Who picked the baseline for normal?
Is Sting still an Englishman in New York? Or is he an Englishman...in a vacation home?
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There’s been a lot of chatter the past couple of days about a return to “normalcy” and the need to re-open the economy. Yet there’s been remarkably little reflection on what is normal or who, exactly, defines it. If you look at media coverage of the topic, in economic terms, normalcy seems to be generally interpreted as macro level growth determined by GDP and/or stock market performance. In social terms, normalcy typically signifies an ability to gather in groups and socialize in public. And indeed, these are two possible definitions of normalcy, but I would argue that they’re not just deficient in scope but actually serve to conceal ugly realities of the way we have been living for years.
The left-leaning Center for American progress released a plan recently for fighting the pandemic, and the authors engage in typical normalcy-think:
Without a coherent, evidence-based plan in place—a path forward, clear benchmarks, and an end in sight—the public and government officials may grow weary of physical distancing prematurely. The result would be repeated waves of exponential transmission followed by lockdowns, wreaking havoc on the economy and peoples’ lives. It will be far more devastating to our economy—and to public health—to experience waves and waves of virus response rather than properly return to normal when it is truly safe. Americans are willing to make sacrifices and do their part to break transmission, but they need to have faith that there is a plan in place that will work. There is no conflict between aggressive public health measures that save lives and economic growth: In a study of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively had faster economic growth after the pandemic.
The intent of the plan is clearly to return the nation to a “normal” state of economic growth and typical social gatherings. If you read the entire CAP plan, there is zero definition of how normalcy is benchmarked and whether the implicit assumptions of the plan are desirable to the majority of people.
There are numerous examples of this sort of thinking, but I’ve singled out the CAP plan on purpose: This type of thinking is not unique to conservatives or the pro-Trump wing nuts on Fox News. Of course, there’s nothing prima facie wrong with a pro-growth agenda, but it fails to acknowledge that the profound disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, like the disruptions caused by new technologies such as social media and smart phones in the past two decades, is also an opportunity to radically refashion how our society operates on a normal basis.
The “normalcy” that the nation’s top policy thinkers are advocating is the same baseline setting that has left us unprepared to grapple with COVID-19 and which has given us the 21st century equivalent of Hoovervilles.
Normalcy has also given intense and growing economic inequality, which certainly will not be remediated by a major economic downturn. Yet a broadly pro-growth agenda fails to define who the growth benefits. Under normalcy, a growing market benefits—roughly in this order—plutocrats, the defense industry, the financial industry and big business generally. It’s impossible to argue that the lower and middle class—the vast majority of people—have thrived under normalcy. It’s impossible to argue in good faith that the vast majority of people will benefit under a return to normalcy. The coronavirus pandemic has made it abundantly clear that we need radical social and economic innovation at this juncture, not a return to the previous baseline.
I have written about the travesty of the $2 trillion coronavirus bailout and the precipitous erosion of democratic institutions in the past few weeks. The decision to delay the $1,200 direct payment to citizens so as to plaster President Trump’s name on the checks is yet another indication of the prevailing political calculus: The belief within the Trump Whitehouse is that a large swathe of the American populace can be bought.
Personally, I believe most people are smarter than that, yet we are faced with a collective challenge. Without the ability to gather and organize publicly, much less go to the polls, how can we even begin to envision a new normal, much less bring it to pass? I want to be clear about something as well; I am definitely not anti-business nor am I of the ilk to object to the accumulation of wealth. And I don’t have any prescriptive rules for what the baseline of normalcy should look like—this has to be a collective decision made cooperatively by society. I wouldn’t want that job, nor am I capable of doing it. That said, it’s clear that we can’t simply return to the way things were before. Or rather, we may be able to, but why would we want to?
Today’s Film: The Florida Project (2017)
Neorealism is a style of filmmaking with its origins in post-war Italy. Aesthetically, it is stark and favors direct, artful framing over complicated camera maneuvers and abstract imagery. Narratively, neorealism puts the every day struggles of ordinary people—particularly the downtrodden—at the center of the story, and it looks for the epic battles and towering victories and losses inherent in the struggle to just get through the day. A lot of the early practitioners were Communists (no surprise there). The film that defines the genre is Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Bicycle Thieves (if you’re interested in this film, I will be writing about it all on its own at some point in the future). Neorealism was born from the cauldron of war and the profound poverty and suffering that took hold in much of Europe after the Allied victory, yet the genre has never gone away. Writer-director Sean Baker’s 2017 film The Florida Project hues closely to the founding principles of neorealism, while being profoundly beautiful, emotionally resonant and unmistakably a product of modern America.
The film follows a young girl, Moonee, through summer days in an Orlando motel—just in the shadow of Disney World—where she lives with her mother, a young sex worker. Willem Dafoe plays a soulful hotel manager who tries to take care of his tenants while maintaining a semblance of order. If it sounds dreary, it’s not. Florida provides a weird and psychedelic backdrop, and because we experience the hardships of the hotel’s denizens through the eyes of a child, the sorrow is punctuated by moments of profound joy and adventure.
The final scene of the film was virtually impossible to film under normal circumstances, and without giving it away, it is one of the great movie endings of all time. In the end, the characters feel like real people, and indeed, they are real. There are millions of people just like them everywhere.
The Florida Project is available to stream on Netflix.
NB: I forgot to include info yesterday on where you can watch Pranzo di Ferragosto. It is available on Vudu or to rent on Amazon Prime Video.
Reading List:
BFI has a great piece about the origins of neorealism, including a top 10 list of the best films in the genre. It’s well worth a read.
Russia has benefited from a network of clinics created to combat bubonic plague in the 1920s. The Times has a fascinating feature about a hidden chapter in Soviet history.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.