There exists a neighborhood (barrio) in the north of downtown Santiago called Bellavista. It’s full of nice shops, galleries, and restaurants as well as artists selling their handcrafted goods on blankets beside the sidewalk. For the most part, it has the wonderfully ‘bohemian’ aesthetic of a true artist’s quarter in its more affluent and original parts. Pictures I have taken of the area hopefully serve as a nice representation of this. However, the main strip of bars on Avenida Pío Nono highlight a certain unshakable disappointment that I’ve found in similar areas in cities across the US, Canada, Europe, and, now, South America: namely, the ‘American’-style bar scene. That is, big bars serving cheaply advertised drinks on loud signs over loud music, and by extension, even louder people seemingly lost in the abyss of the enormity of it all.
This is the type of area where Americans like to go when in a foreign place (by my experience) and the requisite karaoke bars, dance clubs with American music, and English-language signs all prove not only this, but the willingness of another culture to accept American culture for the sake of money over anything else. It is certainly not only Americans that go here, as Chileans are most present. However, my critique of this lies in that this type of bar-culture does not get produced out of the place where it exists, but rather gets imported as an idea to be exploited that has worked elsewhere – in the overwhelmingly homogenous American capitalist mode. Why complain if it’s everywhere, then? That’s what’s natural to capitalism, right? It doesn’t have to be:
When Americans go to a place like this particular barrio, they feel comforted by signs of home but have the certain exoticism that a foreign place offers – if only for the simple fact that they are actually in a foreign country. Chileans, on the other hand, get to experience American ethos and divulge in things that may seem ‘cool’ to them by global media influence. But, what’s actually gained on both sides is nothing but a loss of culture, a loss of what makes places interesting and unique in the first place, a loss of what cultural identity means, and why culture interests those outside of it so much. It’s in the details, the complexity of it all that culture encompasses. It is in places like this that it is easy to see what is not original about the place, what has not grown out from within a culture, but far from it and imported in by blind capitalists exploiting an idea they did not come up with.
What’s the alternative? The corner bar that’s been there for as long as the people remember. The dance club where you can hear Chilean music by actual Chilean artists. The restaurant that serves, and always has served, traditional food to the local populace for the simple reason of that’s what people know as good food to their cultural minds. It’s where a culture says it is based on the dynamic minds that make it up. This is where culture exists for us as outsiders to see, but people on both sides of the coin get fooled by imported American ethos of what a popular bar-scene should be. What’s important is that that ethos is born out of America and the minds of the people in that cultural world, not in Chile or anywhere else.
That is what is particularly exciting about microbreweries in America. They are born out of American cultural ethos and further push cultural identity from the products they produce. Microbreweries don’t exist out of nowhere; they exist because it makes sense to culture from which they arise. They exist for a simple reason that people want some actually good tasting beer from their country if for no other reason – and that idea can only come from within because it is a product of the engine of culture.
The same goes for Chile or anywhere else in the world: what makes you unique are your cultural customs born out of the minds of people within your own culture. That’s what makes you distinctive – your own influence over what may be popular in a far different place, however close globalization may seemingly make it. It’s in these details that make, have always made, and should always continue to make culture unique and rewarding for all involved – from within and from the outside looking in.
No comments:
Post a Comment