My friend James Trimarco is one of my favorite people in the world. We met in the summer of 2005 when we were attending a science fiction writing workshop during which we lived together with sixteen other writers in a sorority house in Seattle, writing a story a week for six serial instructors. Intense? Slightly. Working in tandem with one of the other writers in attendance, James is the first person to ever convince me that the label “radical” is something to embrace rather than be intimidated by — that it is possible to hold radical (as opposed to reformist) politics and still be an effective presence in the world.
And he’s lately published a couple of thought-provoking pieces which I’d like to share.
This year, Vanity Fair asked writers to answer the following prompt: In a country defined by video games, reality TV, and virtual friendships, with a White House that has perfected the art of politics as public relations, what is reality to Americans today? And did we ever have a grasp of it?
James won third place, drawing on his experience working as an anthropologist in the vastly different environments of Albania, and ground zero, to answer the question:
1. It’s June of 2002 and I’m doing an anthropological study on the street trade in 9/11 memorabilia near Ground Zero. Dust still lines the gutters; the stink of charred plastic and blasted concrete lingers in the air. Church choruses from far-flung states sing hymns to comfort the many visitors who shuffle past. My colleague and I walk up to strangers and ask them about the vendors who cluster nearby, their tables full of Ground Zero–themed snow globes, picture books, and T-shirts. Do they approve of the vendors? Would they buy something from them? Or do they agree with the tabloid papers that the vendors are “ghouls” profiting off of sorrow?
People from all over the country, of every age and skin tone, denounce the vendors for sullying a place they call sacred. Others, sometimes even members of the same family, call the vendors an embodiment of the great entrepreneurial spirit that the buildings symbolized—they were called the World Trade Center, after all.
These people think in symbols and ideals. When they look at a vendor, they don’t see just a Chinese immigrant, an African-American Vietnam vet, or an elderly Mexican woman. They see Commercialism on Hallowed Ground, they see the American Way in Action. Just around the corner, in the smoking ruins, some see Why We Are at War.
My friend and I enjoy this research. The feelings we’re talking about are vivid and strong. At one point, I casually refer to a group of passersby as “tourists” and the guy I’m talking to, a construction worker from New Jersey, nearly punches me in the face.
“They’re pilgrims,” he says.
Pilgrims.
The whole article is available up at Vanity Fair.
He also recently published an article on David Icke at Strange Horizons.
In case you’ve been living in the same cave as I have (in which case, “Hello! Care to share a hank of mammoth meat?”), David Icke is a conspiracy theorist who believes that the world is run by a secret class of reptiloid aliens who have infested the top ranks of society. They’re apparently disproportionately represented among the Jews, but can also be found in other “ruling” classes, including the presidency of the USA. It was they who both taught the Egyptians how to build pyramids, and then forced them to do so. These days, they sacrifice children and feed on the blood of the innocent. From James’s essay:
“The government made the hurricane on purpose. It’s the same Brotherhood that’s always been in charge. They’re playing the same old game.”
For a moment all of us were speechless. It had to be a joke. “What Brotherhood is that?” I asked, finally.
Roberto told me, “They’re called the Anunnaki and they’ve been using humans as slaves for five thousand years.” I sputtered and laughed but Roberto didn’t laugh back.
James argues that Icke is so popular because his ideas have hit on a kind of culturally unconscious truth. The ruling class does not really sacrifice the blood of children, but post-globalization, it’s increasingly possible to look at the world metaphorically in the way that Icke describes.
There are many cultural myths that function this way. For instance, there is documentation suggesting that enslaved Africans being brought to America feared that they were going to be eaten during middle passage. While African bodies were not literally used to fill European stomachs, they were used that way metaphorically. African fire engines are not literally powered by the blood of unwilling passengers, but there are some myths in Africa that suggest they are, and those myths have a certain metaphorical truth. Successful capitalists don’t really carve out their empires by making legions of zombie workers, but there are myths about this in Africa too, and they also have metaphorical resonance.
