American Ugly

[Menydh]

American Ugly

Pravda
September 7, 2006

It's easy these days to take cheap shots at America. That country and its people, all the way from Hollywood to Washington and the Big Apple, offer plenty of opportunity for a cheap shot. But I can say that I had contempt for America before it was fashionable to do so. Long before Iraq, I despised America just for its pristine ugliness, for the ugliness of its culture and architecture. I was born and raised in what is, all things considered, the ugliest hole on earth.

I have observed poverty in Latin America, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Africa. And it seems to me that the material poverty of America's poor is shockingly uglier than the poverty of those other places. Confronting nomadic Bedouins living out of boxes in Africa, I sensed something positive, even uplifting in their particular style of poverty. In certain circumstances, of course, poverty is not a curse - just have a look at some of the world's wealthier folk. And yet America's poverty is repugnant, because one senses that it is a thorough, drenching poverty, something in which both the culture and the individual are thoroughly submerged. That ugliness is strikingly evident in America's inner cities, as well as in suburban and rural areas.

Given America's wealth, one marvels that America has produced no architectural Wonder of the World. How is it that, with America's great resources, the nation could not create some lasting collective architectural monument for human posterity? Whether traversing rural America or stalking the streets of urban slums, one sees little evidence to indicate the proud wealth and power of America. The urban wilderness of America, which since the 1970s has functioned as the primary source of innovations in popular culture, cultivates purposely an image of ignorance and sullen ugliness, evident in the landscape, the violent behavior of its inhabitants, and their disdain of education and intellect. The urban popular culture has its origins in commerce, not art. Whereas art is born and nurtured over time within a community of individuals sharing like values, the popular culture of America is unnatural and contrived. American culture depends on an insanity of novelty, far removed from expressions that have an authentic origin in the folk.

The situation in rural America is no less discouraging. For some years I regularly traveled an interstate that crosses what, for me is, an earthly revelation of hell. Both sides of the interstate are strewn there with junked automobiles; rickety wooden shacks and mobile homes; rusting manufactured metal sheds; insignificant businesses revolving around automobile engines, bodies, and tires; and frightful little white wood-frame churches from which heresies and hatreds are spewed Sundays and Wednesdays. Speeding away one day in an effort to escape the place, I was stopped and ticketed. I decided to fight the speeding charge, which meant I had to return to the local court a month later. I knew already what I would encounter. The hearing then was delayed by a discomforting wedding ceremony which involved an immense bride, a slim sloppy groom in blue jeans, both in their late 30s, and a small entourage of relatives with the same empty eyes and expressions, the same neglected appearance as the wedding pair. The single mother of the groom loudly and proudly proclaimed to strangers her joy to 'finally got her son married.' Had there been no entourage, one might have explained it away as two individuals with disabilities. But it was clear that the ugliness and emptiness were collective, common to a whole community, an entire culture. I have since shuddered every time I passed through that spot in the 'greatest nation on earth.'

The idyll of suburbia has brought comfort to some Americans. Proud American suburbanites see only beauty in the symmetrical rows of similar ranch style homes (or homes of whatever style happens to be popular for the decade) surrounded by manicured yards. That greenery serves not as a retreat for humans to commune with nature, but as a boundary separating anonymous inhabitants of adjacent housing. (Some other nations, by contrast, tolerantly cultivate their 'weeds' with grasses and flowers; thus, one nation's weed is another's flower). Those boundaries are important for Americans, guaranteeing the sacred American privacy that isolates one individual from another.

American suburbia displays its own unique ugliness in the symbols of commercial life that are the same throughout America (and increasingly, the world). It is unsettling for me to know that two individuals at the same moment can enter a franchised fast food joint in Alaska and Florida, read simultaneously the same menu, and receive at the same synchronized moment an identical portion of food previously manufactured in a common commercial vat at a processing plant at still a third location. One cannot help but wonder what ends might be accomplished for humanity had some nation other than America control of such marvelous energies and resources.

America is the land of mass production par excellance. Housing and commercial buildings are manufactured distant from the spot where they come to rest. The craftsman does not see his product set into place; he never interacts with the community where his product is installed. The efficiency of the assembly line permits productivity and efficiency, yet it sacrifices part of the human being. It prohibits the development of human community, an important by-product of human industry.

