I predict that this is the year that Rust Belt fiction will start to take off. And that this is the decade when the Rust Belt will confront its own history and turn it into art.
There is an audience who is really hungering for honest, clever, artistic interpretations of the Rust Belt. What evidence do I have? Take the snarky, self-effacing Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism videos:
There’s a reason why people responded so strongly and fervently to these videos — they fill an artistic gap that, say, regional marketing campaigns can and will never fill. No matter how clever or catchy they are.
Why can’t marketing-speak fill that gap? Because marketing by its very nature isn’t totally honest – you have to admit that. It takes the positive and blows it up — that’s how it achieves its purpose. Art looks at all angles, even when they hurt. Art and marketing are not the same thing. People think they want to be happy all the time, but art tells us that they don’t — they want to experience the full range of human emotions.
The best art emerging from the Rust Belt will be truthful and transformative. It will be thought up by hard-luck underachievers waiting for the bus, not in the conference rooms of any marketing firms. It won’t croon about what fun times can be had at the trendiest faux dive bars, but it will chronicle the anguish of those who are desperately trying to hold on to a long-dead ideal.
still trying to make this happen. we’ll see if it works.
Comment by thatgirl — January 21, 2010 @ 9:17 pm |
I will race you. We’ll see who can turn their abstract doodles and sheafs of hastily written scenes into a Rust Belt novel first!
Comment by cborne — January 21, 2010 @ 9:27 pm |