Oz

Volume 8 Article 10

1-1-1986

Scale, Patriotism and Fun: Crossing the Last Frontier of Fantasy

Karal Ann Marling

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Recommended Citation Marling, Karal Ann (1986) "Scale, Patriotism and Fun: Crossing the Last Frontier of Fantasy," Oz: Vol. 8. https://doi.org/10.4148/2378-5853.1118

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Scale, Patriotism, and Fun Crossing the Last Frontier of Fantasy

Karal Ann Marling I

According to the rhetoric of a debate In the world of North Fairfac Boulevard that erupted in Germany in 1933 under in 1926 (or in 1984), it does not behave the leadership of Hermann Broch and like a vase or a hymn, providing visual was brought to a raging boil in America background music for daily activities. Its by Clement Greenberg in 1939, the arbitrariness and self-importance imp­ California Sphinx is a prime example of inge on and alter the workaday environ­ "kitsch." In its most restrained defini­ ment. A modest street address becomes tion, the verb "kitschen" means to pro­ the site of endless questioning and an duce trash, or fake art, by manipulating endless variety of illogical, imaginative, real art, especially the art of past ages, fantastic answers to the riddle of this in the manufacture of articles for mass Sphinx. consumption. In the practice of the late 1930s, however, kitsch came to mean Although appalled and angered by the the anithesis of elite, high culture, par­ very mention of kitsch, Rosenberg has ticularly artifacts deviating from the several cogent insights to offer on its canons of avant-garde art and architec­ American manifestations. The an­ ture. Wheras Broch had conceded that tagonist of kitsch is, as he correctly im­ "there is a drop of kitsch in all art," the plies, the reality of Los Angeles, not the term signified bad taste, blatant excess, ideology of modem art, and the environ­ and a tinge of pornography, all relative ment - nature in America - is the focus judgments, to be sure, calibrated against of this persistent drive to step beyond the prevailing tenets of a highly serious, the frontier of reality into the fan­ chastened modernism. Essentially, then, tasyland of the imagination. In the most damnable quality of kitsch was Rosenberg's lexicon the gigantic Rockies its popular origin and its hard-to-define are, per se, kitsch - obvious, blatant, ex­ but unquestionable appeal to mass cessive, semipornographic. That set of culture. adjectives can be conflated into one, The Sphinx Restaurant, Los Angeles, California.' gigantic "too muchness." Nature made ''Kitsch is art that follows established noticeable elements of the en­ The vernacular California Sphinx is an an aesthetic error of scale in America, rules at a time when all rules in art are vironment. In America kitsch is affront to art because it recreates a troublesome to art critics, mythmakers, put into question by each artist, '' wrote nature. The Rocky Mountains masterwork; it copies, it ''follows the landscape painters, tricksters, novelists, Harold Rosenberg, dean of the have resembled fake art for a cen­ established rules'' at a time when the and tourists ever since. formalists: tury. There is no counterconcept avant-garde pursued a course of idiosyn­ to kitsch. Its antagonist is not an cratic individualism. The rule of moder­ Between 1927 and 1939, Gutzon Kitsch is the daily art of our time, idea but reality. To do away with nism is to assault the rule of rule. But Borglum set out to rectify that mistake as the vase or the hymn was for kitsch it is necessary to change for all its obeisance to historical rule, the in the Black Hills, by turning Mt. earlier generations. For the sen­ the landscape, as it was necessary Sphinx is as startlingly idiosyncratic as Rushmore, South Dakota, into the sibility it has that arbitrariness to change the landscape of Sar­ any Jackson Pollock (or John Marin, or largest statue in the world, a set of por­ and importance which works take dinia to get rid of the malarial Gerald Murphy), precisely because it trait busts of four presidents unfailing­ ly cited in handbooks of kitsch 36 on when they are no longer mosquito. does not exist in a "daily" environment. alongside the Statue of Liberty, a French will appear from below no larger than gift to the United States, unveiled in a fly." An advocate presenting