One of the great characteristics of our age, one that no doubt will be a subject of amusement to future generations, is our post-modern desire to show the guts of everything. Hence, every sitcom these days seems to have an episode where it pulls back and shows us the camera, the light racks and the audience.
Office buildings wear their bones and viscera on the outside.
Our clothes are emblazoned with the logos of their manufacturers. Both our art and our literature go to great pains to destroy our illusions and remind us that they are merely ink on paper or oil paint on canvas. The irony is that this too is an illusion, one in which we believe that by deconstructing artifice we are somehow enriched. Last night I had dinner at a restaurant in Heidelberg called the Mensurstube. The Mensurstube isn't quite as venerable as the castle, having only been built 17 years before Columbus discovered America.