'Cathedral of commerce'

I read this article in the New York Times this morning about how construction in slowing down:'End Seen to New York Building Boom'. I think this will demonstrate the economic turn of events most dramatically in the long term, because the city scape that is home to Wall Street won't up and re-invent itself, in 'The American Way' which people have come to expect. Instead, things will slow down, and perhaps in a few more years the city will look even older than it does already. I think that will change our visual experience of the city, and in turn its symbolic function as an icon of western capitalism to the rest of the world. 

Frank Winfield Woolworth, head of the self-named chain shop, called his famous Gothic style skyscraper, the Woolworth Building  a 'Cathedral of commerce'. In the light of this apt quotation perhaps New York is more akin to the fall of Babylon rather than 19th c. Paris! If that is the case then Joe Friedman's epithet for New York's famous brand of tall buildings 'temples to Mammon' springs to mind. It remains an apt comment considering such temples and their priests, the banks, have been pretty humiliated by this crisis. In turn, their power, as reflected in the architecture, seems to be receding. 

Unfortunately it will be schools, and city infastructure that is the most hard hit by this recent turn of events. It's sad to think that monumental public buildings will be a thing of the past. Of course we will mourn the passing of new corporate 'cathedrals to capitalism', but one gets the feeling that now is neither their time nor place. It seems that Grand Central Station will become all the more bizarre, as a relic from a time of national affluence in conjunction with a serious faith in the public sector. 

Authentic Bicycle Thieves

Charles Burnett described the story of Bicycle Thieves as "diabolically simple". I think you'd be hard pressed to elaborate on "Man gets bike. Man looses bike. Will man ever find bike again." Simplicity is what make this film so ethically complex and dramatically heartbreaking, although it explicit about neither. The images we see are just a guy and his son trying to find a bike. 

It the viewer who connect these images with radical social commentary. We are plunged into a moral grey zone, in much the same way as a Graham Green novel, where we identify the criminal a victim, the right as wrong, and the bad as necessary: our moral absolutes fail to stand the test. The workers in this film are forced to the thieving trade because they live in a state that fails to provide for the poor. In order to survive they have to renounce social duty for individual gain. 

Again, it is the simplicity of this film which makes it such a sophisticated interrogation of post-war Italy. The documentary style (although highly manufactured) is what Godfrey Cheshire describes as an 'ethical stance' which 'continues to represent a struggle for authenticity'. Here is where I think the film becomes involved with contemporary America. The entire nation is gasping for any last grain of authenticity they can believe in politics. McCain's slogan 'The Original Maverick', implies the Republican ticket provide some kind of root source, a primary, unfettered, unfiltered character, to it's voters. 

Obama's campaign is centred around 'change', which is the clearest demand of 'Bicycle Thieves'. After watching that film it's impossible to think that the status quo of its characters should be permitted to continue. The Democratic ticket's compact slogan – one verb 'to change', seems in complete alignment with the socialist principals of Italian neorealist emerging from fascist rule with a fractured cultural identity and complicit guilt in the atrocities committed by the Nazis, being unearthed at the time the film was made in 1948. 

Yet the Obama slogan is still extraordinarily vague. It doesn't pin down precisely what is going to change, in the way that the Republican ticket identifies 'original' expressly with 'Maverick'. This American election seems more like political theatre than ever before. Yet we seem to be sliding further and further away from the 'total cinema' of the neorealist social conscious message for change, to a vague and non-committal rallying cry. It's function is to rouse rather than deliver. 

Angry In Brooklyn

Thursday morning I went to Brooklyn. On  on 3rd Street I took this photograph. The hand painted slogan reads: 'NO MORE CORPORATE BULLSHIT!FUK WALL ST. !' Although it seems a little trite writing it out in compute text, the scale of this graffiti is so big that its statement completely dominated the skyline. It was in a trendy part of Brooklyn, but on a derelict site. Without Manhattan sky scrapers to blot out the phrase, it really screamed out. The tone of the work was particularly jarring because the day I visited this part of town happened to be incredibly beautiful 9.11 weather. 

'My Lost City'

A fairly old article (2003) by Luc Sante in the New York Review of Books is spot on about the city's extraordinary buildings and why they haunt the imagination. The depiction of New York as an elderly metropolis connects with Wall Street's crumbling (demolished) fiscal might. Every day the press is full of photographs that depict 'the suits' in abject despair. Their expressions seem to portray Sante's meditations word for word.  

