No Logo by Naomi Klein

“Commenting on the future of poetry and art in a democratic society, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that he was not worried about a lapse into safe realism so much as a flight into unanchored fantasy. ‘I fear that the productions of democratic poets may often be surcharged with immense and incoherent imagery, with exaggerated descriptions and strange creations; and that the fantastic beings of their brain may sometimes make us regret the world of reality.’
”We are surrounded now by the realization of Tocqueville’s predictions: gleaming, bulbous golden arches; impossibly smooth backlit billboards; squishy cartoon characters roaming fantastically fake theme parks. When I was growing up, these strange creations awakened something in me that I’ve since come to think of as deep longing for the seductions of the fake; I wanted to disappear into shiny, perfect, unreal objects.”

—Naomi Klein, 2000