>[The following article aggravated the hell out of me, but maybe I'm being
>a little too harsh because I'm not all that familiar with the culture. The
>DIY movement (or perhaps more accurately, "movement") is characterized as
>politically left-wing, with references to anarchism, punk, a 'democratic
>world-view', organic farming, etc. But the few times the article
>articulates actual politics, instead of its interminable cataloging of
>sock puppets and pillow cases, it demonstrates an industry more and more
>awash in corporate money and ideologies that don't seem all that different
>from the average Wall Street guy: e.g. "the movement's anti-industrial,
>anti-institutional
>and highly entrepreneurial manifesto".
>I have a ton of liberal and lefty friends who are up to their necks in
>DIY, and many honestly believe that there's some political potential in
>it. But if this article is representative of DIY culture, I don't see
>where that political potential is.)
see, what happened was this. Everyone started totally getting into retro for the past decade. Retro microwaves, retro kitchenaid mixers, martini glasses. That whole thing? Spent. So they went for retro bathroom and kitchen fixtures. At first the dusty rose porcelain sink, dusty rose subway tile, and deep mauve border tile was verah verah cool'n'arrsum, what they discovered was: it was just ugly ass with a capital F, the quality shite.
So, if you can't go retro with your home furnishings, if retro martini shakers are just soooooooo 2004, whaddya gonna do? Knit! Make kitchen curtains out of burlap rice sacks! Can't sew? Even better: so authentic and rustic!
Srslytho, I was just bitching about something similar at facebook: the boing-boing blog tendency to host endless articles on DIY projects, often featuring sappy effusions on the fine art of making your own damn dressings. It's as if making dressing takes, like, days and days and days. And OMG! It actually tastes so much better than Wishbone. Wow. No shit? Whoddathunkit? Never mind something like baking bread which, I hate to break it to these hosers, their great grandmothers usually baked with a batter recipe, quick recipe or salt-rising type recipe, and didn't bother to knead at all. They didn't have time for that shit!
Reading all these geek boys romanticize such ordinary stuff rilly rilly chapped my ass. What mostly women had done forever now becomes some endless project to which one must devote youtube videos and photo galleries of DIY projects in action. *rolls eyes*. Kinda like watching men discovering fathering and getting all kinds of kudos for being such a great dad because - gasp! - they actually pick up the kid from daycare. Something I remember seeing a lot of in academic circles in the 90s. I'm the only woman who attends planning meetings for a local biking group, and I couldn't believe what I heard from the mouths of 30something dads: they had to babysit their kids. "Sorry, gotta leave to go babysit." I asked, "Oh, helping out a friend." "no, just going home to babysit my daughter while my wife goes to her book reading group." frickafrackfuckinfreak. I would expect _that_ from the 55+ crowd, but freaking 32 year olds? WTF. Yeah: young men participate in more of the childrearing duties, but they still use language that suggests that they don't see it as ordinary, but as a special event: babysitting. A project. *rolls eyes*
Anyway, I was ranting about this because DIY is infecting the local alt rag, central station in this community for the liberal-pwog-left nexus.
I try to remember that much of it has to do with the fact that young folks often know nothing else. They turn this stuff into extremely self-conscious endeavors - projects - because it *is* a discovery for them. They've never experienced a world where there was anything but pre-packaged, machine-made, convenience products. Hell, my son's gf told me, at 16, that she'd never turned on an oven until _he_ showed her how!
But it is the patina of social justice slathered all over the DIY movement that gets my manties in a bunch. It's the claim that meeting some age cohorts' needs, wants, desires, whims is the invisible hand that will majikly turn the world into a better place for EVERYONE!
As you point out, it's merely cultivating another consumption lifestyle replete with its own handmade, rough-hewn status symbols that signal belonging to the hipstered, aspiring to professional-managerial classes: People who have the time and energy to self-consciously and endlessly obsess about the centrality of DIY to the revo. It's becoming just another mechanism for sifting out the winners and also-rans: distinction.
