detroit rhetoric

Sometimes I think the art of journalistic writing is most like skipping stones across the water. The real skill in it consists in making things move forward by keeping them from sinking below the surface. If things get too far below the surface, the medium through which the stone is thrown begins to offer resistance. Too much resistance and the stone stops skipping.

A case in point. Rebecca Solnit’s article, “Detroit Arcadia: Exploring the post-American landscape,” in the July 2007 issue of Harper’s. Where have I heard or read it before? Zev Chavets, Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit? Or was it Diane Sawyer on PrimeTime Live? As Jerry Heron put it so perfectly, Detroit is the most representative city in the United States, a symbol for post modernism and post-industrialism and—to use Solnit’s term—post-Americanism.

I’m not even sure what “post-Americanism” is. What I mean is I don’t really know what Solnit means by it. Sure, I understand post-American global exchange, or at least the possibility of the waning influence of the United States in global affairs. But this isn’t what I read in Solnit’s article. No, in the article it’s the same old Detroit we always read about—the racial geography of a black city surrounded by white suburbs, Eight Mile Road, deindustrialization, urban decay, Coleman Young (68), even, yes, “Devil’s Night” (68) and the 1967 Detroit riots (71). But Solnit wants all those things to mean something else. She wants to make them point to the emergence of something “post-American.”

She introduces the term “post-American” with one of her few concrete and sustained examples: the Hotel Pontchartrain. The article begins, “Until recently there was a frieze around the lobby of the Hotel Pontchartrain in downtown Detroit, a naively charming painting of a forested lakefront landscape with Indians peeping out from behind trees” (65). A little further on she continues, “The second time I visited Detroit I tried to stay at the Pontchartrain, but the lobby was bisected by drywall, the mural seemed doomed, and the whole place was under some form of remodeling that resembled ruin . . . . I was sad to see the frieze on its way out, but—still—as I have explored this city over the last few years, I have seen an oddly heartening new version of the landscape that is not quite post-apocalyptic but that is strangely—and sometime even beautifully—post-American” (66).

Okay.

I always like that kind of example, the kind that is pulled from daily life that can be made indicative of so much more. The dynamic of remodeling that upgrades in ways we did not imagine has potential as well . . . just as long as it isn’t a cloaked version of the tired story of Manifest Destiny. I think for Solnit it is and it isn’t.

Detroit’s decline and its insistent—or should I say Solnit’s insistence—of the city’s transition into a hybrid green space is post-American because it contrasts with the fate of surrounding suburbs, or at least of Oakland County, “North of Eight Mile, the mostly white suburbs seem conventional, and they may face the same doom as much of conventional suburban America if sprawl and auto-based civilization die off with oil shortages and economic decline. South of Eight Mile, though, Detroit is racing to a far less predictable future” (66).

Okay.

So Detroit is exceptional somehow because there are pheasant (73) and stray dogs (70) and urban gardens (72). The less predictable future that comes of all this, Solnit writes, is “the hope that we can reclaim what we paved over and poisoned, that nature will not punish us, that it will welcome us home—not with the landscape that was here when we arrived, perhaps, but with land that is alive, lush, and varied all the same” (73).

But wait.

Detroit is anomalous according to Solnit and then again it is not. Other cities were ravaged by deindustrialization, but those cities were “reborn into more dematerialized economies. Vacant lots were filled in, old warehouses were turned into lofts or offices or replaced, downtowns became upscale chain outlets, janitors and cops became people who commuted in from downscale suburbs, and the children of that white flight came back to cities that were not exactly cities in the old sense” (70).

The choice doesn’t have to be between Richard Florida’s vision of cool cities and urban spaces returned to nature. Why can’t Detroit be exceptional because it is a space in which other options are emerging. One of the most glaring absences from Solnit’s article is mention of the Heidelberg Project. I call it glaring because the article includes an image of a burned out house with one of Tyree Guyton’s pink polka dots painted on it (67) and because she make a real point of the Capuchin garden on Mt. Elliot only a few blocks from Heidelberg Street. I’ve argued before the Heidelberg Project does good community service at the same time it is a powerful critique of the very forces of commodity fetishism that motivate Solnit’s article. But this isn’t really what Solnit is interested in. She seems to be most interested in cementing Detroit’s place as the most representative city post-9/11.

That’s okay. I just wonder where any mention of Dearborn is in the article. Or the Southeast Michigan Regional Mass Transit Authority.

