EVERYONE’S A WINNER

By Tirdad Zolghadr

Last night, Farhad Moshiri and I were on a panel on “Art and Globalization” in downtown Tehran.  The room was packed, and the discussion fairly engaging, drawing a characteristic crowd of sarcastic bohemians, unapproachable hipsters, and well bred post Marxists, quixotic old fogies, among others.  Towards the end of the event, after two long hours, a woman to our left complained that Farhad and I should never have been on the same panel, since, supposedly, I was much more at home in the West than Farhad was, “and an Iranian working abroad is not faced with the same challenges as an Iranian working here when it come to Globalization.”  Although the lady in question was obviously unaware of a certain number of commonalities between Farhad and myself, I didn’t want to engage in an embarrassing attempt at proving my aboriginal credentials.  And even her overall concern, that of representation and credibility, which is valid and even crucial, I was too exhausted to broach at that point in time.

But perhaps I’ll use this essay as an opportunity to explain two or three things that Farhad and I, along with a number of other purportedly globalize culture workers, do have in common, anxieties, ironies, and complications.  I’ll start with what I think is a fitting parable for the tremendous commercial potential and insecure political footing of what Farhad would refer to as “Plastic Oriental,” or “Welcome Art.”

In 2003, a UK TV station launched a new series called, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” in which a straight man is coached in matters of good taste by a small clique of gay men.  The straight guy is cast as a good- natured, likable slob with the best of intentions, but he’s utterly incapable of rising to the expectations one now has towards any halfway decent metropolitan citizen- and thus miserably fails in fulfilling his girlfriend’s romantic needs.  Enter the queer men, who are fashionable and assertive in their immaculate suits and designer punk attire, and who take turns rushing the hapless slob around the city during the course of a day, teaching him the secrets of how to pick the right champagne, how to mold his hair with three different products, how to dress up, dress down, and so forth.

At the end of the program, all the Queer Eyes huddle together on a sofa somewhere, in front of a monitor transmitting the big moment; the straight guy obediently doing whatever he has been coached to do.  He waxes, gels AND mousses his hair, puts the right Moët Chandon on ice, gets the perfect knot in his tie, not too symmetrical, not too slim.  At some point, he finally opens the apartment door for his beloved, who is smitten by his new look- oh my GOD, oh my GOOOOOD- upon which he hurries over to the kitchen to get the salmon tartar, while the lady marvels at the refurnished living room and newly filled wardrobe.  The Queer Eyes, meanwhile, revel in their victory with whoops and giggles, and toast their protégé with champagne.

As you may have guessed, more often than not, the Good Taste put to show by the Queer Eye is debatable even by most standards.  In one episode, the refurnishing of the straight man’s apartment left it looking like a teenage Tropicana lounge bar, complete with bamboo walls and a purple ceiling.  But whether those particular gay men have particularly Good Taste, or whether they perhaps adapt their aesthetic standards to the demands of the target slob, is not the main issue here.  Such details are dwarfed by the aggressive and unprecedented staging of Queer wisdom, to be admired for the length of the show as a marvelous, seductive, and entertaining phenomenon in and of itself.  The Queer Eyes are Holders of the Seven Keys, knowers of both worlds, and in a league above the regular guys because they see through and master both the Feminine and the Masculine walks of life.  That said, they are strictly conservative (top jacket botton, always, middle sometimes, bottom NEVER), even pedantic, but are of course in a position to get away with it. 

The group dynamic of the gay cast as a show is finely turned, with everyone having his own repertoire (serious or jokey, macho or diva-esque), but all of them blending into one bubbling bouquet of delight as they applaud the result of their efforts: the success of the straight male.  As a matter of fact, even without having to learn his manners, the said straight male unfailingly comes across in a new, better light, for even when he was ignorant and tasteless, he at least had the courage to engage with such extravagant helpers.

The great thing about participating in regional group shows is that you bond with other artists and curators, fellow Ethnic subjects all sporting a conspiratorial smile at the opening, “we all know we’re playing cowboys and Indians here,” followed by a sigh and a glance at the ceiling, well that’s show business for you.  You get to scoff at the curators and journalists with their naïve questions- oh they’re SO naïve they have NO idea- and please yourself with the utterly irrational but irresistible feeling that you’re the winner of some moral victory, somewhere somehow.  Many among these professional Redskins now consider regionalized shows as inevitable as Starbucks or global warming, and, given the marketing pressures in a context still eager to be flattered by its multicultural credentials, they may be right.

Among other things, the assumption that artists from the same region have more in common with each other than with professional counterparts elsewhere effectively effaces the schisms within the grouping in question, such as matters of social hierarchy.  A crushing worldwide majority of biennale- compatible cultural workers are beset with privileges- passports, background, education- that clearly set them apart from the geographic entity they’re meant to tokenize.  A most defining and fascinating circumstance of the global art phenomenon is thereby eclipsed.

In a context of growing economic divisions and hardnosed imperialism, these matters are all the more poignant.  As luck would have it, at this very moment, Washington is pondering the possibility of reworking the very neighborhood where I’m writing this essay into a sludge of rubble and broken bones.  And I am presumably the one person in this neighborhood who could catch a plane to JFK once the headlines get too frightening.

Regionally packaged art practices become all the more debatable when we consider the fact that today, the very derision of such premises can very well woo the crowds.  Not only was last night’s audience skeptical of national labels, time and again, I’ve watched European professionals who based their very careers on testimonials of local misérabilisme sit on panels and bewail the evils of localized branding.  “Eastern artists are sick of being mythologized and victimized!”  says the postcolonial art veteran, reaping thundering audience applause.

However, the fact remains that, particularly in today’s stirring context of Euro American belligerence, strategic essentialism remains the most efficient key to penetrating the Center of the Real, to reworking it from within, a tool that some say is so proficient it would be downright irresponsible to abandon it.