Reviews

Umberto Eco and the American Way

Travels in Hyperreality by Umberto Eco. London: Pan Books, 1987. 306 pp. Softcover.

Alan Eyzaguirre

Hyperreality is a collection of essays on a variety of topics, but they all have the common theme of over-analysing modern culture in order to get a better understanding of our current social-political environment.

UNLIKE CHOMKSY
who focuses on the surface conditions, the negative effects of the multi-national corporate imperative, in order to analyse the current social-political situation, Eco starts at the root and works up. He found the root of the American psyche in the Coca-Cola phrase "The Real Thing", interpreting it to symbolize the American quest for "authentic copies" -- a result of our "new world" coinciding with the rise of industrial efficiency and the absence of history.

UNLIKE NABAKOV
who suggests his distastes for American values as he drives us through the great heartland in a large American car with a nubile young Lolita, Eco tours the California coast going to places like Wax Museums, Hearst Castle, the Madonna Inn, Forest Lawn and more in order to understand our fascination with trinkets and copies.

UNLIKE ORAL ROBERTS
who is a sand-box bully, kicking dirt in our face and forcing us to submit to his tormented images of a lunatic, tangible, "real thing" god, Eco quirkily and quaintly suggests a critical analysis of our value system.

FOR AN ITALIAN
immersed in history, who can't walk to the corner market without passing by the Sistine Chapel, it is impossible to understand that we Americans can't even identify with him, that we have a fascination for the "real fake." Talking about Disney World, Eco says that some intellectuals do not even want to go there, but he suggests that it may be the Sistine Chapel of our times. Where else, but Disney World, can you see the incredible urge for absolute re-creation-al recreation?

THE STORY OF MY LIFE
I grew up in Florida, a place with no history at all. Our family vacations were a religious voyage to Mecca, a.k.a. Disney World, Orlando. And I loved it. I honestly thought, Why would I need to to go London? I can just go to the EPCOT pavilion and experience a cleaner, safer replica.

Movies, lots and lots of movies. They can take me anywhere. A faceless node in the wasteland suburbs is fine if I can live someone else's modern mythological buy-product.

I was about 13 when I first went to New York City where I saw dirty, old, brick buildings tightly crammed as if the roads were originally based on the paths of herds. I didn't quite understand why people would live there. The safety and the comfort of the anonymous suburb was splendid. The concrete womb and web of highways were pacifying. It was much later that I realized that New York, Paris, London, San Francisco are all wonderful cities because they have evolved. Years of wearing away at the buildings and roads that don't work leave only the ones that do. Tightly fitted streets make the entire town a walkable adventure. Highways dehumanize and decentralize, killing the human element, the community. The layers of reconstruction lead to history and to a feeling of healthy mortality and appreciation for time.

In a suburb, everything is clean, new and improved, and ironically, dead.

THE ANTI-REALITY
At first, I was infuriated by Eco's comments on our American reality. That Italian intellectual was making fun of our society because his own had history. History built by an imperial Rome which had plundered the cultures of others including Eco's favorite -- Greece. "Eco, deal with our commercialism. We love it!" I screamed.

It wasn't our choice.

Eco says that he likes New York. He thinks that the ostentatious Ringling Palace in Florida would work just fine in the City. The City would wear it down, correcting its faults of conspicuous consumption -- something that he thinks could never happen in Los Angeles, the sprawling capital ofthe post-modern world.

You see, New York, like many European cities evolved before the Great MultiNationals began their silent, omnipotent reign. There were no mass Levitt-towns because they were still trying to efficiently move wood and construction equipment to one city. Economies of scale were not yet available because the leaps afforded by cheap transportation were yet to come.

But in Los Angeles, or even in Lake Tahoe, one is challenged by the modern wonders of the seemingly insignificant. Like the Great Temple of Safeway. It represents the end result of many social and cultural changes in our world. In a blinding snow blizzard, in the once-deadly Donner Pass, I can still get a loaf of freshly made bread and my choice of five different types of fresh (although genetically and biochemically enhanced) apples. Was Los Angeles "our choice?" Or was it dictated by the wonders of the Lords of MultiNationals? If we had our choice of living conditions would it be the 10-lane freeway with exactly 1/8 acre lot assigned to people based on class, race and educational level?

Would "our choice" be more harmonious, like the chaotic streets in London, or the unified sprawl of Paris? Or even the rolling towns one encounters biking through the wine country of France? Or would it be beautiful Fremont, California.

SUNSHINE AND HISTORY
New York's industrial cages, the warehouses that acted as the skeletons for the literal machines of industry are now the slumber grounds for trendy artists. Evolution has made them areas of culture whereas once they were the dungeons of the peasant working class.

On the other hand, those small, Italian towns that Eco views as paradise were once merely support structures for the jails called monasteries. Is it reasonable to assume that after a gradual transition, cars will disappear and what were once highways will become great parks and recreational centers for the new breed of Information Colonies? Or am I just dealing with Sunshine and Future?

Alan Eyzaguirre

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