In terms of the portrayal of Plano Texas (a suburb of Dallas referred to in Subdivided), I’ve been pretty supportive of folks there when they were fighting the Wal-Mart a few years back, including in print. I had a sequence in the film about it but took it out because it had become stale, and there are other films critical of Wal-Mart out already. Plano is used as a symbol in the film, though some people will take it for a wholesale bashing. For many people in city neighborhoods, Plano represents the kind of suburbia they do not want anything to do with, and in fact a number of them left there because of the poor state of some of the neighborhoods. They are not all like this, of course.

I also wanted to portray some of the class issues in a subtle way: many of the working class Little Forest Hills residents have an outright dislike for the upper middle class and the “soulless suburbs.” I do not think its entirely defensible or rational, but it was pretty much universal, hence its prominence in the film. It also goes the other way. Looking at the Frisco-online forums you see the opposite perspective: people who react strongly to criticism of their lifestyle of big homes and SUV’s and have little sympathy or interest in the concerns of the bohemian urban dweller. Everybody has blind spots.

So Plano ends up being chosen as a symbol because, well, it was there right in front of me (and I had a lot of photos). But also because I was (a) emotionally offended in that the community spirit where I was living was nil, (b) visually assaulted by the design, and (c) politically offended because a lack of community is bad for democracy. J. S. Mill, I’m paraphrasing here, said that without participation in public life, there is no collective interest and people are not participants in a democracy, they are competitors. John Dewey, one of my preferred philosophers, said “liberty and equality isolated from communal life are abstractions… Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.”

So there’s a two fold response here. One is that the portrayal of Plano in Subdivided is a representation of class perspectives, and ones I do not necessarily share, and two that it is a critique of design, and a message to those developing communities to not make the same mistakes, and to consider other ideas about how to design their communities. The idea is to end up with neighborhoods rather than just subdivisions.

I live very near Plano now and spend a good deal of time there. My son goes to school in Plano. My critique via Subdivided is a way of participating in the civic life, to help generate discussion and debate, and to hopefully help a few people see some things slightly differently.

Originally Published in the Dallas Morning News

It comes as no surprise that Americans are under severe stress due to crushing debt levels and a savings rate that is basically zero. It’s not surprising because we are encouraged to over-consume by nearly every facet of culture and media. Worse, we have internalized consumerism to the point where it has become our value system.

As media critic Mark Crispin Miller told me recently, we have been reduced to being “receivers of messages that constantly tell us that the only thing that matters in life is to go shopping and then stay home with your stuff.” Which is, as he says, “profoundly anti-democratic.”

We have replaced the model of “citizen” with the model of “consumer.” The citizen model encouraged group involvement, debate, and community. The consumer model encourages immediate gratification and personal indulgence. It replaces the real empowerment of civic engagement with a fantasy of empowerment enabled through consumer products.

And not only has the role of consumer become our primary function in society, it has, in large respects, become our religion.

The new Ikea is like the big blue consumer cathedral of Frisco, dominating the landscape like the pyramids (except much uglier). And the hype surrounding its opening is like any new blip on the shopping landscape: its novelty arouses us for a short while, but then we’re on the hunt again for the next promise of material salvation.

And if consumerism is our new religion, one aspect is conspicuously absent: the ethical one. We shop without considering the larger ramifications of our purchases. How and where was this product made? Who and what am I supporting by paying for this thing? How are the workers treated? (The difference between Wal-Mart and Costco, for example). We are encouraged to isolate the buying experience into how it will make us feel in the moment and to ignore the larger effects. These days the effects reach all around the world.

And as Americans we like to think we have a system and ideas worthy of exporting to the world. If the American Dream has degenerated in to a consumer dystopia, we might want to do some rethinking. Here in the wealthiest county in Texas we serve as a kind of model. It is an unsustainable ideal. Our hyper consumptive, supersized lifestyle is a disastrous example for the rest of the world. Especially in booming places like China, where if everyone drove the aptly named Suburban and bought oversized houses the environment would literally collapse.

