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Metropolitan photography benefits amateurs. Any magnificence forfeited via overexposure or a predictable viewpoint is made up for by spectator enthusiasm, which endears locals just as much as sightseers. This holds true for any cherished metropolis, yet as a resident of Chicago, my pertinent illustration is Chicago, the Windy City, situated on a vast, oceanic lake, with a skyline observable from a pedestrian perspective.
The city’s portrayal has occupied the city’s thoughts as of late, as President Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to take it over. Two hundred National Guard soldiers strolled in from Texas the prior month. ICE operatives slither daily from their clandestine location in the suburb of Broadview to instill terror and abduct inhabitants. The justification employed to validate their existence and condone their aggression is resounding and predictable, mirroring the discourse surrounding Chicago for ages, when it is referenced, as a combat zone requiring rescue from itself. That envisioned state of affairs, naturally, hinges upon a degree of ignorance (or a lack of concern) for the origins of global war zones, and the United States’ role in their inferno.
As if to substantiate this assertion, Trump, in September, shared a graphic on social media portraying himself as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, the representation of authorized bloodthirst from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.” In the accompanying caption, Trump modified Kilgore’s renowned line—“I love the smell of napalm in the morning”—to accommodate his vision, substituting “napalm” with “deportations.” (He also provided a new dramatic name: “Chipocalypse Now.”) The inferior edit showcases a procession of Huey helicopters soaring past the distinctive skyline; the sky, concurrently, is tinted yellow by detonations. This is Chicago as the typical Fox viewer, encompassing millions who reside beyond the city’s boundaries in what Illinoisans term Chicagoland, perceives it—our lake as a pool of flames.
That the pandemonium would stem from external, as opposed to internal, sources is in harmony with the image’s inspiration. I am alluding to a scene from “Apocalypse Now Redux,” the director’s cut, unveiled in 2001, wherein Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard and his team stumble upon the remains of a plantation tenanted by lingering French colonists and their Vietnamese service staff. Over a lavish dinner, the French lament their situation to their American visitors, whose nation they hold accountable for engendering the evictors whom the U.S. then entrusted itself with subduing. That narrative, albeit as prejudiced as its Francophone originator, imparts a more accurate, overarching lesson: America’s adversaries are frequently of American creation.
As late summer witnessed the White House further embellishing its justification for infiltrating Chicago, a playful local jest was circulating online. Those present on the ground disseminated visual communications from the city’s “killing fields”: the verdure of Lincoln Park, captioned “Chaos & Anarchy”; the lake’s turquoise-meets-cerulean vista as witnessed from the “war-ravaged” city’s eighteen and a half miles of shoreline pathway. Brief video clips overlaid the President’s sound snippets over compilations brimming with boat gatherings and alfresco concerts and drone shot after drone shot of the handsome cityscape. Illinois’s governor, J. B. Pritzker, participated in the mockery, “reporting from war-torn Chicago” clad in army-green protective gear in a segment broadcast on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “As you can perceive, there’s total bedlam and disorder on the ground,” Pritzker proclaims from the core of downtown, as individuals conduct their affairs on the La Salle Street bridge behind him.
The mockery—a strategy—is not novel, simply reinvigorated under the prevailing administration. Ameliorating the unease of individuals unfamiliar with the area is a customary practice among Chicagoans who did not mature here. The epithet “Chiraq,” for instance, is rendered preposterous by the numerous picturesque panoramas from the riverfront and the West Loop dining scene encountered in “day in the life” vlogs, which prefer to showcase the city as a final American stronghold for yuppies devoid of inherited wealth. (The finest satire of this genre, crafted by the comedian Mike Schwanke, depicts a “weekend as a 28-year-old in Chicago” as an unending cycle of commonplace hangouts—brunch, happy hour, dinner, ad infinitum.) Whereas New York newcomers glamorize adversity, Chicago transplants modestly take pride in convenience. Chicago, in our depiction, is well-managed and primed for amusement. It’s tranquil and sufficiently secure, should an outsider inquire—harmless.
Might we criticize this well-intentioned attitude without slipping into the usual flimsy assertions regarding authenticity—that what’s genuine about a metropolis isn’t situated adjacent to its renowned landmarks, or that existence must be arduous to be legitimate? Perhaps we chuckle, as the Chicago poet Britteney Black Rose Kapri did in a video during the summer: “I know them motherfuckers ain’t never been south of fucking Hyde Park and that’s just because the university is there. West? Baby, O’Hare. Like, I get it, but it’s just also so fucking funny.” I comprehend, as well: the societal factors underlying what qualifies as violence in Chicago, and the reasons that that violence is inflicted upon particular sectors and not others, is incompatible with showboating of this variety—and, furthermore, subtlety has never signified much to conservatives, whether within or external to the city, except insofar as violence can legitimize policies that prolong inequity. However, I don’t anticipate that their sentiments are significantly disturbed by the agreeable visuals intended to counteract their theatrics. Those images of the city, placid in their uniformity, appear to presuppose that any defense against fascist occupation must adopt the language of tourism. They evoke what the author and activist Sarah Schulman has characterized as “spiritual gentrification,” a mode of perception that substitutes “complexity, difference” with “sameness.” They are harmonious with a conservative perspective that would gladly transform the city into a playground for those capable of affording it. That is the reactionary aspiration for any metropolis, the metropolis as the suburbs—whose idyllic depiction, incidentally, is its own delusion. Chicago is exquisite, but idyllic? Absurd!
