Given Circus Americanus's subject - the bizarre and surreal in the everyday - there are sexier ways to recommend this book than to applaud author Ralph Rugoff's restraint. And yet, at a time when so much of what passes for cultural criticism is laced with acidic irony and oily solipsism, to say Rugoff exercises self-control is no faint praise. In fact, his approach restores your own sense of what's ironic and absurd and leaves room for you to draw your own conclusions about the various fin de si�cle entertainments he investigates.
Circus Americanus takes us to several museums and mausoleums (including the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the L. Ron Hubbard Exhibition Hall, and the Liberace Museum), run-down theme parks (the Bavarian-inspired Alpine Village - "a shopping mall done up in edelweiss drag"), and new parks (Universal's CityWalk). In some chapters, Rugoff pursues passing curiosities such as supermodels and superbaggy clothes, and in others he draws on his reading of Susan Sontag and John Berger to contemplate forensic photography and computer pictures admitted as evidence in felony trials.
"Somewhere in his writings, Walter Benjamin mentions a tribe which believed that photography blights the landscape - that every time someone photographs a given area, its integrity is depleted," writes Rugoff. "In our era, photography and cinema may have blighted our ability to actually see the world around us; instead, we tend to merely recognize things seen in pictures. Passing beyond this truism, however, it seems we're already well into the stage of constructing new experiences that conform to photographic realities; strip shows and theme parks alike are now framed by these conventions. Though I never began writing with a preconceived agenda, these articles seem to circle around this idea, trying to describe it at ground zero."
Circus Americanus, by Ralph Rugoff: US$18.95 Verso: (800) 634 7064, +1 (212) 244 3336.
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