter from the street and exit to continue on to the adjoining store or one located further down the strip. Even today, strip malls/plazas are still around, and almost exclusively found in suburban areas. The strip mall first developed shortly after the first World War. There was even an indoor mall prototype constructed in 1915 and officially opened the following year. It was called the Lake View Store at Morgan Park, and, like Southdale Mall, it too was located in Minnesota, in the seaport city of Duluth.

In the early to mid-19th century the first commercial, iron-and-glass covered arcades were built in Europe and opened to the public, signifying the first genuine notion of the modern consumer perusing the market-place to make potential purchases with legal tender. In Walter Benjamin's celebrated, but unfinished, book, "The Arcades Project" (from myriad notes compiled between 1927 and 1940, the year he died), he retroactively defined a certain characteristic found in a select few that were known as flaneurs (i.e., strollers); ones who would leisurely walk around the newly developing, bustling, urban city streets, and glass-enclosed arcades (in particular, the Parisian arcades), pricing nothing, but merely observing - in their ironic solitude and isolation within the fairly new phenomenon known as the "crowd" - the considerable changes to the public environment they occupied with the majority of less-conscious city denizens. Benjamin's prototypical flaneur, pre-dating mass commodity production, was the reputed father of French Symbolist poetry, Charles Baudelaire.

In one of Baudelaire's well-known sonnets written in the 1850s entitled, "A Une Passante" ("To a Passer-by"), and evidently composed after one of his flaneur-related constitutionals, he sees a beautiful woman in the "deafening", busy streets of Paris. He notices her lifting the hem of her ornate, Victorian-era dress as she gracefully weaves through the bustling crowd initially unaware of the anonymous "stroller" admiringly observing her from afar. They then make eye-contact for a brief, passing moment, which causes a sort of "lightning flash" in Baudelaire's eyes, obviously quite taken by this beauty's returning, if transitory, glance. And then, suddenly, it's nighttime, and the mysterious lady has long since disappeared from the poet's view, probably forever, as he addresses her in his mind: "Shall I not see you till eternity?" Though the poet has no idea where she may be now, his ever so brief encounter with her from a distance, and in a large crowd, has marked him profoundly and seen as a missed opportunity for love. In the ensuing 150 or so years, this kind of fleeting experience has become commonplace for modern and postmodern humans while being typically surrounded by commerce and consumerism, ubiquitous advertising and ever-present crowds - unconsciously immersed in the capitalist ideology of their time and place.

Today, the Baudelairean-type of flaneur is a relic of a long since past time and world, I should think. The kind of modern world that developed after World War II, particularly during the Eisenhower years of the 1950s when the suburban explosion happened, and the conservative "nuclear family" appeared as the standard image, especially in America, of citizenry living under the capitalist economic system, became the ontological norm, the way it simply was. This was certainly the overwhelming case for most of North America in general, as it was unmistakably endorsed and shown on a novel technological medium called a television set. Programs like: "I Love Lucy", "The Honeymooners", "Leave It To Beaver", "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet", and "Make Room for Daddy" gleefully and innocently projected strong conservative family values, politics and cultural behavior that seemingly effortlessly espoused American interests and way of life. And this included a commodity-filled deluge of the newest manufactured household items, fashions, domestic gadgets and appliances, all available at the new shopping malls suddenly appearing after 1956; and not to mention the assembly-line inundation of streamlined model vehicles for which to drive the family to said malls, and loan to one's teenager for that special date. America's celebrated "car culture" and the official arrival of the "teenager" and "teen culture", in general, coincided with the 50s; and this brought along with it the birth of rock 'n' roll too, as its own personal soundtrack. The drive-in theatre would become a cultural sensation as cinema reached new heights of popularity and consumer consumption. More and more conspicuous teens would be seen hanging out at malt shops and burger joints and mall parking lots.

