Spring Breakers in Tampa Bay: Glorying in the Pirates' Beautiful Wreck

This piece was originally commissioned to run in the online version of Creative Loafing Tampa.  It was apparently declined - all I know is that it never ran.  Maybe why it wasn't wanted will be more clear to you than to me (I have yet to get an explanation from the editor).

People in Tampa Bay have been fretting about director Harmony Korine’s new movie, Spring Breakers, understandably perturbed by a film set in their hometown that is, if the previews are any indication, a serving of debauchery with a side of carnage.  I moved to Tampa Bay in August of 2011, bringing a completely clean slate.  I had never even been to Florida, but I was offered a job, and so I came.  As an outsider who has now seen the length and breadth of the Bay, and who has now seen Spring Breakers, I think the film gets Tampa Bay right.  Not mainly in the hedonism, the crime, or the murder, though I know there are plenty of those around here.  As anyone familiar with Harmony Korine must have known (his last film was titled Trash Humpers, and that title is just as literal as this one), Spring Breakers is not the simple exploitation movie it’s being billed as.  It’s an uncomfortable meditation that captures a feeling unique to Tampa Bay.  It shows a truth that’s difficult, but that should be treasured.

Much of what I found when I came to Tampa Bay reminded me of my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas: brutal heat, tatty public facilities, and a sprawling highway system and six-lane surface roads that marked it as a driving town.  There were differences, too – from St. Pete to Temple Terrace, the poverty was more in-your-face than at home, with panhandlers on every intersection and condemned homes around every corner.  Those unlucky enough not to own a car raced, Frogger-style, across those wide roads, infants in tow, praying for their lives.  Groups of men lounged aimlessly in the green spaces of grocery store parking lots.

Also different from home, though, was the multi-species parade of brighter things mixed right in with that abrasive reality.  There were the professionals that occasionally ventured from South Tampa, sometimes classy and more often delightfully cartoonish.  There were the hipsters, legion with their tattoos and mustaches, in bars across the street from by-the-hour motels.  In October of 2011, there were anarchists in the streets.  There were hand-painted signs for jerk chicken and oxtails.  There was a creative class throwing together shoestring and tape and getting things done.  There were the mangroves and vines stretching through suburban backyards like Father Knows Best got transplanted to Borneo.  There were the nonprofits and activists striving to make things better.  There were lizards sunning themselves on sidewalks, scattering with each step.

Spring Breakers’ story of hedonism and bad endings is just a superficial detail, part of the trappings that let this slow, smallish art film pass as a big deal party-caper flick (Amazingly, it cracked the Billboard Top 10 this weekend, but given broadly negative reactions from misled audiences, watch for it to drop like a rock). The movie’s soul, ironically, is on its surface.  Korine’s focus is on the feeling he hangs on his inconsequential plot, a hallucinatory strangeness fleshed it out with garish colors, ethereal voice overs, blunted melodies, slow pans, and harsh lighting.  The vibe is lonesome and desperate, like it’s all a frantic display of confidence by someone whose soul is crumbling.  It’s a feeling Korine said he found in Tampa Bay as nowhere else in Florida – darkness and light, in struggle, in flux.

That’s not something any sane tourism board would put on bus signs, but that doesn’t make it less true, or less valuable.  Tampa Bay is a place of decadence, desperation, and degradation, but also of possibility and excitement and change – and all for the same reasons.  Think of New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.  People lived in fear of being mugged or killed, but there was CBGBs and Keith Haring and Studio 54. Then Disney bought out Times Square and shut down the porn theaters.  Within what must have seemed like months, New York – the New York we dream of, the New York of Taxi Driver and Manhattan and Wild Style – was gone.

Spring Breakers is about the desire to change, and to escape, about how even when that desire gets pushed too far, it can still be beautiful.  Like New York in the 1970s, Tampa Bay is a royal mess because nobody owns it, and nobody controls it, because right now, nobody wants to.  It’s a place of both risk and freedom, where it’s easy to try something and the costs for failure (and here the film doesn’t get it quite right . . .) are low.  It’s a city being made before our eyes, a city whose future, unlike those of so many older cities, has yet to be written.

I was originally hired for a two-year job here in Tampa, but I’ve decided to stay and see what happens.  I think Harmony Korine would understand.

Norman Towle: St. Petersburg's Henry Darger?

Note: I now blog at Blownhorizonz.com.  It's much prettier to look at, and more focused on fun stuff like weird fiction, extreme music, and awesome art (like this!).  Also check out my Tumblr at blownhorizonz.tumblr.com.