the pro­ 1886, but thereafter blamed exclusively ject to a businessmen's meeting stunned on American bad taste. Kitsch or not, his audience when he announced that Mt. Rushmore is a stunningly successful a work of such magnitude would cost attempt to tum reality on its ear. A the city of Atlanta 50 million dollars: mountain becomes a statue. By carving Mt. Rushmore, man takes over the shap­ There was a chorus of exclama­ ing role of nature and tailors the physical tions and questions, but the environment to his own measure. The speaker went on, ' 'It will cost the activity humbles nature and renders it city as much as that to build new responsive to human control. roads and erect hotels, to care for the tourists who will come to see In literal terms, Borglum reenacted the· Stone Mountain." metaphorical task of W.B. Laughead, Ned Buntline, and Davy Crockett: he The artist was not insensitive to the made frontier giants of stone, fully as publicity value of his epochal stunt, nor large as the continent. Borglum had did he sneeze at tourism. Having been born in the spacious frontier coun­ grasped that the sheer hubris of his try near the border of Idaho and determination to carve Stone Mountain Nevada, and from the beginning of his was raising eyebrows well beyond noisy career, aimed at a grandiose scale Atlanta, however, Borglum was hard derived, he said, " from American pressed to give his essentially southern sources, memorializing American memorial a broader and a bigger achievement. " Thus he despised the meaning. In. interviews, he began genteel reticence of official U.S. Mount Rushmore? speaking of his mountain as ''a symbol, classicism. The little temple on the than art had hitherto cared to admit: valdsen's Lion of Lucerne. In other in really American dimensions, of a vital Potomac dedicated to Lincoln in 1922 "There was never a better one lived. We words, as Borglum later recalled their in­ chapter in our history - a symbol of the had nothing to do with the robust have had all the emotions any people vitation, the ladies' timid plan- more union of all the forces which make for essence of the man. As for the marble on the earth ever had,'' and at a pitch European than American - was to the greatness of our nation." Granting obelisk of the Washington Monument, of intensity Borglum would translate in­ "subordinate it wholly to the space that the Civil War had been a watershed "if there weren't a policeman to tell you to stupefying size. upon which it was to be placed, ... a in national history, cooler heads that (it) was placed there to record the great granite facade eight hundred feet wondered whether the lost Confederate work and life of a man who built this In 1913, the United Daughters of the in height and about three thousand feet cause merited the immortality of the great nation after eight years of one of Confederacy invited Borglum to submit in length. Instead, Gutzon Borglum con­ Rock Ages: the most trying wars that a little people designs for a bas-relief of Robert E. Lee ceived of a design covering the whole ever had,'' could a stranger from ''Tim­ to be carved into the living rock on the mountainside with a procession of Con­ No one will quarrel with Mr. buctoo" deduce the meaning of that face of Stone Mountain, in Georgia. The federate chieftains, led by a full-length Borglum's audacity in seizing the pallid shaft? The American story, overall dimensions contemplated for the figure of the general so immense that " a opportunity to sign his name, in Borglum argued, was bigger and earthier bust were based on those of Thor- workman engaged in chiselling the hat letters fifty feet high, to the largest 37 Lincoln Memorial. 3 Washington Monument.• monument in the world, bar tent with the great modern none. Nothing has ever been awakening that I should have attempted on this scale before, turned to the huge cliffs of our either in ancient Egypt or Assyria. land, the lofty granite ledges, and The Colossus of Rhodes wasn't in them carve monuments and anywhere near eight hundred feet there leave records of the found­ high, that is certain ... morglum) ing of our great nation and the admits that already there is a fifty­ development of our civilization. thousand-dollar oiled road to the base of his potential monument. Borglum's own contemporaneity was One wonders did the Pharaoh never in doubt. He