It's no surprise that out of the burgeoning Cold War in the 50s was created McCarthyism and the paranoid notion of the "commies" coming to infiltrate and usurp America's collective identity and material beliefs. This kind of paranoia towards "the other" was implicitly expressed through the "U.F.O. craze" that swept across America's pop-culture landscape at that time, despite the suspiciously willful determination to maintain the apparent idyllic quality of life so overtly displayed in many a common American residential community. But even completely American-derived literary works like "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" (1955) and "Peyton Place" (1956) were beginning to expose the cracks in the smiley-face of the suburban utopia advertised on billboards, television and neighborhoods everywhere.

Shopping malls would continue to be built vigorously, and opened with great optimism and promise, throughout the U.S. and Canada during the 60s, as the culture would alter drastically from the Beat Generation-cum-Hippie Movement, to post-revolutionary comedown, 70s cynicism, drug-addled rock ' n' roll fantasies and disco/nightclub hedonism a la Studio 54. And the first true blockbuster films, such as "Jaws" (1975) and "Star Wars" (1977) would begin to change the way movies were made and marketed, for better or worse, with their endless tie-ins and cross-promotions connected with fast-food chains, original soundtracks, clothing fashions and wide-spreading merchandising and paraphernalia. Movies became more "commercially conscious" as a result. All of this would significantly contribute to what would become known in the 1980s, full-blown, as "mall culture" incarnate.

The shopping mall, its experience, and mall culture in general, would peak during the 80s. It was also during the 80s that malls, particularly their interiors, would commonly be seen in many movies, especially movies geared towards a younger, consumer conscious, demographic, such as the "teen movie". Perhaps no other teen movie, or movie in general, captured mall culture entering its zenith-period like 1982's "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". Many scenes in the film show nearly all the principle characters either working at, or shopping/hanging out at, a mall. The aura of normalcy would be palpably seen and felt by both the film's characters and the viewing audience, who likely went to a mall theater to see "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (one of the film's main characters, Mark "Rat" Ratner, even works at a mall theater). By the mid-to-late 80s the notion of the "mall rat" (someone who spends a great amount of time loitering in malls) was beginning to enter the cultural vernacular.

The typical shopping mall in the 80s could be described thusly, using a prime example from my suburban youth, Parkway Mall, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada: A one-level elongated structure flanked by east and west-located parking lots. Inside would feature a north-end department store, known as the "anchor store" (the heart of the mall's commercial viability); in this particular case, a Zellers. At the opposite, south-end of the mall is located a secondary department store, which is a little smaller than the main anchor store, called The Met (outside of these respective stores are a row of coin-operated vending machines filled with candy, gumballs and assorted plastic trinkets and toys). Between the main and secondary anchor stores is the mall atrium, which is architecturally-designed to facilitate the flow a large bodies of people who go there for shopping purposes (for the most part: see above paragraph for the definition of "mall rat").

As one walks from one end of the mall to the other they will notice a self-contained, circular kitchenette in the middle of the atrium for patrons to sit at in a 360 degree formation (the much older version of the "mall rat" can be found here); a drug store, like Shoppers Drug Mart; across from the drug store, a grocery store, like, say, Sobeys; further down the atrium is a baking goods café and a flower shop, washroom facilities and an electronic store called Radio Shack (now known, collectively, as The Source), a novelty shop, and a clothing store, like Thriftys; men's and women's apparel specialty stores, like Tip Top and Le Chateau; a footwear shop; a jewellery establishment and a book mart/convenience store. At the north-west side is found a movie theater, while across from it is a laundry-mat and a sporting goods shop. At the north-east side entrance is an independent family restaurant, as opposed to the food court that is located at the south-west end, featuring several well-known fast-food outlets to choose from before making your way to the abundant seating area to eat your generically-processed food. And, finally, at the south-east end there's a video arcade for teens and video game lovers to hang-out in and dunk quarters into the twenty or so available video game units. Located outside of the main mall area are separate entrances to the liquor store and a Smitty's restaurant.

