In the future, There Will be Robots (Really?)

I just saw an old movie called "Soylent Green," starring Charlton Heston. It takes place in the future, when humans are just hanging on after an environmental disaster, and Heston has to investigate a murder, ducking crooked parties left and right. The full meaning of the revelation at the end of the movie isn't properly explored, but it's a diverting movie nonetheless, and a great opportunity to ponder how people saw the destiny of humanity.

Watching movies' depictions of "the future," you get an idea of the ideas that are really bugging people about the era in which these films are made. Spielberg's Minority Report depicts a world where privacy was gone, and aggressive advertising tactics had completely hijacked our psyches--sounds like a post-Sept 2001 world to me. Such movies as Blade Runner and the Terminator series posit that in the future, the machines would take over--I guess that's what folks were worried about during the 1980s when they bought their first Beta VCR's. In seeking to project into the future, these movies date themselves.

Well, Soylent Green is a movie about the near future--2022--but it was made in 1973. Technology is not a big theme here, since the post-disaster world is decidedly primitive, and everyone's just trying to get by. The hero (played by Charlton Heston) lives in an unimpressive flat in a sweltering, crowded city--no one has a job, and everyone mills around, waiting for an excuse to riot. This vision of human life recalls to mind the bleak depiction of New York City during the 1970s in Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon. Heston's from an older generation than De Niro (Taxi Driver), and Pacino (Dog Day Afternoon), and his approach to acting shows it, but the overall feel of them movie--sweaty, gritty, filthy--makes Soylent more about the urban discontent of the 70s than a movie about the future. Even the one instance of "futuristic" technology occurs a short scene in which a young woman plays on a huge arcade-style video game, the likes of which some rich people had in their houses during the 1970s, and the random appearance of black actors--one as the chief of police, another as a sexy live-in girlfriend--falls in line with the politically-conscious casting of token rules during the period. 2022 looks a lot like 1973, except that in 1973 the government wasn't totally corrupt--oh wait, Nixon, right--2022 looks a lot like 1973.

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Pilsen

In Chapter Two of A White Girl's Adventures to Ethnic Coffeeshops, I went to Cafe Mestizo in Pilsen to try the "special brews" praised so much in TimeOut Chicago. Turns out, the afternoon of December 31st--which was also a Sunday this year--is one of those days when businesses get zero traffic. At least, I think that's why I was the only patron at Cafe Mestizo--it was just me, the barrista, and a guy painting a giant banner expressing support for the protesters in Oaxaca. Since the place was so empty and it was a holiday, I felt as if I was keeping the barrista from closing early and celebrating the New Year. Thus, when I got my Azteca hot chocolate--which, by the way, tasted like any other decent hot chocolate I've had, just with a dried chile floating on top as decoration--I drank it down fast. It didn't help that when he gave me my drink, the guy said, "to go, right?" I'm pretty sure I have a footprint on the back of my jacket from when he kicked me out the door (kidding, sort of).


The decor was very artsy and self-aware, which was great, if still confusing. The walls are covered with political signs and charts decrying the gentrification of Pilsen, and they sold the prerequisite "Home Security since 1492" T-shirts. I thought that this political bent was a little contradictory--an artsy Cafe like Cafe Mestizo attracts a college crowd, which is mainly young people with enough disposable income to buy a $4 coffee drink on a regular basis. You have to be pretty well off to do that--even I visit coffee shops once a week or so as a special treat. I would never feel comfortable spending Starbucks-level prices every day. Cafe Mestizo benefits from an influx of middle- and upper-middle-class patrons, but their patronage is what drives up prices in Pilsen. I guess by railing against gentrification, guilty white liberals can come and have the masochistic pleasure of hating themselves for being part of the problem. For better or for worse, though, I don't feel that guilty or liberal (or masochistic).

