This is a response to the required Metropolarity pieces.
I understand, as an outsider, that black people have been oppressed for the longest time in this country. The idea of ‘Against Empire’ is hinged on the existence and rejection of an established cultural standard perpetuated by the ruling class through the media that values white men over any other category of human, with black women on the polar opposite. The use of the word ’empire’ is very interesting though, because to me at least, it clearly references the United States, which is as imperial as empires get in the present. So, in a way, ‘against empire’ can be read as ‘against America*’, or at least against what can be understood as mainstream American* culture. I find this ironic, because even though “Is Sci-Fi Political?” skewers pretty much everything that can be thought of as ‘traditional culture’, much of the structural behavior that gives America* its imperial qualities are still perpetrated in Metropolarity’s materials.
Metropolarity is very clearly focused only on American* reality. It promotes the idea of anarchic intellectual freedom inspired by the internet (“live adventurously without the trappings of your pre-signified body”), but cannot escape from common American* preconceptions of concepts like ‘politics’; instead, in an attempt to invalidate them, they are in fact reinforced. It invites divergence (“the thermodynamic arrow shoots out into all possible directions”), yet it (maybe subconsciously) tends to consolidation and domination (“a space [to share] skills to control the media”/”When we began forming and developing Metropolarity, I had in my head […] perfecting the art of coercion by digital means”/”Let’s take hold of our representations and worm our way into the mainstream”). This local-locked perspective that apparently cannot see the wider world around it (or abstract away from its own cultural associations) and sense/instinct of intellectual superiority/cultural warfare are key characteristics of the American* way of thinking. It is so ingrained in the mind and ways of the people of this country that it flies in their face constantly, and always goes unnoticed. And it naturally is a foundation of imperialism.
Another interesting aspect of Americanism* expressed in Metropolarity’s materials is an apparent dichotomy: the ever-expanding valuation of individual identity, and the excessive need for external validation of such identities that leads to the normalization of personalities. Contemporary American* culture supposedly empowers diversity through an absolutistic approach to the reinforcement of individual characteristics through obsessive labelling and token representation of such labels in public materials. The “Ride With Us” poster implies that public messaging has the duty to make people feel understood, celebrated, even loved. Are we really so internally frail that we need to be told by a poster or an ad that we are worth something? The idea of “safe spaces”, the need to “protect yourself and the vulnerable” (where ‘yourself’ and ‘the vulnerable’ are clearly equatable), are instruments of “safety”—another word America* loves. But safety from what? Safety of what? Safety of the ego. The reality of American* culture has created generations of people incapable of independent thought and of self-empowering, yet very dependent in —maybe even addicted to—external validation, and they find themselves in the need to rely on the media they consume and the people they frequent to feed them such validation. Since by nature media needs mass appeal, all ‘diverse’ kinds of personalities have been typified in order to be represented in it, and in response, the population that might roughly fit into one of these pre-defined but ever-multiplying boxes adjusts itself to fit neatly in them, creating a very controlled and guided, “safe” kind of “diversity” that ultimately is a mere decoration in the centralized, standardized American* culture.
I have many more thoughts on this phenomena, but this post is already way too long. I’ll close by saying that I understand “Ride With Us” is intended as a tool for empowerment, that the representation disparity of whites and men in opposition to blacks and women in popular culture is abysmal, and that over-compensation is an evil necessity of a period of transition. But the lack of perspective in the tools we create to correct our path as a society can, if left unchecked, replicate many of the mistakes we are trying to overcome.
*’America’ here is understood to be the wrongful appropriation of the name of a much larger continent to denote one particular country/subcontinent, purposefully used in this context as a reference to the United States for brevity.