Some say “personal responsibility” is the answer. True enough when it’s a fair fight, but it’s not. As individuals we are grossly outmatched by enormous propaganda campaigns, market studies, Ivy League psychologists, and “perception managers” who do just that – manage our perceptions of everything. Sadly, they also manage the perceptions we have of ourselves.

This is especially offensive when it comes to our children. The marketing most of us were subjected to growing up seems quaint compared to the industry that is aggressively targeting the youth of today.

Our kids are being trained to be good consumers, which is certainly not the same thing as being a good person, or a good American. Girls get shopping mall games and boys get mini-Hummers, the very symbol of excessive, wasteful consumption.

And everything is branded. Few well-designed toys exist that are not cross-selling something else: sugary snacks, sugary pop idols, animated characters.

Walking through a mega toy store you get the sense that life is nothing but a series of acquisitions. That basically childhood is a matter of working your way through the different departments, front to back. Then you get to head to the big box stores and the SUV lot. Then you get a starter castle. Your identity is defined by what you have, even if it’s the same thing everyone else has.

If consumerism has replaced citizenship, then the more stuff you have the higher your status. And as long as status is equated with stuff our personal, financial, and civic lives will continue to deteriorate. It’s good for the marketers, but it’s bad for democracy.

The American philosopher William James said that worship of success was our national disease. The problem is, in order to cure the disease, we have to admit that we are afflicted in the first place.

Originally Published in the Dallas Morning News

My wife and I noticed a very long line of cars circled around a new fast food joint on the way home the other day. “I wonder what the big deal is?” she asked. Dinnertime rolled around and I decided to check it out.

What was this fantastic new auto dining experience? Well, I would just have to wait and see. And wait. And wait some more.

When I arrived, the line was ridiculous. It wound its way through the parking lot and then around the block. It took eight minutes for the car in front of me to move one space. The next move took twelve minutes.

Oh well, I thought, I could stick it out. In our neighborhood, no one talks to anyone or goes outside, and I wanted to get out and see some other humans. If you want to be around people in suburbia, you have to get in your car.

As I got closer, I noticed there were whole families, even people on dates excitedly entering and exiting the brightly lit building. A policeman was directing traffic. It was a party atmosphere. The place felt special in a temporary kind of way.

An hour went by. If my wife were there she would have said “this is stupid.” True, but I was determined to sit through it with everyone else. What makes something that should be humiliating a compelling experience instead, I asked myself.

An hour and a half went by. I could have walked to and from a nearby restaurant, read the paper and taken a nap in that amount of time. But then again there are no such places within walking distance in my suburb, which is why we were all in our cars in the first place.

The waiting became absurd, but still I insisted on completing the ritual. Instead of being in a pleasant environment with friends, I was alone in my car, sucking on exhaust from the car in front of me. In our auto based culture this is about as communal as we get.

By the time I finally got the menu board two hours had passed. I was so demoralized and hungry I would have ordered dog poo sandwiches. Luckily these were not on the menu.

What was on the menu was the same stuff at every other fast food restaurant. Cheap, highly processed, mechanized assembly line sort-of food in bags that matched the building, the uniforms, and everything else.

A photo of a bored looking young man with a large, perfectly circular hole where his midsection should be stared back at me. It was supposed to denote having an empty stomach, but after subjecting myself to this experience I couldn’t help feeling empty in an entirely different way.

The source of the excitement? The burgers were small and square.

Wow. That was it?

The burger bag said “made special for you.” I sure didn’t feel that way. I felt shallow, used, like I was lost and needed to find myself again.

And I couldn’t help but think that the hunger everyone had was not for fast food, but for novelty, a new consumer experience. Something to inject life into the blandness of the commercial suburban landscape.

In our desperation it seems we’ll do anything to satisfy our desire for the new. Consumer experiences always fail not long after the purchase is complete because the meaning they hold is designed to be transient.

Like the cheapest fast food, even the most expensive cars and homes leave you wanting, hungry. Like the rush you get after a soft drink and fries, the sensation abates and the sense of fullness quickly passes.

And then we start over. We wait with anticipation for the next bright, flashy, salty thing to lure and distract us. And we can’t wait to get in line.