CONSUMPTION: delincuentes, chorros, gil laburantes

I had said something about consumption before...not sure exactly where my thoughts were as a few weeks have passed. Nevertheless, the theme is on the mind and in the eyes constantly. There is the consumption of images and and images of consumption. So really there is a circulation of both images and consumption as we respond to images and consume them, often as messages encouraging us to consume. And then, within all of this, I have found images of children. Children are so much a part of consumer culture. Things are made or advertised as products for children, and the child has been transformed into a consummate consumer, part of a larger capitalist system of accumulation without any inkling of what type of larger system this desire to purchase is playing into.

I was watching a television program on delinquents around the ages of 14 or 15 in the Provincia of Buenos Aires. They looked dirty, not necessarily homeless, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and paco. Some said that they had real day jobs, to keep up appearances, to have some sort of currency of legitimacy (currency not as money but as a symbol of value). Legitimate work isn't offering the quantity necessary, or perhaps only non-laboring cash holds real meaning, but to be a laborer and lead that life is to be a "gil laburante". This term is relatively new and used among younger people. Gil is a character or characteristic that has long existed in tango or gaucho culture. A gil is easily taken advantage of, he is not sufficiently cynical about the pernicious world that resides around him, thus he inevitably becomes it's victim and is taken advantage of without mercy. The term "gil laburante", which these adolescent boys use, is the worker who is robbed daily by society at large. He works and works, but he lives in very humble conditions. The gil laburante is an idiot because he works honestly in a world where that only fucks you over. There is no way that the analytic abilities of these "delincuentes" o "pibes chorros" can be overlooked. They have a cynicism that is not based on some lie, they are the anti-lie in that they see the violence inflicted on those that choose a legitimate life without robbing others or carrying guns. So, in a very important manner, they are choosing to resign themselves to reality that is unjust and cares nothing about the suffering of it's victims, of the gil laburantes, and so, in turn, reproduces this larger and more invisible violence to interactions that are easily perceivable, which then become the problem with the inseguridad. So much energy and footage is spent of these chicos because they have faces and wear clothes and use certain terms, but they do less damage than what produces them, than the reality they are hip and their miming of a larger violence on a smaller level. The worker is an idiot, there is no sympathy; he refuses to play by the rules of the game by insisting on the written rules, the laws, which only makes him a victim. The gil laburante is victimizing himself through his own naivete.

Consumption is always tied to labor. For these boys, their real work is the illegal type, the type that sometimes requires killing or harming other human beings. The program was meant to show these kids as ridiculous and blood loving and lazy and scary. It was scary, but there was more depth to the subjects than the journalists discussed. They oversimplified their frame to make the program part of the security crisis paranoia that is so perversely popular right now. The oversimplification and less than mediocre quality of the program clearly had an agenda, but I do believe that the words of these subjects were not very edited, but left quite untouched. There was an honesty that I felt was transmitted through their tone and matter-of-factness. There was a clear intelligence that was conveniently never addressed or built upon. There was obviously no conversation about how this violence was a response to and recognition of living in a very violent society. The friend I was watching with commented to me about the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption among people that really don't have money, but use what they have, and in this case rob, oftentimes with violence. The absurdity that someone would steal and spend everything for a pair of shoes or a shirt that is associated with a certain brand. An item that just signifies conspicuous and ridiculous consumption; consumption of luxury, not of necessity. I remember at the MERCOSUR anthropology conference I attended in late Sept/early Oct. someone from the audience asked one of the professors about the phenomenon of indigenous Argentine teenagers in very poor provinces in the north with flashy cell phone cases. He responded that it was not so simple that we could judge it as bad, that is is far more complex than something which deserves a simple value judgment. I wish I could remember more of what he said. I have the notes somewhere, but not within reach. It was Alejandro Grimson, who I am so excited to study with, and it was this response that really illustrated his brilliance. Unfortunately I am not equally as apt to be able to do justice to his response. Perhaps the point is that a global capitalist culture makes desires appear as needs, live or die needs. So much of the world dreams of having non-necessities that such a small and select percentage of the global population can only have access to. The object has the status of being a luxury object, and it also stands in as luxury itself, because in a way it is accessing a world that is exterior. However, this object does not exactly mean the same thing in varying contexts. When an item is stolen, or worn in with clothes that are not equally as expensive, or there is so much attention to the embellishment to an extreme, that this seemingly absurd obsession with accumulation of ridiculous things, cannot simply be dismissed as a stupidity. Consumption is a conversation, it is a statement, it is a cultural reflection, it is buying and owning what is outside of one's reach and making it one's own. There are parallels in the violence of 15 year old threateing someone with a gun (or using it) for some money (maybe not even a huge amount) to buy something that doesn't help his family eat better or meet any fundamental needs. We are, though, in a society that advertises objects as if they were necessary nutrients.

Interesting how I am consuming images of these boys talking about consuming; consumption of drugs, of items, of cash...They are consuming products of violence, they are consuming violence, and they are reproducing it on a smaller scale. They ridicule the gil laburante who does not realize or rebel against the his already ridiculed space, his space of worker which is given a lot of lip service, but is ridiculed by a system that sees him as disposable or as not even there, or there and not valuable as a person. The gil laburante is consumed in a way that this boys refuse to be. But they are consumed by something. I don't want to make it trite or make less of their position by moralizing it, but they are consumed by a desire, perhaps like the desire you see in the glassy eyes of someone who is drugged. Like the children that live on the street who supposedly inhale chemicals to leave their lives of pain and see God or the Virgin Mary (Patas Arriba gives some examples). Those children are consumed with a pain, and they consume drugs to escape it.

I need to get some sleep and I am not getting everything down how I wanted or even all that I wanted. I am exhausted and with a fever. But last thought: This television program did not shamelessly dehumanize these adolescents, but they are often dehumanized in discourses surrounding security and delinquency. These boys talked about killing as if it were without a thought, sounding like shooting was done without thinking about pain, but as something easy or as the only way to prevent one's self from ending up on the wrong side of an aimed gun one's self. There is an obvious dehumanization of the victim. The gil laburante is dehumanized because he is ubiquitous and yet almost doesn't exist. He is dehumanized by the economy, by policies, by his ridiculousness in the eyes of his son. Galeano is right. We are living in the world upside down. How else can explain the figure of the Fool as represented by laborer?

tango, dressing up

I was thinking about certain spaces inspire us, or indicate that we are obligated, to change our appearance. We are all performing social role all of the time, but without realizing it. However certain spaces seem to require that we act in a different role, one that has unspoken rules about dress or codes of communication. The space of the tango, where it is practiced, has unspoken expectations about dress and behavior.

Monday night I was rushing out the door to go to a milonga near my house. Even to go to bar with people my age, if I were in a rush, I wouldn't change my clothes or put on make-up, but the milonga makes me think twice about my appearance. I am dressing for a show that I am playing a role in. I have always struggled with the role-playing. Sometimes it's intriguing, but sometimes I don't want to have to obsessively think about my appearance about beauty, about assuming an identity that fits into a location that can seem so distant from my state of mind. Tango can be this appealing beautiful relationship, a way of relating with others, but it can also be this awful milonga environment in which everybody looks everyone over three times over, and we all sit on the sides, while not dancing, talking about everyone who is out there, sometimes spilling their guts, in improvised corporal self-expression.