New York is neither the Wonder City nor a half-populated ruin but a vulnerable, overcrowded, anxious, half-deluded, all-too-human town, shaken by a cataclysm nobody could have foreseen.

(the photograph is from the 'front page' of the New Yorker website on October 8, 2008 in conjunction with an article entitled 'The Rationality of Panic' by Steve Coll.)

I find this tv clip quite creepy. It's obviously staged. That somehow makes it's commentary on the current financial climate all the more chilling. The clip seems more like a poorly performed show, then a news commentary...I don't know if that's an intentional irony or just a mistake.  

A better article is this one I found in 'Profile' magazine, (which is a little bit like Monocle, only slightly less fanciful - more American, as opposed to 'citizen of the world'). I prefer the style for one. Though perhaps a comparison between the two is a little unfair!

Bush vs. Project Runway

- more day to day observations against the back drop of the Palin fandango and the Bush administration 'bail out'. Went downtown to sup with the Handrew on heirloom tomatoes. This was our final taste bud hurrah to the last fresh food from the summer. After all, we have just had an equinox. What Andrew said about Bush's speech last night was spot on (of course). All the major network channels give him the prime time spot, because they have to, because he asked for it. Though I don't mean to be sarke, when I say the speech can't have come even close to the anticipation of 'Project Runway'.  Perhaps telly watchers across the states are so used to his sub-par performance, they've given up. Bush plays political theatre in a way that would make Elizabeth Ist blush for shame, Russian tsars titter and emperors weep.  'Project Runway' reports on ambition, love and loss in a consumer world with frankly far superior production, research, and aplomb. It's no good blaming the 'celebrity culture' around American politicians. They have simply slid closer towards more classic images of monarchy, commonly associated with latterday Europe. Elizabeth Ist (though I can't vouch this applies to the 2nd), again,  positively cultivated the monarch\idol attitude towards the governing body. While contemporary theatre (which is some of the best available in the Western world), certainly jibed, heckled and hissed at her performance, there was never a sense that it was inappropriate for the two to be intertwined. Perhaps Bush should invite 'Project Runway' to his 'court', in a belated attempt to engage with the peoples over which he rules. At the very least, his television team might get some better speech tips. 

Many fairly, nay practically all, calm headed financial commentators are saying the state of America's fiscal affairs are as bad as it's been not simply in the 80s, but the 20s: all ye mark how the bell tolls, recession on that scale is imminent. Despite this somewhat tangible climate, Bush took only 15 mins to address the nation on the matter. He looked terrified: apparantley as frightened as he looked just after 9\11. (Incidently, yesterday was one of those '9\11' days when the light is so shockingly beautiful, with a breeze light and crisp, and a cloudless baby blue sky: perfect temperature, iconic 'New York in the Fall' weather. But of course now such a sensation is charged with weary tension. Something you couldn't even dream up, like a plane crashing into a skyscraper, happened on a day just like it. So hence, '9\11 weather'. The perfect irony being how pretty it is.) You could even hear a tremor of the voice as he paused for breath. He's the leader of the western world, and he's terrified.

 I think that was most clearly expressed by the television.  Afterwards, barely anyone on the telly spent any time reviewing the speech at all. Perhaps there was nothing else you could say. Of course his message was fairly clear:  it's fucked. it's over. Yet what signalled this more than anything Bush's nerves betrayed, was his impotency to pack a punch over American primetime.  Wait - I'm forgetting myself: Fox News spend a considerable ammount of time talking about how McCain was right to suspend his campain in the light of the 'bail out'. As a strategy which screems nothing but weakness and selfish stupidity, they only vindicated how dreadfully incompetent the McCain jambouree really is. As always, they used phrases which don't actually mean anything. It seems more fun trying to import semantic sense onto Fox News than admit the general moral tragedy that is what they are actually trying to say. The faces on this channel consisted of  two types of commentator: stupid, arrogant old men and stupid, arrogant young broads. Just like the republican party presidential candidates. Some of them spoke so badly I doubt they'd qualify for sports commentary let alone 'live' analysis of the american election. 

Before the speech came on, we watched a repeat of the daily show, which had a fantastic skit about the current debacle. Running on the lines of 'is there anything left that this administration can de-achieve'.  The punchline was superb. "George doesn't want to be the worst president [beat] but the last"