Baltimore is one of a kind. It’s strange loveliness gets to me. The charm of the falling apart brick that weaves with the new billboards, wires, graffiti, stained glass, intricate designs arching the tops of boarded up windows, the dirt on the streets , the one way streets that have something new to tell you every time. The out of the ordinary. This city has so much flavor in its unpredictability I don’t think I have ever encountered something of a kind.
I was born in a city. I grew up in the city. When I turned 16 we moved from the city Chisinau, therefore from Moldova, to a suburb under L.A. therefore to United States. The pristine quietness and safety of the suburbs always seemed threatening to me. The fake green lawn, the fake smile on the neighbor’s faces. What annoyed me more was the physical attachment to the realm of a delineated space: your house, a backyard, or a car. No room for curious walks that could lead you on for hours through places you’ve seen, but not really. Just the nearby perfect park with a perfect alley designed for a “perfect” walk. In the quietness of the suburbs, where no strange faces pass by, barely ever would you see a human. The perfect grass, the perfect alleys were more disquieting then the slums of the dangerous cities. I guess it was something about this cleanness and straightness that did not leave room for errors—the most intrinsic and inevitable to being a human. I did not belong.
In one sense, Baltimore is an echo of a once booming industrial city. In fact it used to be the second most populated city after Philadelphia according to the 1860s Census. However, anyone who lived or visited Baltimore will find the last statement ironic, because the city is not booming in anyway, except in the number of abandoned houses. This plethora of falling apart buildings is the aftermath of the urbanization process stimulated by the FHA loans after World War II. But what the population that flooded the suburban areas did not realize, is that they were submitting themselves to a lifetime of a designed experience, designed not by them but for them. The predesigned environment, which is what suburbs are, yields a certain kind of behavior. The idea was inspired by one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century, B.F. Skinner. Skinner writes in Beyond Freedom and Dignity “The intentional design of a culture and the control of human behavior it implies are essential if the human species is to continue to develop.” With this in mind, the government provided its citizens with cookie-cutter-perfect homes positioned in a perfect grid structure. In this case, as Skinner mentions citizens are no longer citizens but “products” of a designed environment.
At the 2010 Whitney Biennial I was perplexed by the photographs of James Casebere Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #1 and Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #2 mainly because these works evoked a feeling of a fabricated reality to which one needs to conform. The artist created the work by photographing mock ups that resembled a part of NYC suburbia. These pieces triggered my memories about instances from my High School years. The time when the designed environment I was part of, forced me to be a certain kind of individual. The perfectness of each inch of grass behind my window; the big flat screen TV that our neighbors bragged about; the toaster, the microwave, the washer and dryer that completed the task efficiently and fast, all told the story of my imperfections, unpopularity and low efficiency. All of these were material goods that I could acquire if I became useful in the society, i.e. become a material good myself. It was even drilled down our brains in school. My efficiency was measured by my G.P.A and class rank. In fact, class rank had a much bigger significance then one’s personality. In some cases, students hated each other based on class rank. Just the fact that a numeric value attributed to a person plays such a big role in the path of his or her future seemed somewhat disturbing to me. It seemed like in the government’s understanding humanity was reduced down to an arithmetic formula.
For a lot of people living in Baltimore, it gets frustrating when it comes to shopping, especially if they are from a suburban area where shopping centers are everywhere. In Baltimore there are almost no malls. Baltimore is almost the opposite of an engineered environment because it fails to do two key things: produce consumers and working robots. The reasons for this are numerous, but number one is crime. The government can’t seem to control the high rates of crime in this city. On top of that, half of the city is a ghost of history composed of old abandoned private shops and boarded up 18th century buildings--not a very inviting atmosphere for consumers. But, amidst all this Baltimore produces artists, musicians and writers who seem to add a lot of flavor to the culture of this city. None of the previously described aspects of the Charm City convey the idea that happiness can be bought which is the primary force behind the Capitalist America.