took the first chunk erect road houses furnishing ex­ out of Mount Rushmore in 1927. As cellent chicken dinners at the feet Mount Rushmore.' , work speeded up with the introduc­ of their pyramids to attract camel­ teetered between apathy and outright inviting Borglum to tour the Black Hills tion of jackhammers and new methods touring parties? antipathy because, as the Norfolk "to see if a mountain monument to of dynamite sculpting, however, a Virginia-Pilot put it, "there still clings to America's greatness could be carved columnist for The Nation admitted At first, Borglum's enthusiasm silenced the enterprise, despite its sincerely there ... . The sculptor arrived in to a certain apprehension about what the doubters. His plans were adopted patriotic conception, an odor of Babbit­ September of 1925 with his 12-year-old fully mechanized mankind might do to and the site was solemnly dedicated in tic Atlanta advertising and the handicap son, Lincoln, in tow: they never left the landscape: May of 1916. Although work was of a fortuitous but highly unfortunate the granite heights of Cathedral Cliff suspended during the war, blasting association with the Ku Klux Klan, again. It is clear that Borglum was To come face to face with resumed in the fall of 1922. On January which claims Stone Mountain as its holy deeply affected by the overwhelming Washington or Lincoln along 19, 1924, Lee's head was unveiled: the birthplace and Atlanta as its holy city." size of his new site. ''The vastness that some remote mountain range occasion was marked by a formal lun­ As a landmark calculated to make lay here," he confessed to his journal, would be at least bearable. But (I) cheon served on a table mounted on the "Atlanta a Mecca for tourists of all na­ ''demanded complete remodelling of the cannot face the prospect of hav­ general's shoulder. Borglum had fin ­ tions,'' Stone Mountain was fore­ grouping I had been dreaming. I must ing to pitch ... camp under the ished the trifle his patrons had wanted doomed. Although Borglum Galled his see, think, feel and draw in Thor's nose of Henry Ford. in the first place, but that very measure Confederate Valhalla " an idea as deep, dimension.'' It is also clear that the size of accomplishment revealed the lifetime as basic as the rocks upon which our of the mountain turned his thoughts Insofar as Borglum' s monument of work ahead. Promoters cooled toward wonderful Continent rests," the theme toward grander themes, of national reflected a restless, tourist culture, roam­ Stone Mountain, there was little for was meaningless to many Americans, resonance and popular accessibility. So, ing the continent by automobile in tourists to see, funds ran short, and the and odious to others. The idea of a too, did his appraisal of the changing search of sensations to match the force sculptor squabbled with all concerned. sculpted mountain was indeed compell­ scale of modern life: of its dreams, Henry Ford might well In 1925, Borglum was summarily ing and "basic," but the Confederate have joined his company of heroes as dismissed and then arrested for destroy­ Monument carved on Stone Mountain Everything in modern civilization a presiding deity. Atop the rugged peaks ing the models others might have used was a barrier between the South and the has so expanded that the very where the West begins, Borglum to complete his mountainside monu­ nation at large. scale, the breadth of one's dominated the wilderness with his ment. While some southern newspapers thought, is no longer limited by blasting caps and his modem optimism; hoped that the artist's temperamental Amid the accusations and recrimina­ town, city, county, or state ... I he asserted his absolute mastery over 38 outbursts would be overlooked, others tions came a letter from South Dakota, believe it was natural and consis- the frontier, subjugating it in the act of Carl Mille's God of Peace.