ReportfromElDorado ByMichael Ventura I’mnot suggesting a nostalgia for that time. It was repressive andbigotedto an extent that is largely forgotten today, tociteonlytwoof it’suglier aspects. But inthat environment America meant America: the people and the land. The landwas far bigger than what we’ddonewith the land. This isnolonger true. Nowtheenvironment ofAmerica is media. Not the land itself, but the image of the land. The focus is not on the people somuch as it is on the interplay betweenpeopleandscreens.Whatwe’vedonewiththe landis Togofroma jobyoudon’t like towatchingascreenon which others live more intensely than you...is American life, by and large. This isour political ground. This is our artistic ground. Thisiswhatwe’vedonewithour immenseresources.Wehave to stop calling it “entertainment” or “news” or “sports” and start calling it what it is: our most immediate environment. This is a very, verydifferent AmericafromtheAmerica that built the industrial capacity to win the SecondWorld War and to surge forward on the multiple momentums of that victory for thirty years. That was an America that workedat mostlymenial tasks duringtheday(nowwework at mostly clerical tasks) and had to look at each other at Illustrations byStuart Mead GraphicDesignbyConnieGilbert 4 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1989
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