I guess those and other things—like the odd statement that Detroit is “not very old” (67) (So 300 plus years isn’t old?)—would only keep the stone from skipping.

Filed by detroitr at 5:09 pm under quandries of rhetoric
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Zombie Movies

Lately I’ve developed a fetish for zombie movies. Don’t know why really.

Saw my first zombie movie at the Brighton Theatre on Archer Avenue in Chicago. My grandmother used to go to the movies there on Saturdays for the matinee and on Wednesdays for the dishes. Every Wednesday patrons would receive a dish and after a while could collect an entire place setting. I still have some of those dishes.

Next to the Brighton used to be a Gertie’s Ice Cream parlor, which was featured in a skit on Saturday Night Live, the skit in which the patron ordering ice cream has so many choices to make when ordering an ice cream cone that he becomes overwhelmed and begins to hesitate in making choices, so the person behind the counter pulls a gun and repeats the question, “Sugar cone or waffle cone?” Once the patron decides, the gun is put down and the employee behind the counter hands over the ice cream cone, saying, “Thanks and come again.”

Of course most people who have seen SNL episodes from back then probably better recall the parody of the Billy Goat Tavern, the one in which all people can order is a “Cheezborger! No fries, cheeps! No Pepsi, Coke!” Apparently there is a Detroit connection with the Billy Goat which only got the name in the 1940s when a goat roamed into the restaurant after falling off a truck. The owner of the tavern, Bill Sianis, brought the goat to the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers. The goat was wearing a sign on it that read “Taken from Detroit.” But the goat was denied entry into Wrigley Field and Sianis was so upset he cursed the team, saying the Cubs would not win another World Series until the goat gains admission to the ball park.

That’s the first Detroit connection, but it’s a digression from zombies.

That first zombie movie I saw at the Brighton was Night of the Living Dead. By that time the theatre was run down. The old chairs were threadbare and the floor was thick and sticky. A perfect venue.

One of my recent favorites is Shaun of the Dead. So many great lines, like this one:

Shaun: As Bertrand Russell once said, “The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” I think we can all appreciate the relevance of that now.
Liz: Was that on a beer mat?
Shaun: Yeah, it was Guinness Extra Cold.

Then there are all the others, so many, but most notably Land of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. No, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later don’t count because they’re not dead, they’re infected with rage.

But the one zombie movie that has a special place in my heart—a film not listed in the Wikipedia zombie movie list—is Biker Zombies from Detroit. Sure it’s bad. Terrible. Painful even. But it is Detroit.

And it was filmed in Canton, which I recently learned is a kind of zombie haven, where human cryogenic research had something of a start.

Eventually it all does tie together . . . sort of.

Filed by detroitr at 12:49 pm under oddities of rhetoric
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I tell people the road to the PhD is littered with a lot of bodies.

It’s a crude way of saying the process takes its toll and those who don’t finish don’t finish for a lot of reasons. It isn’t that those who do finish finish because they are more driven or more intelligent or both. Those who don’t finish run out of time, out of money, out of energy. Some people only complete a year of course work before they go elsewhere. Some even go so far as completing a portion of their dissertations before moving on.

I had one friend in graduate school who had a hard time finishing. She did eventually complete her degree though . . . just over ten years after starting it. We were talking once and she told a story about how if she did not have her homework finished her mother kept her home from school. A look of realization came over her face and she asked, “Do you think that has something to do with why I can’t finish my course work?”

I had another friend in graduate school who did not finish her degree. She passed her qualifying exams and began to write her dissertation prospectus. The year she took her exams I was in the middle of my course work. As she was writing her prospectus I still didn’t have any experience with planning or writing a dissertation. She would show me what she wrote. I would read it. While I could tell what she wrote was theoretically informed and well argued, I couldn’t really say much more about it. Something about the whole thing seemed strange to me. I didn’t realize what it was until I had to write my own prospectus. I really couldn’t say what I was going to do for a dissertation before I had actually done it. Sure I could have some idea, and I could write out at least that much. But at that stage I really didn’t have enough experience either with the genre of the prospectus or with the subject matter. What I wrote was apparently good enough, and that’s what really matters. It only has to be good enough.

I never saw my friend from graduate school after she couldn’t get past writing the prospectus. I did get an email though a few months ago from her widower. She had spent her life as a technical writing consultant and as an adjunct instructor. He wrote that she had been passionate about her teaching and well regarded by her students. I had no doubt.

