Fear and money

Fear and money in Dubai: Mike Davis

Mike Davis is an American commentator, a noted commentator, whose topics though varied are often on fiscal and class matters in America, particularly California. His decision to write an article about the modern day Dubai is interesting as parallels between the two could be surmised.

The idyllic Dubai is portrayed as a mythical kingdom, a utopia, where Odysseus, Cleopatra, Caesar, Nebuchadnezzar II and Houdini would laze under palm trees; Captain Nemo and Sherlock Holmes discussing matters at the poolside with Wayne Rooney whilst Charlie Chaplin provided the entertainment. Throughout the article there is progression, from the mythical to the magical to the staged and ultimately to the pitied. A new religion where money is the baptismal water. Where there is no identity that has been inherited, but many which have been forged. An arrogant self regarding space where history ceases to matter, and heritage becomes something one can imitate on the conveyor belt of the fake.

It is a frightening and humorous article; it chronicles the formation of the modern day Dubai, the potential drivers of its success and also the town’s historical and political context. There is a sense that although Mr Davis sees that things happen for a reason, there is a market for modern day Dubai, and an equal awareness of what has been lost within the transformation – the community that has gone. But was this early community much different? ‘Dubai in the 1980s and early 1990s became the Gulf’s principal dirty-money laundry as well as a bolt hole for some of the region’s most notorious gangsters and terrorists’....

It is here that the point and tone of the article changes. The darkness of Dubai, the hidden cost and the concessions that have been made to lure people in - the myth that clouds the reality is addressed. The suggestion Dubai has links with terrorist factions and that there is an ongoing gross exploitation of people is not normally the picture that is presented of this eastern paradise. The growing distaste towards the city and its attitude towards anything that is not perfect, or wanted, or not part of the master-plan becomes apparent. The town becomes nothing more than Tron controlled by ‘the user’, with individuals within the game not seemingly aware of how they are nothing more than tools.

The article’s suggestion of the alleged lengths that individuals will go to ‘to be number one’ is frightening. History has taught us that behind the illusion, or veil of secrecy, truth will out. Ultimately though history has also taught us that Empires like Rome will fall, consumers will move to the next new shops and maybe Dubai ultimately needs to be fearful.

'What is the reality to which this crisis is spectacle? - Alain Badiou
Interview with Zaha Hadid - Jonathon Meades for Intelligent Life

On first glance there is little to link Alain Badiou and Jonathon Meades. The articles they have written target different audiences were originally written in different langauges and consider different topics. Both however are a discourse on modern day life.
A financial, all encompassing, crisis and a female architect marking the planet in her own manner.

Alain Badiou, author, journalist, political commentator writes of the financial crisis, his piece conveying the sense of abstracted reality associated by many to this 'spectacle'. A cineramic metaphor running through his ironic view of the disaster. It is tongue in cheek writing with Badiou appreciating the far reaching consequences and opprtunities the financial collapse had and arguably still has. An opportunity for people to recapture reality.

Joanthon Meades' article is an interesting foil to Badiou's. It is about an individual who is very present - not simply a spectator; her work part of the fabric of modern day life. It can be argued however that it is also is an article which suggests a particular brand of architecture is distanced from reality - similar to the financial crisis.