Pariopticon

A couple of students have already shared their thoughts about Parisians' beloved pastime -- people watching. I share many of the same sentiments as my colleagues and find it to be both annoying and unsettling, depending upon the specific situation. Of course, this gaze isn't just Parisian but is typically activated by white men with receding hairlines and a mustard stain on their upper lip. Apparently they are so infatuated with consuming their surrounds that they never have time to stand in front of the mirror. I'm self-aware enough however to understand than an American tourist bitching about the behavior and attitude of Parisians is not only uninteresting but probably just obnoxious.

However, I would argue that this uniquely Parisian phenomenon is in direct contradiction with Baudelaire's concept of the flâneur. An essential prerequisite to becoming the flâneur is the ability to be incognito, while at the same time absorbing the vast multitudes of the crowd. The anonymity of the modern artist seems to be dependent of his or her ability to become the spectator, albeit the "passionate" one with the powers of "consciousness." And that's fine, but what would happen if you were to stare back? Is there an artistic merit of remaining foreign to the crowd and staring back at it? All of which lends itself to tired cliches about the artist as the "other" of society who is endowed with the unique ability of revealing its flaws and contradictions. Which is just as obnoxious, if not more. The question of "staring back" wouldn't presuppose an alteration in one's lifestyle but a critical, especially self-critical, attunement to one's own work.

The aforementioned Parisian gaze has a much more sadistic outlet than the cafe patios. One of the first things I noticed when arriving was the amount of bookstores, which every American gets all uppity about because 'oh my god, nobody reads in America' and 'wow, all my town has is Barnes & Noble!' That might all be true but there also isn't much conversation about what is being stocked and sold in these bookstores because amongst the literary classics is typically the Charlie Hebdo manifesto or Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book analyzing the many problems of radical Islam. Then there are similar boutique-type bookstores, which often specialize in a specific area or region. There was one near Hotel Marignan that specialized in Africa, although the window section didn't feature anything published by an actual African artist or theorist. I would argue that these bookstores serve another function of the gaze, perhaps accidentally, of being a storehouse through which their Parisian clientele can have their corneas covering the whole world.

Many of us have probably strolled through the Latin Quarter by now and noticed the graffiti, two of which were especially striking for myself. The first demanded that France "stop immigration," with the stop to be later crossed out. Another at the base of a statue suggests that "France has an identity." Even the editorial section of The New York Times this week (Bob just cringed at this reference) wrote exhaustively about the French malaise and France's current identity crisis. The question to ask might be what it actually means that "nous sommes Charlie," because that is a complicated statement and a confusing affiliation.

So perhaps what Paris needs isn't more aesthetically-motivated flâneurs but a mirror so that someday the patron of a cafe might turn to their friend and finally ask, "What the fuck is it that we are staring at and why?"