For many Americans content to share their dwelling with rats, roaches, overflowing toilets, and filth, the true abode is the automobile (or maybe just a motorcycle). There the soul resides. Pimp my ride, dude! (not that I have any clue what the latter phrase really suggests). I have a prejudice here, insofar as I never learned to recognize beauty in an automobile. Not even the Hummer or late model double-seat pickup trucks impress me. (I have in recent years not only liberated myself from the automobile, but I have come to appreciate the unhurried pleasures of transportation upon occasionally reeking and ornery camels).

The three-car garage becomes a norm in American suburbia, not because most families now own three cars, but rather because the American consumer requires massive space for the storage of his gadgets and accoutrements. In a nation that has produced as much as America has, the disposal of waste presents a formidable problem. No folk in this world has such a cluttered environment as the Americans. Marketers of popular culture, having learned from successful marketers of automobiles and vacuum cleaners, are required to 'move' a set quota of pop culture product, which means that consumers periodically must replace their previous cultural product. The homes and apartments of America are filled with cultural product, current and expired, the different generations of which have a common relation only through the individual's shallow fantasy of nostalgia.

America is a rootless society. The tradition early was established that, once the surrounding environment is exhausted and the cabin begins to show signs of deterioration or accumulated waste, one pulls up stakes and moves on down the road to a new environment. Some Americans in their front yards display trucks and automobiles in various stages of disassembly, which are not only a sign of their admiration for technology, but are simultaneously a monument to the motions of migration that are by now a tradition. Yards with flowers and gardens belong to more recent immigrants of different backgrounds.

America undergoes a constant indoctrination of commercialism which conditions the behavior of its citizens. Americans rejoice to buy one, get one free. This is a language Americans accept and believe in; it seems natural to them that this is how their universe should function. (Ancient societies, surely and rightly, understood that it is illogical that one buys one and gets one free). Commercialism legitimizes a whole culture of dishonesty and commercial obscurantism. Commercialism has allowed the prostitution of art as, for example, in the fusion of popular culture and the commercial medium of television.

The true indicator of American Ugly is found in architecture, a genuine human language. Through architecture we make a statement about ourselves and about our community. Perhaps more than any other art form, architecture is about community, and therefore it reveals something of the soul of a culture. Standing before Rome's mighty wonders, at St. Basil's in Moscow, Hagia Sophia, or the city of stone in Petra, I am dumbfounded, stunned not less by the design and beauty as by some realization of the distant collective effort that was generated in the creation and execution of beauty. In each of those places, I have witnessed a statement of unique human culture.

American architecture is not about community or culture. It is today about kitsch, commerce, and individual egos. Just look at Beverly Hills or any suburb in which wealthy and famous Americans reside. Americans have no understanding of beauty. For some post-modernist elites, beauty is created exactly when the masses perceive ugliness (your insignificant ugly=our celestial beauty, 'bad'=great). Beauty for the Americans is never collective, for the average American today knows not what is beautiful and what is ugly. American 'multiculti' comes into play here. If all human cultures are inherently equal, they reason then that all architectural styles must have equal value, even mud-ugly huts and primitive human habitations in holes in the earth. Yet one can never simply collapse all the architectural displays of the world into a Disneyland of multicultural synthesis. Great architecture reflects a true collective culture. In its poverty of architecture and its ignorance of beauty, America demonstrates the absence of genuine culture and values.

Stojgniev O'Donnell
2006
From a better place than America

[source]

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Beauty for the Americans is never collective, for the average American today knows not what is beautiful and what is ugly. American 'multiculti' comes into play here. If all human cultures are inherently equal, they reason then that all architectural styles must have equal value, even mud-ugly huts and primitive human habitations in holes in the earth. Yet one can never simply collapse all the architectural displays of the world into a Disneyland of multicultural synthesis. Great architecture reflects a true collective culture. In its poverty of architecture and its ignorance of beauty, America demonstrates the absence of genuine culture and values.

Is good to hear some inteligent voices denouncing Multiculturalism and it's negative effects in the education level of people

[Susano]

So, individual expression, and real individual appreciation of beauty, instead of indoctrinisation aresomething bad? And beiing a diverse, complex, pluralist society of free opinion and discourse is somehow bad, too? And somehow, all the skyscrapers, which originated in its modern form in America and were copied in Europe, do not count as architectural archievement? And somehow, architeacture is culture, but having a sufficiently varied culture of automobile affinmity in various form is not culture? And heresies?

That article reeks of bigotted double standards, really...

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Susano

So, individual expression, and real individual appreciation of beauty, instead of indoctrinisation aresomething bad?

