If there is a more irritating word in the English language than “selfie,” I don’t know what it is. The diminutive ending (“-ie”) is as annoying in its cuteness as all diminutive endings invariably are. And I really feel we’ve had enough runaway self-ness to last us for another millennium. Yesterday’s “me generation” was nauseating enough, but the now universal selfie-tick is insupportable.
All of which, now that I‘ve vented my spleen, has only a little to do with Lee Ka-sing’s masterful—and poignant—photo-diptych.
There’s a self-administered Dorian Gray-ness to these twinned photographs. Which one is the portrait in the attic, as it were? Which is the selfie-photo (it hurts even to type the stupid phrase)—the crumpled, desiccated sunflower at the left, or the brawny, vigorous sunflower at the right?
Has the selfie idealized its subject or withered it? Can we command selfies to adorn us, to amplify us? Or does the already self-assured wielder of selfie-hood get the selfie he deserves—by starting out with high narcissistic hopes and then finding out (in the final selfie-result) that its inner selfhood is a mess?
