All Consuming

Stuff. You like stuff, right? You like living in a castle made of empty I-Phone boxes while the environment melts into a flood of baby panda’s tears trickling into a river topographically spelling out “help me” on GoogleEarth? You like stuff, yeah? You love stuff? You like your brands too, yeah? You like your Nikes so much you got knee replacements with a swoosh on them. Your internal monologue is introduced by a bland floppy-haired ident twat springing up to sell you a Three disillusionment tariff through the power of creative bankruptcy? You love stuff, that’s why Christmas exists. You love stuff, almost as much as you love the idea of Chinese children crawling through a flaming alphabet of hypodermic needles to pick out the letters DKNY to sew on your bum flannel. Buy buy buy! You love your ‘stuff’. But is it making you happy? You work seven million hours a second just so you can drive around in a tank and shop at Waitrose. You’re kidding yourself. And secretly you know it’s your fault that everything has gone to shit. Admit it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Wish you were dead yet? Go on, pop off to Harrods and buy yourself a Vivien Westwood noose.

 If it’s any consolation, and you’re still reading, I’m the same. We all are. Buying new stuff makes me feel all tingly inside. For about 5 seconds. Then when that wears off I go out and buy more stuff until, like a rat in a cage with a ‘buy’ switch to the brain, the urge is sated. CDs are my heroin and my 1 bedroom flat is buckling under the weight of my addiction.

 But even before the economy went all apocalyptic, wasn’t it starting to seem a bit hollow and pointless? Tiring, even? Ever resent the endless stream of crap that appears over night that’s not really much different to the endless stream of crap that was there yesterday but that you have to buy to replace the last lot of crap in case that load of crap goes wrong or starts to look out of fashion or gets the bad Aids ? I’m knackered just thinking about it. Life has become like an endless supermarket sweep with a demented, naked Dale Winton bearing down on you with a chainsaw. What’s really tiring is keeping up-to-date with wanting stuff you didn’t know existed. Until recently, I hadn’t had a new phone for 8 years. I was quite happy playing Snake and sporting an embarrassingly big bulge in my pocket. Then I got a new phone with GPS and a fat Elvis wobble-head, and suddenly I’m psychotic with fantasies of phone promiscuity. I want another new phone and I want it now. I want apps. I want an app with bits of skin flying off a baby’s face to accurately represent up-to-the minute stats on infant mortality rates. I want a 3-D giraffe that makes inappropriate sexual innuendo in the presence of old women. I want virtual stuff that does nothing other than create the desire for more stuff I didn’t know I wanted.

Basically, I’m mad with consumerist power. But I have no money. That’s what credit’s for. So yeah, something’s not right. The fact that there’s something not right is the subject of recent book, All Consuming, by Neal Lawson. Lawson argues that we’re all willing victims of an industrial-consumerist complex that gives the illusion of choice, freedom and the ultimate transcendental shopping experience. We’re all rats in a big shopping cage desperate for our next purchasing hit. Lawson argues we’re working longer hours, getting more stressed and are increasingly unhappy as we try to ‘fit in’, in a society where fitting in increasingly means buying more stuff. It’s a seemingly inescapable vicious circle, with notions of happiness and free-time being sold back to us by companies aware that, in a turbo-consumerist society, these are the one thing that money can’t buy. The environment suffers, social relations suffer. A new selfishness seems to be at large compounded by the ‘me-first’ individualism on which consumerism depends. According to a Douglas Coupland Holzerism, shopping is not creating. Shopping is creating, it seems: creating and compounding a whole heap of new social problems. Collectivism, altruism and community are eroded as we concentrate on fashioning our own individual identities by buying stuff. Lawson argues this shopping daze focuses us inward, increasing voter apathy and reducing civic participation. Big companies can have their wicked way with us because we’re too entranced by all the pretty shiny things to pay attention, collectively mobilize and fight the consumerization of every aspect of our lives.

 I agree with pretty much all of this. It’s hard not to. Thing is, I kind of agreed with it before I read the book and I’m not sure whether it has the persuasive power to change anybody’s mind. In fact, in places I found myself mildly irritated by Lawson’s nagging tone: he occasionally comes across like a grumpy old man, angry, resentful and confused by a rapidly changing world. It really doesn’t help his argument. Neither is he helped by a tendency towards broad pronouncements backed up with relatively few facts and citations. The book feels rushed. It would have been more persuasive had Lawson taken the time to ground his arguments in the context of wider sociological and political debates. There are a few references to how Lawson has been inspired by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, but no proper discussion of his work. Strange too that despite citing rapidly increasing shifts towards privatisation as key causes of individualism and a diminished sense of collective responsibility, Lawson avoids analysing the Labour government’s role in reproducing such Thatcherite themes.