After fleeing the cafe, I walked down 18th street looking for a grocery store where I could buy products that are scarce in Hyde Park. I went into a "natural foods store," thinking it would be a Pilsen version of GNC, and instead found a place that sold supplies for a curandera, or folk healer. Instead of organic foods and vitamin supplements, there were shelves and shelves of candles with the pictures of "saints" on them. In addition to real Catholic saints such as the Virgin of Guadalupe, there were a lot of candles and figurines that bore the likeness of the Santa Muerte, a grinning skeleton in a Grim Reaper-like robe. This "saint" is used a lot in rituals at home to get good luck for oneself, or to curse another with bad luck, that sort of thing. When I was in Mexico City, I visited the Mercado de Sonora, a kind of streetmarket that specialized in religious and occult objects, and there was a huge array of similar figurines and potions that one could purchase in order to become lucky, find love, exact revenge, etc. That experience underlined in my mind Durkheim's distinction betwen magic and religion--magic offers opportunities for someone to get what he wants, but magic does not provide the moral system or model of conduct that characterizes a religion. Magic is based on commerce.

Interestingly, the curandera store in Pilsen also sold figures of Orisha saints/gods from Santeria, a system of beliefs that blends Catholicism and Voodoism, and is popular in Cuba. Perhaps Santeria is gaining popularity with other Latinos and Latin-Americans? Whatever the reason for their existence, I thought they were visually interesting, so I bought a bunch of candles from the store. Next time I have company, I'll be able to start a conversation about why I felt the need to have the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Saint of Death, and two Santeria deities watch over me.

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I See Fat People

Winter “vacation” in Ohio can be strange. Lay aside family politics (the usual crisis over my stubborn little brother), and the thing that has affected me the most is the fatness. It’s everywhere. EVERYONE IN OHIO IS HUGE. To be sure, the average Chicagoan is pretty big—our eateries serve big portions, and the long winters encourage people to pack on the insulation—but still nothing is quite as shocking to me as the rotundity of the average Ohioan.

Now, I’m not talking about people that have a little extra padding or some nice curves—I’m talking about women that are so big their fat has filled in all the spaces where their curves should be. They walk around like giant square things, with rolls of backfat pressing down against buttocks that are so big they appear to have grown upward into the person’s back. And the men, with their huge bellies—is this a psychological thing? Are they jealous of woman’s reproductive power, and thus try to create a nice baby-belly for themselves?

I think that this feeling of shock occurs because I was a different person when I lived in Ohio. Having grown up in Cincinnati, I can remember spending my school years K-12 feeling sloppy and gross. Lean, all-American girls with blond hair and German last names surrounded me, and their toned physiques and preppie clothing made me think, “Wow, these girls have it together. They are so confident and beautiful and stylish [I was too naïve to realize that even the most spoiled Abercrombie-clad princess in Cincinnati would be two years behind the fashions in NYC, LA, even Chicago].” These girls lived in houses three times as big as mine, they all looked alike, they were friends with only each other and their parents were all Republicans—even if I weren’t an overweight slob, I’m sure I would have been depressed in high school.

High school was so bad that college couldn’t have been anything but great—I went to school, I dropped thirty pounds, boys liked me, and I dated and made friends. I have since graduated with honors and made my home in Chicago. Whenever I come back to Cincinnati, I see that now I’m the skinny one, and everyone else has become a fat German sausage after spending four years in a school in a cornfield with nothing to do but drink. My close HS friends that went to good colleges in other parts of the country either stayed the same or lost weight—it’s an odd reversal that makes it hard for me not to feel a little smug.


I have a similar feeling when I see my relatives, particularly the ones on my father’s side. A lot of my cousins were thin little dancers, and I was the chunky one. Now they’re graduating from college and getting married and…they’re FAT. Their features melt into the fat on their faces, and they don’t even look like they’re related to me anymore.

Fatness scares me, and it’s not because I’m a health nut—I’m too lazy to exercise and I love barbecue too much. The beauty aspect is important; I know that if I gained a lot of weight I would feel less attractive, and that would upset me. Ultimately, though, I think that I’m scared because if my body got a lot bigger than it is now, I would feel as if I were lost inside myself. What’s more, if I lose control of my physical being, I might lose control of other parts of my life, and I don’t want that to happen. This association between weight and self-control or self-empowerment is confirmed everywhere in our culture, and those ana/mia chicks take it to a grotesque extreme. Still, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reminding oneself to moderate one’s eating habits and very one’s diet. I don’t want to look like I belong in Ohio, after all.

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