Invariably, every new social phenomena has its “dark side,” and this is no less the case with the turn to downtown living. Not all the talented new drivers of urban expansion Richard Florida talks about in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, are as lucky economically as he infers, and this leaves in its path serious social problems as we will now see. (For more background on this issue, take a look at my earlier post, A Post-Material Turn to Downtown Living). The creative talents of Wicker Park (a Chicago neighborhood), described by Richard Lloyd in his book Neo-Bohemia, struggle to make a living, unlike their affluent young customers who haunt the neighborhood’s galleries, espresso shops, and nightspots. It is in the Wicker Park bars and music venues that actual and aspiring artists and musicians work to make ends meet. In this hip, bohemian setting, servers, who treat their physical selves as their own vehicle for artistic expression, face special challenges daily. To gain and then retain their employment, servers must project a unique persona attractive to their experience-seeking clientele. Bar and restaurant owners compete for customers through the edgy image their establishments present. As Lloyd notes, servers have to strike a balance in the hustle for tips between pleasing their customers and fending off unwanted sexual advances. Servers also face the danger of getting caught up in the nightlife culture and neglecting their larger artistic goals, going out for free drinks on their nights off supplied by counterparts in other bars instead of doing creative work. Because these less fortunate members of the creative class face the kinds of dilemmas described by Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy, spending a little time with his ideas should help us sharpen our thinking about the realities of a newly emergent “creative class” so important to the return to compact urban living.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre begins by describing abstractly what it means to exist in the world. At a given moment we are an “in-itself,” a simple object in the world like any other. As an in-itself we are no different than rocks, avocados, or snakes, or any other existent thing. But unlike non-human objects, we humans amazingly possess a consciousness with a capacity for self-recognition and reflection. Self-reflection brings forth a “for-itself” which constantly jumps ahead of what we are at any given moment (our in-itself) to think about our next move, our future actions. A constant restlessness puts us perpetually at the ready to move forward, to shift into a new and novel state of being. Here arise Sartre’s notions of “not-being,” negation, and nothingness. Never happy with our current condition, we keep pushing toward a desired future state. We don’t have the house we want, haven’t yet traveled to Australia or found the love of our life, and don’t fully understand Martin Heidegger’s philosophy much less Jean-Paul Sartre’s. In short, we are never happy with what we are and press for something different. Our physical and mental in-itself is never up to our consciously wanted self-image. The in-itself is a thing in a certain physical state; consciousness is self-aware thought; and never the two shall meet. We live on a moving treadmill of not-yet-realized expectations from which we can never exit. We are not what we truly desire and are stuck in a special kind of nothingness—a not-being what we should.
Sartre’s basic premise is that existence lacks intrinsic meaning, and we are here in the world for no obvious reason. This fact gives us great freedom, intense anguish, and a huge responsibility. We have no alternative but to choose a path through life—we are “condemned to be free” as Sartre puts it. The life we choose is up to us and we bear the responsibility for how it turns out. Our fear that we will lack the courage to exercise our choice responsibly and authentically creates in us a deep anguish. Many of us try to avoid this by adopting roles and meanings in life that society coughs up for us, the tried and the true, the socially acceptable. Even then, subconscious doubt about what we should do and be will remain, causing us to continue in a vague and undefined state of anguish. If we go with the popular flow, we fall into a life of self-delusion and bad faith about who we are and really want to be.
Sartre has little use for bourgeois conformity and oppressive conventions, a view he expresses through the principle character, Rouquentin, in his best-selling first novel, Nausea, set in Bouville, a fictional commercial seaport on the French coast. While looking enviously on the fact that members of the Bouville middle class possess well defined life projects that supply them with a self-identity and meaning in the form of family, home, and profession, Rouquentin finds the repeated routines he observes in the life of the town as tedious and boring, even repellent. The presence of those nauseating others he observes around him with their socially determined projects forces Rouquentin to look honestly at his own life. He finds the historical research that he works on daily in the local library to be useless and comes to see the world around him as absurd and alienating and his own life to be an empty failure. The problem for him is an absence of meaning in his work, relationships with others, and the environment around him. Until the very end of the book, he can’t see his way out. His conscious self doesn’t know how to direct his being to a meaningful existence. Only in the final pages is there a glimmer of hope in his decision to move to Paris and write a novel (kind of like Sartre).
