What has remained through each iconoclasm is an inability to fully break the mentality imposed by a one-to-many system of distribution. The continual use of “They” in language: “They should make a second one, They should have done it this way, They should stop doing this,” &c., can be seen as sort of philosophical litmus test in which our method of discussing cultural production continually falls short.
“They” implies an alienation from production, a continuous deferral to action. It is a vacant critique, either proposal for the perpetuation of the same image unchanged (“They should release this on another platform”) or proposal for an iconoclasm which will never take place, the genesis of the proposition being encased entirely in a passive mode of reception. This deferral is an act which accepts dogma, accepts a dominant image paradigm as an unchanging absolute rather than the result of a complicated history of new approaches.
“They” venerates this absoluteness, sanctifies it, while its opposite, “We,” postures towards the creation of an alternative and constitutes an actual schism; Baudrillard writes: “One can see that the iconoclasts, whom one accuses of disdaining and negating images, were those who accorded them their true value, in contrast to the iconolaters who only saw reflections in them and were content to venerate a filigree God.
