First, I'm extremely disappointed in the result of the PSU v. Michigan game yesterday. PSU missed two field goals early on, Lloyd Carr managed to steal another play by putting two seconds back on the clock (it pays to be able to manipulate time), and the final Michigan drive, from kickoff to touchdown, showed a monumental collapse of PSU defense -- the PSU defense had some big plays, but they gave up way too much yardage to a poor offense. Oh well. Michigan shall remain PSU's undoing for at least one more year.
Second, how many folks around here have ever been to Las Vegas? You may be familiar then with the concept that gambling is legal out there and they have these big things called "casinos" that offer a variety of gambling activities. Now it used to be that it was enough to have some slot machines, some card tables, craps, and a roulette wheel stuck inside a large opulent room with dark wood, dark carpet, no windows, and no clocks. However, that pretty much changed sometime in the late 1980's and came into full force in the 1990's, as Las Vegas casinos became more and more interested in attracting more than the gambling dollar. These days only hard pressed downtown casinos retain that gambling-only flavor. Pretty much every casino on the strip also operates as a high end shopping mall built in ever more elaborate settings, which is sort of where I'm going with this whole discussion.
Las Vegas has always functioned by displacing societal order; as Mikhail Bakhtin would say, it functions as the carnivalesque (although without the generally liberating impetus that Bakhtin ascribes to it -- this carnival is tightly focused not on freedom, but on profit). More and more this atmosphere has been complemented by resort developers' desire to more complete fantasy worlds for their customers to get lost in. Hence the rise also of what Baudrillard would call the simulacra -- that is the re-creation of places or objects that signify for a culture: for instance, the style of Paris or the cosmopolitan grittiness of New York City or the exoticism/orientalism of Mandalay...these places are packaged, distilled, and sold to consumers as a commodity -- a tightly controlled economy. For example, if you were to try to add to the faux realism of Las Vegas's New York New York by setting up a three card monte table or tagging a mailbox, it wouldn't take long for casino security to escort you out to Tropicana Avenue -- or the trunk of a car (again the simulacra, but for real!).
Las Vegas provides a potent example of this concept because it is so open about its imitation, but the idea translates well to other faux developments, from Disney's Celebration to various "town centers" that spring up in the Washington suburbs to the "fine urban living" promised by certain DC developers' psuedo-lofts. Or even to certain Lefty bookstores.
And this therefore has been the long version of my critique of Busboys and Poets. I'm certain it's stocked full of books that can critique the exact cultural dominant in which it participates. And here's the rub: we're caught in a system that all of us, even the most critical, must participate in if we are to meet basic human needs (it's very romantic perhaps to think like Melville's Bartleby that we could simply "prefer not to," but look at what happened to the guy -- and don't even go to Thoreau with me: the guy still took lunch with the Emerson's most of the time he was "living deliberately").
The above paragraph goes for customers as well as merchants: we are all participants in one way or another in Capitalism -- even the guy sitting outside the Black Cat most nights -- and we largely live within the rules of that system (even the so-called "Black Bloc" whose anarchist tactics steal the headlines on many a protest march have to find food, lodging, and transportation and someone's paying for that).
Again, I don't want to paint Busboys and Poets as an evil place; I hope it survives and thrives. Here's why: unless you have the iron-discipline often ascribed to Gandhi, most people give in to entertainment or leisure on occasion -- and there are worse places than Busboys and Poets to spend your entertainment dollars.
4 comments:
I have not been able to bring myself to make a final tally, but I do believe you have snatched the proverbial pebble from my hand, grasshopper. The Swami was equally robbed by Wisconsin with 30 seconds remaining and USC with time expiring. What a wild day in NCAA futbol, thank goodness i don't live in Vegas or I would have bet heavily on BC and FSU.
What Baudrillard book would you recommend? Sounds very interesting. It's like in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the downtown area is chockful of likenesses to the culture of western frontier life that everyone associates with that area. But it's all completely fake. Everyone's wearing fleece and going skiing while living in their $5 million "log cabin" "ranch"-style mansions.
"... most people give in to entertainment or leisure on occasion." Thank god. Otherwise life would be a monotonous bore. Who the hell wants to live like Ghandi? That wouldn't be any fun.
LB: As Nicholson typed in the Shining, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy...as for Baudrillard, probably The System of Objects or Simulacra and Simulation. I don't subscribe to all of his theories, but the gist of his simulacra work is to talk about how the "real" world is unreachable (perhaps nonexistent) due to mediation (see the short work "The Gulf War Did Not Happen").
Mellow: I'd give every correct pick back for a PSU win over Mich. Also, while I detest FSU, I can't believe they lost to Virginia. I figured they were safe until the ACC title match v. VTech.
When I lived in Boston, there were plans to put in a mall near Walden Pond. Despite the lovely alliteration of "Walden Mall", I think they were opting for the classier (pronounced, in Boston, "cah-'lass-iah) name: The Mall at Walden.
I moved to Vermont before ground had been broken. (Not as a direct response, but now that I think of it, the timing was there...) Later, I never inquired as to whether or not the mall had been built.
If it was-- well, 'nuff said. That speaks for itself. If it wasn't, well, that they considered is almost enough. I admit that the grim, South Park-appreciating part of me hopes that it's there.
"Hell in a handbasket" is such a lovely phrase. Adds a touch of gentility to the vision of the apocalypse.
Not with a bang, but with the soft tones of Muzac in the elevator to Ladies Accessories on the Fourth Floor...
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