perhaps more astounding was the fact that this same class had no idea what tiananmen square was or the events that occurred there. in a moment that comforted me slightly, the professor showed the famous photo of the student protester and the tank. visual recognition snuck into the minds of my classmates. whew. at least they had seen this image before. however, any hope i had for the future of the world was CRUSHED by the "professor" when he made the outrageous claim that the iconic photograph was a still shot of a video taken by an anonymous observer via a CAMERA PHONE???? sure, there was video of the event, but NOT CAPTURED A PHONE. unless my facts are wrong, camera phones were not even commercially available in 1989. additionally, the photo is not generally attributed to an anonymous viewer, but jeffrey wiednall of the associated press. hell wikipedia even knew what kind of camera he used.
i guess i could only expect as much from this professor. he looks like a sex offender (sadly, i could not find him in any registries, i bet he is using an alias...) he told our class he went through a "phase" a few years ago where he was convinced that the dream world and reality were flip flopped. that every day he "woke up" he was actually beginning to dream, and only when he thought he was dreaming was he really living. he thought he was quite clever. quite original. i thought he was quite a jackass and watched the likes of waking life, a scanner darkly, the matrix, and inception a few too many times.
and also made the faux pas of attributing edvard munch's famous "the scream" to emil nolde??? this is unforgivable to the art historian in me. however, the painting does express my sentiments quite well.
