Monday, December 8, 2008
A Date That Will Live: Pearl Harbor and the Blue Marble
Posted by Zach in News

 

Yesterday was the 67th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of America’s involvement in the Second World’s War.  Perhaps less well known is that it also marks the anniversary of the photograph marked AS17-148-22727.  This was Nasa’s designation for a photograph of Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 as it headed to the moon.  It is now universally referred to as “The Blue Marble Photograph.”  Some suggest that it is the most widely distributed image of the earth, though all acknowledge that it marks the first clear image of our illuminated planet.

 

 

 

The fact that the anniversaries for Pearl Harbor and the Blue Marble photograph occur on the same day strikes me like an Eisensteinian montage.  A third meaning seems to emanate from the touching of the two events, but I can’t identify it presicely.  The harmony is elusive.  The contrast is not.  On one day the earth, I’m sure, seemed expansive, tragic, and unmanageable.  On the other day the earth seemed small, serene, and so manageable that viewers compared it to a child’s plaything.

I feel as though the two events in synthesis might hint at something profound, but the conclusion seems just beyond the horizon of my brain.  Maybe there is no synthesis.  Maybe they are only two different visions colliding in the attempt to knock the other outside the circle in the sand.

One Response to “A Date That Will Live: Pearl Harbor and the Blue Marble”

Anna Grace comments:
Monday, December 8th, 2008

This might not be QUITE sufficiently deep, but it does bring to mind the short scene at the very end of the first *Men in Black* films, which I found again here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJOVUF-HaDw

(Once the storylines have all been tied up, the camera backs way up and up beyond New York City’s skyscrapers, speeding up until it’s even out beyond the universe itself. Next thing you know, the entire universe becomes a perfect sphere — and some infinitely gigantic alien life form is using it as just another marble in its trivial game.)

Not terribly profound, I guess, but I think the idea is along the same lines. There is always an undeniable Providential connection.

Leave a Comment.

contributors