culture/counterculture: thoughts on burning man and media coverage
While waiting at the pharmacy today, I picked up a copy of Rolling Stone (with a very aged quartet of the same name on the cover, I might add), and discovered the article the magazine had run on Burning Man, sending a journalist and a photographer to the desert to cover the event. At the risk of being an apologist for something which I think can be legitimately critiqued, this article reminded me of all the reasons I dislike journalistic approaches to human social behavior.
Unfortunately, I can't provide a link because I'm pretty sure the article isn't available online -- just the photos:
http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/_/id/5392537
So I'll have to try and sum it up first. The author purports to approach the event with an open mind, then proceeds to ridicule the majority of participants for being hairy, naked and benighted. He denigrates a pair of topless passersby as "freaks," and concludes that Burning Man is just about a bunch of middle-class white folks with corporate day jobs blowing off steam one week a year in the desert.
Of course, it's not that I haven't suggested a similar critique myself. I think there are legitimate questions of class and race that should be raised in the face of narratives about the value of temporary community or an uncommodified "gift" economy. Burning Man is only available to those with the resources -- time, money, material goods -- to take off a week (at least) and pack in everything needed for desert survival (food, water, camping gear) not to mention fun and creative expression (costumes, drugs, elaborate art installations). And furthermore, it's worth considering where the social benefit lies in devoting a significant amount of time and resources every year to an escapist festival far removed from everyday society, at least if you embrace the language of social change while doing so.
Burning Man, I would agree, is problematic in light of the stories participants tell about their involvement in it. But the pat, unexamined dismissal penned by this Rolling Stone journalist is just as limited and myopic. The author, for example, is unable to address any questions regarding the value of "symbolic creativity," the act of making meaning through everyday creative acts, from assembling a countercultural outfit to burning a mix cd. Perhaps thousands of people gather in the desert to walk on stilts and drive their art cars precisely because they do not find sufficient meaning in the everyday world, and Burning Man provides a site where this kind of creativity can be expressed, articulated, and realized.
What hampers this article is its complete lack of any kind of underlying method, or familiarity with the significant body of work that has already been devoted to examining youth subcultures and counterculture. There are no simple answers regarding the efficacy of symbolic rebellion. In a world of symbolic meaning and signification, why shouldn't creative acts have real consequences? Or is the symbolic expression of dissidence destined to remain an empty gesture?
Regardless of the value of cultural movements such as Burning Man, this kind of superficial journalistic attention fails to address the complex issues which underlie any form of cultural production. Instead, the article allows Rolling Stone to profit from flaunting the gaudier aspects of the festival -- fire, nudity, weird art -- while safely panning behaviors and attitudes the author (or editor, or readers) may find uncomfortable.