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Loading... Over the Schuylkill: Aughts Philly Complete (2014)1 | 1 | 7,662,328 |
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If you’re not scared of us, you should be. What was accomplished in The Philadelphia Renaissance, marked roughly by the ten year period 2000-2010, or “the Aughts,” covers so much ground, from the popular arts through the higher arts and into the humanities in general, and breaks with so many American cultural traditions, from the rejection of European classicism to a preponderance of fame-and-profit motivated forces, that it is difficult to believe that forces could’ve coalesced so serendipitously. Yet, the aesthetic favored by Philadelphia Renaissance artists is dark— eerie, chiaroscuro, steeped in multiple meanings, secret passageways, many of them extending back over centuries of European high art and culture, and the secrets there unearthed of form and theme. Conversely, part of the miracle of The Philadelphia Renaissance is that, distinctions and classifications aside, it brought an entire generation of younger Philadelphia artists together, in every personal capacity imaginable— rock musicians, poets, painters, journalists, novelists, DJs, hipsters, and literary theorists mixed and mingled, sans restraints, of vanity or otherwise. Put simply, the Philadelphia Renaissance years were generous ones, and the ferocity of the forces unleashed, from Dirty Frank’s and McGlinchey’s to Woody’s at 13th and Walnut, bound us to each other with passion, joie de vivre, sometimes antagonism but always engagement. No one who had a stake in this Renaissance was ignored, and even when we fought, it was from ideals, principles, and whatever ethos came under discussion to ignite them, and us. | |
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Philadelphia, much more so than New York (which offers, to my eyes, nothing labyrinthine beneath a bold, brusque surface) is perpetually ravaged by contradictions and conflicting internal imperatives- the Main Line surface/patina is all about the prestige of old money; South Philly prizes blue-collar, ethnic simplicity, but falsely and disingenuously (against the complex and baroque machinations of the South Philly mob); the mob also runs at least partly other suburbs supposed to be middle-class, and standardized to American suburban norms, which they are not; and the "noir" sense, at the end of things, is that Philadelphia is a shadow-plagued city, and what you see is certainly not what you get here. The representatively Philadelphian surface/depth tensions are what make the city fertile ground for high art, rooted in formidably intellectual narratives, slanted towards the stylized chiaroscuro of noir symbolization and signification. Make no mistake- Philly makes a more than reasonable microcosm of the United States, because Philly has many things to hide. Every thoughtful Philadelphian has their own Philadelphia narrative. That Philadelphia is often represented as simple is one of its noir allure-features. Philadelphia, in fact, may be taken as the secret capitol of America, and much of America's internal darkness is exteriorized/embodied with precision in our labyrinths here. | |
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To conventional wisdom, the poetry of the American urban landscape is that there is none. The average American metropolitan area is an ugly mess, and built for the convenience of commerce, rather than for the delectation of cultivated eyes. Philadelphia is a Gemini city— and the inversions and ironies about the way Philly looks up close are profound and twisted. Cursed for a century with a self-hating, self-defeating press corps, Philly becomes as famously ugly as Detroit, Houston, or Phoenix (“it’s a working class city” blurts idiot Garrison Keillor on NPR). The truth is that Philly may be the most ambient city in America. There are too many visual feasts which Philly presents (and that are conspicuously absent in New York, Chicago, etc) to dismiss comparisons not only to the rest of America but to Paris, London, and Prague. (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.) | |
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