I own almost every book Slavoj Zizek has published. He is enormously entertaining to read and, thanks to YouTube, to watch. He does have a habit of wiping his nose with his hand then running his fingers through his hair (which is disgusting) but the energy with which he makes his arguments is fun and a welcome change from the dry-as-dust world of professional academia. I have several problems with him tho.
First, his books don't have conclusions. He doesn't make arguments so much as point out interesting things. Essentially, the difference between this blog and Zizek is the speech impediment. And Zizek is wittier than I am. Smarter too. But, as this is a collection of essentially unrelated ideas, so Zizek's books.
Second, he is the undisputed King of ctrl-c ctrl-v. Substantial sections of new books are taken verbatim from earlier ones. This is not just a matter of authorial laziness but it indicates his thought has not progressed all that much between the books. The obvious question is then, if his thought has neither advanced nor changed, why the new book?
Third, Zizek is the academy's most unrepentant Capitalist. This might seem an odd accusation against a self-avowed and dedicated Communist but it is true. Take, for example, the series of books published as Slavoj Zizek Presents... I own all of these by the way. Each is a collection of excerpts from divisive historical figures (Mao, Lenin, Robespierre) prefaced by an introduction by Zizek. He could have published all three introductions as self-contained essays but the essay market doesn't amount to much. Instead, Zizek has used the power of his brand to publish other people's product and make money doing it - while increasing the power of his personal brand.
Zizek is a publishing machine. Books drop from him like fruit from a tree. Of course, some of them are other author's work and all are partially composed of things he has already published but each one sells.
With his cornucopia of published work and his trade mark t-shirt, Zizek has built himself into an icon. His academic bona fides matter less than his fame. Yet, he does hold numerous professorships at the same time and without making a dent in his public appearance schedule.
I watched an interview with Dave Stewart. He said, "Flaunt your imperfections and you'll be a star, my dear." I wonder if Zizek saw this. His pronouncements about subjects as various as love and gardening are nothing more than publicity for his personal neuroses. His appearance - fat, slovenly, unkempt, the ubiquitous t-shirt - is both branding and claim to a place in the public consciousness.
If, after reading this, you think I dislike, or disapprove of Zizek you would be wrong. No matter how obvious his schtick gets, or how disgusting the t-shirts become, I will forgive almost anything because he is entertaining and thought provoking. His critique of Kung-Fu Panda is relevant. He likes the movie because while invoking and mocking all the conventions of both kung-fu movies and the Western mythology of China, it ultimately affirms precisely what it mocks. And it's funny and fun. This is Zizek to me. A Marxist academic who is mocks Capitalism while making money hand over fist. The very image of a radical scholar who is neither radical nor much of a scholar - this really deserves a foot note because Zizek's brand building makes it very difficult to ascertain how much of a scholar he is. His dissertation, for example, is the one thing he has never published as far as I know. Yet, like Kung-Fu Panda he is funny and fun.
I imagine a lot of young kids started learning kung fu (or karate or whatever) because they loved Kung-Fu Panda. Maybe a lot of slightly older kids will start read Marx because they loved Slavoj Zizek. Or maybe they'll read Lacan. Either way, not a bad outcome for an entertainer.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
On Student Critiques
Two days ago I had the pleasure of sitting on crit panels for the University of Waterloo School of Architecture (here and forever after UWSA because the long version takes me about five minutes to type). The reviews were for a first-year group project - multi-unit housing in urban conditions. Some of the work was a little crazy, some was a little boring, and the product (drawings, models) was typically very good. The time between the invitation to the actual crit gave me an opportunity to think about the purpose of crits and how they might be best conducted. I reached a few different and possibly incompatible conclusions.
There are, I think, two ways to conduct yourself on a crit panel; you can either be the good cop or the bad cop. The good cop is encouraging and congratulatory. The bad cop is an asshole. Architecture students since the creation of formal architectural education must have asked themselves if any purpose is served by the bad cops on crit panels. When I was a student, I didn't think so. I believed the reason some respected professionals seemed to take pleasure in making 18 year old students cry was that they were sadists or they were terribly unhappy in their personal and professional lives and needed to make someone else even less happy than they were.
Now I think the actual purpose of mean critics is to help students distance themselves from their work. Because architecture is very important every aspect of a design must be available for criticism. The more rigorously a project is criticized the better the finished design. This process is hindered when students, or professionals, react to criticism as tho it was directed at them personally rather than at the work. So students have to learn to separate themselves from what they produce.
While I understand this, I'm not at all certain it is either a good idea or correct. First, it makes students risk averse. I have always wondered why students sometimes create banal projects when the brief they begin with allows them the latitude to design anything they can imagine. This is partly because students want to provide the "right answer" and they are betting that answer is not some crazy thing they hardly know what to think of themselves. But a little encouragement during the design process can go a long way to helping the students overcome this fear. It can do nothing, however, about the fear of being singled out in front of the entire class for ridicule and disparagement during final reviews.
More importantly, should we really teach students to distance themselves from their work? Criticism always makes things better is axiomatic in architecture. Still, someone has to care for a project and about it if it is going to have a chance. I also question the idea architecture is all that important. I am a proponent of the "nice" school, with which most of my colleagues strongly disagree. I think the most important criterion for any design is that it be nice - as in, O that's nice. A city composed entirely of buildings that met this criterion would become a world class tourist destination. It is only after niceness is assured that architects should start pursuing more effusive adjectives. A nice building with something cool about it is really something. Toronto is full of buildings that aren't nice (and, to be clear, I don't mean kind, gentle, user-friendly, I mean nice as in pleasant, well-composed) and it is suffering from them. There are plenty more buildings no one will ever describe as nice under construction. Some will be spectacular without being nice. And if you take a moment to think of some examples of things that fit the description "spectacular but not nice" you will see why this is to be avoided.
Back to the topic at hand, by inclination and ideology I am against assholes on crit panels. I think the good they do is questionable and the harm unquestionable. I try, therefore, to be encouraging while remaining critical.
One of the best critics I ever sat with had a habit of running through the obvious mistakes very quickly at the beginning of every session. A student would pin up their work and start their prepared explanation - he would wait patiently for them to finish and then say, "Your stairs don't work, they're too steep. The bedroom windows are too small. The front door opens the wrong direction..." and so on. He said all of this in a matter of fact voice, like he was reading it into the official record. He wanted the students to know these mistakes mattered but his manner made it clear how much he thought they mattered. Then he would ask a question some fundamental aspect of the project he found interesting. Finally, after much conversation, he would offer some advice about the design as a whole. I admired his method for a number of reasons. What I admired most, although I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at the time, was he was offering an ad hoc definition of architecture - not a very thorough one but a useful one.
Architecture was about the rise-run ratio of the stairs and the swings of doors and windows and so on. But those things matter much less than the ideas around which a project was developed. And those, ultimately, mattered less than the final design. Things like the angle of a stairway can be changed. The ideas that inspire a designer can be reinterpreted. But a final project must be considered as a whole and on its own merits. Buildings do not come with interpretive guides to explain to the occupants why the atrium is the size it is or why there are so many damn corners, or why all the walls meet at odd angles. The final design stands by itself or it doesn't stand at all.
The one thing I try to keep in mind when I sit on crit panels is what it felt like to stand in front of them. The students are tired. They are anxious. These events, the first half dozen or so anyway, are going to stick in their memories like first kisses. And they will only remember a few sentences from twenty minutes to a half hour of continuous talking. If you say something particularly memorable it is probably going to be mean. I told one group their project needed some architecture. It was true but I feel bad about it because it is impossible they didn't misinterpret me. What I meant was they had devoted themselves to solving problems in a reasonable way but hadn't tried to do anything graceful or poetic with space or matter. There was nothing sculptural in their project, nothing (either solid or void) that was really beautiful. It was competent but nothing more. I was trying to get them to seize the possibility the next project (and every subsequent project) will offer them to create something cool, to try something for no better reason than they think it might be fun. I was trying to tell them I think ambition is praiseworthy; working on something you think is cool and kind of crazy is easier than solving spatial problems. I was trying to tell them architecture school is very different from the professional world. But all they will remember is I said their project needed architecture.
It's been almost a decade but I still remember the mean things some assholes said in crits I was subjected to. They should never have been in a school, never have been asked to sit as critics. They were mean-spirited and seemed to take pleasure in humiliating students. I have, in the interim, disparaged their work at every opportunity. And I am much better at saying mean things than they are. Nothing I say will ever even the score. Those memories are in my head for good. I don't think about them often, only when I sit on crit panels. It helps me remember why I have to be kind and helpful.
There is one other kind of critic I haven't mentioned yet. They inhabit the world's most famous architecture schools and are only there to cherry pick the best and brightest students. They don't give a single fuck for the rest. If you aren't the best in your class, these people do not have even a minute to spare for you. These are people who should be kept out of architecture schools by any and all means possible. While it is true that architecture is competitive and, since you can't teach talent, at a certain moment some people will out-distance their classmates, the fact remains some people peak in third-year and never get any better. Some people don't get their feet under them until they are graduate students. You never can tell when someone is going to hit their stride. Or if. That makes architectural education an extremely inefficient business. So be it.
There are, I think, two ways to conduct yourself on a crit panel; you can either be the good cop or the bad cop. The good cop is encouraging and congratulatory. The bad cop is an asshole. Architecture students since the creation of formal architectural education must have asked themselves if any purpose is served by the bad cops on crit panels. When I was a student, I didn't think so. I believed the reason some respected professionals seemed to take pleasure in making 18 year old students cry was that they were sadists or they were terribly unhappy in their personal and professional lives and needed to make someone else even less happy than they were.
Now I think the actual purpose of mean critics is to help students distance themselves from their work. Because architecture is very important every aspect of a design must be available for criticism. The more rigorously a project is criticized the better the finished design. This process is hindered when students, or professionals, react to criticism as tho it was directed at them personally rather than at the work. So students have to learn to separate themselves from what they produce.
While I understand this, I'm not at all certain it is either a good idea or correct. First, it makes students risk averse. I have always wondered why students sometimes create banal projects when the brief they begin with allows them the latitude to design anything they can imagine. This is partly because students want to provide the "right answer" and they are betting that answer is not some crazy thing they hardly know what to think of themselves. But a little encouragement during the design process can go a long way to helping the students overcome this fear. It can do nothing, however, about the fear of being singled out in front of the entire class for ridicule and disparagement during final reviews.
More importantly, should we really teach students to distance themselves from their work? Criticism always makes things better is axiomatic in architecture. Still, someone has to care for a project and about it if it is going to have a chance. I also question the idea architecture is all that important. I am a proponent of the "nice" school, with which most of my colleagues strongly disagree. I think the most important criterion for any design is that it be nice - as in, O that's nice. A city composed entirely of buildings that met this criterion would become a world class tourist destination. It is only after niceness is assured that architects should start pursuing more effusive adjectives. A nice building with something cool about it is really something. Toronto is full of buildings that aren't nice (and, to be clear, I don't mean kind, gentle, user-friendly, I mean nice as in pleasant, well-composed) and it is suffering from them. There are plenty more buildings no one will ever describe as nice under construction. Some will be spectacular without being nice. And if you take a moment to think of some examples of things that fit the description "spectacular but not nice" you will see why this is to be avoided.
Back to the topic at hand, by inclination and ideology I am against assholes on crit panels. I think the good they do is questionable and the harm unquestionable. I try, therefore, to be encouraging while remaining critical.
One of the best critics I ever sat with had a habit of running through the obvious mistakes very quickly at the beginning of every session. A student would pin up their work and start their prepared explanation - he would wait patiently for them to finish and then say, "Your stairs don't work, they're too steep. The bedroom windows are too small. The front door opens the wrong direction..." and so on. He said all of this in a matter of fact voice, like he was reading it into the official record. He wanted the students to know these mistakes mattered but his manner made it clear how much he thought they mattered. Then he would ask a question some fundamental aspect of the project he found interesting. Finally, after much conversation, he would offer some advice about the design as a whole. I admired his method for a number of reasons. What I admired most, although I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at the time, was he was offering an ad hoc definition of architecture - not a very thorough one but a useful one.
Architecture was about the rise-run ratio of the stairs and the swings of doors and windows and so on. But those things matter much less than the ideas around which a project was developed. And those, ultimately, mattered less than the final design. Things like the angle of a stairway can be changed. The ideas that inspire a designer can be reinterpreted. But a final project must be considered as a whole and on its own merits. Buildings do not come with interpretive guides to explain to the occupants why the atrium is the size it is or why there are so many damn corners, or why all the walls meet at odd angles. The final design stands by itself or it doesn't stand at all.
The one thing I try to keep in mind when I sit on crit panels is what it felt like to stand in front of them. The students are tired. They are anxious. These events, the first half dozen or so anyway, are going to stick in their memories like first kisses. And they will only remember a few sentences from twenty minutes to a half hour of continuous talking. If you say something particularly memorable it is probably going to be mean. I told one group their project needed some architecture. It was true but I feel bad about it because it is impossible they didn't misinterpret me. What I meant was they had devoted themselves to solving problems in a reasonable way but hadn't tried to do anything graceful or poetic with space or matter. There was nothing sculptural in their project, nothing (either solid or void) that was really beautiful. It was competent but nothing more. I was trying to get them to seize the possibility the next project (and every subsequent project) will offer them to create something cool, to try something for no better reason than they think it might be fun. I was trying to tell them I think ambition is praiseworthy; working on something you think is cool and kind of crazy is easier than solving spatial problems. I was trying to tell them architecture school is very different from the professional world. But all they will remember is I said their project needed architecture.
It's been almost a decade but I still remember the mean things some assholes said in crits I was subjected to. They should never have been in a school, never have been asked to sit as critics. They were mean-spirited and seemed to take pleasure in humiliating students. I have, in the interim, disparaged their work at every opportunity. And I am much better at saying mean things than they are. Nothing I say will ever even the score. Those memories are in my head for good. I don't think about them often, only when I sit on crit panels. It helps me remember why I have to be kind and helpful.
There is one other kind of critic I haven't mentioned yet. They inhabit the world's most famous architecture schools and are only there to cherry pick the best and brightest students. They don't give a single fuck for the rest. If you aren't the best in your class, these people do not have even a minute to spare for you. These are people who should be kept out of architecture schools by any and all means possible. While it is true that architecture is competitive and, since you can't teach talent, at a certain moment some people will out-distance their classmates, the fact remains some people peak in third-year and never get any better. Some people don't get their feet under them until they are graduate students. You never can tell when someone is going to hit their stride. Or if. That makes architectural education an extremely inefficient business. So be it.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
The Greatest Grumpy Old Man in the World
Noam Chomsky is a grumpy old bastard. Every time I watch him being interviewed I'm glad I quit drinking - for those of you who don't know the rules of the Noam Chomsky Drinking Game, you take half a shot every time Noam says, "That is not true" a full shot every time he says, "That is simply not true" and two shots every time he says "Look!"