Last night I hit the opening of one of the more exciting and challenging gallery shows I've seen in a while. The show is at the Venture Compound, a D.I.Y. music and art space in St. Petersburg, FL, and the opening coincided with the 29th installation of the Pangaea Project, an ambitious noise/avante-garde series curated by the Venture group.  The art is by Norman Towle, who died recently at the age of 99.  The show is said to encompass 95% of the work Towle produced in his lifetime.

Knowing Towle's story is key to understanding why this apparently unassuming work is so interesting.  After spending time in the Merchant Marine, Towle attended a technical art institute, then spent several decades as a commercial art retoucher, largely working for the New York Times.  He retired to Florida, only after which, apparently, he actually began to produce art of his own.

And what art.  The works - over a hundred of them - cover everything from local St. Petersburg landscapes, portraits of public figures, nonspecific scenes of everything from dancing to ocean life, abstract works that include elements of collage, and a little bit of softcore pornography.  These are all rendered in a hand that can be described as inexpert, even clumsy.

But the whole body of work, and many of its individual pieces, are profoundly absorbing and multidimensional.  This interest isn't because the work is 'good' in any conventional sense, either technically or because it advances some coherent, self-conscious aesthetic or social message.  Towle falls in that troubled and weird category known with measured condescension as 'folk art' - works and artists whose interest derives from the unselfconsciousness of their process, which allows them to represent, at best, a set of truths as deep as those in more conventional 'high' art.


In Towle's work, as in those of so much folk art, those truths are dual-edged.  On the one hand, when we connect Towle's story to his work, we see the way that modern society can limit human possibility.  These paintings show a man with a profoundly foreshortened vision of life, someone attracted primarily to the most banal of public figures and the safest modes of existence.  There are numerous pictures here of 'beautiful' farmhouses, churches, golf courses, suburban homes, and parking lots (!), and dozens of portraits of presidents and film stars and singers and models. Towle, at least according to his paintings, saw the world exactly as NBC, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have wanted him to.

At the same time, the traces of his own life in Towle's paintings show, through no intent of the artist, what utter lies he was reproducing.  Just as his life fulfilling the commands of others seems to have left him with little ability to reflect critically on the culture around him, decades of touching up other people's images as part of a process that reduced art to nothing but another industrial, assembly-line product seems to have left Towle himself with an imperfect command of fundamental artistic principles of perspective, figure, and color.  His apparent naive reverence for Pope John Paul and suburban normality, filtered through the imperfections that this banal world imposed on his abilities, reveals the absurdity, beauty, and even brutality of modern 'everyday life.'

There's also something profoundly troubling about a man trained in 'art' who produced no work of his own until retiring from his career in the art world.  There's a particular piece here that captures that poignancy - a desolately kitsch landscape of a flower garden, which nonetheless stands out from the other paintings in its technical refinement.  This is apparently another artist's work that Towle gave a few small touch-ups . . . and then signed.  It's one of those instances where the unvarnished reality of folk art manages to convey the desperation and sadness of the human condition far more effectively than 'high' art.  Here and elsewhere, Towle's work, in its way, shows the darkness that lies beneath the facade of normality better than Francis Bacon's.
 

But Towle's work also shows the ability of people to transcend the limits imposed on them by society.  Every observation of Towle's technical limitations comes with the caveat that a great deal of this work was completed when he was in his 80s and 90s, with a hand that would have been unsteady for reasons having nothing to do with skill.  That he persevered at that age at producing any art at all is some kind of testament to human creative energy.  And there's a real joy to lot of the paintings,  something that could be seen as either childlike or just sincere.  It's particularly worth remembering that, as someone born in the early 1920s, who served in the military during the 1940s, Towle would have been close to enough darkness in his life that he might not have had much interest in reproducing it.  What looks to people my age like suburban banality and empty-headed celebrity culture may have been a fully justified retreat to psychic safety for those brutalized by world history and the machinations of social elites.

A Note: Car Radio, Space, and Class

A sudden insight and clarification of the piece on car audio that I'm working on.  It all hinges on Zizek's notion of paraconsistent logic, transferred in a somewhat crudely metaphorical form to the social realm.  The car radio is an instance of technological work that, at the same time, helps extend the atomized form of the early 20th century suburban/suburbanizing white middle class into the space of the car, and also produces its obverse, in the form of car radios used as broadcasting platforms that disturb both urban and, later, suburban ideals of middle-classness as they are linked to quiet/the lack of disruptive 'noise.'   This is linked to the idea that even with the earliest forms of electronic networked communication, the middle classes/knowledge classes began to transcend or escape from the physical space of social life.  At the same time, the development of a working-class vernacular of car radio as noise producer was a work of bringing power and meaning back into space.