 To be fair, reading the book did make me reflect on why I bought the book and why it’s sitting on my shelf next to copies of No Logo by Naomi Klein and Affluenza by Oliver James. Strangely, the opportunity for self-reflection (i.e. on the consumer product he’s produced and the kind of ‘consumer identity’ it plays into) isn’t taken up by Lawson. Still, the book’s publication is a good reminder of what you already know deep down. But buy it? I’d take Lawson’s advice and put the basket down.

 http://www.allconsuming.org.uk/about-neal-lawson/

 www.freecycle.org

 www.soilassociation.org

 www.labourbehindthelabel.org

 www.downsizer.net

Sunday Afternoons

 

What I think about when I’m running

Like you, I spend a lot of time sitting around in my pants, staring into the terrifying blankness of my own existence and contemplating the pointlessness of everything. To ameliorate the hollowness and despair, I like to self-medicate through existential crises with a potent combination of Doritos, temazepam and a carefully choreographed programme of intense masturbation. Weird thing is, since turning 30, I’m shitting breezeblocks as I increasingly Guantanamo myself with thoughts of my own mortality. It’s like the Woody Allen joke about terrible food: life relentlessly sucks a big donkey’s dick, but you still want more of it.

So I’ve set about trying to prolongue my exposure to all the gaping emptiness that inevitably awaits. I’ve started to exercise. I’ve started to run. It’s my girlfriend’s idea (self-pitying onanism isn’t ‘proper’ exercise, apparently). In many ways, it’s a good idea. I’ll get to enjoy the forthcoming apocalypse from my own portable throne, because my knees will be completely bojangled.

Anyway, I’m quite getting into it. We’re planning a 10k run in the New Year, together, like the sickeningly in-love middle-class Guildford couple we are. I’ve even got a watch that tracks my route with GPS and then gets cross at me for being slower than I was yesterday, encouraging a fierce and unhealthy rivalry with my younger, fitter self. I can currently run 5k in 22 minutes. Whoopee for me.

I was thinking about blogging about running and how I’m progressing but I’m not really sure what there is to say. Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running sounds interesting, but I’m put off by the possibility of wading through another 400 pages of whimsical surrealism where running is probably an extended metaphor for the trials and tribulations faced by overweight talking barnacles. So I’m not going to read that. Instead, I’ll just nick the idea from the title.  Here’s a list of some of the things that go through my brain when I’m moving at speeds that make me indiscernible to the human eye…

 1) Crikey, these pants are tight. Is everything tucked in? Feels a bit breezy down there.

2) Was he looking at my groin?

3) Is it me or is this hill steeper than yesterday?

4) Lace is undone. Fuck.

5) Legs ache.

6) Better check watch.

7) 1 min 30. Approximately 25 left to go. Fuck.

8) Legs really ache. Can’t…breathe.

9) I could just walk home now. Nobody would ever know.

10) Jade Goody did a marathon without practising. Maybe training for a 10k is overkill? The atmosphere of the occasion will get me through.

11) Jade Goody is dead.

12) Jade Goody didn’t die of running.

13) I’m not sure what the moral of Jade Goody is in this context.

14) Need a wee.

15) Legs hurt.

16) Watch check. 10 minutes 40. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

17) Fuck the fuck out of my fucking way, dildo dog.

18) “No. No really. No worries. Yes, he’s a lovely dog isn’t he? Ahhhhh. He’s a lovely dog. You’re lovely dog aren’t you? Lovely dog.”

19) Legs hurt. Arms hurt. Feet hurt. Back hurts. Neck hurts. Can’t breathe. Snot. Pouring. Down. Face. Sweaty. Smell. Like. Raccoon’s. Vagina.

20) Hot girl! Hot girl!

21) Did she notice me?

22) Yes.

23) Shit.

24) 5 minutes to go. Step it up.

25) Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

26) Think the pain away. Think the pain away. Think the pain away.

27) Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

28) Did I leave the gas on?

29) What’s the name of that thing where you press your balls against a window to make them look like vacuum-packed chicken?

30) Pancaking?

31) No, that’s something else isn’t it?

32) Was I being offensive at that party last night?

33) Yes.

34) I shouldn’t be allowed to speak.

35) Uh, was that some shit?

36) Yes.