I don't recommend you play the game watching Noam Chomsky on Charlie Rose. Unless you are an alcoholic, then go right ahead.
I don't recommend you play the game watching Noam Chomsky on Charlie Rose. Unless you are an alcoholic, then go right ahead.
Something to Cheer About?
Here is an article about what some people have decided to do with their architectural education - instead of practicing architecture in the conventional sense. I would like to note two things: they all graduated from extremely prestigious (and expensive) architecture schools, and two of them (the brothers) got mentioned on Oprah! Which is more than most architects can brag on.
If you read the first post On Ugliness you will remember I have a problem with the design industry as it applies to small things. Here is yet another reason why - architects retreating from the complexity of the built environment for the relative safety of the manufactured one.
There are real reasons to move out the industry that creates the built world. Many of them could be summed up under the rubric classism - not at all the same thing as classicism. Poor people build a lot, they don't hire architects tho. Unless your net worth is more than $5 million, you are unlikely to hire an architect. The exception being if you work for someone, or a group of someones, who are worth more than $5 million.
The population of the world is growing and it is growing poorer. Architects are, in large degree, an insult to this particular injury. For example, the world's largest and most expensive private home, the $1 billion, 400 000 sq ft Antilia house was recently completed in Mumbai.
This is a private home designed for Mukesh Ambani, his wife, and three children. Five people live here, plus an undisclosed number of servants. According to Wikipedia, the land this monster stands on was previously the site of an orphanage - hard to imagine a more devastating symbol of criminal capitalism at its worst. Mumbai is also the site of one of the largest slums in the world.
Are all architects culpable in this kind of malfeasance? Of course not. But, to use a hack-kneed saying, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Even the best architecture firms have to take business where they can find it.
This being the case the retreat to small things might seem not only defensible but morally superior to remaining is such a messed up industry. Here's why it isn't.
The built environment is something we share by definition. The world of small things is private, again by definition. So when people who are educated to think about the shared world, who are taught to think about the effects of their designs in a broader context abandon the industry they are replaced by people educated in building systems.
I have no problem with architectural technologists. I'm amazed by the competency they demonstrate as recent graduates (whereas graduate architects, like myself, are kind of useless) and they have a place in any architecture office. But they aren't trained the same way architects are. Their training is not better or worse, not more or less, just different. If you want to know how to keep your building from leaking, ask a technologist. If you want to know what the building is saying, what it means to the community you are better off asking an architect.
Do architecture interns have an obligation to stay in the industry? It's hard to make a pronouncement about this. Architecture is very unkind to its practitioners. Our professional associations are useless. Our employers tend to demand a lot of overtime. Architecture Interns have no representation, low wages, and an obscene commitment to doing good work. We are absolute suckers. The people in the article I started this with are probably the smart ones, those who have figured out how to make money with their training without making themselves and all those around them insane. I, however, am deeply quixotic and can't cheer their success. This is the same personality flaw that prevents me from cheering for architects who become successful because of their ability to market themselves (the hated Bjarke Ingels for example).
Architecture Interns are the peasants of the construction industry. We are all just waiting for the harvest to fail. But until it does we just want to do good work. And I guess I find that much easier to cheer for than success.
Perkins and Will should never have built the Antilia house. No one should have. It is abhorrent. It's a open question whether anyone - never mind any Intern - can prevent this kind of building, or 7 star hotels and resorts, or massive headquarters for the banks that pillaged the World economy. It takes so much effort just to keep track of all the things to abhor. Eventually a kind of moral exhaustion is going to take over. Still, when some of the smartest graduates from some of the best schools abandon the industry to make jewelry or other meaningless garbage - it's disheartening. I guess that's the only conclusion I can reach and the reason for the question mark on this posts title.
I desperately wish architecture was simpler. Morally clearer. Or that I was smart enough to create some hard and fast rules for when something crosses the line from opulent to abhorrent. But I am not and cannot. So instead of cheering for people who create success outside of the building industry, I'll keep looking for the small victories inside the industry.
If you read the first post On Ugliness you will remember I have a problem with the design industry as it applies to small things. Here is yet another reason why - architects retreating from the complexity of the built environment for the relative safety of the manufactured one.
There are real reasons to move out the industry that creates the built world. Many of them could be summed up under the rubric classism - not at all the same thing as classicism. Poor people build a lot, they don't hire architects tho. Unless your net worth is more than $5 million, you are unlikely to hire an architect. The exception being if you work for someone, or a group of someones, who are worth more than $5 million.
The population of the world is growing and it is growing poorer. Architects are, in large degree, an insult to this particular injury. For example, the world's largest and most expensive private home, the $1 billion, 400 000 sq ft Antilia house was recently completed in Mumbai.
Are all architects culpable in this kind of malfeasance? Of course not. But, to use a hack-kneed saying, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Even the best architecture firms have to take business where they can find it.
This being the case the retreat to small things might seem not only defensible but morally superior to remaining is such a messed up industry. Here's why it isn't.
The built environment is something we share by definition. The world of small things is private, again by definition. So when people who are educated to think about the shared world, who are taught to think about the effects of their designs in a broader context abandon the industry they are replaced by people educated in building systems.
I have no problem with architectural technologists. I'm amazed by the competency they demonstrate as recent graduates (whereas graduate architects, like myself, are kind of useless) and they have a place in any architecture office. But they aren't trained the same way architects are. Their training is not better or worse, not more or less, just different. If you want to know how to keep your building from leaking, ask a technologist. If you want to know what the building is saying, what it means to the community you are better off asking an architect.
Do architecture interns have an obligation to stay in the industry? It's hard to make a pronouncement about this. Architecture is very unkind to its practitioners. Our professional associations are useless. Our employers tend to demand a lot of overtime. Architecture Interns have no representation, low wages, and an obscene commitment to doing good work. We are absolute suckers. The people in the article I started this with are probably the smart ones, those who have figured out how to make money with their training without making themselves and all those around them insane. I, however, am deeply quixotic and can't cheer their success. This is the same personality flaw that prevents me from cheering for architects who become successful because of their ability to market themselves (the hated Bjarke Ingels for example).
Architecture Interns are the peasants of the construction industry. We are all just waiting for the harvest to fail. But until it does we just want to do good work. And I guess I find that much easier to cheer for than success.
Perkins and Will should never have built the Antilia house. No one should have. It is abhorrent. It's a open question whether anyone - never mind any Intern - can prevent this kind of building, or 7 star hotels and resorts, or massive headquarters for the banks that pillaged the World economy. It takes so much effort just to keep track of all the things to abhor. Eventually a kind of moral exhaustion is going to take over. Still, when some of the smartest graduates from some of the best schools abandon the industry to make jewelry or other meaningless garbage - it's disheartening. I guess that's the only conclusion I can reach and the reason for the question mark on this posts title.
I desperately wish architecture was simpler. Morally clearer. Or that I was smart enough to create some hard and fast rules for when something crosses the line from opulent to abhorrent. But I am not and cannot. So instead of cheering for people who create success outside of the building industry, I'll keep looking for the small victories inside the industry.
Elevators
Have you ever seen the outside of an elevator car, the side that faces the shaft? Not in a movie, IRL? I'm an architect (sort of, long story) and I've worked construction but I have never seen the outside of an elevator car, never climbed onto the roof of one through the access panel movies assure us exists but I've never looked for, never stood on top of a car or dangled beneath one, holding on with one hand while fighting ninja assassins with the other.
Think about how many times you've seen people climbing on elevator cars or moving through elevator shafts in movies and on television. It happens all the time! Not just in action movies either. Let me think of some prime examples. I'm not going to give the dates of the movies because I don't want to look them all up on the IMDB.
Silence of the Lambs, the original. Lecter escapes by throwing Sgt. Pembry (sp?) on to the top of an elevator car, Chris Isaak shoots Pembry in the leg thinking it's Lecter. You remember the scene.
Die Hard. The whole series takes place in elevator shafts. My particular favourite is in Live Free or Die Hard when McClane and Maggie Q have a fight in and out of an SUV falling down an elevator shaft.
Star Trek TNG. The Enterprise has elevator shafts, who knew? I don't know the episode name but Picard gets trapped in an elevator with a bunch of kids. His leg is broken (or something) and they have to escape.
Star Wars Episode Three. Obi Wan and Anakin use the elevators to rescue the Chancellor. Really awful scenes in a really awful movie.
Mission Impossible. Again, a whole series that takes place in elevator shafts. And garage elevators. Although the case could be made more action occurs in air ducts than elevator shafts. Similar to Jurassic Park. The elevator is at least possible. Or, I assume it's possible. Most people don't know enough about elevators, myself included, to know whether or not it's possible. But air ducts are made of the flimsiest steel imaginable. They will hold the weight of a cat but not a person - not even a kid.
I watched a YouTube video in which Slavoj Zizek was attempting to analyze a similar problem (the incongruities between interior and exterior space) and his conclusion was the inside of walls, including plumbing, wiring, etc, was a metaphor for our sub-conscious. That is why the exploitation of these spaces as unknown and possibly dangerous is a trope in so many horror movies. But the movies I've mentioned aren't horror movies. Typically they are action movies but some (like Star Trek TNG) are just about over-coming obstacles. So I don't think Zizek's explanation applies in this case.
I think the explanation is simpler. We know the world is governed by rules but we don't know how to navigate the complexity. Moreover, we don't even know who makes the rules. They are just there - like elevators or air ducts. They are part of the architecture (metaphorically) of our society. So people who are extremely capable (the secret agents, with emphasis on agent, of the world) can use them but most of us are just reliant on them working as we expect them to.
Anyone reading these posts will be forced to conclude I, myself, feel powerless and am projecting my own feelings on to cultural phenomena. I think that is probably true but I doubt my situation is peculiar, or even noteworthy. While I am at a point in my life where uncertainty is very high and, consequently, I feel unprotected against the random shocks life delivers, all that has changed from periods of high-confidence and a sense of protection is the subjective emotions. We are all constantly prey to events over which we have no control. Small wonder we admire people who can leap into the hidden structure of our lives and force conditions to suit themselves.
This is the same reason magic appeals to us. It is all part of the same fantasy. Our control over the events which dominate our lives (from the workplace to the nation and beyond) is almost nothing. We do what we can but, in our weaker (or more objective) moments, we must admit this is very little. We aim for a goal and whether or not we achieve it is not determined by our indomitable will or the strength of our character. It is determined only in small part by anything we do, possess, or are. And when we are blocked from achieving a goal, who wouldn't want to be able, more precisely, to be the agent who can get on top of the elevator we were riding and climb to the top, even if the elevator refuses to move? This fantasy, of the ability to manipulate the world to make it as we please, is the motivator and attractor for movies as varied as The Matrix and the Harry Potter franchise. It is clearest in the Potter books and films - although I can't remember any elevators.
Potter is a mistreated orphan with no control over his own situation until he finds out he is a wizard. He then receives all kinds of magical implements that provide him almost complete control over his fate. He can be invisible, or someone else whenever he wants. He can fly. He can fight. And he is rich, something the books kind of gloss over. If there was an elevator in Hogwarts you can bet Harry, Ron, and Hermione would have been on top of it at one time or another.
Think about how many times you've seen people climbing on elevator cars or moving through elevator shafts in movies and on television. It happens all the time! Not just in action movies either. Let me think of some prime examples. I'm not going to give the dates of the movies because I don't want to look them all up on the IMDB.
Silence of the Lambs, the original. Lecter escapes by throwing Sgt. Pembry (sp?) on to the top of an elevator car, Chris Isaak shoots Pembry in the leg thinking it's Lecter. You remember the scene.
Die Hard. The whole series takes place in elevator shafts. My particular favourite is in Live Free or Die Hard when McClane and Maggie Q have a fight in and out of an SUV falling down an elevator shaft.
Star Trek TNG. The Enterprise has elevator shafts, who knew? I don't know the episode name but Picard gets trapped in an elevator with a bunch of kids. His leg is broken (or something) and they have to escape.
Star Wars Episode Three. Obi Wan and Anakin use the elevators to rescue the Chancellor. Really awful scenes in a really awful movie.
Mission Impossible. Again, a whole series that takes place in elevator shafts. And garage elevators. Although the case could be made more action occurs in air ducts than elevator shafts. Similar to Jurassic Park. The elevator is at least possible. Or, I assume it's possible. Most people don't know enough about elevators, myself included, to know whether or not it's possible. But air ducts are made of the flimsiest steel imaginable. They will hold the weight of a cat but not a person - not even a kid.
I watched a YouTube video in which Slavoj Zizek was attempting to analyze a similar problem (the incongruities between interior and exterior space) and his conclusion was the inside of walls, including plumbing, wiring, etc, was a metaphor for our sub-conscious. That is why the exploitation of these spaces as unknown and possibly dangerous is a trope in so many horror movies. But the movies I've mentioned aren't horror movies. Typically they are action movies but some (like Star Trek TNG) are just about over-coming obstacles. So I don't think Zizek's explanation applies in this case.
I think the explanation is simpler. We know the world is governed by rules but we don't know how to navigate the complexity. Moreover, we don't even know who makes the rules. They are just there - like elevators or air ducts. They are part of the architecture (metaphorically) of our society. So people who are extremely capable (the secret agents, with emphasis on agent, of the world) can use them but most of us are just reliant on them working as we expect them to.
Anyone reading these posts will be forced to conclude I, myself, feel powerless and am projecting my own feelings on to cultural phenomena. I think that is probably true but I doubt my situation is peculiar, or even noteworthy. While I am at a point in my life where uncertainty is very high and, consequently, I feel unprotected against the random shocks life delivers, all that has changed from periods of high-confidence and a sense of protection is the subjective emotions. We are all constantly prey to events over which we have no control. Small wonder we admire people who can leap into the hidden structure of our lives and force conditions to suit themselves.
This is the same reason magic appeals to us. It is all part of the same fantasy. Our control over the events which dominate our lives (from the workplace to the nation and beyond) is almost nothing. We do what we can but, in our weaker (or more objective) moments, we must admit this is very little. We aim for a goal and whether or not we achieve it is not determined by our indomitable will or the strength of our character. It is determined only in small part by anything we do, possess, or are. And when we are blocked from achieving a goal, who wouldn't want to be able, more precisely, to be the agent who can get on top of the elevator we were riding and climb to the top, even if the elevator refuses to move? This fantasy, of the ability to manipulate the world to make it as we please, is the motivator and attractor for movies as varied as The Matrix and the Harry Potter franchise. It is clearest in the Potter books and films - although I can't remember any elevators.