Idyllic is the pretense. Reaganite conservatism accomplished its objective of reimagining the quintessential American citizen within the “Dick and Jane” reverie of the American family. Currently, that family constitutes the vernacular of politics: liberal and conservative politicians alike articulate policy in terms of its potential impacts on “American families,” as though surveying a sea termed “America,” populated by myriad private isles. Despite the “American Dream’s” waning credibility resulting from overt disparity, we remain tethered to its logic of individualistic pursuit, whereby, as the cultural theorist Lauren Berlant articulated, “if you invest your energies in work and family-making, the nation will secure the broader social and economic conditions in which your labor can gain value and your life can be lived with dignity.”
That’s “you” and “your,” notably, not “we” and “our.” The exemplary citizen, it is believed, seeks indications of public welfare in private domains—and especially in that esteemed sphere of privacy in America, the family residence. The exemplary citizen is dissuaded from aligning with the multitudes who demand that their government undertake actions for individuals wholesale; such assemblage of throngs threatens the placid domestic tableau by which the citizen comprehends himself. In his quest for a well-lived American existence, he ought to excuse contradictory state behaviors—for instance, the absence of universal health care alongside the monitoring and penalizing of bodies under the law when they jeopardize the picket-fence ideal.
Instances abound in our nation, yet the mere presence of an entity designated the Department of Homeland Security—the recipient of vast sums to monitor, detain, harm, and eliminate individuals residing here in the guise of public safety—serves as one area for examination. Since January, D.H.S. propaganda, disseminated across social-media platforms such as Instagram and X, has embraced the President’s trademark inclination toward frivolous and unsophisticated content. The department has been releasing “Cops”-esque snippets of ICE captures, divulging citizens’ private information, and generating memes with the uncomfortable closeness of a corporate entity. A post from July features a Chevy Silverado emblazoned with Border Patrol branding, positioned to appear as though its occupants were gazing wistfully upon the vast desert at dusk. “ ‘You Look Happier,’ ” an observer speculated in the caption. The rejoinder: “Thanks! ICE is deporting all criminal illegal aliens & there is no crisis at the border.” Another entry portrays a “one-way Jet2 holiday to deportation,” accompanied by footage of a chain gang being forced onto an aircraft. An article in The Drift by the writer Mitch Therieau has aptly termed such missives “agit-slop.” On the video of the chain gang, one commenter remarks, “I thought this was a meme account at first.” Another is left to highlight, “THESE ARE HUMAN BEINGS WITH FAMILIES JUST LIKE YOU!!!!!”
D.H.S., established in 2003 as the nation’s safeguard, employs the vernacular of the American family, yet we undoubtedly grasp which families it signifies. Live-action promotions are interspersed with illustrated notices delineating who embodies America: fair-skinned personifications depict Lady Columbia and her patriarch, Uncle Sam, respectively beckoning and commanding their men, in the antiquated recruitment style, to “Defend the Homeland” and “JOIN ICE NOW.” (As in any scenario where masculinity is made into a fetish, the muscular patriotism in these virtual posters exudes a degree of homoeroticism: in August, D.H.S. boasted about “taking father/son bonding to a whole new level” and appended an illustration of an older and younger man side by side, armed to the teeth, above the words “NO AGE CAP.” Father and Son or Daddy and Boy?) These advertisements reside alongside screenshots of artworks by figures such as Howard Chandler Christy, Norman Rockwell, John Gast, and Morgan Weistling, artists united in the ideological accessibility of their imagery: peach-hued children and adults experiencing what appears to be a pleasant existence embodying the American Dream. A 2020 painting by Weistling transposes the Holy Family into a covered wagon, the land’s expanse unfolding outside; another, from 2013, by the Missouri-based illustrator Andy Thomas, showcases a group of boys pursuing a pigskin in a yard thick with autumnal hues. The selection is unsubtle in its inclusions and omissions, manifesting a white Christian nation with a starkness that almost repels criticism—for what type of person, what sort of American, could take issue with such idylls?