James argues that Icke has tapped into one of these visceral cultural narratives that describes power dynamics in vivid, surreal terms. James writes:
The followers of Icke that I’ve known have often been members of minority groups, lonely and confused, and experiencing types of unemployment that are connected to shifts in the global economy. Like blacks in South Africa, they witness manifestations of incredibly complex problems that are difficult to understand from their vantage point. Unlike those South Africans, however, they don’t have an indigenous system of folklore to provide an explanation. So they turn to David Icke, who weaves the warp of conspiracy theory with the woof of New Age and gilds it all with that system of folklore indigenous to the modern world, science fiction. In the end he creates a tapestry of belief that has a position on every issue and explains every atrocity, all while affirming the essential goodness of humanity.
James goes on to write about the ties between Icke’s appeal beyond the page and the appeal of some mainstream science fiction narratives, comparing Icke to work like Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, which, as he notes, some activists have used as a touchstone for gathering their ideas about a utopic future. He dwells on how Icke manages, through science fictional imagery, to create and sustain not just the suspended belief of a fiction writer, but the belief of a myth maker.
From a feminist perspective, the power of Icke’s narrative — while just as different from the kind of feminist narratives we want to popularize as Icke is from mainstream science fiction novels — is still fascinating, if not exactly instructive. How does one tap that kind of unconscious resonance?
I fear we can’t, or at least not directly. People gravitate toward Icke not just because his work describes metaphorical truths, but also because it underlies those truths with comforting lies. It allows the reader to always ally himself with good, and to escape any agency in his own situation. In creating a new myth, Icke relies on old mythic concepts of heroics, making his narrative compelling, but not helpful. One cannot galvanize around Icke in order to create change.
If nothing else, though, Icke demonstrates the importance of narrative. People believe in him because he can weave a compelling story, and because the framework he offers for people to rewrite their lives into is appealing. For those on the fringe in wealthy countries, Icke’s story is a compelling way to make boundaries around the experience of alienation. Anti-feminist and white supremacist narratives have a similar appeal. Narratives get into people’s heads. It’s important for us to provide counter-narratives where possible, even if they aren’t as popular and inflaming. The existence of counter-narratives gives people the ability to see through our framework, at least for a moment.
Pilgims my butt! They’re not pilgrims, except in the same sense as the people who came to the Americas on the Mayflower were: exploitors ready to take advantage of the sorrows of the locals for their own gain. They aren’t even tourists. They’re ghouls looking to justify their own need to destroy by looking at the destruction that others have caused.
I don’t know anyone who died in the WTC, though I know half a dozen people who only weren’t there by dumb luck (delayed subway, changed meeting, etc.) Maybe if I did I’d be ready to turn Afghanistan into glowing glass. I don’t know. But as it stands, my reaction to the WTC attacks was, “That was bad. Very bad. It should never happen again anywhere to anyone.” I still believe that, as do many New Yorkers. And I don’t care for people using this tragedy as an excuse for perpetrating similar tragedies on other people.
Okay.
I suggest you read the rest of the article; it’s not saying what you think it is.
The key passage was: “They see Commercialism on Hallowed Ground, they see the American Way in Action. Just around the corner, in the smoking ruins, some see Why We Are at War.” Which is related to Pilgrims — it’s the ways in which Americans have taken real events and abstracted them.
James goes on to compare that to the ways in which Albanians resist high-fallutin’ political abstraction: “I keep trying to find the kind of information that I found in America. Right and Wrong. Heroes and Ghouls. Courage and Cowardice. But the most excited I see anyone get is when a bunch of older men in a neighborhood café start arguing about World War II. People tend to assume all politicians are corrupt, but their anger about it is subdued. They don’t see symbolic violations of an idealized homeland; they just see the facts of life, to be maneuvered around through connections, common sense, and perhaps emigration.”
He suggests that the American penchant for making tourists into Pilgrims is part of what allows us to be so unrealistic and cavalier about our destructive role in the world. It’s an anti-war piece; I’m surprised it can be read as anything else. I’m sure the fault is in my excerpting.
It’s an anti-war piece; I’m surprised it can be read as anything else.