Potter is a mistreated orphan with no control over his own situation until he finds out he is a wizard. He then receives all kinds of magical implements that provide him almost complete control over his fate. He can be invisible, or someone else whenever he wants. He can fly. He can fight. And he is rich, something the books kind of gloss over. If there was an elevator in Hogwarts you can bet Harry, Ron, and Hermione would have been on top of it at one time or another.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Architecture and Film I
I finally got around to watching the 2012 remake of Total Recall yesterday. I'm going to leave the obvious criticisms out (no Arnold?) and just consider the architecture.
This version of Total Recall - to be honest I don't really remember the earlier version that well because it was kind of crappy - is set in a world devastated by some kind of chemical or biological war. The only two places fit for human habitation are Britain and Australia. That doesn't make any sense but let's not dwell... The most valuable commodity on the planet is space, which, again doesn't make any sense since if only Britain and Australia were left things like copper, nickel, iron, oil, natural gas, and about a million other things would be more valuable than the space required for a population decimated by war. But space it is.
Total Recall creates an architectural world based on a very old premise - the walled city. This premise is usually more interesting in its inverted form, where the wall city contains rather than protects, as in Escape from New York (1981) for example. But the question of space and the condition of the walled city is really secondary here to the kind of place the art direction wanted. The plot, I suspect, was radically altered to suit the gorgeous cities created for the film.
Most of the action takes place in Australia (called "the Colony"). It is the other side of the tracks meets other side of the world. It's dirty and crowded and it rains a lot. Clearly the set design owes something to Blade Runner (1982) but then, every sci-fi movie that doesn't take place entirely in outer space owes something to Blade Runner. And to Moshe Safdie's Habitat.
The British side of the divide owes a lot to early Modernist imaginings of the 21st Century city. Here is a comparison between the Capital and an imaginary New York:
The common elements are obvious, just slicker in the modern version. But also note how clean it is for a city with an enormous population problem. It's also dry and, in the movie, shot almost entirely during the day. In contrast, here is the Colony:
It's dirty, wet, and claustrophobic. There is a simple visual metaphor happening here - the main character (he has about six names in the movie so I'll call him Colin Farrell) cannot escape his problems, they even invade his dreams. The city in the Colony does not admit the possibility of a non-city (a sub-urban or rural condition). There is the omni-present city and there is chemical death. It's a nice touch. If I could find better screen caps I'd point out some of the really nice architectural details about the Colony - it's sections must be incredibly messed up. There are windows at ground level in one unit that (when CF slides through them) open on head height (or higher) of the unit directly adjacent, there is a wonderful scene (from an architectural point of view) where CF gets chased from his apartment down through about fifty levels of living units, onto a river which is so crowded he never gets his feet wet. It's a crazy dream mash-up of Hong Kong, Europe after WWII, Safdie's Habitat, and about a million sci fi references.
The movie makes an interesting social metaphor as well. Since only Britain and Australia are left - and they are very approximately opposite each other on the globe - they represent obverse social situations. Britain is for the haves, Australia for the have nots. They are connected by a (conceptually absurd) link called the Fall - an elevator that travels through the Earth's molten core without melting or even getting dirty. Absurd. But the image of two walled cities, distinct but connect to each other (and only each other) is relevant given the current social and economic situation many places in the world: Ceuta, Palestine, the US-Mexico border. More would probably have been made of this connection had the characters stopped shooting for more than six or seven seconds at a time.
Total Recall is not a good movie. The action never stops it just pounds you into a state of numbness and the whole thing is absolutely humourless. But it is the most architecturally interesting English language movie I've seen in a long time.
This version of Total Recall - to be honest I don't really remember the earlier version that well because it was kind of crappy - is set in a world devastated by some kind of chemical or biological war. The only two places fit for human habitation are Britain and Australia. That doesn't make any sense but let's not dwell... The most valuable commodity on the planet is space, which, again doesn't make any sense since if only Britain and Australia were left things like copper, nickel, iron, oil, natural gas, and about a million other things would be more valuable than the space required for a population decimated by war. But space it is.
Total Recall creates an architectural world based on a very old premise - the walled city. This premise is usually more interesting in its inverted form, where the wall city contains rather than protects, as in Escape from New York (1981) for example. But the question of space and the condition of the walled city is really secondary here to the kind of place the art direction wanted. The plot, I suspect, was radically altered to suit the gorgeous cities created for the film.
Most of the action takes place in Australia (called "the Colony"). It is the other side of the tracks meets other side of the world. It's dirty and crowded and it rains a lot. Clearly the set design owes something to Blade Runner (1982) but then, every sci-fi movie that doesn't take place entirely in outer space owes something to Blade Runner. And to Moshe Safdie's Habitat.
The British side of the divide owes a lot to early Modernist imaginings of the 21st Century city. Here is a comparison between the Capital and an imaginary New York:
The movie makes an interesting social metaphor as well. Since only Britain and Australia are left - and they are very approximately opposite each other on the globe - they represent obverse social situations. Britain is for the haves, Australia for the have nots. They are connected by a (conceptually absurd) link called the Fall - an elevator that travels through the Earth's molten core without melting or even getting dirty. Absurd. But the image of two walled cities, distinct but connect to each other (and only each other) is relevant given the current social and economic situation many places in the world: Ceuta, Palestine, the US-Mexico border. More would probably have been made of this connection had the characters stopped shooting for more than six or seven seconds at a time.
Total Recall is not a good movie. The action never stops it just pounds you into a state of numbness and the whole thing is absolutely humourless. But it is the most architecturally interesting English language movie I've seen in a long time.
Friday, February 22, 2013
On Universities and Corporations
The Universities I attended were largely free of corporate influence and sponsorship. Partly this was just a matter of timing. My first stint at University was between 1991 and 1995. Corporations were already heavily invested in penetrating the market of affluent young people on a career track but all that meant at the time was we got a Taco Bell in the cafeteria. Considering the quality of food we had prior to that, it's hard to see the drawback. And I got a lot of credit cards, which turned out spectacularly badly.
My second stint at University was from 2002 until a couple months ago (as a student and a professor - not a real professor, the kind they hire when someone who is actually qualified for the position can't be there for some reason). And the primary evidence of corporate penetration was sections of our building being nominally "named" for a company that donated money. The "So-and-So Gallery", which was actually just the wall by the elevator.
Architecture is not the faculty corporations really want in to. My alma mater (the University of Waterloo) has a big reputation as an engineering school and, although architecture is technically part of the Faculty of Engineering, it has its own building in a different city. I bet the conditions in the engineering buildings proper were (and are) very different from the School of Architecture. The influence corporations can have on public institutions (Canadian Universities are public, run by the government) has been well documented. My concern is more with the corporate model as a basis for Univerities.
Without naming any names, there are Universities in Canada that have begun to structure themselves as corporations. And, even when this is not done intentionally there is a certain amount of drift in that directions. The Corporate University views professors as one of the costs of its product - education. It follows that lowering the costs of faculty created more profit - in this case profit is money that can be spent on "luxury" items or just a reduction of debt.
The model is really very simple - students are consumers who are purchasing a degree from a vendor of choice. Buildings are like factories or warehouses, faculty are line workers, administration are managers, etc. It seems like a viable and straightforward model for educational institutions. There is one problem - it's completely fucked.
Universities are not education vendors. Students do not buy their degrees. Faculty are not an operating cost. If these things become true, you no longer have a University. By definition, you have something else. A vocational school or training center. The function of a University is not to graduate students - that is incidental. Universities exist to provide all levels of society with expertise. They are the way society maintains public intellectuals - a phrase that has acquired negative connotations since it now refers to talking heads whose primary qualification is the ability to look good and speak intelligently while pretending not to be on camera. Nevertheless, that is what Universities are for. Professors are paid by the public to be expert and impartial advisers to the society that maintains them. Students are there to make sure we don't run out of professors. A University may be a corporation legally but it is actually the name we give professors and students engaged in trying to increase the sum of human knowledge. According to this (admittedly medieval) definition, the buildings are irrelevant, as are the administrators, staff, anyone and everything except the professors and students.
The practical costs of changing this definition include a massive reduction in tenured professors and an equally massive increase in the number of administrators. Most people are against the concept of tenure - they believe it means the right to get paid for life even if you just sit on your ass. Well, sitting on their asses is what professors do. It is the best position in which to think. And tenure protects them from reprisals in the event they think unpopular thoughts. The validity of tenure, as a concept and binding agreement, relies on the very hazy principle of good faith - the assurance that whatever a professor is thinking about, and whatever writings result, the inquiry was conducted in good faith. Meaning the only reason the professor was thinking about it at all was because he or she wanted to know the answer, or move the rest of us slightly closer to an answer. It relies on professors not writing things just to make themselves famous (or infamous), not becoming political hacks, not espousing ideas in which they do not honestly believe. It takes a hell of a lot on faith because that's the only way it can work.
Of course tenure is abused. Of course it means professors check out early and do nothing but cash pay cheques. Of course there are any number of examples of professors acting in bad faith. But these are the exception and not the rule. Tenure means Universities are not run like reality television - professors are not voted out if they say, or write, something unpopular. And if this seems like a bad system, I quote Winston Churchill on democracy, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
The tenure system is a fundamental protection for free speech and innovation - since popular ideas rarely need protecting. It is also expensive. Tenured professors cost more than temporary, untenured associates. They cost around ten times as much (sometimes more). The corporate model for Universities consequently means fewer tenured professors and more associates without tenure (or benefits). It's way cheaper. But it is also a betrayal of the idea of the University. It makes it impossible for our public intellectuals to have the time and resources they require to serve the society that pays them. Yes, they cost less but they deliver much, much less.
The corporate model also causes an massive increase in student debt - the result of exponential increases in tuition fees. The first time I paid tuition (in 1991) it cost $1300. Those of you who attended schools in the States are probably screaming now but that's what it cost. My first tuition cheque in 2002 was for $5500. That's a big increase. And it's not hard to understand the reason why tuition is going up so fast - tuition is not the cost of your education, it's what the market will bear. Ideally tuition should be a nominal fee that only serves to remind students they have an incentive to try. In practice, it is a crushing debt many students will struggle under for the rest of their lives. This serves the practical, political purpose of making absolutely certain graduates have an incentive (like a gun to their heads) to join the work force immediately and keep their heads down. Here is an interesting perspective on that issue. So students are paying more for less but it doesn't matter as long as they have the degree at the end, right?
Wrong. Students entering Canadian Universities are, on average, 19 years old. The majority are 17 or 18. When they graduate, they will have a degree and a debt level that ensures they go to work immediately. Is it right to expect a 17 year old to know what he or she wants to do for the rest of his or her life? Because six months after graduating the loans come due and you better have a job by then. So if you realize you chose something you aren't going to be happy doing for the rest of your life, well, that's why they call it work. In my field (architecture) there is a common phenomenon I've started calling the lost decade. I have talked to many architects who wanted nothing to do with architecture when they graduated. The only reason they didn't change career paths was because of their debt. It took ten years, on average, for them to find some way to be happy. 10 years out of the 40 or so they will be working. I don't have information on other professions but this is, in itself, enough to bother me. Not just because so many of my friends are unhappy (when you are a graduate of architecture school all your friends are architects too) but because it is so obviously unfair on a class basis. If your parents have money (and, to be honest, the majority of architecture students come from families with above average net worth), you don't have to worry about the debt and can retrain for whatever you want. If you don't come from money you find a way to live with it. Is this as bad as never having had an opportunity to get an education in the first place? No. Is this an unfair as being criminalized because of your race and class? No. But it's still unfair.
Universities should recast themselves as anti-corporations. Instead of luring successful business people into taking largely honorific roles (at huge salaries) in the University structure, Universities should dedicate themselves to not caring about how corporations work - except in the business and economics schools obviously. The Ivory Tower is too Ivory and not Tower enough. How this would work in a practical sense is difficult for me to see. But I do have one suggestion.
All University faculties should be unionized. They might not call themselves unions but the principles of collective action and bargaining would be the same. I have heard the argument Professors cannot form unions because they are the University, so they would be organizing against themselves. In accepting the definition of a University I have described here I am legitimizing that argument. But the reason professors should organize is not to protect themselves (as with a standard labour union) but to protect their institution. In effect, they would be asserting their position as the institution, not making themselves subservient to the institution. Only collectively can professors do anything about issues like the decrease in tenured positions and the massive increase in tuition. Professors should organize not just within their institutions but nation-wide, to protect the place of the third-party expert in a society in which it is under increasing threat.
My second stint at University was from 2002 until a couple months ago (as a student and a professor - not a real professor, the kind they hire when someone who is actually qualified for the position can't be there for some reason). And the primary evidence of corporate penetration was sections of our building being nominally "named" for a company that donated money. The "So-and-So Gallery", which was actually just the wall by the elevator.
Architecture is not the faculty corporations really want in to. My alma mater (the University of Waterloo) has a big reputation as an engineering school and, although architecture is technically part of the Faculty of Engineering, it has its own building in a different city. I bet the conditions in the engineering buildings proper were (and are) very different from the School of Architecture. The influence corporations can have on public institutions (Canadian Universities are public, run by the government) has been well documented. My concern is more with the corporate model as a basis for Univerities.
Without naming any names, there are Universities in Canada that have begun to structure themselves as corporations. And, even when this is not done intentionally there is a certain amount of drift in that directions. The Corporate University views professors as one of the costs of its product - education. It follows that lowering the costs of faculty created more profit - in this case profit is money that can be spent on "luxury" items or just a reduction of debt.
The model is really very simple - students are consumers who are purchasing a degree from a vendor of choice. Buildings are like factories or warehouses, faculty are line workers, administration are managers, etc. It seems like a viable and straightforward model for educational institutions. There is one problem - it's completely fucked.
Universities are not education vendors. Students do not buy their degrees. Faculty are not an operating cost. If these things become true, you no longer have a University. By definition, you have something else. A vocational school or training center. The function of a University is not to graduate students - that is incidental. Universities exist to provide all levels of society with expertise. They are the way society maintains public intellectuals - a phrase that has acquired negative connotations since it now refers to talking heads whose primary qualification is the ability to look good and speak intelligently while pretending not to be on camera. Nevertheless, that is what Universities are for. Professors are paid by the public to be expert and impartial advisers to the society that maintains them. Students are there to make sure we don't run out of professors. A University may be a corporation legally but it is actually the name we give professors and students engaged in trying to increase the sum of human knowledge. According to this (admittedly medieval) definition, the buildings are irrelevant, as are the administrators, staff, anyone and everything except the professors and students.
The practical costs of changing this definition include a massive reduction in tenured professors and an equally massive increase in the number of administrators. Most people are against the concept of tenure - they believe it means the right to get paid for life even if you just sit on your ass. Well, sitting on their asses is what professors do. It is the best position in which to think. And tenure protects them from reprisals in the event they think unpopular thoughts. The validity of tenure, as a concept and binding agreement, relies on the very hazy principle of good faith - the assurance that whatever a professor is thinking about, and whatever writings result, the inquiry was conducted in good faith. Meaning the only reason the professor was thinking about it at all was because he or she wanted to know the answer, or move the rest of us slightly closer to an answer. It relies on professors not writing things just to make themselves famous (or infamous), not becoming political hacks, not espousing ideas in which they do not honestly believe. It takes a hell of a lot on faith because that's the only way it can work.