• Statue of Liberty. • carving the mountain. Borglum became Indian times and a machine-driven another Paul Bunyan of the 1920s and tomorrow, the frontier of the stream­ 30s, and lived out the frontier tradition lined, aerodynamic future toward which of the tall tale. the rocketing profile of the Foshay Tower beckoned, too. The iconography of Mt. Rushmore rein­ forces the meaning of this act of con­ Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota, shares quest. Mountain is man and the men the midwestern environment of "The depicted are the pathfinders, the ex­ World's Largest Indian," Bemidji's Paul plorers, the tamers of the frontier. Bunyan, and other tales writ taller still. Washington surveyed the Western The Statue of Liberty inhabits the Reserve. Jefferson dispatched Lewis and eastern terrain of Eckleburg's eyes above Clark to the Louisiana Territory. Queens. Marvin Trachtenberg has noted Lincoln, the railsplitter, was the raw­ Foshay Tower.7 that the siting of the Statue of Liberty boned son of the western border. George Washington on Mount .above the foyer of the City Hall and in New York Harbor is ambiguous. "T.R.," the roughrider, the expan­ Rushmore was unveiled in 1930. In Court House building on Kellogg From the deck of an arriving ship, Liber­ sionist, founded the cult of the 1929, a 447-foot free copy of the Boulevard, and spun about, the better ty is a beacon of welcome and enlighten­ strenuous life on the high plains of the Washington Monument, enlarged to to amaze the tourists, on the latest word ment. In the words of "The New Col­ Dakota Territory. They are frontier contain a 32-story office building, in motorized bases. The statue was con­ ossus," the Emma Lazarus poem in­ presidents, who claimed and reclaimed opened on Marquette Avenue in ceived as a veterans' memorial and com­ scribed on her base, Liberty " lifts her that frontier dream of perpetual move­ Minneapolis. The design was an missioned in 1932 from Carl Milles, a lamp beside the Golden Door. " From ment, escape, and self-transformation in unusual marriage of historical imagery Swedish artist whose "moderne" design the shoreline, however, Liberty seems the name of the American nation. They with modern utility, the latter given ostensibly depicts the smoke from to turn her back on the immigrant and symbolize the American rite of passage, symbolic expression in the streamlined, native peace pipes congealing into the the Old World; indeed, she seems to and defiantly anchored by Borglum in Art Deco details of the decor. For that milky likeness of a mythological chief­ stride west, casting her beams of 1927 at the demographic edge of civiliza­ reason alone, the sculpture cum tain, the patron of peaceful pursuits. The enlightenment over the dark frontier tion, Mt. Rushmore is itself a perpetual skyscraper functioned as a significant specific iconographic connections be­ unrolling before her, toward Minnesota frontier, an emblematic gateway leading if somewhat grote.sque national land­ tween local veterans and the 60-ton and the Dakotas. But, to ''wretched to our historical dreams and so to the mark. Hailed for a generation as the lump of white onyx in City Hall re­ refuse" and native son alike, Liberty "dark fields of the republic, " rolling ever tallest man-made structure between mained obscure. Connections between marks a door, a place of potential westward, backward in time and forward Chicago and the Pacific, the Foshay Minnesota's territorial past and " The transfiguration. In common with in space. Tower commemorated the first frontier World's Largest Indian" were not. Like Eckleburg's eyes, the colossus defines and articulated the modern edge of the largest pumpkin awarded the blue a frontier between factual reality and the Borglum's landmark gave physical urbanism, beyond which a western ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair, "The imaginatively conceived, dream America definition to the dream of westering. A wilderness still lay in wait for the stur­ World's Largest Indian" betokened an beyond the border stele. On the other pair of very different monuments of the dy adventurer driving to Yellowstone expansive local pride and a swelling op­ side of the "Golden Door," the pioneer, same vintage, erected in downtown along the route of the pioneers. timism well suited to the cheerful the dreamer, the quester, the seeker, and Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, rhetoric ~f the New Deal. The fiercely the wandering pilgrim step out of time also located the frontier with the St. Paul's colossus was a 36-foot tall God modem style of "Onyx John" measured and circumstance into the dazzling vehemence of colossal size. The head of of Peace that rose a full three stories the distance between the old frontier of radiance of their own last, best hopes. 39 ''Lucy," The Margate Elephant.• "Dreamland" .11

