Obviously, you can’t say something is beautiful if you’re not willing to say something is ugly. But there are more and more taboos about calling something, anything, ugly. (For an explanation, look first not at the rise of so-called “political correctness,” but at the evolving ideology of consumerism, then at the complicity between these two.) The point is to find what is beautiful in what has not hitherto been regarded as beautiful (or: the beautiful in the ugly).
As Susan Sontag points out in her essay An Argument About Beauty - beauty has come to be equated to haughtiness. Caring about aesthetics is essentially out of vogue and something to deride. Contemporary consumer architecture and aesthetics is the definitive statement that the vast majority of Americans venerate the ugly. There is nothing beautiful about the strip-mall. There is nothing inspiring about the sea of pavement, the parallel yellow lines that denote parking spaces and the tiny islands of destitute young saplings that hopelessly try to shade a single car. It is a tribute to functionality, convenience and precaution. The dimensions of a suburban parking lot always exceeds the use, as if a big-box store is preparing itself for the day that the entire community descends upon it and frantically searches for a place to put their vehicle. It is a triple-crown of functional triumph over ocular nuance; excessive size to compensate for poor planning, structural expediency over aesthetic.
This is absolutely the fabric of American throw-away materialism and yet to show such fervent disdain for it is at best divisive and at worst dismissive. Those that live around it certainly would find the sentiment elitist. It’s because the problem at hand hasn’t been caused outright by consumerism. The issue is that people that care about aesthetics spend too much time ridiculing the rest of America and not enough time promoting a more beautiful social good.
There is an economy for the tasteful. Not every product sold is made in China. Not every house built is cut from the same mould as the previous ten. The economy is based on aesthetic and craftsmanship is measured by human-instilled value and not complex financial instruments and political manuvering. At the root of cheap products are exploited workers and filthy fossil fuels sold at artificially controlled prices. What man and woman make by hand is beautiful and will be treasured from generation to generation, not just thrown away.
In the end, the exploited will organize, fossil fuels will no longer be politically and economically viable and beauty will win. If people don’t always reject the ugly outright, they do over time.
This is absolutely the fabric of American throw-away materialism and yet to show such fervent disdain for it is at best divisive and at worst dismissive. Those that live around it certainly would find the sentiment elitist. It’s because the problem at hand hasn’t been caused outright by consumerism. The issue is that people that care about aesthetics spend too much time ridiculing the rest of America and not enough time promoting a more beautiful social good.
There is an economy for the tasteful. Not every product sold is made in China. Not every house built is cut from the same mould as the previous ten. The economy is based on aesthetic and craftsmanship is measured by human-instilled value and not complex financial instruments and political manuvering. At the root of cheap products are exploited workers and filthy fossil fuels sold at artificially controlled prices. What man and woman make by hand is beautiful and will be treasured from generation to generation, not just thrown away.
In the end, the exploited will organize, fossil fuels will no longer be politically and economically viable and beauty will win. If people don’t always reject the ugly outright, they do over time.