Of course tenure is abused. Of course it means professors check out early and do nothing but cash pay cheques. Of course there are any number of examples of professors acting in bad faith. But these are the exception and not the rule. Tenure means Universities are not run like reality television - professors are not voted out if they say, or write, something unpopular. And if this seems like a bad system, I quote Winston Churchill on democracy, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
The tenure system is a fundamental protection for free speech and innovation - since popular ideas rarely need protecting. It is also expensive. Tenured professors cost more than temporary, untenured associates. They cost around ten times as much (sometimes more). The corporate model for Universities consequently means fewer tenured professors and more associates without tenure (or benefits). It's way cheaper. But it is also a betrayal of the idea of the University. It makes it impossible for our public intellectuals to have the time and resources they require to serve the society that pays them. Yes, they cost less but they deliver much, much less.
The corporate model also causes an massive increase in student debt - the result of exponential increases in tuition fees. The first time I paid tuition (in 1991) it cost $1300. Those of you who attended schools in the States are probably screaming now but that's what it cost. My first tuition cheque in 2002 was for $5500. That's a big increase. And it's not hard to understand the reason why tuition is going up so fast - tuition is not the cost of your education, it's what the market will bear. Ideally tuition should be a nominal fee that only serves to remind students they have an incentive to try. In practice, it is a crushing debt many students will struggle under for the rest of their lives. This serves the practical, political purpose of making absolutely certain graduates have an incentive (like a gun to their heads) to join the work force immediately and keep their heads down. Here is an interesting perspective on that issue. So students are paying more for less but it doesn't matter as long as they have the degree at the end, right?
Wrong. Students entering Canadian Universities are, on average, 19 years old. The majority are 17 or 18. When they graduate, they will have a degree and a debt level that ensures they go to work immediately. Is it right to expect a 17 year old to know what he or she wants to do for the rest of his or her life? Because six months after graduating the loans come due and you better have a job by then. So if you realize you chose something you aren't going to be happy doing for the rest of your life, well, that's why they call it work. In my field (architecture) there is a common phenomenon I've started calling the lost decade. I have talked to many architects who wanted nothing to do with architecture when they graduated. The only reason they didn't change career paths was because of their debt. It took ten years, on average, for them to find some way to be happy. 10 years out of the 40 or so they will be working. I don't have information on other professions but this is, in itself, enough to bother me. Not just because so many of my friends are unhappy (when you are a graduate of architecture school all your friends are architects too) but because it is so obviously unfair on a class basis. If your parents have money (and, to be honest, the majority of architecture students come from families with above average net worth), you don't have to worry about the debt and can retrain for whatever you want. If you don't come from money you find a way to live with it. Is this as bad as never having had an opportunity to get an education in the first place? No. Is this an unfair as being criminalized because of your race and class? No. But it's still unfair.
Universities should recast themselves as anti-corporations. Instead of luring successful business people into taking largely honorific roles (at huge salaries) in the University structure, Universities should dedicate themselves to not caring about how corporations work - except in the business and economics schools obviously. The Ivory Tower is too Ivory and not Tower enough. How this would work in a practical sense is difficult for me to see. But I do have one suggestion.
All University faculties should be unionized. They might not call themselves unions but the principles of collective action and bargaining would be the same. I have heard the argument Professors cannot form unions because they are the University, so they would be organizing against themselves. In accepting the definition of a University I have described here I am legitimizing that argument. But the reason professors should organize is not to protect themselves (as with a standard labour union) but to protect their institution. In effect, they would be asserting their position as the institution, not making themselves subservient to the institution. Only collectively can professors do anything about issues like the decrease in tenured positions and the massive increase in tuition. Professors should organize not just within their institutions but nation-wide, to protect the place of the third-party expert in a society in which it is under increasing threat.
Why I Don't Like America
It should be obvious from the previous entries that I have some problems with the USA. I want to make it clear, my problems are with the Government of the USA and many of its corporations - not with Americans as people. Shit, most of my heroes are Americans. Or were before they died. A list of absolutely fucking amazing Americans would take a long, long time to complete. Way longer than a list of amazing Icelanders (Bjork and the members of Sigur Ros). It would take me longer to make a list of amazing Americans than it would to make a list of amazing people who aren't American. Mostly that's because, as a Canadian, I am constantly bombarded with American culture. That's not really a complaint. American culture is the best culture going, if you're talking about music, movies, books, magazines, computer gadgets, consumer products of all kinds, essays, critical thought, etc.
And American politics is the most entertaining in the world. Sure, every once in a while members of the Congress of Thailand, or South Korea, or somewhere will get in a fist-fight. But American politics is consistently fascinating. You couldn't make Michele Bachmann up. She's too weird to be fiction. And the constant back and forth between Fox News and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is more entertainment in a single night than Canadian politics provides in a year.
My problem with America is that it is the new Rome. And like Rome, it tended to be less than kind to places that were not Rome and people who were not Romans. Kindness was not what I would call a Roman characteristic. Strangely, kindness is an American characteristic. Every time I go to the States, I'm amazed how kind and friendly the people are. I have a friend (a white guy) who is doing graduate research on Detroit, specifically on the poorest, most desperate parts of Detroit and when he goes there I always half expect to see him on the news the next night, "Stupid Canadian killed for going somewhere no one would ever go if they had any sense." But everyone he has met (with the notable exception of the guy who mugged him) has been friendly, kind, and generous. Hell, I got my wallet stolen in Rome less than an hour after I got off the plane. So the Rome and America analogy has some flaws.
I get exercised about America for the same reason so many Americans are exercised about America. Your government and your corporations are fucking the world up.
So while I love Noam Chomsky, Lou Reed, Susan Sontag, Howard Zinn, Jimmy Hendrix, Sarah Vaughan, Lyle Lovett, Cornel West, Weird Al Yankovic, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chet Atkins, Eugene Debs, and so many others - I have to hate what Rome is doing to itself and the rest of the world.
And American politics is the most entertaining in the world. Sure, every once in a while members of the Congress of Thailand, or South Korea, or somewhere will get in a fist-fight. But American politics is consistently fascinating. You couldn't make Michele Bachmann up. She's too weird to be fiction. And the constant back and forth between Fox News and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is more entertainment in a single night than Canadian politics provides in a year.
My problem with America is that it is the new Rome. And like Rome, it tended to be less than kind to places that were not Rome and people who were not Romans. Kindness was not what I would call a Roman characteristic. Strangely, kindness is an American characteristic. Every time I go to the States, I'm amazed how kind and friendly the people are. I have a friend (a white guy) who is doing graduate research on Detroit, specifically on the poorest, most desperate parts of Detroit and when he goes there I always half expect to see him on the news the next night, "Stupid Canadian killed for going somewhere no one would ever go if they had any sense." But everyone he has met (with the notable exception of the guy who mugged him) has been friendly, kind, and generous. Hell, I got my wallet stolen in Rome less than an hour after I got off the plane. So the Rome and America analogy has some flaws.
I get exercised about America for the same reason so many Americans are exercised about America. Your government and your corporations are fucking the world up.
So while I love Noam Chomsky, Lou Reed, Susan Sontag, Howard Zinn, Jimmy Hendrix, Sarah Vaughan, Lyle Lovett, Cornel West, Weird Al Yankovic, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chet Atkins, Eugene Debs, and so many others - I have to hate what Rome is doing to itself and the rest of the world.
Technical Soutions for Technical Problems
If your car breaks down on the highway, you have a technical problem requiring a technical solution. If your computer goes FUBAR, same thing - technical problem requiring a technical solution. If your cell phone goes berserk (like mine did just a few seconds ago), technical problem with a technical solution.
Most things in this world are not technical problems, they are problems of a different kind. Take, for instance, global warming (or global weirding as some have taken to calling the effects of human behaviour on the environment). This is definitely not a technical problem and technical solutions will not help us.
The effects of human behaviour on our environment might have technical causes - causes that can be reduced to formulas and statistics - but it is not, fundamentally, a technical problem. It is a problem caused by human actions and, as such, requires a political solution.
Politics is what allows any group of people (that is two or more) to live together without killing each other. That's a kind of baseline performance. Ideally, politics allows groups of people to live together without infringing on each others rights; we could take the rights described as most fundamental by the American Declaration of Independence, namely "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are not political in themselves but as soon as you have a group of people politics is required to protect, enable, or provide these things.
Climate change started out as a political problem. Environmental activists tried (and succeeded) calling attention to the problem so people would pressure politicians into taking action. It took a while for politicians to come up with a way to address climate change. First they tried creating a program for actual change (a properly political response). This resulted in the Kyoto Protocol (1997).
The Kyoto Protocol pledged all signatories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global climate change. 191 countries signed. Of course, there were a few hold outs - Afghanistan, Andorra, South Sudan, and the United States of America. Canada signed the Protocol but withdrew when it became obvious the United States was not going to sign.
The United States refusal to sign was the result of the elision between corporations and government in the United States. Corporations refused to meet any new emission standards. Instead they pushed a "Cap and Trade" program - a non-political solution. Cap and Trade refers to a system that provides the right to pollute a certain amount to huge numbers of companies. Those who pollute less than the government allows would then be free to sell their "right to pollute" to the highest bidder. This would have the crazily negative effect of creating a futures market in pollution. You or I could buy a pollution future if we are bullish on carbon emissions. The insertion of an extra stage (or possibly many extra stages) between the assignment of "pollution credit" and the actual emissions drives the price of polluting up. This sounds good but is actually very bad.
Say you are a factory that is allowed to release a certain amount of carbon into the atmosphere but you need to release more than you are allowed. What are you going to do? Are you going to pay an inflated price on the carbon market or are you just going to burn whatever it is you need burned? In short, the problems with cap and trade are enforcement, monitoring, and punishment. There is no way to effectively monitor the polluters, no way to enforce emission standards, and no way to effectively punish violators. But much more importantly, the idea that the air we breathe is for sale is insidious and awful. The government of the United States is effectively saying corporations have the right to poison people (all over the world, not just in America) as long as they pay other American corporations for that right. Fucked, isn't it?
Then there is the whole "new technology" fantasy. First it was solar panels. Solar energy was going to save us from ourselves without anyone needing to cut back on anything. Then someone did the math and realized solar panels take more energy to produce than they create in their lifespan. Ooops. Same with ethanol instead of gasoline. It takes more energy to plant, grow, harvest, transport, convert from food to ethanol, transport again, than it releases when you burn it. It's a net negative. Worse still, it is burning food while people are starving so we can feel better about driving around when we could walk, take transit, carpool, etc. Now it's wind. The American Congress is currently paying for research on the noise pollution caused by wind turbines. That's fucked. Apparently the petro-kings are concerned wind is going to hurt their bottom line.
All of these solutions, and the others we are praying for, share a common flaw. Climate change is not a technical problem. It is a political problem and it needs a political solution. When the world finally found out how bad smoking is for peoples' health, they didn't immediately demand cleaner, more efficient cigarettes. There was no great effort to create less harmful forms of tobacco - clean cigarettes, like clean coal. They just pressured governments into making smoking illegal anyplace there are other people, covered cigarette packages with disgusting health warnings, and prohibited tobacco companies from advertizing. A concerted political program.
Our current financial up-fuckery is very similar to climate change. It will not be solved by economic technocrats tinkering with the system. It is a political problem. How tax dollars are used and who we want the government to tax are absolutely fundamental political questions. It's hard to get more political than that. But instead of taking them on as properly political questions, we are told not to politicize economic issues. Instead of economists taking an impartial advisory roll (helping the members of the body politic understand the ramifications of political decisions), the economists have usurped our political authority. Economists are making political decisions while claiming to be non-partial experts.
I trust most non-partial experts. When you want to know something about climate change, ask a climate scientist. If you want to know about the law, ask a lawyer or a judge. If you want to know about disease, ask a doctor. But we don't ask climate scientists, lawyers, or doctors to take away our right to make fundamental decisions about the kind of society we live in. They are experts whose opinions are valuable in helping all of us make politic decisions and they have as much right to participate in those decisions as everyone else. But never allow anyone to turn a political problem requiring a political solution into a technical problem that only a technician can solve.
And, as Howard Zinn wrote (and I'm paraphrasing), "Don't confuse elections with democracy. Dictators love elections. The difference between a dictatorship and America is they only have one name of the ballot and we have two - ain't America grand?"
In the same way, we shouldn't confuse parliamentism with democracy either. When our leaders neither need or want anything from us except our vote every four years, what we have is a representative government (of a kind) but not a democracy.
Most things in this world are not technical problems, they are problems of a different kind. Take, for instance, global warming (or global weirding as some have taken to calling the effects of human behaviour on the environment). This is definitely not a technical problem and technical solutions will not help us.
The effects of human behaviour on our environment might have technical causes - causes that can be reduced to formulas and statistics - but it is not, fundamentally, a technical problem. It is a problem caused by human actions and, as such, requires a political solution.
Politics is what allows any group of people (that is two or more) to live together without killing each other. That's a kind of baseline performance. Ideally, politics allows groups of people to live together without infringing on each others rights; we could take the rights described as most fundamental by the American Declaration of Independence, namely "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are not political in themselves but as soon as you have a group of people politics is required to protect, enable, or provide these things.
Climate change started out as a political problem. Environmental activists tried (and succeeded) calling attention to the problem so people would pressure politicians into taking action. It took a while for politicians to come up with a way to address climate change. First they tried creating a program for actual change (a properly political response). This resulted in the Kyoto Protocol (1997).
The Kyoto Protocol pledged all signatories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global climate change. 191 countries signed. Of course, there were a few hold outs - Afghanistan, Andorra, South Sudan, and the United States of America. Canada signed the Protocol but withdrew when it became obvious the United States was not going to sign.
The United States refusal to sign was the result of the elision between corporations and government in the United States. Corporations refused to meet any new emission standards. Instead they pushed a "Cap and Trade" program - a non-political solution. Cap and Trade refers to a system that provides the right to pollute a certain amount to huge numbers of companies. Those who pollute less than the government allows would then be free to sell their "right to pollute" to the highest bidder. This would have the crazily negative effect of creating a futures market in pollution. You or I could buy a pollution future if we are bullish on carbon emissions. The insertion of an extra stage (or possibly many extra stages) between the assignment of "pollution credit" and the actual emissions drives the price of polluting up. This sounds good but is actually very bad.