For a considerable cross-section of those born in the mid-to-late 60s and early 70s, the "mall experience" was a huge part of their growing up, and dominated much of their adolescence and social life. It became a part of their identity, of who they were as a person, culturally (though they weren't wholly conscious of this sociological understanding, of course), and how they were reflected onto others, who were usually a lot like them. Unlike kids and teens, and people in general, today, there were no omnipresent technological gadgets like a cell-phone, a Blackberry, an IPad, a portable Playstation, what-have-you, to dominate one's attention by fashionably fidgeting with it through constantly downcast eyes and hyper-active hands. The mall culture of the 80s actually stimulated the idea of a consistently active and (relatively) healthy social-life, whatever social group, or economic category you happened to fit into. That would be a "glass half-full" perspective on mall culture. The downside of it all was all the unchecked commerce and consumer-mentality that, customarily, went along with it, like the air that you breathed (Reagan's economic-prosperity plan in action, until it was humbled by decade's end); a surrogate parental-avatar for the then fading unity of the traditional family. Parents no longer "bring their kids up": pop-culture and capitalism do.

By the mid-90s everything would change and a steady downward trend regarding malls and mall culture would begin to show signs of decline, both economically and socially. To perfectly contrast, cinematically, with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", and it's optimistic view of mall culture, Kevin Smith made a 1995 film entitled, both appropriately and ironically enough, "Mallrats". It starred Jason Lee and Jeremy London as a couple of "slacker buddies" who spend an entire day at a mall. Pop-culture references would frequently be uttered by all and sundry, and adolescent-scale high-jinks would ensue willy-nilly by characters predominantly in their 20s, as opposed to the teenagers that inhabited "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". This represented a significant trend happening in the culture at that time in the 90s: pop-culture was becoming more and more self-referential and self-conscious, literally and ironically; and young people were refusing to grow-up, to mature, even as they became more culturally-informed, savvy and witty, not to mention older; their sense of restlessness and respective defenses becoming sharply honed in the process, as capitalism's ideology was showing signs of transparency and in need of a reconstitution to pacify "Generation X". By the turn of the new millennium, one could hear phrases like "30s are the new 20s" and "40s are the new 30s", and so on, as our now youth-obsessed, and increasingly immature, culture was building momentum, while being dumbed-down, correspondingly.

At one point in "Mallrats", the two main characters relocate to a discernibly older mall with lower consumer traffic and much-dated decor. This mall was clearly an 80s throwback on the decline, unlike the updated, busy mall they initially visited, which was reflected in a very tongue-in-cheek manner by Kevin Smith. This direct contrast in the respective mall's fortunes provided, unknowingly from Smith's perspective I suspect, the economic trend that was happening at that time, and would culminate by the end of the 90s in what we now call the "dead mall" phenomenon. Consequently, and fittingly so, I feel, "Mallrats" would be a box-office bomb and critical failure, as opposed to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High's" great success at the box-office and subsequent ascension to pop-iconic status. However, "Mallrats'" fortunes since its 1995 release wouldn't be all bad, as it has become a "cult favorite" of sorts, likely bolstered by its period-capturing cache. The two films provide a great bookends that encompassed the golden age of the shopping mall and mall culture, generally speaking.

By the year 2000, hundreds of shopping malls across the U.S. and Canada were seriously in decline or completely out of business; effectively "dead", in other words (self-contained "box-stores" like Walmart and Target would eventually dominate the market-place for shoppers). The Internet went commercial in 1995, along with portable cellular-phones, significantly enough; home-bound video game culture was collecting steam, and public smoking bans were coming into effect as well, which would seriously "cramp the styles" of many mall rats and patrons. The mall exodus was well underway. So, in the year 2000, two young men, Peter Blackbird and Brian Florence, started a website solely dedicated to the "dead mall" trend that they were, together, noticing more and more.

They called their website Deadmalls.com. Blackbird would coin the term "labelscar" in 1998, which describes "fading or dirt left behind from a sign on or in a mall. Labelscars leave a readable marking, which is very helpful when identifying former stores". They also defined a dead mall, or grey field, as "a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is dated or deteriorating in some manner". Their website is replete with photos of hundreds of dead, or dying, malls, showing both their mostly dilapidated exteriors and abandoned interiors. To gaze upon these photos is to evoke an eerie sense of "what was", as you witness the ghost town-like conditions of these once bustling businesses. And there is a human element that has been invariably affected, consequentially, by all these closed-down malls across North America. That's why people like Peter Blackbird, Brian Florence and innumerable citizens and inhabitants of the respective towns and cities these malls were found in have a collective sense of nostalgia for these once thriving "social centers", besides the consumer and commodity aspect they supplied, simultaneously.

