For the rest of the series, see:
A short history (1)
A short history (2)
The Ruin Porn Post
The Consequences of Ruin Porn
Out of the ruins, springs hope. It’s an inspiring idea, one that we hear all the time. Out of death, springs life, out of horror and hell, springs humanity and grace.
In Detroit, it’s out of ruin porn, springs hope porn.
Compared to ruin porn, hope porn is almost the exact opposite–but the two need and build on each other. Whereas ruin porn focuses on the devastation, decay and blight of post-industrialization, hope porn focuses on the potential. It sees in the burned out houses possibility, it sees in the abandoned streets a lovely blank slate.
The way that hope porn manifests itself is less in pictures, and more in words. Documentaries and sales pitches. It usually involves an intrepid reporter or explorer that comes to see if things are “really that bad.” After a careful two week study that involves the reporter talking to a specific group of people, there is the grand announcement: it’s not as bad as we’ve been told! And then we get the secret. The exclusive “in the know” report out. Since everybody *thinks* things are that bad–property values around here are outrageously low! You can get a house for a dollar! You can do whatever you want with this house! Because it’s only a dollar! You are only limited by your imagination!
Of course, it’s not really mentioned that the specific group of people that this documentarian/reporter/explorer is usually talking is made up of the very people who have moved into Detroit after hearing from other reporters that things aren’t that bad. And they sorta have a vested interest (that 1$ property) in making sure that everybody knows things aren’t that bad). But that’s ok. Because with the politics of hope porn comes…hope! And that’s a good thing, right?
Except that you don’t have to scratch too far to see how closely related hope porn is to the narratives of colonialism. What were the golden paved streets for Cortes and Columbus and the “house on a hill” for religious communities and the “free land” for hopeful farmers but narratives of “hope”? You don’t have to stay where ever you are and deal with the fucked up bullshit that you’re dealing with right now! You could move to the New World! Or Kansas! Or Oregon! Or California! And you can have everything you ever wanted! Everything is there for the taking! The only limits are what you can imagine!
VIDEO: the first part in the Johnny Knoxville documentary about Detroit. Some quotes:
“It’s a blank canvass. Right now there’s really a possibility to change the city.” “There’s like, opportunity to do stuff, whatever you want, really, and no one will really mess with you.” “That entrepreneurial spirt can be very powerful, can be a much needed anecdote to a city that had it’s heart ripped out….”
But just like with colonial settlers of the past, those who are charmed by the hope porn promises don’t ever quite think to ask…what about the people who are already there? If on the rare occasion that they do consider people already on the land, the seduction of hope porn easily convinces them that they are there to help the poor souls–and if they can’t help, that’s what they pack their guns for.
Which of course, leads to conflict. When you move to a city in hopes of mobilizing the economic potential without recognizing that it was that same mobilization of economic potential that ravaged the city to begin with all while continuously invisibilizing the people who existed on that land long before you got there (i.e. ruin porn), you get what you have now in Detroit.
For example. The gardens in Detroit are known world-wide. Sprung out of the lack of adequate grocery stories coupled with abandoned lots, poor people in Detroit used the land to meet the needs of their communities. People were hungry and were being fed by liquor store food. Crime was a constant problem around the empty and abandoned lots. And even more importantly–because everybody was poor, they had no resources to start up their own stores.
So different community members cleaned up the lots and planted food. They started projects with elders and youth working the land together. Elders teaching the youth about how to properly compost or how to catch rain. Community dinners were held at harvest time where people within the communities finally got to meet their neighbors over food rather than the latest worrying event. People broke bread together. The needs of the community *created* community. Community coming together and talking helped built a critical analysis of what had made this need to begin with (industrialization). And the community agreed. It was as important to continue addressing the vestiges of industrialization as it was to address the needs of the community. By addressing their needs, they were addressing industrialization.
But then the story of the gardens got attached to the hope porn narrative. And suddenly what was an innovative and transformative way to address the ravages of industrialization became a way to “bring people back to the city” and “create economic growth.” Or: through hope porn, the gardens became a selling point rather than a way to meet the needs of an existing community. And you started to see more situations like this one:
A couple of interesting — if not downright sad — examples happened at the East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC) the week of June 20. That was the first week of EMEAC’s Gardening Activism Media and Education (GAME) Summer Camp, when a group of a dozen or so youth attending the camp led by EMEAC Associate Director Ahmina Maxey visited two institutions in the city. One institution calls itself a “community garden,” but is in actuality is a private enterprise in Midtown. The other is a public building in the heart of downtown Detroit.
In both instances, the campers were met by individuals bent on denying them access to these facilities.
…
In the first instance, the campers were purportedly denied access because there had recently been thefts at the garden — the implication clearly being that the campers were somehow likely to cuff something if allowed inside. Even after Ms. Maxey explained who they were, why they were there and that they were given the access codes to the garden by another member who was notified and approved of their visit, the gatekeepers still turned them away and saw fit to make sure the lock on the gate was turned to the inside — just in case the campers had a notion to double back when these vigilant gatekeepers were unawares and make off with the garden’s goods.
In the second instance the very next day, the campers were stopped that afternoon and told they couldn’t enter without a chaperone. When Ms. Maxey introduced herself as the chaperone and produced her driver’s license as proof, the gatekeeper still insisted they could not enter and only relented when Ms. Maxey appealed to a higher level staff member.
In other words, what began as a way to address resource hoarding (i.e industrialization)–is being used as a way to resource horde again.
Things are not hopeless. I personally know many white folks (and people of color!) who have moved in to the city as hope porn consumers–but through critical awareness and a willingness to politicize their own need to “hope,” have stepped back and questioned their own positions within the community, rather than continuing to uncritically accept the building over of the community hope porn incites. I recently had a long conversation with a white father who talked to me about how he negotiated being the white guy that all the people in power preferred to deal with over the black people that he organizes with. It was an eye opening conversation that really addressed a lot of my own hopelessness that white supremacy will always be invisible to white people. It won’t be. And it isn’t.
And just last night I was at an amazing community dinner that celebrated the recent harvest of local gardens. It was a multicultural dinner with lots of different people from all walks of life sharing a meal, music, and dancing together. And as the friar shared at the beginning of the meal, the dinner was a showcase of how what had started off as a charity organization had changed. That same organization decided it didn’t want to service the poor any more (i.e. “to help” the poor), it wanted to create a world where poverty no longer existed. And so it embraced the goal of “creating a just and beautiful food system for all.” So now in addition to giving away food to the poor, it also helps to create those relationships, the ones between youth and elders. It works to position youth as leaders of the movement towards a just and beautiful food system. It holds skill shares so that community members not only learn how to grow food, but how to sell it as well. It examines the idea of “selling” and what that means in the context of “just and beautiful.”
Things are not hopeless. They are just hopeless down the road that hope porn follows. Things *are* bad in Detroit. They just aren’t bad for the reasons that ruin porn tells us. And there is hope in Detroit. It’s just not hopeful for the reasons that hope porn tell us. To address the real problems of post-industrial cities, we have to put down the rose colored glasses–and we have to be brave.
And part of being brave means challenging a narrative that hopes to make others change instead of ourselves.