sistawendy | (Reply)

"We have discovered happiness"- say the last men, and blink thereby.

I don't know why, but the more I read about the Burning Man the more I feel an overwhelming sense of fakeness and annoyance. There's something obnoxiously self-satisfied about the web page and the first-person accounts.

I did some reading and talked to our SF correspondent in order compare my instinctive reaction with some facts. The art is cool, I'm never going to object to anyone erecting a giant illuminated whale. No, my objection must lie elsewhere. Somewhere between the smug emphasis on self-reliance, the blatantly false claim that they have 'no rules', or the fact that they forbid vendors.

Ah. There it is.

Not a comprehensive reason for my misgivings, but something to exemplify them.

No vendors allowed, but the organisers sell ice... and espresso.

Ice, that's fine, not everyone can bring a refrigerated truck with them. But ESPRESSO? Who the fuck drinks coffee in the desert anyway? It's a diuretic!

Oh yeah, let's go out in the desert and live and breathe art and stay away from the filthy lucre for a few days. Oh, except for buying espresso, because we're fucking pissants who would fucking DIE if we had to go a week without our FUCKING ESPRESSO! AAAAAAAAAARGH!

It doesn't escape the preoccupations of modern life! It reflects them! An obsession with consumerism, albiet inverted, is still an obsession! Half-assed enviromentalism! Wilderness survival, but with $300,000 port-a-loos and espresso bars! There's nothing PRIMAL about it!

Why does it annoy me? There's poison in modern western life, something stifling people feel the need to escape. But Burning Man isn't an antidote to that, it's a concentrated dose. It sort of goes unchallenged that people there are doing something awesome and innovative when it's really just a smug, lastmannish holiday camp. You can take the geek out of the city, but...