Filed by detroitr at 9:34 am under other stuff
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I wonder what they can make out of a PhD.

Filed by detroitr at 7:09 pm under other stuff
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As part of some vocabulary exercise at his elementary school, my son was asked to identify three places he might find a prophet. To which he replied:

At church

In the Bible

On a street corner

Smart kid

Filed by detroitr at 2:36 pm under daily observations
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Betty Boop.

That’s what Curtis used to call her.

They were together about seventeen years I think. When he first introduced me to her he called her his nurse. Something about welfare payments, they got some money for her to take care of him.

She used to take care of a lot of people. Like the old man who lived in the retirement tower near Woodward and Warren. She would stay with him for days at a time. Cooking and cleaning and keeping him company I guess. Sometimes she would stay out at Mrs. Pile’s on the west side. She was a good person Mrs. Pile. It seemed like a few people stayed with her. I don’t think they so much took care of Mrs. Pile as she took care of them, took them in and helped them out, gave them a sense of purpose, and a little money.

I used to drive Betty out there some times. The entire time I knew her she was little more than skin and bone. She had that slow tired way of walking. We would talk on those drives. She told me how she grew up in Port Huron, used to be in the military, and how she loved Curtis but he just drank too much.

When they drank they used to fight. Sometimes Curtis would come down the street with a split lip or a swollen eye. Betty had beat him up. Sometimes he beat her up too. She would leave him. He would kick her out. Eventually though they would end up back together.

The other day I saw Gator for the first time in a while. He asked if I had heard about Curt. “No, what?”

Betty and  Curtis got in a fight. She threw bleach at him. All he remembers is waking up and seeing her lying there. He tried to wake her up but couldn’t.

She was dead.

And now Curtis is going to Jackson.

Filed by detroitr at 9:16 am under quandries of rhetoric
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Signs in all their simplicity still manage to communicate a whole lot. Like the sign, “Walk With Light.” Kinda poetic if you think about it.

I was just in Disney World and there were a number of signs that caught my eye and made me think. One in particular–I wish now I had taken a picture of it–was at the entrance to each of the theme parks. It was a sign directing people who were not carrying a purse or backpack to go past the inspection stations where park security inspected each bag. The sign had an arrow and read something like, “Persons without baggage.”

I thought, does that include emotional baggage?

I figured it didn’t since the line was short, but it wasn’t that short.

We all carry emotional baggage with us. Not all of it bad. I don’t think we would be human if we didn’t. I mean the experiences we have had that have shaped us did matter. We have the scars to prove a lot of it. We also have the character and strength to show for it.

Without any baggage we would be blanks, walking around empty. But how much baggage is enough and how much is too much? Its like when some people “camp.” They bring everything they own and just kind of recreate the place they left. Too much baggage. I think you gotta pack lighter than that if you really want to experience where you are and who you are with.

Although it isn’t all about how heavy your baggage is, its also about what you do with it, how you use it to be somewhere. Sometimes it takes a while to figure these things out. It takes a while to figure out how to carry what you have into the future. There’s no denying it though, we can’t pretend things did or did not happen. Although we can bring those things forward for use in the present. To shelter or to expose.

Anyway, there was another sign prominent around Disney World that I did get a picture of. On each trash can, in the blue rectangle across the palm tree, “Waste Please.”

I wonder if anyone threw any of their excess baggage in there?

Filed by detroitr at 1:25 pm under daily observations
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Been away for a while. A lot to think about.

One thing I have been thinking about (that I want to write about here) is the film Tsotsi.

The opening scene is forceful and I want to write about it further. In the scene the main character, Tsotsi, is striding toward the camera which recedes from him, keeping its distance and its focus on his face. As he strides toward the camera he looks straight at it, unblinking. Dressed in black, the road he moves through is brightly lit. People move away from him as he goes by them. He swings his arms confidently, his menace confirmed by the aggressive sound of Zola’s “Mdlwembe.”

I think its a great establishing shot. And it contrasts so strongly with the final scene. The final scene is at night, the background is so dark nothing can be seen of anything except the characters. Tsotsi is standing, surrounded by police, his arms raised in the air. He is dressed in a white shirt. A powerful contrast with the black coat worn in the brightly lit opening scene.