37) Is this over yet?

38) Nearly.

39) Oh, you’ve already stopped.

40) LOSER!

Watching you, watching me: The fear of CCTV

I recently had the pleasure of reading Anna Minton’s new book, Ground control: fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city. It’s a great overview of problems with the privatisation of public space and I’d highly recommend it for anyone interested in the terrifying spread of surveillance and gentrified secure-by-design space. More than anything, it succeeds in making you angry about the ways our towns and cities are being constructed as soul-drainingly banal zones of social purity and, well, nothingness, policed by increasingly elaborate forms of surveillance technology, where some people can and do belong and others are rendered out-of-place. Purification is linked with profit, Minton argues. Counter-intuitively, the gated-communities and surveillance technologies that are supposed to make us feel safer have the converse effect: fear of crime is on the rise.

The relationship between fear of crime and surveillance technology is the subject of a new paper by forensic psychologists at the University of Huddersfield. I’m no forensic psychologist, but I was interested to see whether the paper might further flesh out the psychological reasons for a seemingly counter-intuitive rise in fear of crime in the face of increased surveillance and reductions in the amount of actual crime. Based on existing psychological models of the fear of crime, Williams and Ahmed (2009) argue that whether CCTV cameras are reassuring or fear-inducing depends on a complex range of factors influencing people’s perceptions: for example, the nature of the environment in which they’re placed, the people in that environment, and the pre-existing assumptions of the observer (along with a range of other individual factors such as age, gender and so on).

CCTV may act as kind of ‘cue’, they suggest, influencing our understanding of how much we should trust an environment and the other people in it. To use the authors’ own example, CCTV cameras outside a school might ‘cue’ a sense of vulnerability that requires protection, while CCTV cameras in a shopping precinct populated by large groups of young people might trigger interpretations of ‘threat’. On this basis, they set out to explore the dynamics of the relationship between CCTV, our preconceptions and the characteristics of the environment.

To explore this relationship the authors showed people photographs of an urban scene into which they placed different targets, including a CCTV camera and pictures of either a single female or a male skinhead. The idea was, firstly, to see whether the presence of a CCTV camera influenced ratings of crime frequency and fear of crime. Secondly, they wanted to see whether these ratings depend on the positive or negative stereotypes cued by other factors: in this case the presence of a male skinhead, assumed to trigger more negative criminal stereotypes, or a ‘studious’ female, assumed to trigger more positive feelings of protectiveness.

The paper’s key finding is that reported fears of walking in the area shown in the photograph was significantly higher when the scene included both a CCTV camera and a male skinhead. Participants were also asked to write a ‘day in the life’ of the target – only male skinheads were viewed as antisocial, and only in the presence of a CCTV camera. As such, the authors argue that CCTV and particular figures such as ‘the male skinhead’ work together to create a sense of fear and anxiety – they do not have this effect on their own.

There is an underlying political message to this research which is largely consistent with the message of Minton’s book: CCTV and surveillance technologies may be contributing to our fear of strangers and the erosion of trust in society. Rather than protecting us from particular folk devils, they play a part in creating them.

That said, I wonder how much this research can actually tell us about the psychological mechanisms underlying fear of crime. To me, the presented photographs seem to draw attention to their own contrivance. Taking part in psychological research, people are often left searching for clues as to what is really required of them and what the researcher is looking for. This sometimes happens in qualitative research on prejudice, where people can respond in a prejudicial manner out of a kind of politeness – they respond in a negative way, not necessarily because it accurately represents their own views on a particular topic, but because they think it is what’s required of them in the research they’re taking part in. I wonder whether the visible contrivance of the photos may have communicated a need for participants to think stereotypically. It may be that the presence of a CCTV camera in this case doesn’t simply ‘trigger’ perceptions of a figure as antisocial, but instead communicates the need for, and even social legitimacy, of stereotyping.

The researchers’ own presumption that the male skinhead would be negatively stereotyped is itself somewhat dubious and risks implicitly reproducing stereotypes of the ‘threatening’ skinhead. In this way, the political objectives of the paper might be undermined by some of the banal assumptions they make.

Links

http://www.annaminton.com

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/10683160802612882

Buying a house (part 1)

Buying houses: what’s that about? Providing American stand-up comedians with the subject for a tediously inevitable rhetorical question? Middle-class angst alert! The baker and me have been trying to buy a house for a while: a humble little 2-bed Victorian terrace in Reigate, with an airy vibe (rising damp) and charming period features (a broken roof). Six months and a few thousand pounds later, we’ve downgraded our ambitions to the purchase of a secluded molecule of shit under a north-facing pebble in Blackpool. Well, not Blackpool – actually, the exact opposite of Blackpool; we’re trying to buy a flat in, erm, Guildford. I’ll probably write something about Guildford at some point; I don’t want to blow my bilious load just yet. Suffice to say I know, I know, I know.