The biggest pitfall we face in the quest for a life of meaning, Sartre tells us, is the danger of caving into society’s demands for conformity and submission to social judgment. A lack of self-confidence in our own ability to choose a life-path causes us to look to our fellow human beings for acknowledgement, but we should do so with trepidation. Normal human affection—a relaxed and unthreatening felt connection to someone else—gets suppressed by the judgmental “look of the other,” that “evil eye” projected on those who do wrong, calling for them to shrink in shame. The fear of social judgment holds out the danger of failing to be who we authentically want to be.
Consider the actions of a typical Parisian waiter as describe by Sartre in Being and Nothingness: "His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patron with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer…All his behavior seems to us a game."
Sartre wrote this to illustrate the notion of “bad faith,” the idea that we play at our role and do so to conform to practices demanded by the public. We get diverted by social requirements into adopting a pattern of life rather than creating one that is uniquely our own. We delude ourselves into thinking we act freely when in reality we succumb to the perceived judgment of others. In Sartre’s eyes, social life boils down to an exploitive dance in which we fruitlessly try to control each others’ perceptions. In the end, failure dooms us in such attempts. We can never really know our real influence on the true feelings of others. Rather than getting on with our own self-chosen authentic projects, in Sartre’s view we waste our energies in the mutual pursuit of strategic and conflicting ends in our personal relationships. Whether he is right, I leave for you to judge. I can imagine other possibilities, such as something like the following.
Return for a moment to a Parisian cafe. Waiters follow traditional patterns in their work that comply with public expectations, but this does not rule out creative and unique interpretations of what it is to be a waiter. One can imagine a waiter doing his work in a way that authentically expresses his own idiosyncratic personality. A tall, handsome waiter of Haitian extraction glides to my table, inquires as to my well being, takes my order and magically appears moments later with my double espresso and croissant, placing them precisely and gently on the table while commenting on the beauty of the day. The man behaves with pride in his profession, something I can appreciate and enjoy. He spends time with each customer, some whom seem to be friends from the neighborhood who interact with him on a basis of equality and mutual respect. He later returns to collect my money, making change with dignity and efficiency. The next day I return for a repeat performance. This time a customer, who is elegantly dressed, looks wealthy, and probably comes regularly, sits down in the cafe several minutes after me. The waiter, aware of the circumstances, serves me first despite the obvious impatience of the snooty regular. This is what a good waiter does as a matter of practice, refraining from any strategic judgment about ultimate rewards in deciding who to serve first. We don’t see the whole of our Haitian waiter in our brief interactions, but we do see at least part of his life that seems to honestly express who he is.
One could take this alternative interpretation of a waiter’s life too far. No occupation is an entirely a thorn-free bed of roses. Customers can be difficult, muscles will ache after a long day, and repetitious tasks can be tedious. Still, one sees pride in the affectations of at least some waiters who indeed perform for us, but who do so with authenticity and real concern. Participating creatively in the tradition of a Parisian waiter could be a consciously and freely chosen activity, much like writing Being and Nothingness. The question for us here is whether the freedoms in behavior enjoyed by our Haitian waiter, or for that matter of a book-writing Jean-Paul Sartre, extends to the artists and servers of Wicker Park.
The heyday of arts community predominance in Wicker Park occurred in the 1990s prior to an influx of young, affluent professionals into the area. A few of the bars were already emerging as entertainment venues for rock bands who attracted outsiders into the neighborhood, but most of the cafes and watering holes were oriented to a local clientele. By 2000, the neighborhood had become a cultural and entertainment destination with and expanding array of restaurants, bars, galleries, antique stores, and boutiques depending largely on a youngish, affluent clientele. At this point developers became active in the area constructing new housing for upper income customers. While rising rents pushed some artists to the neighborhood’s periphery, the area retains its bohemian and hip flavor even though the local population mix has shifted decidedly in favor of those who work in Chicago’s downtown business establishment. Digitally tuned-in local artistic talents has attracted a number of web design firms who require not only computer literacy but an aesthetic sensibility in their employees as well.
