LOOKA HERE

By MICHAEL PERKINS

INSIDE EVERY PERFORMER, THERE LIES a little kid dying to get his mother’s’ attention. teetering on tiptoe atop a picket fence against every rule of grace or gravity, just to hear a weary, “that’s nice, dear.” This urge to, basically, not be ignored follows us through every social situation, from religion to politics, but never so fundamentally as when we are putting our very personality up for sale. Here. Look here.

Look here NOW.

Like all too many human drives, the fine art of “doing anything to make someone glance in our direction” has undergone a change. Call it a refinement. Call it progress. Whatever the cause, the way we beg someone to please, please look here has become more sophisticated, more mechanized. Shouting fire in a theater used to be more than enough to make someone crank their head in your general direction. But in nearly the third century of mass advertising and media, the old sensation of, let’s say, being drawn into a tent by a carnival barker, has been replaced with multi-million dollar theme parks and scientifically-designed ad campaigns tuned to the finest mental and emotional bait. Merely reacting to someone acting loud and weird is just too simple, too slow.

That’s why it’s great for experience, and for photography, when some of the oldest tricks somehow still do work, when someone with a crude banner, loud colors, tinny music and a snappy, weird line of gab manages to cut through the clutter. A little miracle. Months ago, I found myself on a carnival midway for the first time in more than twenty years, and I was amazed to find how much my inner eight-year-old still enjoyed being conned, cajoled, begged for attention. Somehow, even in a world where a single roller coaster can take ten million dollars and ten years’ research to create, one guy in loud clothes and stupid wigs can make us, however briefly, replay to the old invitation hurry, hurry, hurry, step right this way. And maybe snap a picture of the vanishing art of “looka here”.

And, now, if you’ll all come in a little closer, just a bit closer to the stage….