I read a book once (I think it was Steven Shapin’s Social History of Truth, but I might be wrong) which had a bit about how trust is the cornerstone of any properly functioning society: in fact, it’s what our scientific knowledge of everything is based on. If I remember rightly, one of the arguments was that for us to successfully interact with the world around us, we have to put faith in what other people tell us. Whether it’s that a mechanic has fixed the brakes on our car, or that the car is actually a car and not a giant cake running on liquorice, we have to use what we’ve been told about the world to make assumptions and get things done.

A rather lovely implication is that we need other people to survive. Togetherness defines our humanity. We need to have some faith that other human beings have the capacity for honest decency in order for everything to function. Of course, you always need to assess the credentials of your information source: only an idiot would trust anything I ever say, for example.

But when you buy a house, the opposite is true. Assume other people are acting decently at your peril. In all likelihood, they’re not. House purchasing is like driving – it’s one of those few situations in life where it seems acceptable, and almost expected, that people will act like dementedly selfish fuck knuckles.

Imagine: you go into a grocers and buy, say, a big juicy-looking watermelon. You know it’s a watermelon – it says so on the sign, and also, it looks like a watermelon. You get it home; mmm, watermelon you’re thinking. Hubba-hubba. I like watermelon. Then you crack it open. Disappointment awaits. Instead of that nice juicy pink flesh bit, the inside is made of hypodermic needles and some grit. Not quite what you were expecting; understandably, you’re a bit irritated. Still, you take it back to the shop and the grocer kindly agrees to swap it for another one, apologising for the inconvenience in the meantime.

Now, say the watermelon is a house. The following is more likely: you see a nice watermelon on the internet and ring up to say you’re interested in buying it. They ask you what your financial predicament is. You lie and tell them it’s tight – you’ll struggle to pay the full price of the watermelon, but you’d like to see it anyway. The fruit and vegetable specialist drives you to the grocers. Once there, you’re shown a small rotting turnip. This is the only thing they have left. You tell the fruit and veg specialist that it isn’t quite what you were looking for. They tell you that the turnip is actually a watermelon and, anyway, it’s a good price for the area. You say you’re not sure. They tell you that with things the way they are, it’s either this or you starve. You cave in. You tell them you’ll take it, but for less than the advertised price. The fruit and veg specialist tells you this is out of the question: the price of turnips will only increase over the next year because there’s a national turnip shortage (even though turnips are actually selling for less and less). You cave in. You say you’ll pay the full price for the turnip. Then they tell you that somebody else has expressed interest in the turnip. You’ll need to pay over the asking price, otherwise you’ll miss out. You cave in. Whatever it takes, you just want the turnip. They say you can have the turnip. On one condition: you have to get a turnip specialist to assess the quality of the turnip. You pay the turnip specialist, who tells you the turnip is riddled with aphids. But you should still buy the turnip. You buy the turnip. It gives you food poisoning and you die.

On the plus side, your children get to keep what’s left of the turnip. They put it on the internet. The fruit and veg specialist rings up – some people are interested in buying a watermelon…

Buying houses. What’s that about? Grrrr. Sometimes I think we’d be better off handing over our life savings to the KLF*.

A Small Town Anywhere

Yikes, I’m scared. We’re all scared, but I’m letting it show. And with good reason: it turns out I’m a convicted criminal. Worse still, I’ve no recollection of my crimes and nobody seems willing to enlighten me. It’s like I’m trapped in one of those room escape puzzle games where you wake up, covered in blood, facing a race to clear yourself of crimes you probably didn’t commit.

It’s like that, apart from the fact I’m in a Pizza Express near Clapham Junction, sipping a nice cool Peroni with the butcher and the baker – a final drink before my fate is revealed. What will the community think? Am I doomed to spend the rest of my life rotting in my own filth (admittedly, not a massive lifestyle upheaval)? Or does something far worse await me? Yikes, indeed.

“God, you’ll be fine”, says my fiancée, the baker. “Stop going on about it”. She sounds irritated: my impending exile has come between her and a cakehole full of Pollo Pancetta. The baker has her own shit to deal with right now. She’s meeting the mysterious Henri Georges in an hour; an evening of intense baking beckons. The butcher chips in: “I wonder whether I’ll get a meat cleaver”. My own concerns pale into comparison. I mouth a guilty ‘sorry’.

