RND/ To imagine a remix of “Boys And Girls” by Ladybird Books:
While exceedingly de rigueur nowadays – and there are some truly eye-rollingly dreadful mainstream Ladybird remixes available in any Waterstones nowadays, whose lead footed obviousness in conception and design feels utterly depressing – mixing up weird and wonderful books of one’s impossibly naive (/imagined white middle class) childhood can still occasionally throw an interesting existential curve ball.
Presenting “Boyz N Girlz” by ‘Ladybirdd’ books, featuring mild instant spray-on ghetto flava; go Peter – go Jane!
Ah, old Ladybird Books – for clean happy obedient citizens only – fascinating historical artifacts clearly illuminating upper middle class bourgeois culture in some permanently forever green and disturbingly pleasant England circa immediate post WWII.
Such illustrations showcase the exact type of soul crushing inner blandscape predicted by writer-visionary J.G Ballard [1]
The future is just going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul
– Interview, 30th October 1982 in RE/Search No. 8
Ladybird key word reading books are some holy place in the elite stifled imagination where Mummy, Daddy, Peter and Jane live in a carefree countryside far away from all vulgar noise of Johnny Foreigner and their funny ideas – where everyone knows their little D0g-given role in English(TM) life by heart, and it all plays out with ruthlessly charming and terrifyingly bland efficiency.
UK based artist Miriam Elia [2] has historically faced unthinking blanket censorship from neckless bean counters at Penguin Books for releasing a ‘frightfully jolly’ postmodern satire of one of ir impossibly ancient titles – ironic indeed, considering such images were (historically-culturally) tantamount to shameless propaganda for a white (washed) Western world of fake innocence, plastic living and unquestioned misogyny.
As a small measure of artistic solidarity and to try one’s hand at a spot of spiffing digital montage, freelance amateur postmodern internet theorist Robert What presents another such parody in slices of perfectly English delight.
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Example Reference Links
- J.G. Ballard themed Conceptual R&D
- http://miriamelia.co.uk/
- Eisenhower Approved: “Beginning Science” Children’s Book Parody
- Key Words With Ladybird Book Parody
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// how to play big science