When did this constant urge to categorize the world in rankings, ratings and timelines start? It might as well be an outhgrowth of neoliberal thinking, since all rankings are based on a competitive marketplace, even if it's a marketplace of ideas (whoever came up with that term). So to feed that urge a Swiss filmmaker named Bernhard Weber started a web voting for the new seven wonders of the world. The winners were:
Chichén Itzá, Mexico, Christ Redeemer, Brazil, The Great Wall, China, Machu Picchu, Peru, Petra, Jordan, The Roman Colloseum, Italy and The Taj Mahal, India.
Funny enough the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein was amongst the 21 finalists, now the Bavarians are pissed they didn't make it. Quite self assured that hill tribe north of the Alps. What makes them think the feverish dream of a flaming gay monarch who was willing to drive his country into ruin for his architectural drag shows would be more than a symbol of corruption and hubris? Well, according to Deyan Sudjic's "The Edifice Complex"
Another great tool of categorizing are of course comparison charts. One of the biggest faves of this genre are city comparisons. Which could be also useful to explain to our American friends where we live now. Most German cities don't really compare to any US cities. You could cram them all into Manhattan though. In that case Frankfurt would be Manhattan below Canal (lots of banks, great river views and a bit of gentrified subculture), Berlin would be Manhattan between Delancey and 14th (that's easy), Cologne would be Chelsea (art galleries, down to earth gay subculture plus remnants of 80s clubbing), Düsseldorf the East Side between 57th and 86th (high income, high art and pretentious boredom). Hamburg's already off the Manhattan grid, being more of a Baltimore with legal prostitution. For Munich we couldn't come up with any comparisons for a while. But then we got it - it's Santa Barbara. Same mix of money, natural beauty, sports enthusiasm, intellectual vacuum and a strange sense of creepiness. Until everything changes into Daytona Beach during the weekend of course.
7/8/07
Bavarian Hubris
2 comments:
Yeah. Ahem, did you read my comment on "Most Liveable..."? Would be fun to play the newspaper-game a little bit. "Die Welt" is the "New York Post", I guess.
That had escaped me. But I think there's no comparison. There's no New York Times anywhere in Europe, no Bild in the US. The few similarities might be Spiegel and Time. Can't come up with more at the moment.
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