The middle classes used the car radio to connect themselves over great distances to projects of national identity and development - for instance, during World War II, radio listening was conceived as a kind of patriotic duty.  These were early experiences of networked identity.  By contrast, the subaltern-identified usage of car radio as a broadcasting platform in local space - specifically, in the emergence of the 'boom cars' that we're all so familiar with now - was a resistance to the networking of identity, and a reaffirmation of localized identities formed in physical spaces.  It was not just a rejection of and attack on middle-class cocooning, but the articulation of a different logic of community altogether.  It is crucial to this understanding that the main media channels for boom car culture were rarely actual radio broadcasts, but physical media, in an era that roughly coincided with the democratization of the production and distribution of these forms - the appearance first of the cassette, then later the CD, then the CDR.  These were not vast networks of high-speed, ephemeral, space-binding broadasts, but much more time-binding, coherent 'records' (in both senses) of highly developed, increasingly local worldviews.

But is there an inconsistency to using Zizek, who in his take on Hegel rejects the notion of socialized reason and history as a project of "The Cunning of Reason," in an argument that hinges on the presumption that these processes play out some sort of structural problem-solving?  I'm not sure.  More generally, I'm not ready to comment on the legitimacy of Zizek's notion of paraconsistent logic - I can frankly say that I know I am well inside that mindset, and I still don't have many of the tools that I'd need to take a step back and place it in the context of the history of ideas.

All of this came to me as I was reading the exchange between John Gray and Zizek in the New York Review of Books and Jacobin, respectively.

An Open Letter to Occupy Tampa, its Members, Allies, and Supporters (and to other Occupies in Crisis).

Note: I now blog at Blownhorizonz.com.  It's much prettier to look at, and more focused on fun stuff like weird fiction, extreme music, and awesome art.  Also check out my Tumblr at blownhorizonz.tumblr.com.

Last Thursday, I was invited to answer some questions about income inequality and Occupy for a continuing education course at a progressive church in north Tampa.  I was really amazed to find that this group of a dozen people in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties were eager to hear more about Occupy.  I told them about the movement’s drive to get the money out of politics, and to return to people a sense of the democratic process.  A frail-seeming woman in a wheelchair quipped, “If only you’d been around for Reagan.”  But then a man with a snow-white beard spoke up: “Everything you’re saying sounds wonderful – but why am I not hearing more about it?”

That’s when I noticed he was on the verge of tears.  He knew that he was witnessing a great moment of possibility, but he sensed that it was slipping away.

He was right.

Occupy has opened a window through which we can see a new world.  It comes after decades of neoliberalism in which looking for new possibilities, much less working towards them, has seemed futile.  By bringing together and giving voice to people committed to living in that new world, it has shifted the political culture of what is still the richest and most powerful country in the world.  It has shown its potential, and the need for it is obvious.  As that supportive but dispirited man said in all sincerity, “Without you, we’re lost.”

Hearing just how much faith – or at least, how much hope – these people were pinning on Occupy was a wakeup call for me.  We still have a lot to do, and we have massive untapped resources with which to work – silent allies, waiting to be activated.

Of course, returning to the reality of Occupy Tampa was another sort of wakeup call.  Because we’re on the verge, in Tampa as in many places across the country, of losing all of this possibility.  Of losing everything we’ve worked for.  Those of us who have been proud to be associated with Occupy Tampa are now at risk of being associated, for the rest of our lives, with disappointment, failure, maybe even catastrophe.  While the air is still full of possibility, on the ground, we are at a crisis.

Many – in fact, most – of the energized and purposeful individuals who showed up for the early days of Occupy Tampa are no longer active participants.  As those activists have trickled away, the space that has been shared to us by one of our great outside allies has come to be mainly of non-activists, where there are regular outbursts of violence, hate speech, drug abuse, and even active sabotage of political projects.  It is only a matter of time before this stew of instability explodes and forever tarnishes the name of Occupy Tampa.

In order to address these issues of fracture and decline, I’m encouraging all past and present allies of Occupy Tampa to make the effort to come out to our General Assembly this Saturday, April 28^th, at 7:30pm, following our discussion of May Day planning.  There, we need to address two key issues – first, how to maintain cohesion even as affinity groups of Occupy Tampa pursue independent projects, and second, how to deal with individuals whose actions threaten the work of our organization from within.

As the great movement thinker Cindy Millstein has emphasized again and again over the last six months, this moment is fleeting.  The sense of possibility that came with Occupy may disappear at any moment – remember what happened when 9/11 put a sharp end to the anti-globalization movement?  We must seize this moment while it lasts.  But a major part of seizing this moment is making it last – working to carry forward the initial burst of energy that brought us together.  If you ever considered yourself a member or sympathizer of Occupy Tampa, you are needed NOW to make sure the moment does not simply pass.

I want to frame the discussion that we will have on Saturday.  A few related issues and dynamics have gotten us where we are now.  At bottom, all are negative downsides of the unique and exciting aspects of Occupy’s initial structure – particularly, the way it invited everyone to participate in the process of changing the world.