In a 2002 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interview, Blackbird was quoted as saying: "Tearing down malls also tosses away a repository of a community's memories. I want to try and preserve what they were [who concedes he loves the old-style malls that seem dated but were once cool places to hang out]. I'm a product of my generation". I too, despite myself, am one of those members of that generation that lived through the golden age of the shopping mall, and its accompanying culture, for better or worse, in all its sociological and historical irony. I too look back, nostalgically (especially compared to how much the world and culture has dramatically changed since then), when Parkway Mall, for instance, was a thriving bee-hive of social activity and commercial consumption. And life was far less complicated and jaded than it is today, especially for the young and culturally-impressionable.

The Police and the 30th Anniversary of Their Swansong, "Synchronicity"

One Special Album Made all the Difference: Reflections on The Police's 1983 "Synchronicity" album

by James Albert Barr

"I have only come here seeking knowledge, things they would not teach me of in college."
                                             -  The Police: "Wrapped Around Your Finger" (lyrics by Sting)

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the final studio album by The Police, Synchronicity. As anniversaries go this one is pretty significant to me personally. I had only turned fifteen years old a few weeks before this monumentally important album's official release on June 17, 1983. In the month prior to the album's ubiquitous appearance in music shops and retail stores, like Zellers, where I purchased my copy for $6.99 plus tax, the album's first single came out. It was entitled "Every Breath You Take".

I can still remember how utterly blown away I was when I first heard it; that classic, commencing bang from Stewart Copeland's drum that immediately set the dark tone of this incredible song, followed by Andy Summers' arresting guitar melody suffusing the song with an ominous, billowing fog, which, coupled with Sting's steady bass-line, I feel completely warranted the memorable black and white video that accompanied it, giving it a film noir quality, especially as it featured a lit cigarette at the beginning and end. Kevin Godley and Lol Crème of 10cc fame directed the "Every Breath You Take" video (along with the videos for "Synchronicity II" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" as well), and MTV incessantly aired it from then on that May and throughout the rest of the year pretty much. It also dominated radio airplay and 45-single sales by spending 8 consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in July and August of '83.

Sting's vocals on the track were uncharacteristically in a low-register, which lent a menacing vibe, given the stalker-theme elicited in the fairly simple lyrics that begin with: "Every breath you take/ Every move you make/ Every bond you break/Every step you take/ I'll be watching you". Many people, particularly unwitting brides and grooms, misinterpreted "Every Breath You Take" as a love-song in the traditional sense, but it's anything but. The song seems to be about a jilted man who's the unfortunate recipient of unrequited love, and has become obsessed with his distant "object of desire". 

However, Sting has intriguingly claimed in a recent interview that the smash-hit song is about the Reagan administration and the conservative political climate of the 80s, with the notion of Big Brother "watching you, and watching us all": 1984, after all, was the title of George Orwell's nightmarish 1949 novel, fittingly enough, so perhaps Sting was, consciously or unconsciously, channelling that novel, as well as his marriage break-up with his first wife, Frances Tomelty, when he composed "Every Breath You Take". Was there possibly a synchronous relationship between said political climate of that time and the deep, personal romantic turmoil Sting was going through concurrently?

Regardless, I bought the 45-single of it in May of '83, and fervently played it to death, if for no other reason than because I absolutely loved its seductive melody and hook and overall mood, while still being intrigued by its sinister overtones. Even as a young teenage boy, I was readily drawn to the strange, mysterious and dark under-currents of the world around me. No wonder David Lynch's Blue Velvet is one of my all-time favorite films! There's a definite part of me that profoundly relates to the film's small-town protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont, and his irrepressible sense of curiosity and inquisitiveness, whatever the risks and dangers such investigating may entail. Ironically, I seemed to have had cultivated a Faustian taste for "forbidden knowledge" and the truth, however unsettling, about the real state of things.

