Semiotical Confusion

When the Toshiba (TM) LED ball dropped in New York last night, John Lennon's "Imagine" was echoing throughout the city. Almost four decades into its existence, the song sort of seems like barely a rung above the standard mindless Sad FM drivel. However, the sincere sense of humanity that's since been diluted by the song's ubiquity and commercial opportunities is laid so bare it's chilling:

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

Lennon calls for the eradication of both god and country as sources of blind faith, as religion and nationalism combine for large-scale bloodshed that continues to ravage humanity. The fact that his anti-religion, anti-capitalist anthem was playing on New Years Eve in the (crumbling) financial capitol of a defiantly Christian nation that's currently waging a brutally unnecessary war in a Muslim nation is much more than enough to make Lennon roll in his grave. This is the man who returned his Medal of the British Empire to the Queen in 1969, with the explanation:

‘Your Majesty, I am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With Love, John Lennon."


The next day, at the Winter Classic, a hockey game at Chicago's Wrigley Field between the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks, both the Canadian and American national anthems were performed. The Canucks went first, while fifty service men and women gripped the enormous maple leaf flag and shook it. The crowd paid tame respect. The Americans were next, and the flag was given the same treatment. Throughout the singing of the anthem, the crowd rowdily cheered and exploded in chants of "USA" when it was all over. Such elation in the face of patriotic paraphernalia elicits in me a knee-jerk assumption that said crowd is perpetuating that tired, smug and myopic We're Better Than Them ideology, but for the first time, I had reason to wonder if the Chicago crowd was instead celebrating something to truly be proud of: that one of their own would be inaugurated into the White House in a few short weeks.

As soon as the US vs. Canada rivalry dissolved, the crowd localized its concern: how Detroit "sucks," yet the Red Wings are "the only thing the city has going," since the big three have fallen while the rest of the country rubbernecks at the bloody disaster without bothering to feign sympathy. People's ability, eagerness, to bisect the human race into as specific factions as possible never ceases to amaze. (I wonder if John Lennon was a football fan.)

Between the anthem ending and the puck dropping, loud fireworks exploded in fire balls from the ground, and I hoped that no Iraq vets were in attendance as they surely would've crawled under their seats. As two fighter jets soared overhead, I hoped that if there were any vets, that none of them pondered whether or not these military machines were fueled by Iraqi oil and that they might have died for standard celebratory pomp preceding a sporting event.