Friday, May 22, 2009

P O S T S C R I P T



There is a city, constantly trumps the paradise, from its dream-factory to the glossy lavish lifestyles. Here prosperity roots and branches splendiferously in almost every shape. It is a cosmopolitan, expanded immensely thanks to mental slavery, of those that explicitly are hired for making the better image.

Los Angels is all about perfection: an exaggeration model of pleasure.

There is another city, dark and polluted. Gangs are shooting openly in streets, burning everything in their way. Crime and poverty is booming. If there was a dream once, here in the mornings you will find yourself trapped in an army of homeless, roaming furiously around, as for the nights you will hear them with the bullet sound bites.

Los Angels is all about perfection: an exaggeration of brawl.

Or maybe Los Angeles is an endless thriller. Alas, it is upon you, the non-citizens, to decide that which version demonstrates more sticks. And for those who already are living in this dogmatic city, you probably are too busy figuring out your own lives, or you are becoming ignorant numbs. Because, It is never the question of what exactly the city is but rather what it wants to be. So likewise, as through the theater you briefly are selecting a desired scripted reality, here, you just have to pretend to choose your favorite and perhaps the hoax version. Finally, it is a movie without particular ending, so try to enjoy the popcorn and action scenes.

That’s how I entered in Los Angeles, somewhere between the endless discussions about the city. My first intuition was to rationalize the 1992 riot as a model of urban conflict.

I have already learnt enough about it on screen , there is no need for traveling.

Los Angeles knows the best way- going back to what really is- alike movies, which it only consists of the perfected (enhanced) shots- when it wants to deal with the 1992 riot, the best verdict after ten years constant challenges, is the easy one: just change the name and ignore the existing facts. And there would be no south central Los Angeles left in the map. Problem solved.

That is why. It is redundant to analyze Los Angeles logically. As it is evident that after all the rational analyzes of the L.A riot, intellectuals could only create more complexity.

Instead, think about a high-budget movie, sharp colors fills with astounding action scenes. It is designed precisely to contradict the reality. It portrays a simple trip, offers an escape from every day despairs. And importantly, like a vacation, it is only momentary and at the end you can go back home – intact.

However, the confusion appears when you are taking it too seriously and shifting its temporality to the state of permanence. This is like staying in the vacation forever is not necessary an obliging lifestyle.

And

There is no need for heavy theoretical justification for pop-culture- basically it is exist there, somewhere But it is critical when it becomes the permanent lifestyle.

It is obvious that television and Internet –what I called the image-fiction entertainment- has changed our perspective of the world. We are becoming the nation of viewers, when an average American household watches TV more than six hours a day. Media has become our official source for research and the consumption habit appears in our everyday perception of the whole. And when it comes talking about the whole, this is not just a new viewpoint, as gradually we are becoming one giant family. This is sort of family we are seeing either passively on TV or actively communicating with on the net. It is freighting to see that there are few alternatives left and certainly there is no escape from this immense invasion. We literally cannot imagine life without the media. We are not different from our fathers in that television presents and defines our contemporary world. Where we are different is that we have no memory of a world without such an electric definition. So what is happening to the rest of daily life? We are neglecting its being, simply by escaping to the imaginary world of media. Or what I called it by staying perpetually in a vacation.

This, superimposition of image-fiction over the real world, is my hypothesis for excavating the Los Angeles, while referring to Walter Benjamin’s quote cities to be looked at rather than lived in, the main confusion appears when constructed temporality becomes permanence.

I always have the Rem Koolhaas’s joke in my mind, thinking about future of urbanism, he concludes with the famous phase:

“The city is no longer. We can leave the theater now.[1]


[1] S,M,L,XL, Pp.1264

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