When June came around, and I saw Synchronicity displayed, with all the other new records out at the time, I snatched up a precious copy with my own money that I had earned delivering newspapers with my brother, Jeff. Excitedly bringing the album home, without having heard any of the other tracks, besides "Every Breath You Take", I seem to recall just knowing beforehand, in my mind, that the album was going to be amazing, and IT WAS! The music (side one is the rockier, up-tempo half, and side two is the more subdued, slow-tempo half), melodies, hooks, vocals, production, and each band member's respective instrumental contribution captivated and enchanted my every faculty and sense, which, for a freshly pubescent fifteen year-old boy, were hyper-sensitive and sharply attuned. It was a watershed moment for me when I first heard Synchronicity in its entirety. I had never heard anything like it before. It was so different to what I was used to hearing on the radio, despite its accessibility. However, the lyrics were a different story altogether, at least on a conscious, and naïve, level.

First of all, I thought to myself back then, while going to junior high school at the time, "what did synchronicity mean exactly"? And as I eagerly followed along with the lyrics printed on the album sleeve, I also asked myself what did "Spiritus Mundi" mean? And what did Sting mean when he sang "Take this space between us and fill it up someway"? What the hell was Andy ranting and raving on about his mother? Who was "Miss Gradenko"? What did the Loch Ness Monster have to do with suburban families and city life? Why all the vivid negative imagery to express that you're in pain? What was the Scylla and Charibdes? Who was Mephistopheles? And, finally, who were these strange sisters wandering in the Sahara Desert looking for tea? Some of the answers to these teeming questions were thankfully provided by The Police members themselves in the many interviews I came across in the rock music magazines I started to buy in conjunction with my burgeoning love and obsession with pop-music and Top 40 radio circa '82-'83.

For such a dark and dour, intelligent and literary album, Synchronicity became a huge commercial hit, spending 17 non-consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard's Top 200, even keeping Michael Jackson's juggernaut hit album, Thriller, off the top-spot for most of the summer and fall, as it went on to achieve multi-platinum status with staggering sales of over 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. It also scored three more hit singles: "King of Pain" (#3 chart placing), "Wrapped Around Your Finger" (#8), and "Synchronicity II" (#16). Clearly, the album struck a lot more chords than just mine in 1983.

Eventually, I learned that synchronicity was a concept developed by famed psychologist, Carl Jung, which meant the profound connection between two seemingly unrelated things; and that Spiritus Mundi meant "World spirit, or spirit of man"; the "space between us" is apparently the widening gap within a humanity that has distanced itself from its former god, or gods, and are collectively feeling spiritually empty for it; the rocky relationship between Andy's character and his mother is clearly a depiction of Freud's well-known "Oedipus complex"; "Miss Gradenko" alluded to foreign relations with the Soviet Union during a time when nuclear devastation was on everyone's mind, and would we go the way of the dinosaurs as suggested in "Walking in Your Footsteps"; the Loch Ness Monster was used as a metaphor for the darkness humanity had apparently unleashed from within itself, because of the increasing inhumanity brought on by an alienated modernity (there was also an allusion to William Butler Yeats' famous 1920 poem "The Second Coming"); the hyperbolic, yet poetic, imagery Sting described in "King of Pain" were all analogies to the monumental "pain and turmoil" (which he admitted in interviews around that time in '83 produced his best work) he had seemingly been enduring exclusively; the Scylla is a massive rock formation resembling a many-headed sea-beast, while the Charibdes is a gigantic whirlpool, and both were featured in Homer's "The Odyssey"; Mephistopheles is the personification of the devil that appeared in Goethe's early 19th century masterpiece, "Faust"; and, finally, the sisters in the Sahara Desert appeared as a symbolic anecdote in Paul Bowles' marvelous 1949 novel, The Sheltering Sky, which Sting had read and was obviously inspired to write "Tea in the Sahara", the mesmerizing album closer on the vinyl version of Synchronicity, where as the politically-acerbic "Murder by Numbers" is/was the featured album closer on the compact disc and tape cassette.