Gatsby and Nick Carraway cross today still fasten on a Jolly Green Giant, Eckleburg's frontier repeatedly in Fit­ a giant loon, or a Paul Bunyan who zgerald's novel, the former as blind to wears a size 73 shirt to define the pro­ its significance as the sightless cess of "having a wonderful time." signboard and the latter gradually open­ ing his eyes to the delights and terrors Having a wonderful time on the Board­ of revelation. In moments of anxiety, walk meant rubbernecking at the third Gatsby shuns the valley of ashes; in­ version of Lucy, the elephant-hotel, and stead, he asks Nick to go with him to any number of other Coney Island col­ Coney Island or Atlantic City, spawn­ ossi and near colossi. The Inexhausti­ ing grounds of the American popular ble Cow was a particular favorite in the colossus. On the road to Atlantic City, 1890s. It was a machine constructed "to one James V. Lafferty, between 1881 and satisfy the insatiable thirst of visitors" 1885, built Lucy, the Margate Elephant. The Elephant Hotel.'o and then disguised as a heroically pro­ In a bizarre presentiment of the Los had decided to settle for a parsimonious the famous Heinz amusement pier portioned bossy. Promoters argued that Angeles Sphinx, Lucy was built to house night on the beach. matrixed within a giant pickle, a specific its milk was "superior to the natural pro­ a real estate office, although she has also business reference neatly merged with duct in the regularity and predictability served as a flophouse, a tourist informa­ Lucy's eyes were a simple commercial the more generic and fantastic resonance of its flow , its hygienic quality and its tion booth, a children's library, and, for come-on. But her circus body signaled of the image. controllable temperature.'' Artifice was the past several years, as a landmark on fun afoot, a tourist's adventure amongst superior to nature- safer, more depen­ the National Register of Historic Places. Barnum's curiosities. That the form of With the advent of the automobile, road- dable, richer, less apt to disappoint. The records are silent on the fate of the the elephant-hotel symbolized release side colossi became the pictorial staples real estate firm; the 65-foot Lucy herself, from the fetters of convention and of the postcard industry. Symbols of the The huge figures that marked the en- however, was a huge success. Within the routine is demonstrated by John pleasure trip and the adventure of the trances to "Dreamland" and the other decade Lafferty had built another at Kasson's observation that "the phrase open road, the linen-finish ~~cards of rides and attractions at tum-of-the- Cape May, New Jersey, and a third on 'seeing the elephant,' often accom­ the 1920s and 30s used jangling colors century Coney Island made the same Coney Island. panied by a broad wink, became a and setting airbrushed clean of ev~ryday promise. The dreamland just past the euphemism for illicit pleasures.'' At the clutter to dramatize the already fan~stic colossus at the ticket window was a bet- The Coney Island elephant was larger, deepest and crudest level, the bedrooms appearnce of Mammy Gas, Toto's S~ - ter place, full of fun, adventure, and hap- "as big as a church," and was intended and stairways inside invoked the pelin Diner and Cocktail Lounge outside~iness, all conducted in a controlled en­ to be a resort hotel. "Its legs were 60 psychic transformation of a Jonah in the Northampton, Massachusetts, a vfronmerrt-of make-beheve, wherem the feet in circumference. In one front leg belly of the beast, Finocchio in the in­ Wigwam Cafe in Browning, Montana, or tourist was guaranteed the pleasures life was a cigar store, in the other a diorama, nards of a whale. Commercial postcards the Teapot, a postcard, souvenir, and often denied, and a dream life could be patrons walked up circular steps in sold in tourist meccas of the day often hot dog stand in Chester, West Virginia. lived out in a perfect, predictable safety one hind leg and down the other." depict colossal objects and figures con­ And if travel on the interstate is no real life could seldom provide. Rooms could be had in thigh, shoulder, taining pleasure pavilions miniaturized longer the fabulous odyssey implied by hip or trunk. After dark, searchlights within them: a typical postcard, dated such pictorial fish stories, the Rexall The fantasy colossus has been the visual flashed erratically from the eyes, to 1908 and bearing the legend souvenirs, the gas station mementos, trademark of the fair, the carnival, and 40 illuminating anyone within range who "Greetings from Atlantic City," shows and the slick Kodachrome postcards of the amusement park since 1881. ''Creation''. 12 "Hereafter"." "Temple of Mirth" .14 "Dream of Venus" ,1 5