No, it’s my fault for unclear ranting. I was ranting at the tourists and Jerseyites who see them as pilgrims, not the piece, which was clearly anti-war. So maybe I’m still a little overemotional on the subject.
Oh! Indeed.
My current favorite rant on this issue was ranted by a Manhattanite who’s at the workshop. She said, “The only thing this war is doing is increasing the probability that people are going to target New York City again. And all I have to say is: when I die, I am not forgiving you.”
a White House that has perfected the art of politics as public relations
Actually, this administration is headed by the least articulate President we’ve had in my lifetime (and I started with Eisenhower). I think the current President Bush is the worst at public relations that we’ve had in that time. I’d say the champions at this would be a close race between Reagan and Clinton.
The article said:
Dianne said:
Pilgims my butt! They’re not pilgrims, except in the same sense as the people who came to the Americas on the Mayflower were: exploitors ready to take advantage of the sorrows of the locals for their own gain. They aren’t even tourists. They’re ghouls looking to justify their own need to destroy by looking at the destruction that others have caused.
I didn’t see anything in the Vanity Fair article that spoke to the motivations of the people being described as “tourists” or “pilgrims” (who were the passersby, not the vendors). On what basis do you have any evidence to judge the motivations, feelings, or experience of the passersby, Dianne?
On what basis do you have any evidence to judge the motivations, feelings, or experience of the passersby, Dianne?
George Bush’s reelection, based on nothing but vague ominous comments about terrorism and 9/11. The sale of crosses made of bits of steel recycled from the WTC site. The query of a passerby as to where she could buy a video of the towers collapsing. The Republican convention in NYC. The attacks on Islamic people and mosques in much of the US (though generally not in NYC.) The smiles on the ghouls’ faces as they take pictures of a place where 3000 people died and talk about how well Bush had avenged their deaths.
“The Republican convention in NYC.”
This, particularly.
I don’t remember whether James wrote about it in the Vanity Fair essay or not, but his personal anecdotes about the rage of the citizens when they realized their personal tragedies were being used in this fashion are stirring.
It was actually while we were talking about his experiences during the RNC that he opened my mind to the possibility of calling myself radical rather than reformist.
Now, there may have been a number of people who wanted to look at ground zero for reasons other than bloodlust or spectacle. (I was living in NY at the time, about fifteen miuntes away, and I can’t say the possibility of visiting ever entered my mind, but it was a pretty intense time for me for other reasons.)
But certainly, the man who got so mad that anyone would refer to them as tourists, he who was turning the people into Pilgrims — by making it a sacrament, I think he turned the real people into an Abstraction, and that Abstraction was certainly ghoulish.
The RNC was a weird scene. It was quite different from what I expected. I’d expected a lot of people from odd places wearing Bush buttons and tacky elephant paraphenalia clogging up the restaurants, bars, and tourist sites. That didn’t happen. As far as I can tell, there wasn’t much of an increase in tourism at that time at all. Just a big area of midtown suddenly made inaccessible, more cops everywhere, and a bunch of mindless arrests (and civil rights violations as protesters were held for more than 24 hours without charges…the main reason that my enthusiasm for the current mayor, who has otherwise been quite decent, is mixed.) I never saw a conventioneer. The Republicans didn’t come to NYC to honor the sacrifice of New Yorkers or even to party in the numerous famous or infamous clubs and bars of NYC. They came and established a “green zone” in a hostile city and left as soon as they could declare victory.
Consider the Southeast US: Lowest rates of education. Highest rates of job outsourcing. Lowest rates of personal incomes. Highest rates of poverty. Highest rates of violent crime. Highest rates of obesity and associated ailments. Highest rates of disability and blindness. Highest rates of sexually-transmitted disease. Highest rates of pornography consumption. Highest rates of divorce. Highest rates of bankruptcy. Highest rates of drunk driving. Highest rates of suicide. Highest rates of death.
And highest rates of church attendance.
