Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in
England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all,
it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a
simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice
or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country
to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goring
January 10, 2009
"The drive-through, which accounts for 60 percent of the chain’s business in the
United States, was reconfigured to become more efficient." NYTimes (January 10,
2008)
I didn't know McDonald's does 60% of their business through idling
carbon emitters. We have a problem. McDonald's chief executive
(Jim Skinner, who looks like a McDonald's customer) eats at McDonald's every
day.
I just read an article by
Judith Warner in the New York Times that noted how often movies depict the
lifestyle of 1950's suburbia as a hellhole of emotional privation and
spiritual desiccation. There are a long list of movies that fit the
bill, from "The Hours" and "Far From Heaven" to "Edward Scissorshands" and
"Revolutionary Road", of course. How about "Hairspray"? Andy
Warhol's "Bad"?
She didn't think it was quite fair. I'm not sure if
she actually admired those mythical moms who spent their days cooking and cleaning
and plucking their eyebrows and showing up at school "perfectly coiffed" to
pick up their children-- maybe she should-- but she seems to think it's
unfair that we castigate a lifestyle that provided stability, security, and
happiness to most people. The movies never tire of ridiculing
suburbanites, whether they're manicuring their hedges or swathing the house
with Christmas lights. The audiences for these films live in suburbs,
where they manicure their hedges and put up Christmas lights. And go
to movies that ridicule them.
Having acknowledged a
measure of hypocrisy in the near-universal (among liberal intellectuals)
condemnation of 50's conformity and materialism, I'm not sure this (Warner's
diatribe) isn't just another case of the a writer acting as if she had just
discovered something that the writers she criticizes had always known and
took for granted: that there was indeed a trade-off, and that the material
comforts of suburbia are... just what they are: material comforts. Warner
acts as if an entire generation has forgotten about how nice it is to have a
warm, clean home and meals. Artists, don't you know, sacrifice these things
for the purity of their "art". But of course, we are only ever shown the
successful artist, for whom, we conclude, the sacrifice was worth it. How
would it look if, instead, the movies showed us the dismal, depressing lives
of the vast majority of wood-be artists, living in poverty and deprivation,
for nothing more than the, assumed, personal satisfaction of creating great
art?
And she's right about the note of hypocrisy among the swaths of young,
urban professionals who choose to live in the suburbs for the material
comforts while entertaining quiet delusions about soulfulness and
authenticity being smothered by the spirit of conformity.
All Contents Copyright
© Bill Van Dyk 2009 All Rights Reserved
Font: Verdana