"Dreamland" was reincarnated on the Detail'' says the free brochure; and any Pike at the St. Louis World's Fair under given turning in the path at Disneyland the title of "Creation." A colossal and where, with vast mice and ducks danc­ scantily draped angel - or was she a ing in solemn procession, the past of winged Eve? - enticed the fairgoer to Main Street U.S.A. yields to Fan­ board "a boat that bears him gently tasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, away through a labyrinth of and Tomorrowland, under fiercely underground passages with clever hygienic conditions. scenery . . . from remote parts of the world . When he disembarks with a sense of having made a voyage," a serious nar­ EDITORS NOTE ration from the Book of Genesis was, We would like to thank the University of Min· somehow, anticlimactic. The nesota Press, Minneapolis and the author, Karal Ann Marling, for granting permission to "Hereafter" <~ttraction, entered under reprint this excerpt from Colossus of Roads: Mytb the gaze of an •(normous winged sphinx, and Symbol Along tbe American Highway, offered a similar tour of the horrors and Copyright ©1984 by the University of thrills of hell, and the "Temple of Minnesota. Mirth," prefaced by a gigantic winking clown and four grinning maidens, sent customers on a voyage through a PHOTOGRAPHY mirrored maze and shot them back to 1. United Press International; all rights reserved. real life on a circular slide. The Joy Zone 2. Courtesy of South Dakota Tou ri sm. at the Panama-Pacific Exposition was a 3. Photo by Kevin Lew. 4. Photo by Kevin Lew. kind of parody of the heroic gigantism 5. Richard Frear, National Park ·Service, U.S. of the "serious' buildings, and the in­ Department of Interior. flated industrial propaganda of 6. Photo by Bruce White. 7. Photo by Bruce White. serious exhibits. Underwood 8. Richard Frear, National Park Service, U.S. displayed a typewriter 15 feet high and giant naked lady, and a giant replica of "Dream of Venus\ concession at the Department of Interior. 21 feet wide that weighed 14 tons; New some ancient male deity introduced "the same fair, which catapulted the unwary .9. From a jack Freeman (Longport, New jersey) postcard. York State showed an 11-thousand­ Dayton Flood, " a variation on "The into the Freudian ambiance of a 10. Anonymous photograph. Courtesy of The pound cheese. The amusement con­ Galveston Flood" of the St. Louis Fair Surrealist nightmare; Cobb's hen-on­ Museum of The City of New York, NY. cessionaires responded with a 90-foot and "The Johnstown Flood" of the 1901 eggs-shaped Chicken ryouse eatery at 11. Brooklyn collection, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY. caricature of a suffragette, and the Buffalo Exposition. the 1939 San Francisco~ounterpart to 12 . From an original photograph by the Official Souvenir Watch Palace was all but over­ the Flushing Meadow e · ~avaganza (a Photograph Co., St. Louis, MO. shadowed by a giant, jointed statue of More recent but equally noteworthy second overblown cash regfs\er loomed 13. From an original photograph by the Official Photograph Co., St. Louis, MO. Uncle Sam, reaching one great, hammy examples include the stupendous nearby); "kiddie-lands" everywhere; 14. From an original photograph by the Official hand down into the crowd. "The African National Cash Register that toted up the Mitchell, South Dakota, Corn Photograph Co. , St. Louis, MO. Dip" was served up in a refreshment daily attendance figures at the portal of Palace; the Wisconsin Dells, the 15. Carl Van Vechten photograph, fO urtesy of The Museum of the City of New York, NY. stand shaped like a squatting African. the New York World's Fair of 1939; South Dakota Dinosaur Park in Rapid 16. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Division of "Creation" turned up again, with the the humanoid facade of Salvador Dali's City- "Childhood Fantasy, Prehistoric Tourism. 41