Say you are a factory that is allowed to release a certain amount of carbon into the atmosphere but you need to release more than you are allowed. What are you going to do? Are you going to pay an inflated price on the carbon market or are you just going to burn whatever it is you need burned? In short, the problems with cap and trade are enforcement, monitoring, and punishment. There is no way to effectively monitor the polluters, no way to enforce emission standards, and no way to effectively punish violators. But much more importantly, the idea that the air we breathe is for sale is insidious and awful. The government of the United States is effectively saying corporations have the right to poison people (all over the world, not just in America) as long as they pay other American corporations for that right. Fucked, isn't it?
Then there is the whole "new technology" fantasy. First it was solar panels. Solar energy was going to save us from ourselves without anyone needing to cut back on anything. Then someone did the math and realized solar panels take more energy to produce than they create in their lifespan. Ooops. Same with ethanol instead of gasoline. It takes more energy to plant, grow, harvest, transport, convert from food to ethanol, transport again, than it releases when you burn it. It's a net negative. Worse still, it is burning food while people are starving so we can feel better about driving around when we could walk, take transit, carpool, etc. Now it's wind. The American Congress is currently paying for research on the noise pollution caused by wind turbines. That's fucked. Apparently the petro-kings are concerned wind is going to hurt their bottom line.
All of these solutions, and the others we are praying for, share a common flaw. Climate change is not a technical problem. It is a political problem and it needs a political solution. When the world finally found out how bad smoking is for peoples' health, they didn't immediately demand cleaner, more efficient cigarettes. There was no great effort to create less harmful forms of tobacco - clean cigarettes, like clean coal. They just pressured governments into making smoking illegal anyplace there are other people, covered cigarette packages with disgusting health warnings, and prohibited tobacco companies from advertizing. A concerted political program.
Our current financial up-fuckery is very similar to climate change. It will not be solved by economic technocrats tinkering with the system. It is a political problem. How tax dollars are used and who we want the government to tax are absolutely fundamental political questions. It's hard to get more political than that. But instead of taking them on as properly political questions, we are told not to politicize economic issues. Instead of economists taking an impartial advisory roll (helping the members of the body politic understand the ramifications of political decisions), the economists have usurped our political authority. Economists are making political decisions while claiming to be non-partial experts.
I trust most non-partial experts. When you want to know something about climate change, ask a climate scientist. If you want to know about the law, ask a lawyer or a judge. If you want to know about disease, ask a doctor. But we don't ask climate scientists, lawyers, or doctors to take away our right to make fundamental decisions about the kind of society we live in. They are experts whose opinions are valuable in helping all of us make politic decisions and they have as much right to participate in those decisions as everyone else. But never allow anyone to turn a political problem requiring a political solution into a technical problem that only a technician can solve.
And, as Howard Zinn wrote (and I'm paraphrasing), "Don't confuse elections with democracy. Dictators love elections. The difference between a dictatorship and America is they only have one name of the ballot and we have two - ain't America grand?"
In the same way, we shouldn't confuse parliamentism with democracy either. When our leaders neither need or want anything from us except our vote every four years, what we have is a representative government (of a kind) but not a democracy.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
On Zombies, II
Here's an interesting article on the modern fascination with zombies. I should point out that while it is interesting, and I'm certain Stanford University PhD candidate Angela Mercedes Becerra Viderga is a very nice person, she is also completely wrong (see this extraordinarily insightful piece on a similar topic).
Two things I wish to add to my earlier comments about zombies and vampires. The first is an obvious omission I'm a little embarrassed about - I am no longer between 18 and 25 so I am not the target audience for these works. No one gives a shit about whether a 40 year old loser liked her vampire books or not (looking at you here, SM). I feel kind of stupid I didn't think of that earlier.
Second, I watched 28 Weeks Later (2007) last night. It's the sequel to 28 Days Later (2002). It reminded me of the emergence of a new element of horror fiction, the fast zombie. The Internet Movie Data Base (www.imdb.com) lists 1793 films in the "Best Zombie Titles" section so I'm not going to go through them one by one to figure out if 28 Days actually introduced the fast zombie - Angela Mercedes Becerra Viderga would likely know. Technically, the monsters in the 28 Later franchise aren't zombies but humans infected with the "rage virus". Kind of similar to the Resident Evil franchise, also kicked off in 2002 but pre-dated by a video game from 1996. Between these two film franchises a couple of important fixtures of zombie lore were set in stone. Zombies infect you by biting you (I don't know if that was the case before, I think dead people just came back to life - ask Angie V if you really need to know) and zombies get faster and stronger than when they were humans.
These two things, but particularly the fact that zombies can run really fast, completely change the outcome of the films (and the outcome of the zombie apocalypse when it happens). Slow zombies create the need for cooperation. The best survival strategy in the event of a slow zombie attack is to get as many different types of people as possible in your group. Even I could be useful in the event of a slow zombie attack. I know a little bit about a lot of things and, given time to ponder, am a useful thinker. Even old people, first to go in a fast zombie situation, are good to have around in a slow zombie infestation. Parenthetically, I'm getting really bored of typing "slow zombie" and "fast zombie" and then thinking of a synonym for apocalypse - so from now on it's a SZE (slow zombie event) and FZE (fast zombie event). Old people, getting back to my first line of thought, know how things used to be done, before computers and cell phones, which are always lost regardless of the type of zombie. They have a wealth of experience. So in a SZE you want everyone because you never know what problems going to come up against.
In a FZE on the other hand, you only want fast runners. Because everyone else is completely fucked. FZ's are really fast. You need to be between 16 and 25, in perfect shape, no kind of physical impairment, and you should probably be a good swimmer (everyone knows zombies can't swim).
In a way, the difference between SZE and FZE are the differences between the kind of society most of us want and the kind of society most of us have. Most of us, provided we didn't get eaten or have any pre-existing anxiety problems, would actually be happier in a SZE than we are now. No more wondering what our purpose is or why to get out of bed in the morning. Existential doubt and dread gone forever, thanks to the zombies! We would all feel needed, all belong, and, when we had the occasional freak-out (because it's going to happen) we'd have a perfect excuse - who can blame you for losing your shit in the middle of a zombie event?
FZE are inherently fascist. Everyone has to be the same. Young, fit, durable. Boring. And when the zombies attack, it's every person for his or her self. Leave the slowest behind. That's the kind of shit society we already have! At least a FZE would let you know you were dying from some cause other than greed or neglect. How fucking banal. You could have an IQ of 200 and seven different PhDs but when the fast zombies come you better be able to run the hundred in less than 12 seconds or you are useless. Watch some television, look at the people in the ads - would they survive a FZE? Then you are probably being sold a boring as shit monoculture.
So I say bring on the slow zombies! I already have my plan. In case you think I'm being sarcastic - I totally am about bringing on the zombies, what kind of psycho would want that to happen? - I'm not. Planning for a zombie event lets you know what really matters to you. It also makes it painfully apparent I'm paying too much rent. This building is hopeless as a place to survive a SZE.
Two things I wish to add to my earlier comments about zombies and vampires. The first is an obvious omission I'm a little embarrassed about - I am no longer between 18 and 25 so I am not the target audience for these works. No one gives a shit about whether a 40 year old loser liked her vampire books or not (looking at you here, SM). I feel kind of stupid I didn't think of that earlier.
Second, I watched 28 Weeks Later (2007) last night. It's the sequel to 28 Days Later (2002). It reminded me of the emergence of a new element of horror fiction, the fast zombie. The Internet Movie Data Base (www.imdb.com) lists 1793 films in the "Best Zombie Titles" section so I'm not going to go through them one by one to figure out if 28 Days actually introduced the fast zombie - Angela Mercedes Becerra Viderga would likely know. Technically, the monsters in the 28 Later franchise aren't zombies but humans infected with the "rage virus". Kind of similar to the Resident Evil franchise, also kicked off in 2002 but pre-dated by a video game from 1996. Between these two film franchises a couple of important fixtures of zombie lore were set in stone. Zombies infect you by biting you (I don't know if that was the case before, I think dead people just came back to life - ask Angie V if you really need to know) and zombies get faster and stronger than when they were humans.
These two things, but particularly the fact that zombies can run really fast, completely change the outcome of the films (and the outcome of the zombie apocalypse when it happens). Slow zombies create the need for cooperation. The best survival strategy in the event of a slow zombie attack is to get as many different types of people as possible in your group. Even I could be useful in the event of a slow zombie attack. I know a little bit about a lot of things and, given time to ponder, am a useful thinker. Even old people, first to go in a fast zombie situation, are good to have around in a slow zombie infestation. Parenthetically, I'm getting really bored of typing "slow zombie" and "fast zombie" and then thinking of a synonym for apocalypse - so from now on it's a SZE (slow zombie event) and FZE (fast zombie event). Old people, getting back to my first line of thought, know how things used to be done, before computers and cell phones, which are always lost regardless of the type of zombie. They have a wealth of experience. So in a SZE you want everyone because you never know what problems going to come up against.
In a FZE on the other hand, you only want fast runners. Because everyone else is completely fucked. FZ's are really fast. You need to be between 16 and 25, in perfect shape, no kind of physical impairment, and you should probably be a good swimmer (everyone knows zombies can't swim).
In a way, the difference between SZE and FZE are the differences between the kind of society most of us want and the kind of society most of us have. Most of us, provided we didn't get eaten or have any pre-existing anxiety problems, would actually be happier in a SZE than we are now. No more wondering what our purpose is or why to get out of bed in the morning. Existential doubt and dread gone forever, thanks to the zombies! We would all feel needed, all belong, and, when we had the occasional freak-out (because it's going to happen) we'd have a perfect excuse - who can blame you for losing your shit in the middle of a zombie event?
FZE are inherently fascist. Everyone has to be the same. Young, fit, durable. Boring. And when the zombies attack, it's every person for his or her self. Leave the slowest behind. That's the kind of shit society we already have! At least a FZE would let you know you were dying from some cause other than greed or neglect. How fucking banal. You could have an IQ of 200 and seven different PhDs but when the fast zombies come you better be able to run the hundred in less than 12 seconds or you are useless. Watch some television, look at the people in the ads - would they survive a FZE? Then you are probably being sold a boring as shit monoculture.
So I say bring on the slow zombies! I already have my plan. In case you think I'm being sarcastic - I totally am about bringing on the zombies, what kind of psycho would want that to happen? - I'm not. Planning for a zombie event lets you know what really matters to you. It also makes it painfully apparent I'm paying too much rent. This building is hopeless as a place to survive a SZE.
How Long, O Lord, How Long?
I'm in a prognosticating mood. Unfortunately, the future looks kind of bleak to me. Here's what I mean.
I've been reading lately about how the IMF and World Bank have been used by orthodox neo-liberal economists (primarily American) to plunder almost every country under the sun. Good reads in this regard are John Perkins's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: The Shocking Story of How America Really Took Over the World (2004), David Harvey's A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (2007), and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2008). There are, of course, others - particularly for those of you with a background in economics and political theory. My choices are the soft-core dumb-public versions.
I guess before I get on to the predicting, I need to do a little explaining. Hopefully not too much. Neo-liberalism is a crazy mythology / ideology that if all constraints are removed from the market - everything from trade unions, taxes, tariffs, any and all laws regarding economic functions, all trading regulations, all currency controls, any and all public services (because they are government interference) - if all that stuff is done away with completely, the result will be the greatest possible good for the greatest number of people. "The Invisible Hand" of the market is, in this mythology, a kind and benevolent deity who wants the best for everyone. It's absolute bullshit and if you read the statements of the chief protagonists they sound crazier than the most far-out ravings of Marxist ideologues. But some very important individuals seem to believe this shit. And a many more important people have become extremely rich by the actions of the true believers (and those they can con, threaten, or beat into accepting their doctrine).
The IMF has been restructuring countries all over the world for almost 40 years. I've used that term before but never explained it. In case you've never heard it, restructuring is the term of choice for the process of privatizing everything a country owns and selling it off (they have to sell because they need money or they wouldn't be dealing with the IMF at all). It also means destroying any laws protecting labour (because organized labour is an impediment to the free action of the market) and removing governmental support for all social services (which should be provided privately and for profit). What this means is the IMF is holding a garage sale and it's your society out there on the card table.
The Americans have controlled the IMF almost since the beginning because, although it was supposed to be one country = one vote like the UN, it changed almost immediately to one dollar = one vote. And the US has more money than anyone else. In this case, to be clear, it is a combination of the American government and American investment banks and other financial institutions.
So if the US economy isn't doing well on its own, one sure fire way to pump up the numbers is to find a country with a lot of national resources, crack it open via IMF restructuring and buy everything at fire sale prices. This is all possible because the IMF answers to those with the deepest pockets.
And it makes me ask two questions. First, people wonder why much of the world hates Americans? That's a rhetorical question. Obviously, the average American has about as much to do with the fuck-uppery of the IMF as the average Iraqi has to do with Al Qaeda and they were just fine, right? By the way, "weapons of mass destruction" and "axis of evil" are American code for "oil" and "oil" but I trust you already figured that out.
Second question; what happens when America is no longer the richest country? Many people might think it would be difficult to IMFuck the good old US of A because it is already a neo-liberal paradise, right? Google "america subsidy" and you'll find out. The farmers are getting a shitload of cash that must appall all true neo-liberals. Although it isn't very popular now in some circles, the public subsidy for health care would have to go (including Medicare and Medicade). Social security would be gone, as would almost every form of pension. And there is the small matter of America's unbelievably enormous corporate welfare system. And the $1 trillion + that went to the banks. That is definitely anti-competitive.
How will you feel when you can't afford to send your kids to a University owned by a Chinese multi-national because the German multi-national that fired you from your job (at the US Postal Service) and there is no more social safety net. You better pray you don't wind up in a prison owned by an Russian oligarch because everyone knows those aren't pretty.
I'm not so pessimistic as to think that will probably happen. But I do think it's a possibility. On the plus side, by the time the US gets rolled by the IMF you'll probably be unemployed and living in what the UN describes as "desperate poverty" already. Think about that for awhile; poverty wasn't negative enough, they had to find a whole other way to classify a good portion of the planet's population who were living in conditions that made "poverty" seem inadequate as a description. I think the technical definition is less than $1 US per day.
So, this future hellscape is inevitable right? I try hard not to think so. And the way to make it impossible is 1) always remember there are some things that shouldn't be for sale, and 2) make loud noises (the cruder the better) when anyone who actually believes everything should be for sale tries to say so.
One way or the other - I guess technically that should be two ways or the other because there are three ways I can see this going down. There's the future hellscape where Trillionaires rule like gods and make the rest of us fight in gladiatorial combat for their entertainment. There's the violent revolution where we fight (not as gladiators) until this shit gets decided. And then there's my preferred option, where we as a species come to realize that when we degrade each other through grinding poverty, we degrade ourselves as well. That the measure of humanity really is the state of the worst off among us and we do best what we do together. The point is things are going to change and, while I fear they might get worse, when I look at the world I wonder if it hasn't already got bad enough for us to learn some sense and start making things better. That's why this post is titled, "How Long, O Lord, How Long".
