THE SPINE FEBRUARY 4, 2007
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Whichever p.r. firm it is that has the Abu Dhabi account in America is
truly brilliant... or maybe just very pushy. In any event, someone has
gotten the New York Times to run the same story on the top of the front
page of its Arts section twice in four days, first on Thursday, then on
Sunday. Otherwise, what nonsense has taken control of the editors'
minds? OK, it is isn't exactly the same story. But let's read the
headlines first. From Thursday: "Celebrity Architects Reveal a Daring
Cultural Xanadu for the Arab World." And from Sunday: "A Vision in
the Desert. Abu Dhabi has an unlikely proposal for the Middle East. It
involves $27 billion, the world's top architects and a brand new city of
culture." That last phrase is the conceit of both stories. A new
city of culture, to compete with Florence and London, Paris and New York,
St. Petersburg and, yes, Cairo or Athens or Barcelona or Shanghai. As if a
city of culture can be fashioned pellmell even if, particularly if, the
city is without a past and without a curious indigenous population.
I can't say I blame the rulers of Abu Dhabi--and, for that matter, the
rulers of Dubai--for their ambitions. They have so much money. Why not
spend even if it were on a lark? Like the source of the money (Abu Dhabi's
is tied to oil; Dubai's to shipping and banking; both of them are
lubricated by indentured servitude) their ambitions are quite
different. Dubai aspires to expand its commerce and therefore be a center
of of activity that does not challenge the body or stretch the mind: Disneyworlds, Disneylands, a completely artificial skiing center, on and
on, existing in symbiotic relationship with its hotels, beaches,
restaurants, sex clubs, golf clubs, tennis clubs. Dubai has a good chance
of success. It does not aspire to change anyone. Just put a bit more
superficial excitement into people's lives, the same sort of "oh, my"
excitement travelers experience in Anaheim, California or Orlando, Florida,
or as the Disney publicity puts it, "where dreams come true." On the other
hand, Abu Dhabi--give it its due--wants to do something fresh, maybe even
a trifle brave. But I do not think that tourists who want to go to the
snazziest new hotel in the Gulf will be at all enticed by a museum hanging
one of the thousand of near identical Damien Hirst productions
("Thiosalicyclic Acid Pharmaceutical Painting," glass household paint on
canvas, let's say; or 'Isopropamide Iodide," also glass household paint on
canvas). Who will go to the opera and what will they want to see? Can you
imagine a Wagner festival of Der Ring des Nibelungen, the most intricate
musical drama of all time? Or shall we just settle for Aida? What
theatrical drama will fill a 6,500 seat theatre? Will Tennessee Williams
be allowed, or Jean Anouilh?
It's not just that these faux city-states are alienated from the modern and
liberated sensibility. They are also ignorant of the classic
sensibility. Still, I believe these projects are born of the shame they
feel now about being Arab. Shame is sometimes a noble sensibility. After
all, Arab civilization is presently descending into the darkness of
fanaticism and barbarism. And neither Abu Dhabi nor Dubai are barbaric,
and many of their sons and some of their daughters have gone to American
colleges and universities. They know what separates culture, even a glitzy
culture like ours, from their culture. Can they make bridge the chasm with
an expenditure of $27 billion? I doubt it. Of course, shame is often
fought by desperation. And these grand plans seem to me to be desperate
improvisations.
And now back to the New York Times. What has come over it to publish story
after story about--in the end--these truly insignificant polities? The
populations of both Abu Dhabi and Dubai (1 million and 1.3 million
respectively) and count a huge majority of foreigners, really huge. These
are not organic societies. They are models for no one. There was a
poverty of conception even in the two recent Times articles, and they had
abutting them virtually the same photographs and the same maps.
As for Xanadu, the "daring cultural Xanadu," Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote
these lines,
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
a stately pleasure-dome decree.
But this was a fantasy and, as the poet makes clear, "a savage place."
Orson Welles named Citizen Kane's house Xanadu. It was where Kane's life
and dreams unraveled and which brought him grief. Maybe someone at the
Times actually grasped the futility of the Abu Dhabi enterprise.
11 comments
Oh, come on, Marty, give 'em a break. Abu Dhabi's in the middle of a desert. I stopped over in Abu Dhabi once, and they're making a brave effort to be something more than a gas pump. That you regard it as crass, that they must import or manufacture a cultural identity, strikes one as snobbery of the rankest sort.
