Impish Thoughts
So, I watched the Superbowl ad from yesterday which opens with apocalypse, in the conventional Biblical sense. Horrors are being visited on the world, the order of things is turned upside down: dogs are walking people; God is Black. This ad was listed in the “funny” section.
The punchline is that all this mayhem is due to God’s cell phone running out of power. Apparently, this whole little reality we make so much of is just some virtual concoction in his phone – his version of Sim City or Farmville. Or maybe it’s kinda like the remote control to keep things going. Or maybe he can’t call on-site supervisors….I’m not precisely sure exactly how the cell phone keeps the world together, I just know that it did, and now it’s outta juice and it’s a very bad state of affairs.
We can’t ignore the obvious metaphor, though we may have to first decide what is meant under its shroud. Yes, when our cell phones die and we are disconnected from our people and world, we feel like things are falling apart. That’s the surface take away. But you know there was that one copywriter who interjected something more intentional – something about how when we’re disconnected with God, it brings ruin. Or how technology is ruining our ability to be connected with the One. Maybe the Christian Coalition read “Rules for Radicals” and decided to plant the ad, you know, for those with ears to hear. Or maybe it’s an Illuminati warning. Or a Klan message with the potentially inference-laden image of “this is what happens when an incompetent Black man is at the helm” – you know, because his Omnipotence couldn’t figure out how to plug the phone in and his power is coming to an end.
I did laugh, but at the idea that anyone sitting around a table thought disturbing images of catastrophic ruin and psychological undoing could be funny. And sure, it could be just that there are some macabre humored folks going for a creative reach – my kind of people, I admit – who scored in a vaguely startling way, presenting layered meaning through a filter of a joke. And maybe the layers weren’t even there, or maybe the creative subconscious plays out in our symbols no matter what we think we’re doing, or maybe both.
This connected with a conversation I’ve been both watching and peripherally engaging in recently. In Detroit, there is apparently a local legend which carries over from the French settlers about the Nain Rouge. This year, there’s an event using this historical factoid as the galvanizing point for community celebration that includes floats which can win a small prize for a participating group. This is an idea used in many places – the preparation and float building creates a small venture for community cohesion, and then the event itself brings people out. So a neighbor innocently sent this notice out with enthusiasm for raising an interested group to participate, and immediately, Wham! the critics emerged.
Okay, so the points were varied, but one point is that these “community” events are mired in the gentrification tensions currently playing everywhere, but in a locally painful venue. Who plans events; which events get funded; who participates in events; etc. Are events which draw outsiders a problem? What if certain events draw mostly outsiders, and not residents? Or what if those residents are, themselves, branded outsiders, for various reasons? Who are insiders, and who are outsiders, and who gets to say? Why are community events like this happening now, instead of before? What does it mean that after a pattern of divestment, new investment is flooding into Detroit – but mostly in powered ways that exacerbate inequity? Given the myriad problems in Detroit, is this the best outlay of resources? These are all important questions.
And the answers are complex, because there is not one answer: the story of urban change is as varied as its denizens, and while we social scientists and activists can identify larger structural issues at work, it would be a mistake to conflate all the known variables into a black and white dichotomy – literally and proverbially. This is because the flip side of being aware of Marx’s idea of false consciousness is assuming you’re observing false consciousness. That is, if you argue poor folks don’t need people coming in to save them, you must also argue they don’t need people coming in and telling them what they should be pissed off about. Progressive paternalism is just as condescending as conservative paternalism, because they both presume people do not understand the experience of their condition.
I come from a place where spiritual dejection is the baseline psychology. A sense of defeat and futility is wholly internalized, and it pervades every decision that most people make. On the occasions when a person finds the will to stand against the tribal mentality for half a minute to consider greater possibilities, the reaction is not, typically, rallying support. It is, instead, equivalent to “And just who do you think you are?” Hope is beaten out of you, one way or another, until you either acquiesce or leave with some salvaged. So, when I hear people telling me what poor people want, or should want, you will pardon me if I raise my hand and point out that only privileged people find poverty glamorous or sacrosanct, an outfit they can wear and take off, and most poor people I personally know would give a child in exchange for a local Walmart or an event which brought tourists to whom they could sell something. I’m not personally agreeing that those should be end points in social policy, but I do find the ironic arrogance of chastising other people of privilege on the basis of “knowing” what poor people should and would be pissed off about, if only they knew better, an awkward stop in the critical consciousness continuum. It’s also incredibly arrogant to paint Detroit as a black hole of ubiquitous poverty, as if there are no middle class or affluent residents – and as if there are not Black people (as well as other ethnicities and races) across the local socioeconomic spectrum, all of whom do not subscribe to a homogeneous perspective. And let’s not even get into the weeds of the complexity of identity and affinities, as though being Black, Latino or X tells us what position a person holds on a broad swath of topics. Please, complete the wereman shift before howling at the moon.