Individual expresion? You are surely joking here!

Individualism as egocentrism is indeed a characteristic of the American society but.. individual expresion?

Funny, you sound more like an ultra-liberal than a leftist.

And beiing a diverse, complex, pluralist society of free opinion and discourse is somehow bad, too?

What diverse are Americans? They all stick to a limited number of artificial stereotypes. White Trash, Suburban Slaves, .. What's good about that?

As for free of opinion and discourse (I assume speech), it is limited to the opinion created for and delivered to them by the media. Let us not be delusive.

And somehow, all the skyscrapers, which originated in its modern form in America and were copied in Europe, do not count as architectural archievement?

Yes, the architecture of the ugly, where the human individual loses his identity and his soul to become a statistic.

And somehow, architeacture is culture, but having a sufficiently varied culture of automobile affinmity in various form is not culture? And heresies?

You are not suggesting here that the American cult to the automobile is a culture in the high meaning of it, are you?

[Susi]

Just to let you all know, having been to America several times and being in Canada (which has very similar architecture to America) and having been to several European cities, I would say that the European architecture is superior... it is a blend of old and new that emits a feeling of life, rather than the dead, plain old buildings in my city (though not exactly in "America"). The nicest buildings are the rare few Art Deco buildings from the 30ies... as well as the few buildings that are pre 1900s that we have, like the old town hall near my school and the churches.

[Susano]

Mynydd:

There is one key sentence in the article:

Beauty for the Americans is never collective, for the average American today knows not what is beautiful and what is ugly.

It is part of the wider theme of the article, and I found it is most precisely stated in that sentence. That sentencem and hence that theme, implies that there is an absolute beuaty, and that there should be cultural collectivism. I despise both concepts, hence I presentedthe alternate concepts: America has no cultrual collectivism as demanded by teh author, but rather indvidual expressions of culture. Now, wether that is true nor not - eh. It may be America is collectivised anyways. But that would make it even more odd to lambast it for not having a cultural collectivism!

[Menydh]

The existance of a collective's culture is not in conflict with the existance of the individual's culture. In fact the individual's created culture derives from the group's inherited culture and his own acquired experiences.

If the collective's culture is of a corrupted nature, the individual's culture will also be corrupted through inheritance. Such is the case of America.

[Susi]

Originally Posted by Susano

Mynydd:

There is one key sentence in the article:


It is part of the wider theme of the article, and I found it is most precisely stated in that sentence. That sentencem and hence that theme, implies that there is an absolute beuaty, and that there should be cultural collectivism. I despise both concepts, hence I presentedthe alternate concepts: America has no cultrual collectivism as demanded by teh author, but rather indvidual expressions of culture. Now, wether that is true nor not - eh. It may be America is collectivised anyways. But that would make it even more odd to lambast it for not having a cultural collectivism!

Just a question...

How many times have you been to America and how long have you been there each time?

[Marcus Marulus]

Ugliness - thy name is America!

[Lucifer]

Originally Posted by Susano

So, individual expression, and real individual appreciation of beauty, instead of indoctrinisation aresomething bad? And beiing a diverse, complex, pluralist society of free opinion and discourse is somehow bad, too? And somehow, all the skyscrapers, which originated in its modern form in America and were copied in Europe, do not count as architectural archievement? And somehow, architeacture is culture, but having a sufficiently varied culture of automobile affinmity in various form is not culture? And heresies?

That article reeks of bigotted double standards, really...

America has no freedom, my friend. America has strict laws on things that they have no reason to govern. For example: You can't drink (alcohol) until age 21 - what the hell gives the government the right to tell me when I can, or can't drink? Same goes for smoking, and sex. It has become almost natural for Americans to believe that their government can tell them when they can have sex, when they can go outside, when they can drive - which only shows that Americans do NOT know how to act/react. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned company, and in no way works for the government - yet it prints the American dollar, and Americans have to pay with taxes on their labor so the American Government can pay the Federal Reserve for the money they're printing. American women only have rights because the Federal Reserve wanted reason to tax them. The American people voted down tax on labor in 1930, but the five-six men that run the Federal Reserve decided that they wanted it passed - so it was passed. America claims to be the beckon of free-will, yet free will requires you to be allowed to act unconstrained by outside forces - law, illness, disabilities, religion, age, race and death all constrain you from decision making. This means that free-will does not exist, and the power motivating the America people is a lie.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Susi

Just a question...