It's funny though, despite not being privy to all the literary and philosophical references peppered throughout Synchronicity's lyrics, and not fully comprehending the underlying themes therein, during that initial time, I felt, on a subconscious, gut-level, what Sting, predominantly, was trying to communicate to his audience, to me. And it was ultimately this internal drive and curiosity to understand and to learn that I believe "the seeds to my intellectual being" were originally sown, as pretentious as that may sound. The world was then beginning to really open up to me, to my individual purview, and I wanted to absorb and understand as much of it as I could stand to take in without feeling overwhelmed and frightened by it all, and so the irrepressible urge to express myself, artistically, emerged.

Consequently, I became an avid reader, socially-conscious, and started writing my own songs, which showed, quite obviously, the immediate influence of Sting and The Police. By February of 1984, I had all five of The Police's proper albums in my possession, and they undoubtedly became my favorite band, and top musical artist in general. They've remained a beloved, and continuously enriching, favorite of mine for the past thirty years. And Synchronicity has become the single most important and impactful album on my life.

The Anamorphic Stain of Reality in Holbein's "The Ambassadors"

The Anamorphic Stain of Reality in Holbein's "The Ambassadors"

by James Albert Barr

"The time is out of joint - O cursed spite,
 That ever I was born to set it right." - William Shakespeare: Hamlet

"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life." - Karl Marx

In 1533, Hans Holbein the Younger (named thusly, because his father, who was also a renowned painter, is referred to as Hans Holbein the Elder) painted a commissioned double-portrait work that would insure him everlasting fame and admiration, but would also haunt art historians, aficionados, academicians and philosophers to this day. The painting is entitled, "The Ambassadors".

Aside from its astonishing artistry and brilliantly, meticulously rendered details (which he learned from Da Vinci and the Flemish masters, such as Jan van Eyck), a cursory glance at the painting shows a depiction of two wealthy and distinguished 16th century gentlemen posing with an assortment of devices, instruments and books on a couple of shelves (a furniture item known back then in England as a "whatnot"); the top one of which they both lean on from opposite ends.

But upon closer inspection one can perceive an odd-shaped image in the lower foreground of the painting. What is that strange object? Well, in order to make out what it is you have to shift your view laterally, because what you're looking at is, in fact, the most famous use of anamorphosis in the history of painting. When seen from a side view, you will realize that Holbein placed, as a superimposition, an anamorphically-distorted human skull! What appears to be a fairly normal portrait suddenly becomes "denatured" and "uncanny". And given that the distorted object is a human skull, it further unsettles the painting's narrative by rendering it ominous and foreboding.

The two figures posing in the painting are reputed to be Jean de Dinteville (the ornately dressed aristocrat and landowner) on the viewer's left, who actually commissioned the painting from Holbein, and Georges de Selve (the clergyman in the long robe) on the viewer's right. The circumstances that brought these three men together proved to be extraordinary and historically significant.

Hans Holbein was a German-born artist and printmaker who moved to England, from Basel, Switzerland, in 1526 seeking employment after getting a recommendation from renowned Renaissance humanist/theologian, Desiderius Erasmus, whose portrait Holbein famously painted in 1523. Among the well-known commissions incurred by Holbein during his first period in England was a 1527 portrait of Sir Thomas More (then a successful writer and knighted speaker of Parliament whose novel, Utopia - from which the title-word he had coined - had been published in 1516; he would play a significant, if tragic, role in the religious upheaval that Holbein would witness and record, if understandably subtly, while working under Henry VIII's embattled court). 

After returning to Basel for a few years, Holbein chose to resume his career back in England, in 1532, under the considerable patronage of Anne Boleyn (second wife of Henry VIII) and Thomas Cromwell (English lawyer, statesman, and chief minister to the King). By 1535, Holbein would become the portrait painter in the court of King Henry VIII. Holbein's portraits of the royal family - most notably of King Henry VIII himself - and nobles are regarded as the definitive images we have and know of these historical figures.