I've been reading lately about how the IMF and World Bank have been used by orthodox neo-liberal economists (primarily American) to plunder almost every country under the sun. Good reads in this regard are John Perkins's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: The Shocking Story of How America Really Took Over the World (2004), David Harvey's A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (2007), and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2008). There are, of course, others - particularly for those of you with a background in economics and political theory. My choices are the soft-core dumb-public versions.
I guess before I get on to the predicting, I need to do a little explaining. Hopefully not too much. Neo-liberalism is a crazy mythology / ideology that if all constraints are removed from the market - everything from trade unions, taxes, tariffs, any and all laws regarding economic functions, all trading regulations, all currency controls, any and all public services (because they are government interference) - if all that stuff is done away with completely, the result will be the greatest possible good for the greatest number of people. "The Invisible Hand" of the market is, in this mythology, a kind and benevolent deity who wants the best for everyone. It's absolute bullshit and if you read the statements of the chief protagonists they sound crazier than the most far-out ravings of Marxist ideologues. But some very important individuals seem to believe this shit. And a many more important people have become extremely rich by the actions of the true believers (and those they can con, threaten, or beat into accepting their doctrine).
The IMF has been restructuring countries all over the world for almost 40 years. I've used that term before but never explained it. In case you've never heard it, restructuring is the term of choice for the process of privatizing everything a country owns and selling it off (they have to sell because they need money or they wouldn't be dealing with the IMF at all). It also means destroying any laws protecting labour (because organized labour is an impediment to the free action of the market) and removing governmental support for all social services (which should be provided privately and for profit). What this means is the IMF is holding a garage sale and it's your society out there on the card table.
The Americans have controlled the IMF almost since the beginning because, although it was supposed to be one country = one vote like the UN, it changed almost immediately to one dollar = one vote. And the US has more money than anyone else. In this case, to be clear, it is a combination of the American government and American investment banks and other financial institutions.
So if the US economy isn't doing well on its own, one sure fire way to pump up the numbers is to find a country with a lot of national resources, crack it open via IMF restructuring and buy everything at fire sale prices. This is all possible because the IMF answers to those with the deepest pockets.
And it makes me ask two questions. First, people wonder why much of the world hates Americans? That's a rhetorical question. Obviously, the average American has about as much to do with the fuck-uppery of the IMF as the average Iraqi has to do with Al Qaeda and they were just fine, right? By the way, "weapons of mass destruction" and "axis of evil" are American code for "oil" and "oil" but I trust you already figured that out.
Second question; what happens when America is no longer the richest country? Many people might think it would be difficult to IMFuck the good old US of A because it is already a neo-liberal paradise, right? Google "america subsidy" and you'll find out. The farmers are getting a shitload of cash that must appall all true neo-liberals. Although it isn't very popular now in some circles, the public subsidy for health care would have to go (including Medicare and Medicade). Social security would be gone, as would almost every form of pension. And there is the small matter of America's unbelievably enormous corporate welfare system. And the $1 trillion + that went to the banks. That is definitely anti-competitive.
How will you feel when you can't afford to send your kids to a University owned by a Chinese multi-national because the German multi-national that fired you from your job (at the US Postal Service) and there is no more social safety net. You better pray you don't wind up in a prison owned by an Russian oligarch because everyone knows those aren't pretty.
I'm not so pessimistic as to think that will probably happen. But I do think it's a possibility. On the plus side, by the time the US gets rolled by the IMF you'll probably be unemployed and living in what the UN describes as "desperate poverty" already. Think about that for awhile; poverty wasn't negative enough, they had to find a whole other way to classify a good portion of the planet's population who were living in conditions that made "poverty" seem inadequate as a description. I think the technical definition is less than $1 US per day.
So, this future hellscape is inevitable right? I try hard not to think so. And the way to make it impossible is 1) always remember there are some things that shouldn't be for sale, and 2) make loud noises (the cruder the better) when anyone who actually believes everything should be for sale tries to say so.
One way or the other - I guess technically that should be two ways or the other because there are three ways I can see this going down. There's the future hellscape where Trillionaires rule like gods and make the rest of us fight in gladiatorial combat for their entertainment. There's the violent revolution where we fight (not as gladiators) until this shit gets decided. And then there's my preferred option, where we as a species come to realize that when we degrade each other through grinding poverty, we degrade ourselves as well. That the measure of humanity really is the state of the worst off among us and we do best what we do together. The point is things are going to change and, while I fear they might get worse, when I look at the world I wonder if it hasn't already got bad enough for us to learn some sense and start making things better. That's why this post is titled, "How Long, O Lord, How Long".
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Architecture and Economics
Although the title of this entry is suitably broad, I want to look at a very specific economic situation - extreme poverty. There has been, in recent years, a growing interest amongst architects in the formal and social properties of slums (favela, barrio, etc). The first academic interest in the subject roughly coincides with Mike Davis's brilliant book Planet of Slums (2006). This is an encyclopedic survey and discussion of slums the world over and I recommend it most highly to anyone who isn't an architecture student! If you are an architecture student, avoid this book as if your (professional) life depends on it because it does. If you read this book you will immediately leave architecture school (because it is completely irrelevant, bourgeois, and decadent) and find yourself in Caracas, or Manilla, or Cairo working for free - a total failure.
A Google search (terms "architecture slums") returned 1 600 000 hits, including titles like Learning from Lagos and Slums: The Architecture Vernacular of Swelling Cities. While I find my colleagues' interest in slums and their evolution (slightly) heart-warming, in my experience, there is an essential aspect of the creation and maintenance of slums that has been completely ignored.
According to International Business Times, the five largest slums in the world are Neza-Chalco-Itza (Mexico City), Orangi Town (Karachi, Pakistan), Dharavi (Mumbai, India), Khayelitsha (Cape Town, South Africa), and Kibera (Nairobi, Kenya). They add, "Rounding out a list of the 10 biggest slums would include communities in Bogota, Colombia; Baghdad, Iraq, Venezuela, and Ghana."
These places have some things in common. Mexico was caught in a debt trap after the Volcker Shock and restructured by fiat of the IMF. Pakistan is in default on loans from the IMF and is undergoing restructuring. The IMF's own website proclaims;
"In recent years, the Fund has provided India with technical assistance in a number of areas, including the development of the government securities market, foreign exchange market reform, public expenditure management, tax and customs administration." - in other words, restructuring.
South Africa's neo-liberal restructuring (and IMF loans) are well documented. In fact, research any of these countries (with the notable exception of Iraq) using search terms "country IMF" and you'll find they have all been aggressively restructured. Iraq, of course, got the most aggressive restructuring of any country in recent memory but it was handled by the US Air Force and Marines (and then by Imperial Overlord Paul Bremer).
Slums are not naturally occurring phenomena. They are created by economic decisions. Yes, it is true that conditions of general exploitation of some of these countries necessarily resulted in extreme poverty. But in most cases, the exploitation was recent and deliberate - done by the IMF and World Bank to create a business friendly climate. It is also interesting to note how this restructuring has resulted in extreme riches for a few in each country.
Carlos "Slim" Helu became the world's second richest person after Mexico privatized its television networks. The largest private house in the world is currently under construction in Mumbai. As Jean Baptiste Aristide said, before he was deposed by the US and kidnapped by the French, "Wealth creates poverty."
Architects cannot morally study conditions of extreme poverty without some consideration of how the condition of such poverty was created. It is no longer sufficient to assume poverty is a part of the human condition, natural, and unavoidable. This is not only morally unacceptable, it is academically questionable. It is reasonable to assume poverty created by concerted government actions will have a different social and formal representation than poverty created by natural disaster, war, or other means.
It seems strange to me that architects are doing this kind of research (connecting system of government to architectural form) already. Theorist have no problem identifying fascist or communist architecture. There is extensive theoretical work on the major projects of FDR's New Deal. I think the time is here for a theory of neo-liberal architecture and, unfortunately, I think the place to look for it is in the world's slums.
A Google search (terms "architecture slums") returned 1 600 000 hits, including titles like Learning from Lagos and Slums: The Architecture Vernacular of Swelling Cities. While I find my colleagues' interest in slums and their evolution (slightly) heart-warming, in my experience, there is an essential aspect of the creation and maintenance of slums that has been completely ignored.
According to International Business Times, the five largest slums in the world are Neza-Chalco-Itza (Mexico City), Orangi Town (Karachi, Pakistan), Dharavi (Mumbai, India), Khayelitsha (Cape Town, South Africa), and Kibera (Nairobi, Kenya). They add, "Rounding out a list of the 10 biggest slums would include communities in Bogota, Colombia; Baghdad, Iraq, Venezuela, and Ghana."
These places have some things in common. Mexico was caught in a debt trap after the Volcker Shock and restructured by fiat of the IMF. Pakistan is in default on loans from the IMF and is undergoing restructuring. The IMF's own website proclaims;
"In recent years, the Fund has provided India with technical assistance in a number of areas, including the development of the government securities market, foreign exchange market reform, public expenditure management, tax and customs administration." - in other words, restructuring.
South Africa's neo-liberal restructuring (and IMF loans) are well documented. In fact, research any of these countries (with the notable exception of Iraq) using search terms "country IMF" and you'll find they have all been aggressively restructured. Iraq, of course, got the most aggressive restructuring of any country in recent memory but it was handled by the US Air Force and Marines (and then by Imperial Overlord Paul Bremer).
Slums are not naturally occurring phenomena. They are created by economic decisions. Yes, it is true that conditions of general exploitation of some of these countries necessarily resulted in extreme poverty. But in most cases, the exploitation was recent and deliberate - done by the IMF and World Bank to create a business friendly climate. It is also interesting to note how this restructuring has resulted in extreme riches for a few in each country.
Carlos "Slim" Helu became the world's second richest person after Mexico privatized its television networks. The largest private house in the world is currently under construction in Mumbai. As Jean Baptiste Aristide said, before he was deposed by the US and kidnapped by the French, "Wealth creates poverty."
Architects cannot morally study conditions of extreme poverty without some consideration of how the condition of such poverty was created. It is no longer sufficient to assume poverty is a part of the human condition, natural, and unavoidable. This is not only morally unacceptable, it is academically questionable. It is reasonable to assume poverty created by concerted government actions will have a different social and formal representation than poverty created by natural disaster, war, or other means.
It seems strange to me that architects are doing this kind of research (connecting system of government to architectural form) already. Theorist have no problem identifying fascist or communist architecture. There is extensive theoretical work on the major projects of FDR's New Deal. I think the time is here for a theory of neo-liberal architecture and, unfortunately, I think the place to look for it is in the world's slums.
Culture and Architecture
I was educated at an architecture school (the University of Waterloo), that has cultural history enshrined in its mandate. The study of architecture is always to be part of a broader study of culture - particularly Western historical cultures. Studying the relationship between architecture and culture in ancient Greece or Rome is something I have come to regard as absolutely necessary to understanding the development and the place of architecture in our history. But, as often happens, the closer one gets to the present, the less direct the connections become - the more difficult it is to understand how culture and architecture (in this particular case) are related.
There are several perfectly understandable reasons for this to be the case. First, academics have had two thousand years to perfect their arguments about architecture and Rome (or architecture and Athens). Admittedly, there were several centuries in those two thousand years when no one gave a single thought to the subject but it would be hard to argue against the axiom, "distance provides clarity". Second, it has been almost half a century since there was a consensus opinion on the definition of architecture. After WWII half of Europe's housing stock was destroyed, along with many of the factories producing construction materials, and a large percentage of the people who actually built what architects designed. Providing housing for the homeless in a very particular economic and social circumstance became architecture's orthodoxy, even in places (like the United States) where the conditions which had generated that orthodoxy did not apply. Since Modernism (as the post-WWII architecture was called) was rejected, there has been no universal consensus as to what architecture does, how it should look, what its goals should be, how it should be judged, etc. The study of architecture and culture demands we know what both things are, and since 1975 (at the latest) no one has been able to say what architecture is. Third, as with architecture so with culture. That is to say, there is no consensus what culture is anymore. This might be a function of our position - like a fish trying to understand water, or some other metaphor. Or it might be the case that conflicting, and antithetical, views of culture have not, and cannot, be reconciled.
I am not smart enough to define architecture. I do not have the experience even if I was smart enough. The last person who provided a nearly universal definition was Le Corbusier - and I'm not him.
I can't define culture either but I can clarify some of the antagonistic positions that prevent people smarter than I am from defining it. But first, a brief summation of a few pivotal moments in the last 40 years is necessary. I'll keep it as short as I can.
Where to start? I could start in 1971, when the US voided the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system collapsed. Or I could start with the American backed coup in Chile that disposed Salvador Allende. After the coup the Chilean economy was restructured according to monetarist (what is now called neo-liberal) principles. Maybe a few words about the bankruptcy of New York City in 1975 - not really essential to the argument but the first clear indication of the neo-liberal principle summed up in the now famous phrase "privatize profit and socialize risk". Or I could start with the Volcker shock. Between 1979 and 1981 Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker more than doubled the prime interest rate. This signified a move away from embedded Keynesianism (aimed at zero unemployement) to monetarism, or supply-side economics (aimed at zero inflation). But I think I will start will Margaret Thatcher.
In an interview with Women's Own magazine (31 October, 1987) Britain's Prime Minister gave her clearest summation of her view on culture and politics. She said:
"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."
Thatcher's stress on individualism was consistent throughout her politics. She spent her first years in office in a bruising fight against labour unions, public education, and the entire social safety net Britain had previously provided. Her view that society was non-existent was also consonant with the opinions of then President Ronald Reagan.
One of Reagan's first actions as President was to crush the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). On 3 August 1981 PATCO went on strike. The same day the President issued an ultimatum - return to work or lose your job. Union busting has been a staple of American politics for more than a century but the air traffic controllers were a white-collar union. Reagan was making a statement, very similar to Thatcher's. "There is no such thing as a union. Only individuals."
Individualism is a condition of neo-liberalism for a very simple reason - money. Neo-liberalism is an ideology tailor made to suit corporations. In the contest between an immortal individual worth billions and a mortal individual worth almost nothing, the corporation wins every time.
To be clear, altho I cannot agree with neo-liberal doctrine and think it is a repressive and morally abhorrent system, I do not think its advocates are evil people. They aren't even bad people. They are the people who have been put in charge of making sure our economy continues to grow. This is the lens through which they see the world. It had been demonstrated over and over that neo-liberal doctrine does not promote sustainable, or even healthy growth. The GWP, the world economy, was $19 trillion in 1980 and $70 trillion in 2012. That's definitely growth.