How many times have you been to America and how long have you been there each time?

Trice, but I was stuffed with dollar, so I got very friendly threatment everywhere.

However, I am not very impressed by USAmerican "beauty" ideals. Much to magalomanic, surfacial and faked for me. And their madness about huge tits, and huge cars, is very childish. They have not quite understood the beauty and esthetics of little things.

Remove the porcelain teeth, the toupes, the latex tits and their nosejobs, assjobs and spayed tan, and check whats left... American "sexy" is definitively not my idea of "sexy" either. But USA is a very young "nation", with not too much own history worth mentioning, so the average USAmericans fascination for BIG boobs may reflect their infancy as a "nation".

But who am I to beat up children, not even monsterous grown babies? No, no, I rather pray the Lord Allah to have mercy upon USA, and stop relasing tornadoes on it.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Lucifer

America has no freedom, my friend. America has strict laws on things that they have no reason to govern. For example: You can't drink (alcohol) until age 21 - what the hell gives the government the right to tell me when I can, or can't drink? Same goes for smoking, and sex. It has become almost natural for Americans to believe that their government can tell them when they can have sex, when they can go outside, when they can drive - which only shows that Americans do NOT know how to act/react. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned company, and in no way works for the government - yet it prints the American dollar, and Americans have to pay with taxes on their labor so the American Government can pay the Federal Reserve for the money they're printing. American women only have rights because the Federal Reserve wanted reason to tax them. The American people voted down tax on labor in 1930, but the five-six men that run the Federal Reserve decided that they wanted it passed - so it was passed. America claims to be the beckon of free-will, yet free will requires you to be allowed to act unconstrained by outside forces - law, illness, disabilities, religion, age, race and death all constrain you from decision making. This means that free-will does not exist, and the power motivating the America people is a lie.

For someone who claims to be a German student in America, he knows much more of American than of Germany. Included the language as he had to use a software translator to try to pass as a German.

Profile edited. Land flag changed to appropriate status.

"Yards with flowers and gardens belong to more recent immigrants of different backgrounds."

Where exactly was he at? I would say that the majority of my neighbors have some type of garden of shrubbery and only a few of them are immigrants. My family spends quite a lot of time gardening in summer and spring.

"How is it that, with America's great resources, the nation could not create some lasting collective architectural monument for human posterity? Whether traversing rural America or stalking the streets of urban slums, one sees little evidence to indicate the proud wealth and power of America."

America may not have that "lasting collective archetectural monument" but to act as if there aren't pretty buildings here is lunacy. I live in St. Louis and in the city there are plenty of pretty buildings. There are also dilapidated ares, but this guys seems like the type who would defend to the death the certain group who causes much of the dilapidation.

(continued)


"American 'multiculti' comes into play here"

I have to agree here. Not only is considering different cultures equal insanity, so is having so many in one space. We would have been much better of if the immigration waves of the late 1800's early 1900's and the current one never happend. Then there's a good chance Mr. O'Donnell would not be here.

While I agree with some of what this says, this guy goes too far. There's too much here to criticize on this forum.

[PaleoYankee]

"But USA is a very young "nation", with not too much own history worth mentioning, so the average USAmericans fascination for BIG boobs may reflect their infancy as a "nation". "

Oh please, we have history worth mentioning. We've had writers, inventors, battles, and other history worth mentioning. What history do the Sami have worth mentioning? Reindeer herding?

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by PaleoYankee

"But USA is a very young "nation", with not too much own history worth mentioning, so the average USAmericans fascination for BIG boobs may reflect their infancy as a "nation". "

Oh please, we have history worth mentioning. We've had writers, inventors, battles, and other history worth mentioning. What history do the Sami have worth mentioning? Reindeer herding?

Indeed, but you should understand that the U.S. experiment has shown some severe limits: if the U.S. has had a big number of fine inventors it is also true that its inhabitants did soon abandon the measure approach to visual beauty that characterizes the euroepan continent.

Form collars protruding too high above suits to the lack of proportions in almost every product, especially fancy cars, buildings devoid of any sense of warmth etc.

If you compare an american bowie knife ot a germanic migration era knife (sax), which is its direct ancestor, you will see the difference: from grace to a crude gigantism.

This doesn't affect other positive aspects of your country, first of all the strong working ethic.

My impression is that you put too much stress on technical ingenuity, which is not a secondary factor at all, and too few stress on visual grace.