Trembling with what he is beginning to feel, he is not longer strident. He is still, ready to be taken into custody and whatever awaits him. He seems broken, but it is not entirely clear that he is shattered. The film ends here. We do not see him taken into custody. We also do not see him run away, or killed. In some ways the end of the film can be seen as a beginning for the person, David, who Tsotsi had so long repressed.

 A very different ending compared to Fugard’s novel. In the novel Tsotsi dies with a peaceful expression, having come to terms with his humanity, while having been crushed by an apartheid bulldozer pushing a wall over on him.

Which is different still I understand when compared to the ending that is circulating in bootleg copies of the film. I am not sure just what the bootleg ending is. As I understand it though it is not the ending that confronts the issues of reconciliation as the original film does.

Although the original film may not really confront the issues of reconciliation either. Tsotsi starts to become aware of himself as a person with a name, as David, as he continues caring for the infant. He begins to have memories and to feel the pain, as well as joy, of those memories, to experience his own humanity, to feel connectedness, to vaguely sense ubuntu. But there is no explicitly articulated political or social cause for his loss of ubuntu. He is not made out in the film to be as much a “wreck of apartheid” (as Dlamini put it) as he is in the novel.

I am not sure how far this line of thinking about it goes, but it seems possible that the film is suggesting tha reconciliation is at least as much about black South Africans coming to terms with themselves. More a personal reconciliation than a political one, or than the spiritual reconciliation in Fugard’s novel.

 As chair of the TRC, Archbishop Desmond Tutu does bring together in the same person the force of personal, political, and spiritual reconciliation. In the film though, more than ten years past the democratic elections, the separate threads of reconciliation continue to pull apart.

Like I said, something here worth thinking about and writing further about, something worth developing further. I think it really has to do with openness, Tsotsi letting his guard down and opening himself to the vulnerability and fragility of his own life.

Filed by detroitr at 9:28 am under quandries of rhetoric
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In Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert A. Simon distiniguishes natural science from sciences of the artificial–disciplines of production such as engineering, graphic design, and writing. Simon makes the case that sciences of the artificial are non-generalizable because production is so context-specific that each production task and so every end production is unique. When building a bridge the demands of terrain and weather and usage and whatever else define the task and make it unique relative to any other bridgebuilding task. The same thing with writing. Each written product is a response to the demands in the moment.

Even though artificial sciences are sciences of the particular this does not mean that there is only one right answer unique to every specific production challenge. There is a range. Different architects or engineers will submit different designs that all may satisfy the demands of the engineering task at hand. Similarly different writers will write different responses to the challenge posed by something like an essay contest.

This is not a paradox or anything. It is the nature of the sciences of the particular. We shouldn’t get hung up on Simon’s terms. His use of the word “science” is an expression of his positivism, yes. But we do not need to be positivists to accept his point. Disciplines of making, such as architecture, engineering, writing, require applying a kind of problem-solving ability, a making use of design thinking, to bring into existence some thing that has not yet been made.

It requires innovation.

At least all genuine design problems require innovation. Any problem that does not require innovation, any problem of making some thing for which the parameters for success are well-known and/or the contraints of production are so rigid and inflexible, is not a genuine design problem after all. There is no challenge. Just repeat what has already been done. No innovation in the solution. And so, not particular.

We accept the standard of innovation in the production of the particular all the time. Think about shows like Project Runway. The aspiring fashion designers are challenged to make a dress or an outfit or some piece of clothing. What they end up making hasn’t been made before. Or if it has, if the judges see that it is repetitious or a rip-off, they disparage it. The challenge is in designing the particular.

I think this is the real challenge for student writers. I mean it should be the challenge writing teachers give to student writers. Offer them challenges that engage them in the discipline of particularity, that introduce them to the rigors of design. And if you have ever seen Project Runway or any other show like it, you know that design is rigorous. It takes attention to detail and familiarity with materials and facility with the tools and knowledge of traditions and so on and so on.

Now no one on Project Runway ever complains that the judges are being “subjective.” Of course they are. Isn’t that the point of a discipline of the particular? We judge the productions on their own merits as designs here and now. And judges of design can be very particular. So the designers shake their heads and take the abuse and go back and try to at least not make the same design mistake again.

Writing teachers aren’t as lucky in this as the judges on Project Runway. Students always say we are being too subjective or not objective enough. What they don’t get and what we don’t seem to teach them is that writing is an act of designing. It isn’t meant to be evaluated objectively. Its meant to be assessed in its particularity.

