THE SUBURBS ARE HALLUCINATING.... THE SUBURBS ARE UNRAVELLING The suburbs are hallucinating, England is hallucinating. Monster Ripper and Smirnoff, Brandy Boost, oversized glasses of chardonnay at Wetherspoons monday club, valium scored for a few quid in the pub , the stink of weed drifting from portakabins , red eyes and yellow bibs. The pharmaceuticals industry is one of UK Plcs biggest success stories ( along with arms dealing and loans companies) as prescriptions for anti depressants are kept on repeat. Were all hallucinating, in a landscape that has become more surreal and more authoritaruan in equal measure. The physical landscape has become infantilised, we are spoken to in baby voices by cereal packets and drinks cartons and are subjected to the ubiquitous sight of cartoon characters looming down from billboards offering us energy tariffs and payday loans. And yet life in this country has never seened more coercive. More consumer choices than ever before, have it your way, but always within the narrowest set of parameters,,the moment you step out of line and express your anger the weight of the law comes crashing down,four years for nicking a bottle of water, the 2011 riots loom large in the suburban pysche. In 2011 it was the suburbs that saw the most dramatic dispalys of collective violence. Croydon, Edmonton, Catford, Streatham, these towns, these suburban sites have become thr repositories of a class anger that for most of the time stays pent up in the cellular strucutres of housing estates. In rooms where you sit drinking supermarket lager in front of flat screen tvs, smoking weed playing x box, anger and frustration is sucked inwards..it is sublimated in a cascade of pahamecuticals and self help platitudes. Fluoxetine, citraloporan, CBT, its all about fixing the individual. To be happy in the face of this disaster neoliberalism has wrought would surely be the pathological response? In 2011 the barriers broke down, the estates and streets of the suburbs, instead of being selaed corridors suddenly becmae porous, terrirtorial markers melted, the streets became the site of collective engagement with the spectacle of consumerism. The anger was directed towards pawnbrokers, retail parks and high street stores , places taunting us every day. In the new suburban enclaves, in the zones of sacrifice, there resides a surplus work force moving in a precarious fashion between flats in condemned buildings and camps under mortoway flyovers and patches of waste ground. There are buried currents, plots and cells. The suburbs, once the site of order and domesticity are unravelling. Laura Oldfield Ford lauraoldfieldford.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/seroxat-smirnoff-thc-9-october-29.html
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 18:27:12 +0000
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