{ Tuesday, September 13, 2005 }
Super-Cannes
There are so many little quotable lines in every J.G. Ballard novel. Some of the most interesting issues explored in Super-Cannes is the idea of the built environment, the modern obsession with work, and the death of real human interactions and community:
Shopping is the last folkloric ritual that can help to build a community, along with traffic jams and airport queues.
Intimacy and neighborliness were not features of everyday life at Eden-Olympia. An invisible infrastructure took the place of traditional civic virtues. At Eden-Olympia there were no parking problems, no fears of burglars or purse-snatchers, no rapes or muggings. The top-drawer professionals no longer needed to devote a moment's thought to each other, and had dispensed with the checks and balances of community life. There were no town councils or magistrates' courts, not citizens' advice bureaux. Civility and polity were designed into Eden-Olympia, in the same way that mathematics, aesthetics and an entire geopolitical world-view were designed into the Parthenon and the Boeing 747. Representative democracy had been replaced by the surveillance camera and the private police force.
LINK | 11:32 PM | TB