Another Sign of the Decline of the State
No one can build a decent palace anymore. I agree that this is not one of the greatest social problems of our time, but it must nevertheless be revelatory of something economic or cultural.
My first reaction when seeing President Erdogan standing at the foot of the stairs of his palace in Ankara, said to be several times larger than Versailles, was to laugh (I am not a Turkish taxpayer). Surely it was some kind of film set, to be dismantled when the film has been completed. They would do better in Hollywood, or even in Las Vegas. At least there it would be fun. As for the janissaries that Mr. Erdogan now uses for ceremonial purposes, any provincial theatrical costumier would be ashamed of their tawdry inauthenticity.
Why can’t we build a decent palace anymore? I used to think it was, at least in part, a question of the price of labor. Even in the worst despotisms (and Mr. Erdogan’s is only incipient) they have to pay workers more than the amount that will just keep them alive, if that; their wages must cover their mobile phones, for example. This means that ornamentation must be industrialized, and industrialized ornamentation bears the same relationship to the handmade variety as processed cheese does to real, or out-of-season greenhouse strawberries to wild. No one these days can labor lovingly, or at least fearfully, for weeks to produce the merest trifle or detail. We measure output by quantity, not quality.
But I do not think this quite goes to the heart of the matter. Even in those places where money is no object and there is access to a nearly inexhaustible fund of cheap labor, what we get is kitsch. It is true that kitsch on the modern Arabian scale almost transcends itself. The Arabs of the Gulf at least have the courage of their bad taste, and kitsch on the scale on which they patronize it becomes awe-inspiring. I even admit to a certain fondness for it. Though I would not want to live among it, the memory of it enriches my stock of mental images, and I smile whenever I recall it. Moreover, bad taste performs a vital function: It helps us to delimit, if not to define, good taste.
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