Evil's Advocate: Why Nike's Miyashita Park is a Good Thing

I consider myself a leftist, but there are a lot of pieties and givens on the left that I don't quite swallow whole.  In fact, I sometimes find myself sketching positions that are at least contrarian, if not retrograde.  The thing is, I wish someone would convince me that I'm wrong about these fleeting hints of conservatism.  This is the first installment of a new occasional series, Evil's Advocate, in which I invite friends of the blog to tell me exactly why my thought crimes against progressive ideology are misguided.

After years of organized opposition to its extensive reconstruction, Shibuya's Miyashita Park has finally re-opened.  It's a tiny strip of elevated land parallel to JR Shibuya station.  Prior to the renovations, the park was a typically depressing Japanese park, not much but packed dirt, some playground equipment so dilapidated I wouldn't let any child of mine within ten yards of it, and about two dozen permanent homeless residents.  Now, it has become . . . this:

So, how could this transformation from moribund and dreary to active and useful be a bad thing?  The root problem for hundreds of activists who have spent a lot of energy opposing the changes seems to have been that they're all planned and executed, not by Shibuya City, but by Nike.  Initially, Nike was to pay the city a large sum of money each year for a decade for the right to officially rename it "Miyashita Nike Park."  Through demonstrations and direct action, the activists seem to have successfully stopped the renaming - when I went yesterday, there was no Nike branding on any signage, all of which simply said "Miyashita Park."  Even though this seems to have been the activists' only real victory, it's not a small one - for park users and residents to have it constantly shoved in their faces that Nike had essentially taken over a public park would have certainly had insidious long-term effects on whatever slim awareness of the idea of public space may remain in Tokyo.

But without the imposition of corporate ownership, what impact does this reconstruction have on the idea of public space?  In the pictures above, you'll see a healthy mix of people of all ages enjoying themselves, and most importantly, interacting outside of the confines of traditional work or school settings.  It may not be explicitly politicized, but as anyone who lives in Tokyo can tell you, this is still deeply political.  People from different walks of life are almost never brought together in relatively unstructured play environments, and it seems certain that the new Miyashita Park will act to strengthen social ties among area residents.

And the place truly is accessible to all.  There are fees for using the facilities, but they're almost nominal: 200 yen for skating and 350 for climbing, about $2.50 and $4.50 U.S. respectively.  Futsal court rental runs from 4000 to 6000 yen per hour, but with two sides of five players, that breaks down to about 600 yen, or seven dollars, per player.  Especially in Tokyo, these are truly trivial amounts of money, just enough, I would say, to guarantee that those using the facilities will take some responsibility.

A second major issue for the activists was the forcible ejection of the homeless during construction of the park, and the suspicion that they would not be welcome in a new, corporate-sponsored park.  (This complaint might be hard to understand from an American perspective, but here in Japan it's quite common for homeless residents in parks to be tacitly or even explicitly tolerated by authorities).  I have mixed feelings about anti-camping laws: at least in the U.S., many homeless people truly need help, either with mental illness or substance abuse, to the extent that they're dangers to themselves and others.  This seems to be slightly less true in Japan, mainly due to stronger familial safety nets, but it's nonetheless the case, particularly in a space as small as Miyashita, that campers made the park less usable for other people.  In other words, homeless or not, they were using more than their share of a public resource, and using it in a way that interfered with others' enjoyment of it.  While for the homeless, living in the park is probably nicer than being in a homeless shelter, I think that in this case it wasn't fair to the general public, and the park is now a greater public good.

Finally, activists objected, over and above the naming issue, to corporate control of the park.  This is where I am likely to really clash with some of my friends - I think that it's great that Nike took the initiative to make this space more usable.  This is especially true since, generally speaking, Tokyo's wards and the Japanese government are extremely bad at maintaining parks.  Their manufacturing practices may be traditionally abhorrent, but Nike as an entity and a culture clearly has a far better sense of what people want to do for fun than anyone in any branch of Tokyo's metropolitan government, most of whose idea of fun is probably getting shitfaced in a no-panties hostess bar and charging it to public accounts.  Japanese people have a huge love of outdoor activity, and cultivate it despite the almost uniformly lackluster provisions for things like soccer in Tokyo's public parks.  If it takes a corporation to come in and do a better job, then so be it.

Just to reiterate, whatever good I think has come of this, the role of the activists was crucial.  Everything good about the new Miyashita Park would have been rendered bitter and destructive by having Nike's name plastered all over it, and it's hard to say what the park might have ultimately looked like without their pressure.  But now that it's quite literally a fait accompli, it's not fair to hold a grudge and completely deny the possibility that something good resulted.  After all, I'm willing to bet some of those protesters like to skate.