Coincidence?
y’know, correlation doesn’t equal causation. would love to see some linkage regarding those stats. attending church in itself is no marker of anything particularly, as churches are as likely to be full of corrupt people preaching falsehoods as anywhere else.
the southeast us is also full of church leaders who willfully sin and are not held accountable for same, and considering how poisonous modern self-absorption culture is, why are you not noting the equally dangerous manifestations of it in more unchurched parts of the usa?
it is quite as silly to stealth-bash christianity because omg christians sin just like other people! as it is when people do it regarding other religions.
to be on-topic, anyone who thinks icke is being metaphoric is not all that well-acquainted with his oeuvre, frankly.
he does in fact believe real actual iguana overlords are after human women and plotting to take over the world. it’s not a bunch of disguised political speech, but his actual beliefs.
I don’t understand Mandolin to be focused on what Icke believes; I understand her to be focused on what would cause other people to embrace his story. Specifically, Mandolin identifies two variables: Icke offers a powerful, affirming narrative, and he offers it to people who feel they’re losing control of their lives.
In a similar vein, I note that 1) people in the South live amid greater social stress than the rest of the US and 2) people in the South are more likely to embrace a powerful, affirming fundamentalist Christian narrative than the rest of the US. And I speculate that the first fact may help explain the second.
I don’t mean to disparage either the South or Christianity. If anything, I find my analysis extenuating. I admit I find aspects of fundamentalist Christianity oppressive. But I feel more generous toward its proponents if I understand them not as self-congratulatory bigots, but rather as people desperate to find a world view to help them maintain self-esteem when confronted with a world full of people who seem to be enjoying better lives than they do. I suspect this dynamic drives the rise of fundamentalism everywhere.
Well, there was that study that came out last year, indicating that when one tallies up the indices of “morality” (they included things like teen sex, abortion, murder, etc.), turns out those things happen way more in religious countries than irreligious ones.
I certainly think there’s an argument to be made that religion (an affirming narrative: as nobody.really describes) appeals to people who need an affirming narrative, at which point it would probably become a recursive loop.
As to Icke’s metaphoricalism, nobody.really is correct. The claim is not that Icke isn’t a paranoid schizophrenic; the claim is that he has tapped viscerally potent imagery which, despite being the result of his own particular psychological difficulties, is also metaphorically appealing. The enslaved Africans who believed that they were going to be eaten during middle passage weren’t intentionally tapping a metaphor either, but that doesn’t make the belief any less metaphorically potent.
I did pose the question of whether we can cynically use what Icke has tapped without meaning to — well, to be more clear, James posed that question in his article (which I highly suggest you read) in regard to science fiction, and I broadened his question to ask about feminist/radical narratives.
Diane said:
George Bush’s reelection, based on nothing but vague ominous comments about terrorism and 9/11. … The Republican convention in NYC. The attacks on Islamic people and mosques in much of the US (though generally not in NYC.)
Which tells you exactly nothing about the motivations, feelings and experiences of the people who are passing by.
The sale of crosses made of bits of steel recycled from the WTC site.
Pilgrims have been buying relics at religious pilgrimage sites for millenia. This could (and likely does) reflect their sorrow at the violent death of so many people and a hope for their salvation.
The query of a passerby as to where she could buy a video of the towers collapsing.
Your original comment was, “exploitors (sic) ready to take advantage of the sorrows of the locals for their own gain. … They’re ghouls looking to justify their own need to destroy by looking at the destruction that others have caused.”
How is someone who wants a video of the towers’ collapse exploiting the sorrows of the locals for their own gain? Seems to me that the vendors are doing so in such a case, but not the purchasers. And how do you know, based on that request, that they have a need to destroy?
The smiles on the ghouls’ faces as they take pictures of a place where 3000 people died and talk about how well Bush had avenged their deaths.
This last I will cede as inappropriate. At least, I think so. Even if one does think that retribution is necessary, that does not mean one should take pleasure in it. But then, how many people are you sure are doing this?
And highest rates of church attendance. Coincidence?
Nope. Christian churches are, by definition, full of sinners. If there is a higher percentage of sinners in the American Southeast than elsewhere, then you’d expect a higher percentage of church attendees.