One of the ways that growth has been achieved is by enclosure. The term metaphorically recalls the actual enclosure of public (common) property in Britain in the five centuries or so preceding the Industrial Revolution. Modern enclosure is transferring public goods, land, infrastructure, and responsibility to private hands. The government (and this is particularly true in the United States) "privatizes" things that had previously been part of the public realm. Although this has been demonstrated to cost more, be less efficient, and concentrate wealth at the highest end of the social-economic spectrum, it is portrayed as a natural and axiomatic good by supporters. "The government which governs least, governs best."
While governments have moved away from the concept (or even acknowledgment) of culture, corporations have moved into it with every tool at their disposal. I won't summarize this movement. Instead I'll recommend Naomi Klein's NOLOGO - a very thorough and well-considered history of culture's co-option by corporations.
This dual movement, government removing itself from society and corporations installing themselves, has excluded people from society in essential ways. I am being shockingly non-rigorous with my terms here, using culture and society almost interchangeably - I should insist society is the many and various bonds which connect people through mutual obligation and affection and culture is the product of society but you get the picture. Anyway. The most important effect of corporate influence in culture and society is we now approach culture, society, and politics as consumers. Our only available (sometimes only conceivable) options are to approve (purchase) or disapprove (walk away). Raj Patel's book The Value of Nothing (2009) is instructive on this systemic failure. And those groups which do manage to maintain a connection and purpose separate from corporate marketing are typically small enough that marketing gurus can't find them or poor enough that they don't matter (in the eyes of governments and corporations alike).
All this creates a tough situation for those who study the interaction of architecture and culture, at least our architecture and our culture. It is much simpler, and probably more informative, to examine someplace with a monoculture that is both politically engaged and related fundamentally to the built world - like Eyal Weizman has been doing in Israel and Palestine for many years or Lieven de Cauter has been doing with the global politics of exclusion.
There are several perfectly understandable reasons for this to be the case. First, academics have had two thousand years to perfect their arguments about architecture and Rome (or architecture and Athens). Admittedly, there were several centuries in those two thousand years when no one gave a single thought to the subject but it would be hard to argue against the axiom, "distance provides clarity". Second, it has been almost half a century since there was a consensus opinion on the definition of architecture. After WWII half of Europe's housing stock was destroyed, along with many of the factories producing construction materials, and a large percentage of the people who actually built what architects designed. Providing housing for the homeless in a very particular economic and social circumstance became architecture's orthodoxy, even in places (like the United States) where the conditions which had generated that orthodoxy did not apply. Since Modernism (as the post-WWII architecture was called) was rejected, there has been no universal consensus as to what architecture does, how it should look, what its goals should be, how it should be judged, etc. The study of architecture and culture demands we know what both things are, and since 1975 (at the latest) no one has been able to say what architecture is. Third, as with architecture so with culture. That is to say, there is no consensus what culture is anymore. This might be a function of our position - like a fish trying to understand water, or some other metaphor. Or it might be the case that conflicting, and antithetical, views of culture have not, and cannot, be reconciled.
I am not smart enough to define architecture. I do not have the experience even if I was smart enough. The last person who provided a nearly universal definition was Le Corbusier - and I'm not him.
I can't define culture either but I can clarify some of the antagonistic positions that prevent people smarter than I am from defining it. But first, a brief summation of a few pivotal moments in the last 40 years is necessary. I'll keep it as short as I can.
Where to start? I could start in 1971, when the US voided the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system collapsed. Or I could start with the American backed coup in Chile that disposed Salvador Allende. After the coup the Chilean economy was restructured according to monetarist (what is now called neo-liberal) principles. Maybe a few words about the bankruptcy of New York City in 1975 - not really essential to the argument but the first clear indication of the neo-liberal principle summed up in the now famous phrase "privatize profit and socialize risk". Or I could start with the Volcker shock. Between 1979 and 1981 Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker more than doubled the prime interest rate. This signified a move away from embedded Keynesianism (aimed at zero unemployement) to monetarism, or supply-side economics (aimed at zero inflation). But I think I will start will Margaret Thatcher.
In an interview with Women's Own magazine (31 October, 1987) Britain's Prime Minister gave her clearest summation of her view on culture and politics. She said:
"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."
Thatcher's stress on individualism was consistent throughout her politics. She spent her first years in office in a bruising fight against labour unions, public education, and the entire social safety net Britain had previously provided. Her view that society was non-existent was also consonant with the opinions of then President Ronald Reagan.
One of Reagan's first actions as President was to crush the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). On 3 August 1981 PATCO went on strike. The same day the President issued an ultimatum - return to work or lose your job. Union busting has been a staple of American politics for more than a century but the air traffic controllers were a white-collar union. Reagan was making a statement, very similar to Thatcher's. "There is no such thing as a union. Only individuals."
Individualism is a condition of neo-liberalism for a very simple reason - money. Neo-liberalism is an ideology tailor made to suit corporations. In the contest between an immortal individual worth billions and a mortal individual worth almost nothing, the corporation wins every time.
To be clear, altho I cannot agree with neo-liberal doctrine and think it is a repressive and morally abhorrent system, I do not think its advocates are evil people. They aren't even bad people. They are the people who have been put in charge of making sure our economy continues to grow. This is the lens through which they see the world. It had been demonstrated over and over that neo-liberal doctrine does not promote sustainable, or even healthy growth. The GWP, the world economy, was $19 trillion in 1980 and $70 trillion in 2012. That's definitely growth.
One of the ways that growth has been achieved is by enclosure. The term metaphorically recalls the actual enclosure of public (common) property in Britain in the five centuries or so preceding the Industrial Revolution. Modern enclosure is transferring public goods, land, infrastructure, and responsibility to private hands. The government (and this is particularly true in the United States) "privatizes" things that had previously been part of the public realm. Although this has been demonstrated to cost more, be less efficient, and concentrate wealth at the highest end of the social-economic spectrum, it is portrayed as a natural and axiomatic good by supporters. "The government which governs least, governs best."
While governments have moved away from the concept (or even acknowledgment) of culture, corporations have moved into it with every tool at their disposal. I won't summarize this movement. Instead I'll recommend Naomi Klein's NOLOGO - a very thorough and well-considered history of culture's co-option by corporations.
This dual movement, government removing itself from society and corporations installing themselves, has excluded people from society in essential ways. I am being shockingly non-rigorous with my terms here, using culture and society almost interchangeably - I should insist society is the many and various bonds which connect people through mutual obligation and affection and culture is the product of society but you get the picture. Anyway. The most important effect of corporate influence in culture and society is we now approach culture, society, and politics as consumers. Our only available (sometimes only conceivable) options are to approve (purchase) or disapprove (walk away). Raj Patel's book The Value of Nothing (2009) is instructive on this systemic failure. And those groups which do manage to maintain a connection and purpose separate from corporate marketing are typically small enough that marketing gurus can't find them or poor enough that they don't matter (in the eyes of governments and corporations alike).
All this creates a tough situation for those who study the interaction of architecture and culture, at least our architecture and our culture. It is much simpler, and probably more informative, to examine someplace with a monoculture that is both politically engaged and related fundamentally to the built world - like Eyal Weizman has been doing in Israel and Palestine for many years or Lieven de Cauter has been doing with the global politics of exclusion.
Astral Info Pillars
I once had a professor who said, "Any reasonably intelligent architect should be able to construct a barrier that can stop the police for a day." I responded that it should be made an assignment for first-year students. So the first time I saw an Astral Info Pillar, I started thinking how best to destroy them.
For those of you who don't know, the City of Toronto has sold space on bus shelters, garbage cans, and (most egregiously) on sidewalks to advertisers - the so called Info Pillars. They look like this:
They don't seem so bad out of context - in the infinite white space. But on sidewalks, where space is definitely not infinite, they look like this:
And you can see how that is a huge pain in the ass. A group called cARTographyTO, comprised of local artist and adbusters, hacked them and so they looked like this:
Which is very amusing and pissed the City and Astral off quite a bit. So cheers to them. But no matter how entertaining some of the busts were (and I recommend checking the gallery at the cARTography site because some of them are really good) it doesn't change the fact these Info Pillars (and, quibbling here, they are neither informative nor pillars) are ugly, dangerous, and a nasty concession to the corporations who believe that everything is for sale - including public space.
So, how would one destroy them? The obvious answer is a cutting torch. An ac/ox torch would go through one of them in about ten seconds but there are a couple drawbacks. First, you would almost certainly get caught since running with a cutting torch is neither feasible nor a good safety practice. And second, they could just slap a new IP on the remains of the previous one.
I would also not recommend hitching a chain to the frame of your car or truck and yanking them out like rotten teeth. While this might offer a more permanent solution than cutting the IP in pieces, it is very likely to mess up your car.
Here is what I've come up with and I have to say, I'm not recommending it. This is a thought exercise only and if anyone does this and says I told them to, I'll deny every word. If I am breaking any laws just by writing this then the situation is too far gone to be fixed and every person for themselves.
The trillium is Ontario's official flower but, contrary to popular belief, it is not illegal to pick them except in national parks and other conservation zones. It is illegal to pick the Drooping Trillium (Trillium flexipis). Here's what a drooping trillium looks like:
To get rid of an Astral Info Pillar correctly takes at least four people and as many Drooping Trilliums. First, you need to go after the concrete the IP is standing on. That's how it is supported. Anyone who has ever built a fence or a deck knows how this works. The concrete goes down and the base for the IP (or fence post) goes in while the concrete is still wet. If I was recommending a method (which I'm not) I would say 6' pry bars, picks, and shovels would be the tools of choice. Half the people pulling on the top of the IP - some mechanical assistance would be good here, like a winch on an off-road vehicle. The rest get the pry bars into the ground and start working the concrete foundation free. Don't underestimate the amount of force needed. These things are likely engineered to bend but not break in the event a car hits them, for the safety of pedestrians, but the foundations were designed to stay. You could also think about renting a jack-hammer if you are really determined.
After you get the IP out of the ground, fill the space left in the hole with high quality top soil. Then plant your Drooping Trilliums according to the instructions of someone who understands plants better than I do.
Another warning, since it's illegal to pick drooping trilliums, make sure to keep your receipt! That way you can prove you purchased them and didn't pick them yourself.
Of course, an equally effective strategy would be to go after the sidewalk between the building and the IP. It's going to be thinner and less heavy than the foundation of the IP. Smash it up, remove it, and plant the DTs all the way from the IP to the storefront - completely blocking the sidewalk. Then get some lawn chairs, sleeping bags (depending on the season), and a copy of the legislation protecting the DTs and wait.
I like the latter solution as it presents the City with a decision you can exploit - does it destroy an ugly and unpopular IP or rip up a bunch of (legally protected) flowers? Good copy either way.
For those of you who don't know, the City of Toronto has sold space on bus shelters, garbage cans, and (most egregiously) on sidewalks to advertisers - the so called Info Pillars. They look like this:
They don't seem so bad out of context - in the infinite white space. But on sidewalks, where space is definitely not infinite, they look like this:
Which is very amusing and pissed the City and Astral off quite a bit. So cheers to them. But no matter how entertaining some of the busts were (and I recommend checking the gallery at the cARTography site because some of them are really good) it doesn't change the fact these Info Pillars (and, quibbling here, they are neither informative nor pillars) are ugly, dangerous, and a nasty concession to the corporations who believe that everything is for sale - including public space.
So, how would one destroy them? The obvious answer is a cutting torch. An ac/ox torch would go through one of them in about ten seconds but there are a couple drawbacks. First, you would almost certainly get caught since running with a cutting torch is neither feasible nor a good safety practice. And second, they could just slap a new IP on the remains of the previous one.
I would also not recommend hitching a chain to the frame of your car or truck and yanking them out like rotten teeth. While this might offer a more permanent solution than cutting the IP in pieces, it is very likely to mess up your car.
Here is what I've come up with and I have to say, I'm not recommending it. This is a thought exercise only and if anyone does this and says I told them to, I'll deny every word. If I am breaking any laws just by writing this then the situation is too far gone to be fixed and every person for themselves.
The trillium is Ontario's official flower but, contrary to popular belief, it is not illegal to pick them except in national parks and other conservation zones. It is illegal to pick the Drooping Trillium (Trillium flexipis). Here's what a drooping trillium looks like:
To get rid of an Astral Info Pillar correctly takes at least four people and as many Drooping Trilliums. First, you need to go after the concrete the IP is standing on. That's how it is supported. Anyone who has ever built a fence or a deck knows how this works. The concrete goes down and the base for the IP (or fence post) goes in while the concrete is still wet. If I was recommending a method (which I'm not) I would say 6' pry bars, picks, and shovels would be the tools of choice. Half the people pulling on the top of the IP - some mechanical assistance would be good here, like a winch on an off-road vehicle. The rest get the pry bars into the ground and start working the concrete foundation free. Don't underestimate the amount of force needed. These things are likely engineered to bend but not break in the event a car hits them, for the safety of pedestrians, but the foundations were designed to stay. You could also think about renting a jack-hammer if you are really determined.
After you get the IP out of the ground, fill the space left in the hole with high quality top soil. Then plant your Drooping Trilliums according to the instructions of someone who understands plants better than I do.
Another warning, since it's illegal to pick drooping trilliums, make sure to keep your receipt! That way you can prove you purchased them and didn't pick them yourself.
Of course, an equally effective strategy would be to go after the sidewalk between the building and the IP. It's going to be thinner and less heavy than the foundation of the IP. Smash it up, remove it, and plant the DTs all the way from the IP to the storefront - completely blocking the sidewalk. Then get some lawn chairs, sleeping bags (depending on the season), and a copy of the legislation protecting the DTs and wait.
I like the latter solution as it presents the City with a decision you can exploit - does it destroy an ugly and unpopular IP or rip up a bunch of (legally protected) flowers? Good copy either way.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
On Zombies and Vampires
In the last decade of the previous century and first decade of this one, everything was vampires. Actually, if I was going to place a firm date at the start of the recent vampire resurgence, I would say it was the release of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). After that came the Blade trilogy (all very good), various and sundry television shows, and the delightfully unreadable Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. The books and movies earned $170 million for Meyer and she deserves every penny. G*d they are awful.
Somewhere in the last five years a major change happened. After nearly two decades of Vampires, suddenly everything was Zombies. Zombie movies (my favourite is Zombieland by Reuben Fleischer from 2009), zombie television shows (The Walking Dead obviously the best of the bunch), zombie preparedness kits, a Center for Disease Control report, and a zombie proof house.
We are careful with our fears. They are important to us. A major change like this, from one focus to another, means something. To explain why this change happened we need to understand what we were, and are, afraid of.
Vampires have always been a symbol of sexuality, or our fears about sexuality. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised the vampire re-emerged as a cultural fixture at precisely that time we, as a society (particularly the youth) were being taught to fear sex like never before. AIDS was in the news, in tv show plots, in movies, in the classroom, it was everywhere. G*ds punishment for our immorality (or a CIA plot to kill African Americans, if you believe the rantings of the lovably insane Bill Cosby). Sex was no longer something to fear because of social stigma - it could kill you.
