Havana Daydreamin'

There was an interesting moment towards the end of PBS’ Independent Lens: Revolucíon: Five Visions, a short documentary dealing with 5 photographers from Cuba. Rene Pena was one of them, and he describes himself as having lived in San Francisco’s Mission District for a brief period (a couple years or so), because he said it was important for him to know, for certain, what kind of place the United States was.

He came away with this sense of crushing consumerism. The collection of photographs they showed in relation to this revelation were titled White Things, which one supposes is his attempt to somehow wrap race, politics, and economics into one nice trite title. Because as we know, white people are responsible for capitalism, Celine Dion and all of the other terrible stuff out there. Just my guess. To be fair, the photography itself is pretty sharp.

I’m relatively sure there’s some Chomsky-esque explanation of how all of the preceding proves with damnable conclusiveness my own sexism, racism, homophobia, cultural insensitivity, and any other of a host of isms and disorders. But I digress.

Shortly after going into the horrible pervasiveness of consumerism, Pena begins to describe how hard it is to be a photographer in Cuba: the lack of materials, film, water. He blames the embargo the U.S. has placed on trade with Cuba.

The first thing that pops into any rational person’s mind, rightly, is that moving to San Fran’s Mission District to find out what America is really like, what it represents, is kind of like hanging out with Lindsay Lohan to get an idea of what sobriety is truly about. You would learn more about honesty in five minutes with Bill Clinton, than ten years in Frisco could ever teach you about the essence of America.

And that’s not meant (necessarily) as an insult (at least not towards San Francisco). The city by the bay is a truly beautiful place, with a class of nutters unmatched and unparalleled anywhere else in America. We love everybody in our crazy-ass family, but San Fran is pretty much the one the rest of us talk about in hushed, bewildered, and flabbergasted tones.

The second point that comes to mind, is that it seems a bit contradictory to damn the culture and the system on one hand for being so intent on selling and consuming things, and then indict the system on the other hand because it chooses not to sell you the things you want to consume. It’s one of the more amusing hypocrisies of a delusional revolutionary class.

Another of the photographers, Raul Corrales, talked about the American Dream – a Buick, being a millionaire, having a beautiful blond wife. “Of course,” he said, “who wouldn’t want these things?” The sad part really, is that he thinks the American dream includes a Buick.

He paints these desires, or at least the idea that one isn’t required to live like a third world peasant, as dangerous propaganda, the kind which leads to millions attempting to reach America, and thousands dying en route. One can only assume that if Mr. Corrales were in the construction business, all of his buildings would be one story, no stairs one might fall down, no doors that might slam on someone’s fingers, no windows that might shatter and cut anybody. Hurricanes would simply be seen as another thing to blame on America.

The flipside (a somewhat novel concept in a PBS programming) was Rogelio Lopez Marin, who, with far more insight, honesty and understanding of what it means to be American than most Americans do, expressed a sentiment all too often forgotten: “I might have to work hard for it, but I know [the American Dream] is there.”

Endearing really, to see someone who actually gets it. Reminds one of the guillotine Ayn Rand dropped on one twit who had the audacity to ask: "Why should we care what a foreigner thinks?"

"I chose to be an American. What did you ever do, except for having been born?" she replied.

The hope is that in the ensuing years, rational society will be able to chip away the shiny veneer on the image of Cuba, Fidel, Che et al. and expose it for what them for what they really are – the ugly remnants of a ridiculously brutal social experiment which has done about as much for the poor working class it claims to love, as crack has done for them. Bravo.

I hope it happens because I’m tired of finding out artists, whose work I otherwise enjoy immensely, are complete utopian boobs, who have deluded themselves into thinking that somehow communist Cuba got it right. At Earth Day 2000 in Washington D.C., Chevy Chase claimed "socialism works" and said that "Cuba might prove that." This is, however, the funniest thing attributed to Chevy Chase since the late 80’s.

The odds are, things will stay the course for the foreseeable future. Hollywood and the pseudo-intellectuals of the world have built a cult of personality around Fidel and Che. If nothing else, Fidel has managed to stay alive long enough to witness the rebirth of the kind of anti-American sentiment that will help cement him as a martyr/minor deity if he kicks off in the midst of it. As for Che, I’ll leave all of you with this: if you read up and actually keep score, you’ll find he’s been way more successful at selling t-shirts than he ever was as a revolutionary.