How do you think that cultural gem San Francisco started out? It's culture didn't grow "organically". It built its honky-tonks and opera houses and imported its hookers and singers to work them, largely on the backs of indentured Chinamen. And what about Houston? Or Atlanta? Their cultures weren't organically cultivated but bought, turn-key. Or L.A.? Everything here is canned, including the palms! Or, speaking of Disneyland, Las Vegas!
And speaking of shame, is American culture itself not born of the shame of being considered parvenu by the rest of the world? If Abu Dhabi's sheik wants to build a culture from scratch, then who are you dismiss him, just because his aesthetic doesn't measure up to your "classic" sensibilities?
- jm_rice
February 4, 2007 at 12:36pm
Brilliant critique of a warped vision of culture as well as the NY Times' view of it. btw: an appropriate play for the Abu Dhabi cultural theme park is, "Rhinoceros" by Eugene Ionesco.
- jacksondyer
February 4, 2007 at 10:45am
What happens when the oil runs out?
- jacksondyer
February 4, 2007 at 12:56pm
- peretz
February 4, 2007 at 1:25pm
that's the perfect anology, but not to Abu Dhabi...to Dubai.
- peretz
February 4, 2007 at 1:27pm
jm_rice makes some good points here. Even in the US, many of the cultural gems we have were initially the result of top-down planning and funding, either from the government or wealthy families. For example, if I remember correctly (it's been a long time since I read the book), Tom Wolfe pointed out in The Painted Word that the US jumped on the modern art bandwagon fairly early, largely due to seed funding from a few key families in New York who wanted to overcome the US's cultural cringe on such matters. So the cultural funding by rich sheiks as a way to jump-start the cultural scene in Dubai and Abu Dhabi isn't without precedent. That having been said, I think Marty is correct in his statement that you need a curious indigenous population to keep such things going. Cultural life can only exist if people in the area are inspired to create good art for local consumption, whether it's in local art galleries, theater companies or media installation venues. That's the difference between a city that imports its culture and one that creates it, and that's why places like L.A., Houston and Atlanta have been able to create their own interesting cultural scenes, after an initial top-down seeding by key families or firms (see, e.g., the beneficial influence of the de Menil family in Houston, which is where I live).
- myzaguirre
February 4, 2007 at 2:22pm
Also, one aside about Dubai. I remember hearing several years ago that an old acquaintance of mine who was a rowdy, hard-drinking party guy was going to work for an oil company in the Middle East. Everyone who heard this and knew him had the same first comment: "how is he going to be able to get a drink and have some fun in that part of the world?" Fortunately, it turned out the company he went to work for sent him to Dubai, so life treated him well on that front.
- myzaguirre
February 4, 2007 at 2:27pm
"Abu Dhabi's in the middle of a desert." Not quite. They're on the Persian Gulf and its a pretty green island. You cannot just buy culture with billions of dollars and you don't need that kind of wealth to have a vibrant culture (look at India). Abu Dhabi could create a world class city by loosening their laws to allow free thought and exchange of ideas. And it can establish universities and become the intellectual center of the Arab world. They can also encourage their youth to get jobs. Even the professional jobs in Abu Dhabi are filled by foreigners. The city-state imports their doctors, engineers, accountants, etc from South Asia.
- bahaha
February 4, 2007 at 2:33pm
OK, so it's Dubai that's more Las Vegas. So what? Whether high culture or low culture, they bought their culture. So, like lots of American cities -- or like America itself -- Abu Dhabi is buying its culture turnkey, and if in so doing it lacks "classic sensibility," well, so did we, in the days when vulgarians like Morgan and Frick plundered Europe for their monster collections, in order to buy New York its culture.
Give them time, for chrissake! Here are some Arabs who, for once, are trying to crawl out of the gutter. Stop quibbling over how culturally refined they are in doing it.
- jm_rice
February 4, 2007 at 5:57pm
Shouldn't surprise anyone that Pinch's Lifestyle Guide is highlighting this. Look at all the buttons to be pressed: 1) Celebrity 2) Architects 3) Big $$$ 4) Travel-Fun-Adventure 5) T-F-A with Tom Friedman's Hip and Modern (Post-modern?) Arabs I'm surprised the Times stopped at only two articles last week.
- teplukhin
February 5, 2007 at 3:59pm
Look for a special travel pullout next, with splashy ads from Grey Goose, 99 Virgin Airlines and Cirque de Burque
- teplukhin
February 5, 2007 at 4:01pm