Ok, but there’s more. Yes, the question of community, who is it, who runs it – these are pertinent questions and a critical part of necessary “navel gazing” which should be considered so that we at least know whom to shoot when we take to the streets. But one critic commented:
“Oy vey. So not down with Nain Rouge – the parade of rowdy young, upwardly mobile whites through the Cass Corridor, behaving in ways that routinely result in violent death for young black men, all while Chasing an “evil” red dwarf who represents the indigenous population the French settlers murdered….
I’ve learned to be much more wary of my young white neighbors in parades than of anybody else in this city. So much unchecked entitlement, privilege, and settler mentality. I can only imagine how difficult that is to witness and experience by those who grew up here and experienced the first iteration of state disinvestment, white flight, etc, only to have the kids and grandkids of those people come to “take back the city” and “smite the evil spirits” they left behind…
I’m quite certain the origins of the Imp are tied to French settlers and their relations with the indigenous population. They must have felt pretty uneasy about stealing so much (tho arguably not as brutally as the English) and found it cathartic to have an annual parade to chase off whatever negative karma or cognitive dissonance certainly haunted them or plagued their consciousness….
I am all for celebration – I want more of it. And of course there are many interpretations of anything and nobody has a monopoly on reality or Truth, however, I think it’s irresponsible to divorce real events from their history and their present impact in favor of navel-gazing about the potential meaning.”
Oy vey, indeed. There are points I hope we all agree with: rowdy White people are treated differently than rowdy people of color in the US. Crowds have their own momentum and psychology, which can easily escalate into violence or destructive behaviors. Alcohol is an exacerbation which is almost universally problematic. These are valid points.
But I am an anthropologist, first, and one who focused on cross-cultural consciousness, second. So, I know, and the history books know, that the kind of lore represented by Nain Rouge has, in fact, nothing to do with Native Americans, African Americans, White guilt or settler misgivings. And when we start entering into the realm of willful ignorance and misleading hyperbole to substantiate a point of view that has sufficient force to stand, there is a bigger problem. This critic chastised readers to “read the history,” which he himself failed to do. Because, I agree: “I think it’s irresponsible to divorce real events from their history and their present impact.” Nain Rouge is old, old lore that the French brought with them. The kind of lore which goes to the heart of being human, of being afraid of the dark, or the dead, or the wolves, or the Greys – take your pick. It’s the personification of the most primitive, unconscious fears that are hard-wired and cross-cultural: Nain Rouge is a European expression, yes, but these rituals are performed by Man from everywhere and in every time, especially in the winter, when darkness is longest. In fact, this idea of banishing a sort of evil eye is precisely the local spin of Nain Rouge, who is more akin to Mothman than anything – a harbinger of bad times. Smiting and expelling such an unwelcome guest is the most positive of psychological exercises, especially in a city with the embedded trauma such as Detroit has. In fact, there’s a whole branch of therapeutic practice which employs just such role playing and theater for healing.
We can argue that, as with Mophie’s ad, perhaps there are deep-seated meanings being expressed which are unconscious and reflect ritualistic Manifest Destiny, or assignation of Black Detroiters as the primitive which must be cast out, or a way for people with power to flaunt how they can spend discretionary dollars. And as metaphors for the complex issues and feelings which exist here, we should consider all of it. But we also have the choice of meaning to embrace, and so we can equally consider deep-seated meanings being expressed which are unconscious and reflect a desire to exorcise the pain, trauma and despair which has settled in Detroit for too long. To assemble as a community in an army of hope, standing on a creative front, drawing in allies from wherever they live – like the rallies at Ferguson, or Occupy in New York did – is a celebration worth having, a stand worth making. This is as legitimate a view as any, and while I do not gloss over the need for Truth and Reconciliation in Detroit – especially since trauma is still being experienced and inflicted – I also think it’s important to not become addicted to validation through adversity and isolation. We must be careful not to let valid criticism spill into casual destruction of any effort to come together.