Llyn Foulkes: The Golden Ruler

Instantly, upon laying eyes on this piece by Llyn Foulkes, now showing at MoCA Los Angeles, I was thrust back into the Reagan era.

I was just a babe then, living on an island most Americans had never heard of, but I can distinctly remember journalists Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather’s narration of the 1980s.

There was AIDS and crack and “trickle-down economics.” Evangelicals and excess, Back to the Future, and that would-be assassin that grazed Reagan with a forgiving bullet. Shoulder pads and hairspray, the stock market crash heard around the world—the one we called Black Monday—and Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.’ He hates that song now, but I still love it.

There was “Let’s make America great again,” the original rendition with the same old inference. Oh, and it was John Hinckley, Jr., that would-be assassin.

Anyway, the Reagan-esque figure in this instillation seemed to be peering out of a window of one of those ticky-tacky ‘Little Boxes’ the middle class clamored for then and now — the ones Peter Seeger sang about in 1963.

And its name … The Golden Ruler … the measure of the mantra, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Fire with fire. Dog eat dog. An eye for an eye. It’s so 80s.

And the measure of a man — of a ruler. The most powerful man in the world was an actor. This single vision cyclops — eyes one and two gouged and bleeding. The mask. His skinny tie toeing the line.

Ah, yes. This piece struck me … right in the After School Special, and I found it worthy of comment.