Because I think this way about it I am disappointed in Fred Kemp’s coming out in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the blind grading of first-year writing at Texas Tech. I have no doubt he found as he said he had a deeply inconsistent set of teaching and grading practices when he took over the composition program. But isolating evaluation of writing from the instruction in writing is to profoundly misconstrue the character of writing as a science of the artificial. It is not about being objective or impartial. It is about creating design challenges that are real, that force students to draw on and so extend their facility with the tools of writing. Any demonstration of that facility is assessed in the context of the particular design challenge itself. To take an example from engineering, no one would evaluate the merits of the Hoover Dam as an engineering accomplishment except in its context as a dam on the Colorado River. You just can’t make any sense of it otherwise.

Besides. Evaluation never improves ability. I forget who said it, but it makes sense: Weighing cattle doesn’t get them fat.

Filed by detroitr at 2:39 pm under Rhetoric & Design
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I was in third or fourth grade at the beginning of a school year when the teacher went down the rows of students asking each one whether he or she was catholic. This was in a public school in Chicago. She wasn’t asking out of idle curiosity or anything like that. She was identifying those students who would be attending catechism classes on Wednesday afternoons at the local parochial school.

I used to love those Wednesday afternoons. There would be one or two other students left behind after all the others left to go to catechism classes. The teacher would pretty much just leave us alone to have an extended art period. An hour and a half of art. It was great.

As the teacher was going down the row of students and each one responded to her question about their religion with the same answer, “catholic,” it struck me that I didn’t know what to say. I mean I knew I wasn’t catholic, but I really didn’t know much else beyond that. I needed an answer, so I started to think through it, then it struck me that there are two kinds of schools. Catholic and public. I knew I wasn’t catholic, so that meant I must be public. Of course when I announced this to the teacher she stopped. Who knows what she thought. She didn’t ask me again though, figuring I wasn’t catholic and so I wouldn’t be going to catechism classes.

Growing up with that many catholic friends though I developed a good sense for catholic guilt. Not a sense for it like I experience it. No, this is a sense like I can perceive it, like I am sensitive to it. But as sensitive as I am to it I never have developed it. I never have developed that sense of being guilty for my limitations, guilty for not having done more.

No, my guilt is different. Kind of the opposite. I have always felt guilty for my lack of limitations, for having raw talents I never asked for that people close to me did not have. What it comes down to is growing up with an older brother who is disabled and always being around other kids all the time who had mental and physical disabilities. Pretty confusing stuff to be able to easily do so much more than everyone else. I felt guilty about it, guilty at the sensation of ability, guilty with the pleasure I felt sometimes when I experienced the ease of some activity.

Since I never asked for it and couldn’t get rid of it I just wouldn’t use it. Let it go to waste. Of course that carried with it its own guilt too. With all the people around me who did not have what I felt I had in terms of ability, for me to not use mine felt even worse. So I would try to use my ability to carry everyone else, but that never worked for obvious reasons.

Guilt makes people do funny things though. Once when I was ten my mother sent me a few blocks away to the store to buy a gallon of milk. On the way I met an older kid who had CP. He wanted me to give him money. I told him the only money I had I had to use to buy the milk for my mother. He persisted. So did I. I walked away and went on to the store, feeling terrible. The scenario seems sort of like some kind of ethical dilemma, you know, which do you choose when no choice is perfect?

On the way home from the store I saw the same kid again. He didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t say anything to him. I just took the change and held it out and put it in his hand. I didn’t know then just how much money there was. It didn’t matter to me. When I got home though it mattered to my mother. She was furious that I didn’t have the change and wanted to know what happened to it.

I remember not wanting to tell her. How could I tell her? How could I tell her how I felt and why I did it? I was really too young to be able to articulate such things. Eventually, after she told me she was going to walk me back to the store and ask the store owner what happened, I told her about the kid. By this time she didn’t believe me or didn’t want to believe me. So we walked back to the store and the owner who didn’t know anything probably just told her I paid for the milk and left.

We soon left the store and started walking home when we came across that kid. I remember pointing to him and saying something like, “See, there he is.” The kid looked back at me. I’ll never forget it. Like he had been caught. Guilt and hurt on his face. My mother said nothing. Nothing to him. Nothing to me. We just walked home.

Filed by detroitr at 12:56 pm under reflections on stuff
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