School pictures in an era of narcissism.

As I recall, when I was in school we had pictures done once a year.  We would have a big class picture (through elementary school), and then a single individual picture. 

My kids, however, in a period of photography being everywhere via digital cameras on cell phones, have pictures seemingly taken a dozen times a year.  Fall pictures.  Fall reshoots.  Spring pictures.  Spring reshoots.  Yearbook pictures for clubs.  Yearbook pictures for sports.  Lifetouch individual pictures, also for sports.  It never stops...we spend half the school year getting pictures made. 

Is it any wonder that children today are completely and totally narcissistic?  From the time they were born we were pushing cameras in their face.  We wallpaper our living rooms with the endless official portraits of whatever year it was.  We give them specially designed phones that allow them to take selfies.  We install software on said cameras to put dog ears or silly faces or touchups on every picture.  We instagram, facebook, shapchat, tik-tok their lives until they believe that they are truly the center of the universe. 

Because this a blog nobody reads and I have no interest in doing the research, I'll just go from memory...but somewhere I remember reading that some cultures thought that taking pictures were evil because it captured somebody's soul.  By putting one's image on to a piece of film or scattering it into megabytes of information, they no longer are themselves. 

I don't know that we can go back...but somewhere we need to address the idolatry of it all.  The decalogue warned about the danger of making graven images of God, but that no longer concerns us.  Rather, we are more interested in graven images of ourselves.  I wonder if this is an even more wicked form of worship...we got rid of God, and replaced him with ourselves. 

They Airbrushed My Face

So I came across this story today about how the White House has been airbrushing pictures of the president to make him look younger and more fit.  I know that some people are going to have a field day with this...but if you looked like that, wouldn't you do the same thing? 

As one who came of age musically in the 80s and 90s this was the first thing that came to mind, the centerfold of an REM album liner notes. 


When I first came across that picture all those years ago I marvelled at the possibilities of something like that being possible.  Wow, I can now look younger, more fit, more attractive? 

Of course, today we live in a time in which we have great suspicion about any photo or image.  Whether it's dudes flexing phantom muscles or politically motivated shots of politicians appearing somewhere they aren't or hamburgers that look much, much better than they do in reality, we never know what really to believe anymore...so we choose to stop believing. 

Maybe this will be the death of sites like Instagram, with all of its beautifully filtered photos of people and places.  People will get tired of the delusion.  Or maybe we will just learn to no longer accept anything at face value anymore.  Part of the worldview of any future generation will be a general agnosticism about almost anything, even as they enjoy the cropped and airbrushed pictures.  Even as lines between virtual reality and real reality begin to fade, will we no longer believe even what we can touch, see for ourselves, or hear? 

And what will this do to matters of real importance, like faith in Christ?  Will more people hold to a form of Christianity even as they casually dismiss the idea of resurrection or spiritual power to be unreal or impossible?  Will future generations no more believe the Scriptures and rather read the many deconstructions about how it came together as simply a human book? 

It's a scary world out there when you can't even tell that our president looks like the fat orange guy that he is.  But it reminds me, that he's the perfect president for our fake world.