Ed
Driscoll at PJ Media March 3rd, 2013 - 3:19 pm
Back in 2004, blogger Val Prieto coined the
phrase “Omnipotent Tourist Syndrome” to
describe the love of many on the left to jet into places such as Cuba and scope
out the socialist-inflicted ruins, and the ruined lives of its inhabitants and
then jet back a few days later to enjoy all of the benefits of American or
European capitalism:
The Omnipotent Tourist Syndrome is a disease common
among Americans that is caused by arrogance, egotism and nonchalance. Carriers
show a penchant for obliviously overlooking the obvious while delighting
themselves at the cost of others. Delirious OTS sufferers refuse to acknowledge
their malady and will argue that it is their God given right as an
American to travel freely about the world with little or no conscience
or consequence. OTS people frequently hide behind their Bill of Rights and
Constitution. Unfortunately, there is no cure for OTS nor is there any way to
ease its symptoms. It is a disease which, no matter how much hard data and
facts are introduced into the OTS sufferer, will not ease unless said sufferer
finds a compass of morality and humanity.
Of course, getting to Cuba or North Korea from
America can take a bit of effort. But these days, there’s no need for a leftist
with a yen to play omnipotent
tourist to ever leave the US, as my fellow PJM
columnist Richard Fernandez writes, taking one for the
team by spotting an article in the New York Times titled, “How
Detroit Became the World Capital of Staring at Abandoned Old Buildings.”
Richard sets up his link to this piece by writing:
Mark Binelli of New York Times has
managed to portray the collapse of the city as some kind aesthetic triumph. He
calls it the “world capital” of beautiful ruined buildings. [They are beautiful because most were built during the last
stages of the American Renaissance when the study of Classical Architecture
informed the practitioners and artisans who designed and built these buildings.
[“I prefer the Renaissance as imitated in New York to the original in
Florence.”---Le Corbusier] Funny thing, since classicism began with the detailed study of the
ruins of Rome it has always been a style that aged, or shall I say decayed,
gracefully. Most buildings in the modern styles having gone through the
desecration of Detroit would look like the smile of a homeless man.] Where else can you see
whole city blocks of skyscrapers in smashed, burned and deserted condition
except in movies with titles like “Omega Man” or “I am Legend” or “After
Earth”? And in the movies they do it with CGI whereas in Detroit it’s all
live action.
Binelli explains a point which may not have been
obvious to the reader. It is only plain to the artist: the city is beautiful
because it seems ugly.
Now much of the attention being showered upon
Detroit from the trendiest of quarters comes, in no small measure, thanks to
the city’s blight. Detroit’s brand has become authenticity, a key component of
which has to do with the way the city looks.
This is not exactly a question of gentrification;
when your city has 70,000 abandoned buildings, it will not be gentrified
anytime soon. Rather, it’s one of aesthetics.
And in Detroit, you can’t talk aesthetics without talking ruin porn, a term
that has become increasingly familiar in the city. Detroiters, understandably,
can get touchy about the way descriptions and photographs of ruined buildings
have become the favorite Midwestern souvenirs of visiting reporters.
Still, for all of the local complaints, outsiders
are not alone in their fascination. My friend Phil has staged secret,
multicourse gourmet meals, prepared by well-known chefs from local
restaurants, in abandoned buildings like the old
train station; John and his buddies like to play ice hockey on the frozen
floors of decrepit factories. A woman who moved to Detroit from Brooklyn began
to take nude photographs of herself in wrecked spaces (thrusting the concept of
ruin porn to an even less metaphorical level). And Funky Sour Cream, an arts
collective originally from New York, arranged an installation of little cupcake
statues in the window of a long-shuttered bakery on Chene Street. A few days
later, the bakery burned down. People debated whether or not this was a
coincidence.
Perhaps the article is tongue in cheek, but if not
then the bakery fire is probably not coincidence. It was probably intentionally
set by the last sane man in Detroit.