 So ok, I haven’t really committed a crime (unless you count pirating Betamax films in the 80’s). But the fear – the fear is real enough. We’re on our way, see, to visit A Small Town Anywhere at the Battersea Arts Centre. It’s been devised by Coney who describe themselves as an agency “of adventure and play, founded on principles of adventure, loveliness, and reciprocity”. They’re an enigmatic bunch. They have a leader who goes by the name of Rabbit and the rather admirable aim of bringing play and fun to the sometimes po-faced world of theatre. It’s a fairly unusual piece of theatre at that: there’s no script and the audience take on the key roles.

This is the part that really scares me. I haven’t done any amateur dramatics since GCSE Expressive Arts (not, according to the baker, a ‘proper’ GCSE). In fact, I’m so socially backward, speaking to other people in real life sends me into a crazed panic: my eyes dart around uncontrollably, I start waving my arms like I’m communicating horse odds, and occasionally resort to punching the other person in the face just to get the whole sorry incident over with as quickly as possible. Public speaking is worse. I carry a glass-encased scalpel which I’ll crack open to cut out my own tongue if anyone ever tries to make me do it.

We arrive early at the BAC, the baker nervously toddling off for her secret meeting with Henri. In fact, this is not our first encounter with Monsieur Georges: all week we’ve enjoyed intriguing correspondence with the Small Town’s cryptic historian. E-mailing Henri is highly recommended. In exchange for the revelation of a few ‘personal’ secrets you’ll be rewarded with snippets from the town’s archives and gently nudged into taking on a role within its emerging history. Tonight, I am Le Prisoner. I know nothing of my crimes, only that a shadowy character known as ‘the Raven’ may have been responsible for my incarceration. Beware inky claws, I am told.

Pre-show googling suggests that A Small Town Anywhere is heavily inspired by Henri Georges Clouzotí’s 1943 film Le Corbeau (the Raven), in which a small French community is torn apart by a series of anonymous poison-pen letters. The letters in the film are signed simply Le Corbeau. The film raises questions about how clearly we can define right and wrong. Sod that. An unshakeable backstory has developed in my mind, subtly egged on by our own Henri: this ‘Raven’ character is pure evil and needs to be taught a lesson; as a morally reformed convict, it’s my job to take him down.

After being issued with hats and badges by the only proper actor we encounter all evening, we’re ushered into the Small Town itself – a single room, with representation of the town’s architecture not much more elaborate than in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville. A voiceover guides us to our locations and takes us through a typical day: sunrise and the delivery of the town’s post, afternoon gossiping, and a meeting in the town hall perhaps (or maybe a sermon at the local church) before evening drinks at the pub. Gossiping aside, it seems our ‘days’ will be punctuated with lots of letter writing – we have our own post office and a rugged looking ‘postmistress’ unconcerned with current picket lines. A pen and paper are the only things I find in my ‘cell’. No matter. Time to stir up a shitstorm.

 Even if our ‘game’ doesn’t quite do justice to the playful build-up, what follows are an absorbing couple of hours’ fun. My fears of being forced to act prove unfounded. With no audience in the traditional sense you become immersed in the flow of events and interactions as though its everyday life – albeit everyday life in a very different social reality. Age-old questions are raised about a range of issues: the performative nature of everyday social existence, inter-community tensions and the banality of power and corruption. As someone familiar with the (in)famous Stanford Prison experiments, I’m surprised at how quickly I come to quietly despise my jailers, presuming their role selection to be based on some latent fascistic/authoritarian tendencies.

 I furiously scribble notes to the town’s journalist casting aspersions on the character of the police chief and the local undertaker (I’ve received notes, which I’m all to ready to accept, identifying the undertaker as the source of an ugly rumour about me). I let out an evil cackle: an unfortunate incident with a banana; ha ha ha, that ought to do it.

Later, after we’ve been forced to make a number of icky moral decisions, I pay a visit to the butcher and the baker. The butcher’s annoyed – somebody has stolen a tin of spam – and the baker is trying to convince the postmistress that the black stains on her hands are from cake icing. Cake icing. Cake icing? Wait: she hasn’t even made any cakes. Wha-? Could it be? The baker…my baker…my trusted, loving, lying-through-her-beaky-Raven faced fiancée?

Beware inky claws.