By 1532, the year of Holbein's return to England, Europe was embroiled in great religious strife and revolution due to a severe division within the Christian Church. This was precipitated by disillusioned German monk and priest, Martin Luther, in 1517, when he famously nailed his highly controversial "Ninety-Five Theses" to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in protest to what he believed was corruption in the Roman Catholic Church and its Papacy, thus provoking the Protestant Reformation and the establishment of the Lutheran Church, and later a Calvinist offshoot (which would decidedly develop the notion of the "Protestant Work Ethic", thus alleged to have been responsible for the advent of capitalism, according to fin de siècle sociologist, Max Weber, in his famous 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism). As a result, many wars and mutual persecutions ensued throughout much of the 16th century in Europe.

Before 1532, the Church of England was under the authority of Rome, but when Henry VIII attempted to get an annulment/divorce from his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1527, because she didn't provide him with a male heir (and he was then courting Anne Boleyn besides), he was denied by Pope Clement VII via Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, whose failure to secure a divorce for Henry resulted in his downfall as Archbishop of York, getting arrested for treason in 1529 after having been stripped of his government office and property initially, and died from illness in late 1530 before any sentence could be carried out. 

To finally get a divorce for Henry, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer (after his predecessor,William Warham, died), pulled some crafty strings in eliciting an ultimate approval from the Pope, who was unaware of Henry's ulterior motive with the Church of England.When the new Lord Chancellor and chief minister, Thomas More, who was a devout Roman Catholic and resolutely opposed to divorce, stubbornly refused to publicly acknowledge Henry's annulment from Catherine and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, which Thomas Cranmer had announced as legitimate, Henry, with the help of his new chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, and blessing from Cranmer, decided to dramatically remove the Church of England from Rome's, and, thusly, Roman Catholicism's, authority by instituting the 1534 Act of Supremacy legislation, hence making Henry VIII the Supreme Head of the Church of England, which he then converted to Protestantism, which did not oppose divorce. Thomas More was subsequently arrested, tried and convicted for treason. He was sentenced to death and beheaded on July 6, 1535.

And so it was a year before the 1534 Act Of Supremacy that both Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve came to England as ambassadors (hence the title of Holbein's monumental painting) and emissaries for Francis I of France in hopes of talking Henry VIII out of leaving the Roman Catholic Church. While visiting London for this extremely important political mission, de Dinteville commissioned Holbein to paint his portrait along with fellow ambassador and friend, George de Selve. Unfortunately, their diplomatic mission, and likely de Selve's prays, eventually failed.

Under the apparent auspices of the religious circumstances and tense atmosphere in England at the time, Holbein, and likely de Dinteville himself, evidently chose a very significant day to have "The Ambassadors" painted. On the upper shelf of the painting where all the scientific instruments are displayed, one can notice a polyhedral sundial just left of de Selve's right elbow. To the trained eye, one can read the time and date on the sundial. It, in fact, reads April 11, 1533 at approximately 4 p.m. in the afternoon. In other words, it was Good Friday when Holbein painted this unforgettable portrait.

What is also quite significant is that that day happened to correspond with the 1500th anniversary of Christ's crucifixion. No doubt the painting is positively rife with pregnant messages and codes! These include the broken string on the lute located on the lower shelf. The lute symbolized harmony, and with a string broken on Holbein's lute, it likely symbolized the breach within the Christian Church. However, also seen on the lower shelf is a book opened to a Lutheran hymn, perhaps symbolizing the desire for a reconciliation between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Aside from the anamorphic skull shown in the lower foreground, perhaps the most significant symbol and message in the painting - again, given that it was Good Friday - is, likely, the most subtle. In the top left hand corner of the painting you can just discern, peaking out from behind the green curtain, a crucifix. It only half appears. What did that particularly mean to Holbein? Was it put there as a reminder of Christ's sacrifice on this specific Good Friday? And that, ultimately, it was that symbol that should be acknowledged more simply by both warring churches instead of how the Church should be governed and conducted? Was it put there to contrast with the material symbols of Renaissance achievement so confidently displayed on the whatnot? Or did it more prominently represent a foreboding of the divisive decision of Henry VIII to cause a severe breach between his kingdom and the Catholic Church, thus rendering only half of the crucifix? 

