I found last weeks reading quite deep and difficult to understand in places, whereas this week I thought it was much more interesting and understandable, or is it that I am beginning to understand the ethos behind the reading? I have no doubt that part of my undertsanding is because I can relate to this subject of time, space and the flaneur.
Jenks begins by comparing the 'manor' of Bethnal Green, home to the Krays with that of 1920's Chicago and later with certain parts of Manchester. The truth is that any large town or city has its similarities in terms of 'manors', turfs, estates, etc 'run' by the local 'overseers'. Lefebvre and Foucault blame a government hell bent on modernity, control and capitialism without proper thought being given to the consequences of segregation.
Jenks then goes on to describe the flaneur, 'The Flaneur is the spectator and depictor of modern life. The Flaneur moves through space and among the people with a viscosity that both enables and privalages vision. An observer is a prince who is everywhere in possession of his incognito'.
I n other words this person is able to move around all areas of a city at will, being noticed but not being challenged. At the same time he is also at odds with the rush and speed of modernity, preferring to fly in the face of it and 'take the turtle for a walk'.
He is the ultimate observer, I say 'he' because later the 'gender' of the flaneur is discussed. It is alluded to that the street is no place for a woman, 'sexual dangers' being a reality. Also that the men derived pleasure from visiting the 'bad' and 'ugly' parts of town, being masculine explorers and 'speaking in defence of the poor.
I have personal experience of the dangers of thinking that men are at liberty to walk the streets, these days nobody is. To be able to without fear of challenge, is almost to become invisible.
'Women do not look, they are looked at' and therfore cannot be flaneuse? Walkowitz goes onto the offensive by saying that men treat the streets as a way of getting a cheap voyeristic thrill by seeing it as a 'playground of dreadful delights'.
The paper then seeks to describe how England with its nationwide community segregation allowed things to get so 'out of control'. 'Keating notes that the middle class population of the period was in general so ignorant of the condition of the working classes that 'realist' accounts of working-class people in literature were often accused of plagiarism'. If they were indeed 'out of control', who were they out of control from? The middle classes? Why is it that it always seems to be the so called 'upper levels' of 'class' who see things as 'out of control'?
We often see examples of this today. A few weeks ago I read of a judge allowing a convicted paedofile to have his own mobile phone in prison stating that 'everyman these days should have his own phone'! There have been numerous other examples in the past of judges seemingly being out of touch with 'reality'. In another case, that of sexual assault, the victim who had already been through hell, was accused by the judge of virtually 'asking for it' because of the way she was dressed!
Debord then provides 3 methodologies in which the flaneur will move around the environment. Derive, detournement and spectacle. Derive means 'drifter' and in following this methodology the flaneur has no preconception of where he/she is going and may drift anywhere dependant of what takes his/her fancy at the time. This is the way in which I moved around Chester last weekend, I didn't have any route in mind, or anywhere in particular to go, and changed direction several times as I went. When I saw the chefs on the roof, I wasn't originally going that way, but was taken by the moment.
Detournement means re-cycling, re-positioning of existing elements of artwork. This is the way in which Adam in the lecture on Monday described how he would map out a route in Preston and then transfer the exact route to Paris and follow it to see where it took him.
'The spactacle spectator is in itself a staunch bearer of the capitalist order'. 'The spectacle indicates rules of what to see and how to see it'. This seems like a very rigid, almost blinkered way of seeing things, so blinkered in fact as to miss the point of looking!
This paper struck a chord with me, as I grew up in a small but rough town in North Wales. Most people knew everyone else and there was a definate 'hierarchy' amongst the youths. Again there were definate areas where you could safely go, and others where it paid to become invisible, or be challenged as to why you were there. Of course back then it meant the worst was a bloodied nose, knives were seldom carried or used. Many years later I went back and a new generaton of youths had taken over. I went into a pub I knew, being quiet and off the main street. It was empty, which did not surprise me, except for a gang of youths talking quitely in one corner. As I sat at the bar one youth approached the pool table next to me, placed a large two handed axe into one of the pockets and sat back down. I took my 'cue' and left! It stikes me that the incident would have happened irrelevant of how I acted, or what I was wearing. In that situation it was impossible to become the 'grey man' and not having been back for years I was simply an unknown.
Photographing the 'underbelly' of a city is something which interests me. As a CSI visiting most rough areas of a town/city I often made the comment that you didn't really know the place until you knew the people in these areas. It is a sad but true fact that the spread of capitalism drives people to the outskirts.
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