Chicago, I hope you get well soon. As it is, you’ve been infected. You’ve been infected with policies that directly create concentrated poverty, drugs, gangs, segregation, and indirectly create fear, hatred, a cease to curiosity. How many children have been taken by Chicago? We are all children to Chicago. We are all children of Chicago. When the report of a killing becomes so commonplace it’s not even reported, it is time to take a step back and restart. As I think about Chicago as I know it, I also think about how Chicago is portrayed. Chicago is a war zone, a blood bath, a training ground to those who hear our music, watch our news, pass through downtown and no where else. It’s a far away problem, an issue that’s only pressing when someone begins to press, and shockingly, it has become entertainment.
When I think about Chicago in that light, I think about Detroit. How many times have you seen a picture of Detroit that looks like this:
Granted, a building like this is a shocking, amazing sight to see. You don’t exactly know why, but it is beautifully intriguing, and hard to look away. This is what some people in Detroit are calling ruin porn. It is a nude, exposed picture of a building striped of all context and historical relevance, and turned into a novel, risky image. When you look at porn, you don’t feel the need to think about the girl you’re ogling in a humane manner, you don’t wonder if she has any brothers or sisters, or what she enjoys doing on a chilly Thursday night. She only exists in that picture, no context or emotional responsibility, all for your viewing pleasure. It’s the same with these pictures of families’ homes, burned down and destroyed, family businesses, looted and vandalized, majestic theaters, neglected and unkept. It is a sad, sad sight to see when fully present. I look at ruin porn the same way I look at Chicago’s expose’s. They are sent out without a story behind them, without the shattered morales of family and friends, without the thought that this person is never coming back. For me, a die-hard Chicagoan who has love for every neighborhood and every soul in this city, it hurts.
Chicago get well soon. I’m trying, i’m trying.
When's The Last Time You Heard A Funky Academic? 