It is interesting that the crucifix is located above de Dinteville and to his right, because when one shifts to their right in order to make out the anamorphic skull one can line up de Dinteville's left eye perfectly with the crucifix and geometrically form a horizontal triangle with the elongated line of the skull. At the apex of the triangle one can then draw a straight line that perfectly separates the top shelf of the whatnot with the bottom shelf, thus creating the north/south division of the celestial sky and heavens (represented by the scientific instruments, such as the celestial globe, used to look upward) with the terrestrial ground of the earth (represented by the earth-bound instruments, such as the terrestrial globe). So Holbein's mathematical and geometric precision is executed remarkably well in the painting.

Now having said all that, the most dominant, and ultimately unsettling, image and symbol depicted in "The Ambassadors" is unquestionably the anamorphic skull. Many of the painting's interpreters believe the skull to represent memento mori: "Remember that you are mortal and will die one day". However, not immediately noticeable on de Dinteville's hat is, in fact, a skull! Apparently, memento mori was de Dinteville's own motto! So it would suggest that the anamorphic skull isn't necessarily being used here as a mortality symbol per se, because the rendering of more than one skull seems a bit superfluous within the painting's rich narrative. I believe it represents something much more significant than just a reminder of our own mortality, fragility and transience, though I will agree that the skull still represents something definitely negative, but it's something that actually transcends, or is outside of, the general purview of consciousness.

I've good reason to believe that Holbein's anamorphic skull is the earliest adumbration, or initial sign, of what a few renowned, modernist writers and thinkers (such as T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence) in the early 20th century initially alluded to, and what Frank Kermode, in his 1957 book, Romantic Image, directly implied, and Keith Alldritt formally asserted in his 1968 book, The Making of George Orwell, as "the bifurcation of human consciousness"; the breaking and split in the collective mind and heart of late Renaissance Europe.

It's quite astonishing, and literally mind-bending, that Holbein's skull should appear to be an incredible precursor of modernist art in the 20th century with its surrealist, and montage-like, character. It immensely sticks out - unlike anything else during the Renaissance and right up to the Industrial Revolution - like an infinitely disturbing "stain", an intrusive alien-like presence that defies any linguistic economy, an ineffable rip or tear in the very fabric of human consciousness, let alone the narrative field of the painting's more contemporaneous signs. It is, as Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, refers to, a "surplus knowledge" that severely contaminates the gaze and suspends the ostensive meaning of the painting. It ultimately represents a reality that precipitated as a result of the Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII's abuse and exploitation of power, further allowing for Calvinist Protestantism to inaugurate the capitalist economic system through the Protestant Ethic of hard work to acquire material wealth as a way to better one's chances of getting into Heaven. Like a now useless husk, capitalism would eventually discard Protestantism and become a fully secular monetary system devoid of any religious mandates, or any other meaning other than to simply, collectively, and ever expansively, accumulate wealth and material goods for its own sake.                     

Like the late 16th/early 17th century Baroque period of the German "Trauerspiel" (i.e., mourning-play) that would express, allegorically, the growing sense of "mourning" and futility of life drained of all meaning, through the plays of Daniel Caspers von Lohenstein, Andreas Gryphius; the Spaniard, Calderon de la Barca, and most importantly, Shakespeare's 1601 play, Hamlet (which according to the 20th century German essayist, Walter Benjamin, in his monumental book, The Origin of German Tragic Drama [1928], is the single most significant mourning-play), Holbein's skull projects the harbinger of mourning that would suffuse through Europe over the course of the next 100 years, because of this "bifurcation in human consciousness" that seemingly and slowly drained the world of sustainable meaning. It expressed a new, burgeoning reality that was inexpressible, and incomprehensible to the conscious mind (and I suspect even Holbein's as well), at that ground-zero time in history.