In Coppola's Dracula the eponymous villain is a self-admitted monster but the most obvious link between vampirism and the new fear of sex is Dracula's refusal to bite the nearly-naked Winona Ryder. He refuses to "condemn her" to his world. In a movie otherwise drenched with sexual images and symbols, this is a strangely puritanical moment. Still, the connection between sex and death is consistent.
In the Blade movies we are introduced to a vampire who doesn't feed on humans. A chaste vampire. A virgin vampire. He still looks cool and murders people in appropriately graphic ways, but he is removed from the sexual connection between blood and sex. His only friend is an old man. His foe is a handsome (but presumably straight) young man. The two women in the film are a scientist who facilitates Blade's refusal to feed and Blade's mother. This is how the film handles the sexual nature of vampires - thru the interjection of a mother who has remained young and nubile. Instead of fear of AIDS we get the more ancient fear of incest. In Blade 2 the hero falls in love with another vampire (closing off any fear of infection) but she dies before their relation is consummated.
The Twilight series is completely without sexual tension or imagery. The characters are all beautiful and completely asexual. Until they are legally married. Then they are completely monogamous. The books add a new element to vampire mythology - the "mate for life" rule. They are also useful members of society, good neighbors, and generally amiable people. Except the Italians.
This is a sketch of a progression. Obviously there are deviations from this movement towards a friendly, neutered monster. Brian Bendis's Thirty Days of Night, for example, also removes the sexual aspect from vampires but replaces it with even more killing fury.
And I wouldn't claim AIDS (and AIDS awareness) was the only reason for the evolution. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an early precursor of Twilight's non-sexual monsters. Although Buffy was deeply in love with a vampire, the story was more concerned with traditional teenage sexual angst than fear of AIDS or more deep-seated fears of our own sexuality. Of course, the introduction of the vampire Spike took the show in a different direction - more comical and philosophical at the same time. This is an aside to the current argument but Spike was what made BtVS a truly great tv show.
By the time Twilight had finished its epochal run and K.Stew and Patts were (some) household names, vampire stories had become uncool. The hook was too obvious. Who wouldn't want to be rich, young, and beautiful forever? There was no down-side and so no drama. But that doesn't mean the switch from vampires to zombies was necessary or obvious. I would argue Twilight was more responsible for the shift than any other franchise. From rich, young, beautiful and omnipotent to dead, disgusting, and contagious - the zombie was the perfect monster to replace Twilight's teen-idols.
Vampires equal sex. This has been a staple of our culture for a long time. But what do zombies equal? I don't think they represent anything, certainly not in the obvious and fairly literal way vampires do. Zombies are stripped of qualities, they have only one function (eating flesh) and so cannot be analyzed as agents unto themselves. They function either as a metaphor for society or the cause of its overthrow and possibly both. Still, the question remains: Why are zombies so damned popular?
I used to think it was a metaphor for lack of political agency. Zombies cannot be reasoned with. They cannot even communicate. To me, this seemed like a perfect metaphor for the society in which we live - the most dominant fact about our social existence is that we are at the mercy of powers we cannot exercise any influence over or even communicate with. This was largely a Marxist reading of zombies (never thought I'd write that sentence). The zombie plague was capitalism in its current form, destroying everything it touched and leaving the survivors alone and fearful, scrounging a living from whatever was left behind. I now think this reading, while still possible, lacks nuance.
The most potent moment in any zombie film (tv show, comic book, etc) is when a character close to the hero (heroes) becomes a zombie. That moment of turning, when something previously familiar or even essential to the heroes understanding of the world and his/her place in it becomes the Other, is where the drama (and the terror) of zombie fiction resides. Zombie fiction is ultimately about social isolation, whether the cause is seen as capitalism, politics, urban planning, whatever.
Of course, zombie fiction also contains a powerful release. Instead of dreaming about becoming the monster (as is the case with vampire fiction) we gain power and freedom by remaining precisely who we are - provided we also have a lot of guns. The scene from The Simpson's is telling here:
Bart: Dad! You just killed zombie Flanders!
Homer: He was a zombie?
In zombie fiction our hopelessness and helplessness is never relieved. We do not change. Our circumstance becomes much clearer. Is that the asshole who insulted me yesterday? becomes Zombie! We don't suffer any extra burdens, at least not as viewers. Most of us are as afraid every day as the heroes of zombie fiction. But, unlike them, we possess no clear way of responding to our fear. We cannot understand our fear or isolation. And, as Hannah Arendt writes, "Suffering without meaning is intolerable."
Somewhere in the last five years a major change happened. After nearly two decades of Vampires, suddenly everything was Zombies. Zombie movies (my favourite is Zombieland by Reuben Fleischer from 2009), zombie television shows (The Walking Dead obviously the best of the bunch), zombie preparedness kits, a Center for Disease Control report, and a zombie proof house.
We are careful with our fears. They are important to us. A major change like this, from one focus to another, means something. To explain why this change happened we need to understand what we were, and are, afraid of.
Vampires have always been a symbol of sexuality, or our fears about sexuality. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised the vampire re-emerged as a cultural fixture at precisely that time we, as a society (particularly the youth) were being taught to fear sex like never before. AIDS was in the news, in tv show plots, in movies, in the classroom, it was everywhere. G*ds punishment for our immorality (or a CIA plot to kill African Americans, if you believe the rantings of the lovably insane Bill Cosby). Sex was no longer something to fear because of social stigma - it could kill you.
In Coppola's Dracula the eponymous villain is a self-admitted monster but the most obvious link between vampirism and the new fear of sex is Dracula's refusal to bite the nearly-naked Winona Ryder. He refuses to "condemn her" to his world. In a movie otherwise drenched with sexual images and symbols, this is a strangely puritanical moment. Still, the connection between sex and death is consistent.
In the Blade movies we are introduced to a vampire who doesn't feed on humans. A chaste vampire. A virgin vampire. He still looks cool and murders people in appropriately graphic ways, but he is removed from the sexual connection between blood and sex. His only friend is an old man. His foe is a handsome (but presumably straight) young man. The two women in the film are a scientist who facilitates Blade's refusal to feed and Blade's mother. This is how the film handles the sexual nature of vampires - thru the interjection of a mother who has remained young and nubile. Instead of fear of AIDS we get the more ancient fear of incest. In Blade 2 the hero falls in love with another vampire (closing off any fear of infection) but she dies before their relation is consummated.
The Twilight series is completely without sexual tension or imagery. The characters are all beautiful and completely asexual. Until they are legally married. Then they are completely monogamous. The books add a new element to vampire mythology - the "mate for life" rule. They are also useful members of society, good neighbors, and generally amiable people. Except the Italians.
This is a sketch of a progression. Obviously there are deviations from this movement towards a friendly, neutered monster. Brian Bendis's Thirty Days of Night, for example, also removes the sexual aspect from vampires but replaces it with even more killing fury.
And I wouldn't claim AIDS (and AIDS awareness) was the only reason for the evolution. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an early precursor of Twilight's non-sexual monsters. Although Buffy was deeply in love with a vampire, the story was more concerned with traditional teenage sexual angst than fear of AIDS or more deep-seated fears of our own sexuality. Of course, the introduction of the vampire Spike took the show in a different direction - more comical and philosophical at the same time. This is an aside to the current argument but Spike was what made BtVS a truly great tv show.
By the time Twilight had finished its epochal run and K.Stew and Patts were (some) household names, vampire stories had become uncool. The hook was too obvious. Who wouldn't want to be rich, young, and beautiful forever? There was no down-side and so no drama. But that doesn't mean the switch from vampires to zombies was necessary or obvious. I would argue Twilight was more responsible for the shift than any other franchise. From rich, young, beautiful and omnipotent to dead, disgusting, and contagious - the zombie was the perfect monster to replace Twilight's teen-idols.
Vampires equal sex. This has been a staple of our culture for a long time. But what do zombies equal? I don't think they represent anything, certainly not in the obvious and fairly literal way vampires do. Zombies are stripped of qualities, they have only one function (eating flesh) and so cannot be analyzed as agents unto themselves. They function either as a metaphor for society or the cause of its overthrow and possibly both. Still, the question remains: Why are zombies so damned popular?
I used to think it was a metaphor for lack of political agency. Zombies cannot be reasoned with. They cannot even communicate. To me, this seemed like a perfect metaphor for the society in which we live - the most dominant fact about our social existence is that we are at the mercy of powers we cannot exercise any influence over or even communicate with. This was largely a Marxist reading of zombies (never thought I'd write that sentence). The zombie plague was capitalism in its current form, destroying everything it touched and leaving the survivors alone and fearful, scrounging a living from whatever was left behind. I now think this reading, while still possible, lacks nuance.
The most potent moment in any zombie film (tv show, comic book, etc) is when a character close to the hero (heroes) becomes a zombie. That moment of turning, when something previously familiar or even essential to the heroes understanding of the world and his/her place in it becomes the Other, is where the drama (and the terror) of zombie fiction resides. Zombie fiction is ultimately about social isolation, whether the cause is seen as capitalism, politics, urban planning, whatever.
Of course, zombie fiction also contains a powerful release. Instead of dreaming about becoming the monster (as is the case with vampire fiction) we gain power and freedom by remaining precisely who we are - provided we also have a lot of guns. The scene from The Simpson's is telling here:
Bart: Dad! You just killed zombie Flanders!
Homer: He was a zombie?
In zombie fiction our hopelessness and helplessness is never relieved. We do not change. Our circumstance becomes much clearer. Is that the asshole who insulted me yesterday? becomes Zombie! We don't suffer any extra burdens, at least not as viewers. Most of us are as afraid every day as the heroes of zombie fiction. But, unlike them, we possess no clear way of responding to our fear. We cannot understand our fear or isolation. And, as Hannah Arendt writes, "Suffering without meaning is intolerable."
Thursday, February 14, 2013
On Ugliness
I have made absolutely no effort to design this blog. There is a practical and an ideological reason for this. The practical reason is I'm not smart enough to work the Blogger design setting without serious effort. And I still won't be happy with the product because blogs are nearly always ugly. It should go without saying that the templates offered are hideous. Beyond redemption. Not just lacking goodness but possibly participating in evil.
The only blogs I can think of, off the top of my head, that aren't incredibly ugly were designed with some professional participation - someone to create the title bar, match the colours, do some customization of the layout. And while I occasionally work as a professional designer I am not a stylist by inclination. So it's ugly.
The ideological reason has to do with the ubiquity of "design". The word gets, and deserves, scare-quotes because the seven thousand different cocktail sets you can buy, or the even larger numbers of salt and pepper shakers, iPhone accessories, and cet that aren't really design; they are almost pure products, existing for no reason other than to be purchased. They offer nothing to the purchaser other than possession. They serve no function other than as symbolic carriers of identity - the self you bought.
I am sick of designed shit. I am tired of being forced to chose between fifty versions of the same thing because I supposedly want something personal to me, something that fits a constructed identity, what Gibson calls "an external token of self". I do not want anyone to think they can tell anything about me by my choice of colours for this blog, or by the layout, or by the font. It's just words in an ugly face.
So it's ugly by default. Ugly by design. Ugly by intent. Its ugliness participates in a kind of purity most things lack. I find it symptomatic of our culture that beauty must be considered with deep suspicion and while ugly reads as pure. There is, of course, artifice here as well. But it is a simple one and easily seen through. I am leaving this ugly so the lack of polish will imply a kind of purity, straightforwardness, and authenticity it self-evidently lacks. It is what it is, don't think about it too much.
There is one last reason this is ugly. I think the proliferation of designed objects is not to provide consumers with choice so much as to provide the illusion of choice. At its most basic, this illusion functions as a stand in for power; you are not completely powerless in this society because you are free to buy completely different shit than other people. You can even choose to buy shit neither you, nor anyone you know, would ever actually want, thus demonstrating both your power and freedom. This is also true, or perhaps more fundamental, of the thousands of iPhone accessories available. These are compound accessories - useless things one buys to augment, protect, or disguise another useless thing previously bought. Don't get me wrong, iPhones are pretty cool gadgets but I have never found myself seriously inconvenienced because I don't own one. And no one will ever convince me they bought one because of the utility of the object. iPhones sell because they are cultural identifiers. And the accessories sell because people are uncool with some aspect of the culture being identified and want to mask, occlude, or deny it.
The fact the phone I do own cost $7 and is almost universally recognized as the cheapest cell phone in the world (and likely the cheapest possible cell phone) is something to be deconstructed another day.
The only blogs I can think of, off the top of my head, that aren't incredibly ugly were designed with some professional participation - someone to create the title bar, match the colours, do some customization of the layout. And while I occasionally work as a professional designer I am not a stylist by inclination. So it's ugly.
The ideological reason has to do with the ubiquity of "design". The word gets, and deserves, scare-quotes because the seven thousand different cocktail sets you can buy, or the even larger numbers of salt and pepper shakers, iPhone accessories, and cet that aren't really design; they are almost pure products, existing for no reason other than to be purchased. They offer nothing to the purchaser other than possession. They serve no function other than as symbolic carriers of identity - the self you bought.
I am sick of designed shit. I am tired of being forced to chose between fifty versions of the same thing because I supposedly want something personal to me, something that fits a constructed identity, what Gibson calls "an external token of self". I do not want anyone to think they can tell anything about me by my choice of colours for this blog, or by the layout, or by the font. It's just words in an ugly face.
So it's ugly by default. Ugly by design. Ugly by intent. Its ugliness participates in a kind of purity most things lack. I find it symptomatic of our culture that beauty must be considered with deep suspicion and while ugly reads as pure. There is, of course, artifice here as well. But it is a simple one and easily seen through. I am leaving this ugly so the lack of polish will imply a kind of purity, straightforwardness, and authenticity it self-evidently lacks. It is what it is, don't think about it too much.
There is one last reason this is ugly. I think the proliferation of designed objects is not to provide consumers with choice so much as to provide the illusion of choice. At its most basic, this illusion functions as a stand in for power; you are not completely powerless in this society because you are free to buy completely different shit than other people. You can even choose to buy shit neither you, nor anyone you know, would ever actually want, thus demonstrating both your power and freedom. This is also true, or perhaps more fundamental, of the thousands of iPhone accessories available. These are compound accessories - useless things one buys to augment, protect, or disguise another useless thing previously bought. Don't get me wrong, iPhones are pretty cool gadgets but I have never found myself seriously inconvenienced because I don't own one. And no one will ever convince me they bought one because of the utility of the object. iPhones sell because they are cultural identifiers. And the accessories sell because people are uncool with some aspect of the culture being identified and want to mask, occlude, or deny it.
The fact the phone I do own cost $7 and is almost universally recognized as the cheapest cell phone in the world (and likely the cheapest possible cell phone) is something to be deconstructed another day.
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