Out of order and out of the ordinary, Baltimore city presents a model of an environment that has been designed in the past and now lives through its deterioration. This might be the reason behind such an aversion towards the city coming from those who previously grew up in designed environments, i.e. a suburbias. As John Locke states, our “ideas, [are] not innate, but acquired” from the environment thus our mind is just a blank canvas ready to be imprinted upon. So the government builds these perfect neighborhoods for people to be born into and later embrace, without questioning, as the ultimate or proper reality. For generations to come memories will be bound to the perfect house with the perfect lawn in a perfect neighborhood. They will strive in high school to be perfect and to get the job that would get them a perfect hose with the perfect lawn in the perfect neighborhood. This resulting in a continuous cycle that generates perfect consumers and perfect producers. These suburbia kids will be the product of their environment, fulfilling the government’s master plan like robots on a nine to five job. But under the automaton masks hide a human beings with all of their flaws. What happens to these human beings when they are trying to fit the system, in stead of having the system fit them?
In the quiet of the suburbia, there lived a little boy. Every Christmas he got new video games, every birthday mom would take him shopping for what he wanted, every Easter he would trod along his mom and dad to drop off an apple pie at the neighbors house. So went each year, every celebration was perfect but predictable. Then daddy got a big plasma screen TV. If he would come home from work, which hardly ever happened, he would watch TV. He never talked. His mom was busy cooking the perfect apple pie and decorating the house according to each seasonal issue of the Martha Stewart Magazine. She seemed the happiest when her friends came over and marveled at the arrangement she made in the house. The boy grew up in his room playing video games. Everything was perfect.
When it was time to go to school, the boy got on the yellow bus and he never noticed much of the surrounding areas. At lunch he never talked to other children because he was socially awkward. He would always find a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, apple sauce, a can of coke and a stick of cheese in his lunch bag. But what irritated him the most was the everyday lunch note mom would put in the bag. Most of the time he felt that if she really meant it she could tell him instead of writing silly notes. Other then that, everything was perfect.
One day his parents promised to get him the wii if he got good grades at school. So the boy tried very hard and at the end of the semester he had straight A’s. He got what he wanted. Since then he knew that he could get whatever he wanted if he tried very hard. He found some friends that played video games too. They played video games together after school. Mostly he invited his friends to his house so he could brag about his newest stuff. Everything was perfect.
One time he came home and saw his mom and dad fighting. He did not realize they always fought because he was always in his room. So this time to avoid what was happening he ran up to his room. The same day dad got killed in a car accident. The boy realized that he knew nothing about him, except that he was a good businessman. He felt it was his duty to continue his dad’s path. Mom hired a supervising nanny and left with her friends to relax on the beaches of the Caribbean. The boy was irritated that his mom had to hire a nanny because he old enough to take care of himself. He was 17 and about to graduate High School. Everything was less perfect, but each one found a way to create a more perfect situation.
A couple years later the boy was working as the executive director at a business compony. With each promotion he knew that he would get less time for himself and more money. Money was extremely important to him, especially because he needed the newest interactive TV in his house. He lived separate from his mom, who at this point had too many dogs and got into knitting. He hardly visited her. He still played video games. He loved playing. It was perfect.
He did not like visiting home because it made him sick to the stomach. It reminded him of some kind of thing he overlooked in the perfectness of it all. It seemed like the worst was watching his mom knitting and feeding her dogs. May be because it was a routine. May be because he thought it was annoying that she replaced him with 10 dogs. But what he never realized, was that this anxiety was coming from within himself. From not knowing, who he really was and where he really belonged.
For ten years he worked and played video games. A major depression hit the country and he lost his job. So he played video games all the time now. He was old and alone. One morning the suburban boy committed a perfect suicide. He lost himself to the perfectness of his suburban house, on a quiet suburban street with a perfect lawn.
Bibliography:
B.F. Skinner. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company 2002
Locke, John. “No Innate Speculative Principles.” An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Barnes and Noble 2004
