Two Plots in Farragut

I took this photograph in Farragut, Tennessee. There’s a large, newly-built single family house on the right. On the left is a gravel road, worn down to expose the dirt beneath. A well-maintained sidewalk underlines the scene.

The house on the right with its hodgepodge of historical styles and material finishes and three-car garage, is colloquially known as a ‘McMansion.’ Driving through any upper middle class suburb, one will see rows of similar-looking McMansions with slightly different colors or finishes. Like the catalog houses of the early 20th century, there are designed to not be site-specific. McMansions are derided by many architectural critics as examples of poor taste and excessive use of space, and suburbia is subject to the same criticism, to the point that McMansions are synonymous with suburbia. These criticisms leveraged are often about consumer choice—deciding to live in a house or neighborhood is just like deciding to buy coffee.

I find McMansions more interesting as indicators of a wider economic trend. Wealth moved from the inner city to the suburbs. After the Second World War, government housing policies incentivized veterans to move out of new cities and build homes in the suburbs. Minimum lot size rules in municipalities encouraged the construction of widely spaced single-family homes and car-dependent neighborhoods. McMansions are a continuation of this legacy.

Geographically speaking, suburbs are extensions of central cities. Because they are extensions, suburbs often rely on their cities for employment, transportation hubs, and cultural resources. The McMansion’s oddly ahistorical design is held up as proof of suburbia’s lack of actual history and culture. The suburbs are built on nothing, supposedly.

In contrast to hastily built suburbia, the countryside is defined by the consistency of its land use. It is sparsely populated, but clearly developed for human needs such as planting or grazing. The McMansion sits adjacent to a rural site in this photo. It illustrates the fallacy of writing history with cities at the center, and built environments as proof of history’s existence.

The story of suburbia is one of building outwards. Out onto what? The building took place not on empty land but land that served a different purpose. While the McMansion emulates a built history that originated elsewhere, the rural landscape of grass and gravel on the left is a product of the history that actually happened here. Rural America’s declining share of the population is just as integral to the story of suburbia, as urban flight.

Commentary on Rachel Tanur's Works: New Orleans Balcony

Rachel Tanur photographed this rainbow flag flying over a New Orleans street sometime before her passing in 2002. The photograph is undated, but I am certain that Rachel witnessed massive progress in the legal and social status of LGBT people over course of her lifetime. Illinois became the first state to decriminalize sodomy in 1962. In the following decades, 36 states would repeal their anti-sodomy laws or have them overturned in court. Lawrence V. Texas ruled that private sexual conduct was protected, therefore invalidating all state anti-sodomy laws in 2003. Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same sex marriage nationwide in 2015. If a rainbow flag flying outdoors is a sign of America’s progress, then it is also a reminder of how geographically fragmented progress can be. New Orleans has been home to LGBT communities since the early 20th century, producing such creative luminaries as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Big Freedia, and Tony Jackson. One of the deadliest incidents of anti-gay violence in history also happened in New Orleans, when an arsonist attacked the Upstairs Lounge in 1973. The fire killed 32 people. Louisiana has anti-sodomy laws on its books to this day though they are no longer enforceable. It is currently among the 27 states that do not have laws against anti-gay discrimination and 20 states that do not facilitate gender marker changes on state IDs [1]. An alternative way to read this scene is through the lens of cultural consumption. Though history and culture are intangible, they are still subject to the same treatment as consumer goods, and people can still experience them through market transactions. The LGBT scene in New Orleans—clubs, music, pride parades—is a major draw for tourists visiting New Orleans. The wrought iron awning of the building in the background is an architectural element commonly seen on Creole townhouses in the French Quarter, one of the most visited districts in all of New Orleans. With the confluence of these two, the rainbow flag could just as easily be a signal to visitors. In recent years, several major cities have organized efforts to install the rainbow flag in public spaces. Chicago’s Boystown has a rainbow pillar permanently installed, and San Francisco has a rainbow crosswalk. LGBT iconography is now profitable for businesses in some neighborhoods, whether to signal progressive values or lure tourists in with promises of hedonistic adventure. Queerness and historic architecture like the Creole townhouses are now both agents of gentrification, which drives up rents and forces out established residents, gay and straight alike [2]. When Gilbert Baker created the rainbow flag in 1978, he hoped that the symbol would be used nationwide but he couldn’t have anticipated the degree of commodification. Baker never trademarked the design. A rainbow flag flying outdoors on a New Orleans balcony is a sign of the LGBT community’s hard-won civil rights and cultural acceptance. In the neighborhood context of the French Quarter, it can also symbolize the subsequent commodification of queer culture for tourist consumption. It’s an example of a symbol triumphing, while the people it represents still struggle. So Rachel Tanur’s photograph sits, somewhere between establishment and the margins. [1]https://www.hrc.org/state-maps/ [2] “The ‘gaytrification’ effect: why gay neighborhoods are being priced out.” https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/13/end-of-gaytrification-cities-lgbt-communities-gentrification-gay-villages