Like backyard gardening is going to transform the food system in the world. O rilly? I bite my tongue to avoid saying, "Look motherfuckers, I kept a 50x100 foot garden, supplementing a budget to feed four kids, five if you count the wasband. Lemme tell ya something, that 10x10 plot in your sideyard or the jungle of pots on your condo patio is gonna yield exactly squat in terms of offsetting your food budget. That rosemary plant? Arrrsum. WTF are going to do with all the rosemary now? You might want to learn how to dry your erbs herb because, srsly, you can't eat that much rosemary in a week."
Don't get me wrong, I loved keeping a garden. But to keep one that actually feeds a family in a serious way? Pretty huge undertaking - and I did it the cheaters way! You have pests to deal with: gophers, woodchucks, deer, insects, grubs, birds, and shitting cats. Then there is the weeding, the watering, the hoeing, and 5 a.m. mornings sitting there with the hose, spraying down your plants to keep them from being killed by an early frost. Nevermind other weather disasters like massive rain or drought. Now, let's talk a bit about slicing, dicing, grating, pureeing, pickling, canning, freezing, and drying.
Still with me? I'm guessing not. Because if you're simply 'incented' by the romanticized wonder of it all, you're probably gonna lose interest real fast the third day you are standing for hours in a kitchen putting up canned beans, sweating over a boiling canning kettle when the temperature is 92 degrees F outside.
Again, don't get me wrong, I always loved the mastery of it all, not to mention the fact that it was slightly cheaper - but only slightly. Living in a rural area meant that all I had to do to get very affordable fresh veggies is stop at a farmstand and buy yellow squash for 20cts/lb in the mid-90s. Today, that same farmer takes advantage of the dearth of such outlets and the craze for local and charges you $3/lb. So maybe, in an urban/surburban environment, it's quite a bit cheaper than it was in the 90s. dunno.
WRT your discussion of the consumerism of anti-consumption, you may be interested in the passes Mark Grief takes at this phenom is an essay contained in _What *was* the Hipster_ (n+1). Grief has a number of points and, working quickly here, I'm going to badly summarize what is a much more nuanced position. Basically, Grief thinks hipsters are the usually very privileged children of the UMC who are attracted to urban environments where artists and muscicians congregate. As Grief says,
"One could say, exaggerating only slightly, that the hipster moment did not produce artists, but tattoo artists. ... It did not produce photographers, but snapshot and party photographers. ... It did not produce painters, but graphic designers. It did not yield a great literature, but it made good use of fonts. And hipsterism did not make an avant-garde; it made communities of early adopters."
Hipsters became the target market for artists and musicians trying to make a living practicing their art. Hence, something Grief and others explore in the book as well, this huge drive to start your own businesses among musicians, artists, craftspeople.
Thus, a symbiotic relationship emerges between hipsters and the artists and musicians who need them to buy their stuff. This was captured nicely in an article I stumbled over - I thnk it was New York Magazine, a satire where the author talks about the endlessly reoccurring declaration of the death of the hipster. In the article, one guy bemoans the loss of "community" - which is what exists to buy your art, go to your shows, or star in your video and photo documentaries you make and call it 'art'.
""I knew Gabe," he says, "and I think the real reason why he left is because he felt there was no community in New York anymore. I think he felt like he had no friends. And maybe he didn't, but there are a lot of people like that here, and that's not cool. Now more than ever, it's really important to have friends. Especially if you want to open a store, or start a record label, or throw a party. Or, like Gabe, if you want to make documentaries. Because now it seems like the big thing is making documentaries about your friends. But how can you document your friends' lives if you don't have any friends to document? Right?" http://nymag.com/nymetro/urban/features/10488/index2.html
See also Rob Horning's piece, Death of the Hipster, in which he writes:
"As Greif mentioned in his talk, hipsters function as a "poison" conduit between the marketing machine and the street." http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/the-death-of-the-hipster-panel/
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)