One black lady managed to point out the downside of
living in ruins at a talk the author attended. “During the question-and-answer
period, a stylishly dressed African-American woman in her 50s stood up to make
a contrarian point: that devotees of ruined buildings should be aware of the
ways in which the objects of their affection left ‘retinal scars’ [another form of PTSD?] on the children of Detroit,
contributing to a ‘significant part of the psychological trauma’ inflicted on
them on a daily basis.”
“Retinal scars” — that’s a classic. How’s that
related to the scars that have been gouged in the American landscape by the
legions of those in search of aesthetics, themselves, their life destiny, in
making a statement for passion, caring, understanding and all the other planks
of liberal policy that led the city to dusty death?
“Retinal scars” was probably her polite way of
telling the members of that refined audience that there was something of a
downside to living in a dump. But whether that will dissuade artists whose idea
of chic is having yourself photographed nude in a reasonable facsimile of
Berlin, 1945 remains to be seen. [Berlin was smashed,
Detroit merely allowed to decay.]
Berlin, 1945 you say? We’ll talk more about that
right after the page break.
It’s funny; my first thought after reading the above
passage from the Times on Detroit and “Ruin Porn” was simply
to juxtapose it in a blog post with a quote from historian Frederick Taylor’s
2005 book Dresden:
Tuesday, February 13, 1945 from Robert Ley,
the head of the National Socialist Labor Front. When Dresden was flattened by
the Americans and British in 1945, with the approval of the Russians simultaneously
advancing into Germany from the east, Ley
fanatically said:
“After the destruction of beautiful Dresden, we
almost breathe a sigh of relief. It is over now. In focusing on our struggle
and victory we are no longer distracted by concerns for the monuments of German
culture. Onward!…Now we march toward the German victory without any superfluous
ballast and without the heavy spiritual and material bourgeois baggage.”
Of course it’s fantasy, with the end of the Nazis
clearly in sight, even to them. (And recall early in the film Downfall,
Hitler utters a very similar remark to Albert Speer when staring at his
enormous model of Berlin, backhandedly praising the allies for hitting the
CTL-ALT-DLT keys on Berlin, which they themselves had planned to do,
either before the war or if they had won.) But at least there was an assumption
that these cities would be rebuilt.
Many of today’s left though simply want to leave the
ruins in place. Earlier today, we linked to Robert Tracinski inReal Clear Politics, written
after watching the Oscars last week revealed to him the abyss of 21st century
Hollywood, and Tracinski concluded:
This is the dead end of Modernist culture, which
sought to break down traditional values and rules but was unable to replace
them with anything better. It left us in a cultural void where, as the New
York Times piece puts it, everyone is afraid that “serious commitment
to any belief will eventually be subsumed by an opposing belief, rendering the
first laughable at best and contemptible at worst.” In the second half of the
20th century, this corrosive Modernist skepticism brought us the ruling concept
of contemporary popular culture: the “cool.” Remember the original meaning of
the term. To be “cool” is to be emotionally cool, to refuse to be
caught up in enthusiasm. [Miles with his back to the
audience.] Early on, this could be taken to mean a kind of manly
reserve, the ability to be calm, cool, and collected in the face of strife, or
to refuse to be carried away by momentary or trivial emotions. This is the
sense in which James Bond was “cool.” But by the end of the 20th century, the
culture of cool increasingly came to mean a studied lack of response to values.
It meant refusing to be carried away by enthusiasm about anything.
That sense of nihilism has implications far beyond
the television and movie screen. Much of today’s left have abandoned the serious study of history,
and have largely turned their backs on the future as
well. All that is left for them is to play in the ruins — and to create more of them.
[Recently Huff-Po presented an article by Noam Chomsky on
North Korea and the ongoing lack of communication between us and them, only
thing it was not informed by the history. Abandoning the serious study of
history? Maybe we have abandoned the serious study of reality?]
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