A Reconsideration of Values - Or: Putting Words in their Mouths, Thoughts in their Heads

Sometimes you stumble across a perfectly innocent scenario. Then the little demons that live in the imaginative subconscious kick in. An old background created for by the stalwart of 3D computer art, Angela Fox, (for the long-delayed, still to be completed, INSTITUTIONALISED comic-book project) happens to be at hand, and it just so happens that yours truly - while working on an image for and on behalf of Roger Benson yesterday and last night- had reason to assemble a new speech bubble... And it all just comes together.

I have to admit that like so much I have put out on my blogs of late, this has VERY little to do with the early sections of the - multi--part - book I am working on in its present incarnation, which does not, in its early stages at least, have much to do with any kind of institutional scenario. But it does make one think of what just might be plausible within the context - and under the auspices of - one of those early experimental psychology studies undertaken back in the days before ethics committees had much sway.  

The imagery that has imerged also explores an interest I have held for some time within the context of CP / discipline writing, that being the concept of having the subject submit to the strap or the cane in preference to something far worse and yet not necessarily involving PHYSICAL discomfort, and perhaps actually quite subtle, to the point of not even actually being perceived as punishment as such...  to begin with! In this case that less-preferable or less-tolerable option is also that self-same factor responsible for the subject buckling under the pressure to conform to the protocols or stipulations surrounding her residency. Here it is simply a well thought out régime of carefully planned boredom, petty rules and tedious rituals – all underlined by scrupulous isolation.