[lbo-talk] Blog Post. The Road Beckons: Excerpt from Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

[Wojtek S]

[WS:]  The fact of the matter is that the lives of the great majority of
people on this planet are miserable when compared to glitzy idealized
images shown in most public media.  What makes them miserable is a contrast
with a blatant fiction that people see as the norm.  This is evident in
reactions of many immigrants to the US who discover that this 'land of milk
and honey' is not that much different from the dreary land they left
behind. But comparing to the slums of Africa, Asia or Latin America where
most of the humankind lives, the US slums do not look that back.  This was
an observation of a visitor from Bulgaria who after being taken on a tour
of the slums of Baltimore commented "You call that slums?  You should see
the slums in Bulgaria."

Another observation, a skillful writer or filmmaker can portray the lives
of any group of people as either "glamorous' or 'miserable.'  Stalinist
propaganda in Russia and Eastern Europe often glamorized peasant life and
contrasted it with dreadful artificiality of bourgeois life.

Having said that - the aesthetics of portrayals of the dreary lives of
ordinary people cf. "Workingman's death"
http://www.aljazeera.com/profile/working-mans-death.html trumps the
schmaltzy aesthetics of Hollywood-style glamour of celebrities.

-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."