The English Beat, "Mirror in the Bathroom" from I Just Can't Stop It (The Last Angry Rude Boy)
Skammentary: In devising this skammentary on "Mirror in the Bathroom," aiming to draw a connection twixt the myth of Narcissus & our all-too-modern obsession with "selfies," I discovered that the earliest known photographic portrait, a daguerreotype from 1839, is of & by a man named Robert Cornelius (1809-1893, above). Of course, the cameras aren't to blame; there's no photography in the self-obsession of "Mirror in the Bathroom," for instance. Cameras don't decide to take selfies, persons do. I simply lament that we've become a culture of Narcissuses. Whether using a photographic lens of the Mark I eyeball, we've becoming a culture of self-destructive madmen.
"Mirror in the bathroom, recompense
For all my crimes of self-defense,
Cures, you whisper, make no sense,
Drift gently into mental illness…"
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