Popular Culture Review Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2018 | Page 33

Popular Culture Review 29.2
ing . That list includes such items as six American flags , Alan Shepard ’ s golf balls , commemorative plaques , pins , jewelry , a gold-plated telescope , a silicon disk with written greetings from 75 world-leaders , a photo of astronaut Charlie Duke ’ s family , a piece of lava from Devil ’ s Lake in Oregon , shovels , rakes , boots , hammers , cameras , backpacks , towels , wet-wipes , empty food containers , a medal , a golden olive branch , a fraternity application , an urn containing the ashes of planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker which is wrapped in brass etched with 5 lines of Shakespearean poetry�and 96 bags of astronaut ’ s urine , feces , and vomit .
And art . In fact , there ’ s actually an art museum on the moon . ( See figure 6 .) Carried aboard Apollo 12 and designed by Forrest “ Frosty ” Myers , the ceramic wafer�slightly smaller than a postage stamp�contains works of art by six prominent artists of the times . Most art critics tend to focus on Andy Warhol ’ s penis doodle ( which he claimed was just his initials�an A and a W�in a stylized juxtaposition , but ... no ). Objectively speaking , though , the single line drawn by Robert Rauschenberg is the star artistic attraction on the lunar gallery .
In many ways , then , this tells the whole story : our best and our worst . We take both with us wherever we go . But maybe we shouldn ’ t go everywhere . It ’ s one thing to think about the romantic notion of a museum on the moon . It ’ s another to leave our poop behind . The logic , of course , makes perfect sense : why cart the latter back ? Why use up space and weight�and thus fuel�on the return vehicle to bring back something no one here wants ? But that ’ s the problem with logic . It does make perfect sense . The logic of colonialism , empire , and subjugation has never been under question . It ’ s the ethics of it all that damns us .
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