Wicker Park retains a class divide between young professionals and artists that finds its clearest expression in the neighborhood’s bars that rely heavily on an influx of affluent youths seeking a Bacchanalian ecstatic experienced fueled by music, drink, drugs, and a potential for sexual liaison. The primary source of labor for local bars and restaurants is the nearby arts community whose members depend on such work for a living while pursuing entry into their chosen careers. Youth, looks, and a unique, hip fashion sense help immeasurably in getting hired as a server or bar tender in Wicker Park. Unlike the conformity to tradition of Sartre’s Parisian waiter, Wicker Park servers are rewarded for an offbeat and unique style in their appearance which becomes a design element for bars and nightclubs in their competitive efforts to attract customers. Servers in this environment enjoy the opportunity of expressing their own artistic skill by creating themselves as a work of art. The downside in this form of expression is the role it plays in competition for both employment and tips. Female servers must balance success as a server and the extra tips that can come with a sexually provocative look against the problem of unwanted sexual advances from male customers. In short, the capacity for creating a unique style is limited by the expectations of not only bar owners but tip-supplying customers as well. Just as is the case for a Parisian waiter, the work of being a Wicker Park server can be strenuous, repetitive, and at times boring. Servers also have to deal with social pressures from their colleagues to go out drinking in their off hours, taking away time from their artistic pursuits and downtime from the physical and mental stresses of the job. Alcohol addiction and a failure to pursuit professional goals can be the end result. As one server expresses it, “If I’m still here in a year, kill me.”
The artistic quest can be an authentic and laudable pursuit of expressions of meaning that help to “spiritualize” the Dionysian love of life talked about by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy. The visual and performance arts possess the capacity to help us both celebrate and sublimate life’s powerful sensual urges that can easily get out of control. Artists serve us by providing an opportunity to find and sacralize meaning in the experience of life, rather than the in the heavens beyond. If anyone can overcome the dangers of Sartre’s bad faith and anguish in choosing a path through life, artists have a good chance at it. As we see for Wicker Park servers, circumstances can nonetheless conspire against them in obtaining their hearts’ desires. While they may see themselves as uniquely creative individuals, the conditions servers face can work against them in truly attaining their artistic purposes. They face a special danger of exercising a self-delusive “bad faith” by ignoring their true condition.
Whether or not the Wicker Park case constitutes a widespread phenomenon matters. If artists create urban communities that ultimately get destroyed in a gentrification process driven by an influx of post-materialist young professionals, then this new form of compact living will possess a dark and undesirable quality. While many well known urban bohemian districts have succumbed to affluence, all arts-based neighborhoods needn’t suffer the same fate. Milwaukee, a seemingly ordinary older industrial city, surprisingly contains a substantial population of artists, many of whom have taken up residence in inner city neighborhoods such as Riverwest and Bayview. As already described, Riverwest houses numerous artists, art studios, interesting restaurants and bars, and a variety of entertainment venues, including the Jazz Gallery run by the Riverwest Artists Association. Riverwest serves as a local bastion of activist, left-leaning politics that attracts substantial involvement by local artists and adds a stabilizing element to the neighborhood. Despite a solid core of artists living and working in the neighborhood and an expanding nightlife, unlike Wicker Park, Riverwest has avoided an influx of affluent young professionals into the neighborhood and a surge in property values. Artists have been able to solidify their presence by taking up ownership of aging, affordable Polish flats, duplexes, and storefronts that have little middle class appeal but can be rendered into comfortable and pleasing spaces in which to live and work. The local nightlife lacks the supercharged energy of Wicker Park, but provides a more community oriented and less exploitive working environment for servers and bartenders most of whom live in the local neighborhood just like many of their customers.
The experience of other cities confirm the reality of two divergent paths for the impact of the arts on urban neighborhoods. In those first tier artistic centers such as New York and San Francisco, concentrations of artists in neighborhoods often become attractors for development of the type experienced in Chicago’s Wicker Park. In cities where housing pressures are less substantial such as Philadelphia or Minneapolis-St. Paul, researchers find that artists often bring neighborhood revitalization of the kind we see in Milwaukee’s Riverwest without much displacement of ethnic or racial minorities. Artists in these cities find urban havens with an immunity to high pressure gentrification where they engage in a political activism that helps to stabilize the neighborhoods in which they settle. In sum, the growth of the arts profession nationally has led to local creations of moderate income but stable compact urban communities. It’s not just the return to the central city of affluent professionals that drives an urban renaissance. The social and economic dynamic of a Riverwest appears to be more friendly than a Wicker Park in overcoming the anguish and tendency to bad faith we all face in making something of our lives. The kind of post-materialism we see taking shape in the Riverwests of the urban world as opposed to the Wicker Parks may well help us surmount the barriers to an authentic human existence raised in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and instead celebrate the wonders of our existential being.
No comments:
Post a Comment