One painting by Thomas Kinkade struck some as especially illustrative, and perhaps overly blatant. On July 1st, D.H.S. posted a painting by Kinkade titled “Morning Pledge,” which depicts an American street from a bygone era as two fair-skinned boys with book bags proceed toward a schoolhouse with its Old Glory elevated high. The work is quintessentially Kinkade, whimsical and pastel, with structures illuminated by an eerie inner glow. The artist, a self-proclaimed crusader for “family and God and country and beauty,” confessed to painting “not the world we live in” but “the world we wished we lived in,” an aesthetic that proved compelling enough to the American populace to render him the most commercially triumphant painter of the nineties. What his clientele were acquiring was contrived in multiple senses: the works were typically not paintings, but assembly-line reproductions fabricated to mimic a human touch. In a 2001 profile of Kinkade, my colleague Susan Orlean toured his production site and witnessed “a crew of Hispanic workers peel images off wet paper and smooth them onto canvases, then slide them onto racks like pies set out to cool.” However, it was Kinkade’s personal life, overshadowed by allegations of sexual harassment and assault, that ultimately marred his reputation; as a 2006 investigation by the Los Angeles Times articulated, his history of alleged transgressions “belies the wholesome image on which he’s built his empire.” The degree of shock one experiences at that contradiction hinges upon the extent of veracity one initially attributed to his scenes.
For those who define “family” in legislative, executive, and judicial terms, it is as exclusionary a concept as manifest destiny. When former President Barack Obama referenced “Israeli families” but “the people of Gaza,” as he did in early October, he was, wittingly or not (and I have my suspicions), excluding Palestinians from a sympathetic category in complete alignment with U.S. policy. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, recently reproached Vice-President J. D. Vance for relishing a family respite while ICE was rending families asunder, yet this rhetoric can only shame a target who believes that families can exist outside the law. Conservatives entertain no such notion. (“Had a great time, thanks,” Vance responded.) In September, an ICE officer fatally shot a Mexican immigrant named Silverio Villegas González during a traffic enforcement in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park. D.H.S. has asserted that Villegas González had endeavored to flee, inflicting “serious” injuries upon an ICE agent in the process, but there is no footage to substantiate their claim, and the agent in question later characterized his own wounds as “nothing major.” Villegas González was reportedly killed after dropping his two young sons off at school. He is not, however, the kind of individual whom our politicians delight in labeling a family man. Within two weeks of his demise, D.H.S. issued a statement denouncing alleged “violence and dehumanization” directed toward its agents: “The men and women of ICE are fathers and mothers, sons and daughters,” the department stated, concealing its inhumane mission beneath the righteousness of domesticity. The grand fallacy, though, is that the depiction of the all-American family, sustained at the detriment of the remainder of the world, will safeguard those within it. In actuality, the American family is not a haven in America, and everyone acknowledges it. The family firearm amplifies the likelihood of a family member perishing from gunfire. The family S.U.V. possesses a substantial probability of killing children. The family man is, with somber frequency, the foremost menace to the well-being and security of his spouse and offspring. The American family conceals its violence. Trump, boasting last month, without substantiation, that his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., had curtailed crime to “virtually nothing,” lamented that “things that take place in the home” might qualify as criminal activity: “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime,” he stated. Leaving all that aside, he added, “We are a safe city.”
In hardly any time, videos of Chicago existence posted in poor taste have been rendered obsolete by other sensational scenes from the city. An apartment building raided in South Shore; a family apprehended in Millennium Park; tear gas employed in Lake View; a teen girl body-slammed in the suburbs. An elementary school proximate to my residence underwent a “soft lockdown” last week, the euphemism all the more alarming for attempting to sound less severe. Each school in every locality is officially or unofficially fortifying itself daily, given ICE’s predilection for school grounds. One parent disclosed to ABC News, “The kids aren’t playing outside because there’s been a huge amount of ICE presence in the neighborhood, just driving up and down the streets, just kind of terrorizing the neighborhood.” The sky reverberates with the clamor of helicopters. I exit my dwelling and listen for atypical sounds, for whistles and for honks that appear excessively insistent or protracted—the identical sounds of locals alerting locals which one discerns in videos of masked individuals granted license to abduct and slay. There exists a certain irony in witnessing the paranoid vigilance of neighborhood watch now replicated toward reverse ends. Access an online forum for Chicagoans and you’ll encounter debates concerning the boundary between exerting adequate effort and exceeding it under the surveillance of a federal administration that is keen for justifications to unleash war upon its citizens; Kristi Noem, after all, has stated that D.H.S. intends to procure local real estate and station snipers on the rooftops of its buildings. At present, we are summoned to generate a cacophony, not as members of our respective nuclear entities but as something more ancient and resilient—as community, a term that has become excessively commonplace to take earnestly, yet which nevertheless endures. The cacophony forewarns and attests. On certain days this suffices as a demonstration of fortitude. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
