>I digress. Let's get back to terrorism as a transcendent means to
>moral rectitude in an aberrant universe of indifference.
>
>Phillip Johnson's Crystal Cathedral is a glass trapezoid set against
>palm trees and parking lots in Orange county---just down the freeway
>from Disneyland. If there was ever an architectural icon for morality
>purified down to its structural essence as clerical fascism, this is
>it. It has absolutely no human content whatsoever. All form, all
>law, the face of Moloch as a multifaceted mirror of the sky.
>
>Chuck Grimes
So, "terrorist architecture"? Renata Salecl has an article on Disneyland and the People's Palace in Romania (in [Per]Verions of Love and Hate, 1998), which was built by leveling huge chunks of Budapest. The idea being, "I love my country, and because I love something in my country more than my country, I must mutilate it." Although I haven't been to Crystal Cathedral, I have a close friend who has - I've even got a picture of it. I guess the most obvious association is "transcendental-transparent reflection." An icon of purity, yep, that sounds about right. I'm wondering if there is anything to do about diamonds here, and objet a.
One of the fringe, I'd like to say fringe anyway, evangelists has a 'red book' that he sells at his workshops - on tour at a city near you. His analysis of the family: a woman is a diamond, perfect in all ways, and a husband must love this woman. But sometimes the relationship doesn't work, and the woman needs to submit to the husband. The husband is a hammer, and must crack the diamond so that its flaws are chiseled away. I can't remember the guys name, his sociology is enough to make a person puke. He also argues that rock must is poison, because it jumps around and causes excitement which is contrary to the peace that passeth understanding. This might not be completely connected to the CC, but there is the metaphor of the diamond and the association with 'the feminine.' Is not the church the bride of Christ? The Crystal Cathedral as 'neo-gothic feminine' architecture?
Ok, nasty thoughts are starting to creep into my head. Crystal Cathedral as objet petit a, the excess, surplus, remainder, leftover of a faith in God. Our places of worship ought to reflect our innermost being, open, a hard kernel of faith, pure - faith can only be demonstrated with outward appearances... we have to re-arrange the outward appearance to make it coincide with our inner disposition. Not unlike the world mission of the evangelical church, would that be to destroy everything made of sin and replace it with... what, something like Krypton from (the first) Superman? God's house, a woman, is pure - put on a pedestal. A sight of purity. I'm reminded of the Jacobin terror. The terror of abstraction: rather than assume the place of sovereignty the Jacobins leave the place of sovereignty empty, and must destroy anything that is not equal, abstractly. The real terror here is not freedom that is extolled, but the necessity of having to destroy everything that smacks of difference, or of power.
I haven't finished my coffee yet, is this something you were hoping for or, as in the past, have I missed your point completely?
ken