NYC
I recently stayed in New York City for a ten day vacation. I really enjoyed it. But why? I repeatedly caught myself observing that it was “just like in the movies and on TV”. When something did not corrospond with the image I had from the media it “Wasn’t really New York’ though obviously is was. This made me think of Jean Beaudrillard’s book ‘America‘ compiling travel notes from trips to USA. The book reflects on America from a European point of view, and is in essence subjective, but it offers some really interesting insights for any first-time visitor to America. Among other thought provoking statements Beaudrillard concludes that for an outsider whose main impression of American reality is constructed through the media, Disney World is the most ‘real’ place in America. Read it and wonder.
Everywhere I went I was met with unparralleled service and professional hospitality from the ‘ticket queue’ security check at JFK to the Lyic Diner at east 23rd street end 3rd avenue where I had several of my breakfasts. I caught myself choosing music venues, resturants, parks and sights after how ‘typically New York’ they were - how ‘real’. This was, of cause, staged. Everything was service, and I don’t think i saw a single business that wasn’t in some way providing service or trading shares in companies in the service industry. I even leaned that the old New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn where they used to biuld battle ships and air craft carriers was converted into movie studios and a plant that produces Sweet n’ Low (artificial sweetener you put in coffee and tea in restaurants and cafés).
Seing New York (Which is, I was told by a native waiting in queue for the men’s room at the Lincoln Center, not a part of USA but rather an international zone) as a tourist made me want to come back and find the REAL America. Is everything service and setting or is there more? Is it real and to whom, or is Jean Beaudrillard right when he classifies USA as a theme park? I intend to find out.