Moonwalking, imitating Michael Jackson

It's quite remarkable the role of pantomime in the developing of medieval literature noticed by Bakhtin in 'The dialogic imagination'.

I am not sure how to put it but there are many converging lines to explain the emergence and development of higher (and not so higher) psychological functions in history: the role of pantomime and theatre, for once. Or pantomime as the most primitive form of drama.

I cannot but see a connection between Shakespeare and the issue of his works citing stories and other works up to the point where we believe the Bard is a bodily representation of a collective author. The fact that his English is a sort of word salad that emerged in an England open to trade, people, products and languages from all over the world (a re-run of the Roman empire in steroids), without a fixed centre (soon they will even reject the 'Vulgata latina' and the canonical normative it imposed on vernacular languages).

How could we think of politics without theatre. Does politics imitate theatre or theatre imitates politics? And when national languages were fixed in their modern version, literature then imitated literature (starting by Cervantes). In its contemporary forms, people imitate life styles depicted in films, TV series and comedy. A former Chinese student of mine learned most of her English by watching 'Friends'. Of course she wants to imitate not only the way Rachel speaks but the way she lives and I think she eventually will manage to copycut her lifestyle: live in an apartment in New York and be a successful businessperson.

I remember some political observers noticing the Soviet Union fell not only as a consequence of the struggle between economic and political forces but because Russians were watching the American series 'Dallas' and were fascinated by America's way of living (not sure about this information though).

On an even more simplistic key, one can start to see a complete shift in American society when white kids tried to moonwalk like Michael Jackson. Perhaps without that cultural change fostered by the television industry (MTV), the rise of Obama to power would have not been possible in the US.