NEIGHBOURHOOD OVER NATIONHOOD
As a change in social history over time has only come to prove that "a new order and intensity" has come to order, openly embracing the new media as the world becomes it's own suburbia. Arjun Appadurai disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy follows this change in world ethics and cultural transitions of the system we live in.
In an account of the "Philippines affinity for American popular music is rich testimony to the global culture of the hyper real", where in a world of print and internet media culture is able to travel from one country to another easily regardless of who the media is centered around. He describes as the Filipino people 'look back to a world they never lost'- media portraying a life of the 'perfect' American yet this life, so contextualized and rich of fantasy is far from real, it is the hyper real that is being fed to foreign countries. A life of a dreamland that is far from existence.
Baudrillard quotes in 'Astral America'
"Sex, beach and mountains. Sex and beach, beach and mountains. Mountains and sex. A few concepts. Sex and concepts. 'Just a life'.
Everything is destined to reappear as a simulation. Landscapes as photography, women as the sexual scenario, thoughts as writing, terrorism as fashion and the media, events as television. Things seem only to exist by virtue of this strange destiny. You wonder whether the world itself isn't just here to serve as advertising copy in some other world.
When the only physical beauty is created by plastic surgery, the only urban beauty by landscape surgery, the only opinion by opinion poll surgery...and now, with genetic engineering, along comes plastic surgery for the whole human species." (Baudrillard 32)
A world of hyper real, where all is 'perfected' to an image that has become an expectation to the outsider. Suburbia is the perfect example, a neighbourhood perfectly paved, large houses and backyards- foreign to most centered in cities, this suburbia has a level of expectations that is rarely met as living such life is often living next to empty houses, failing economies and bare streets as living in once a dream area fades as children leave to work in cities and commuting between suburbia and work is often a long drive.
Arun Appadurai, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy", Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp.27-47
Baudrillard, Jean. America. New York: Verso, 1988.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
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It is interesting to think of America as one big simulation of life, their suburbia portrayed through tv and film presents a pretty boring picture of reality whereas the actual reality seems much sadder. Luckily in NZ we don't really have the emptying out of towns(or do we?), there's usually just enough through-fare for survival but its a scary thought in terms of pollution (amongst other problems) if everyone (in North Island) decided to move to Auckland or Wellington.
ReplyDeleteAlthough strange to think that during our time America has been the superpower and most of what we have been opened to is through the American life- I think that also without, we might be very far behind (mainly technologically) than we are today.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the purpose for life to exist outside the major populated areas is just as important for it to aswell- New Zealand for example couldn't survive without its farming industry, therefore a need for smaller towns exists.
But the future of most moving towards populated areas is quite possibly inevitable. What that leads towards is purely unknown
The hyperreality and silent horror of American suburbia has been a subject of investigation through fiction for a long time. One of my favourite book/film combinations: Jeffrey Eugenides/Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides is deliciously creepy in its portrayal of urban decay and death in a way that cannot be easily understood. Why do all the trees planted along the streets have to die? Why do a family of teenage girls commit suicide? The girls don't know. The boys don't know. Everyone judges everyone else and thinks they have the right to know each other's business.
ReplyDeleteGregory Crewdson has also turned his eye on this underlying dissatisfaction with the American ideal that is suburbia. He questions whether this is not actually an alien environment that we, as humans, have created for ourselves and that will inevitably be our destruction. At least that's how the work seems to read to me.
Another film that deals with a certain suburban horror is Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road. It is not an easy film, but will be rewarding if you let it.
-Nathaniel
Suburbia has failed, as it was always going to. The perfection it was trying to embody was its ultimate downfall. So what about on a larger scale? Canberra, Brasilia...both cities created for a specific reason, and both cities that have failed in trying to emulate a utopian place to live. The streets are empty of people, there is no one walking. They were created without thinking about the inhabitants, but rather the image. An image of modernism that, like suburbia, chased out the people who called it home.
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