at the fun fair
Bathed in the smell of overpriced deep-fried food the country the fair goer marvels at the prize heifer and hopes to cheat destiny, at least for a day. The state and county fair is a primal form of culture industry at work for the entertainment of agricultural workers: long ago, it was at such events that the yearly isolation of the rancher, the dairy farmer, the sharecropper was briefly interrupted. The spectacle of hardened carnies barking out the attractions of hairy ladies and the cheap thrill of mechanically questionable roller coaster rides and garishly painted carousels were supposed to make up for the drabness and privations of farm life.
Today, on our way to gawking at Angus beef cattle and lean pigs, we pass booth after booth hung with cheap giant stuffed animals, all made in China's new manufacturing sector: hairy blue gorillas, overgrown pink teddy bears have never seemed more desirable. These are the prizes you can win for trying your hand at games of putative skill: when we are looking for fun, the greatest thrill is the promise of winning something for 'nothing': of course we forget that we pay for this chance to thwart our fate as workers when we pony up five dollars for a chance to shoot a duck, pop a balloon, stand the bottle in the circle with a fishing rod to win either four wheel drive truck or stuffed python.
The whole principle of the fair is to make us briefly forget the infernal rhythms of work: we pay to forget how we earn our daily bread and our bi-weekly paycheck when we try to pin the tail on the donkey. The fair is the overturning of the puritan work ethic, which is turned on its head - for a price. When the game hawker stuffs the plastic toy in our hands after we've popped our three balloons, it feels as if we have defied the fates - for a price, the price of admissions, which we forget because it seems as if we've gotten something for our putative skills as a dart thrower.
Just as the roller coaster ride evokes false dangers and risks, the fair 'game' evokes the logic of chance and the denial of persistence.
For the carnies, it's all in a day's work.
Today, on our way to gawking at Angus beef cattle and lean pigs, we pass booth after booth hung with cheap giant stuffed animals, all made in China's new manufacturing sector: hairy blue gorillas, overgrown pink teddy bears have never seemed more desirable. These are the prizes you can win for trying your hand at games of putative skill: when we are looking for fun, the greatest thrill is the promise of winning something for 'nothing': of course we forget that we pay for this chance to thwart our fate as workers when we pony up five dollars for a chance to shoot a duck, pop a balloon, stand the bottle in the circle with a fishing rod to win either four wheel drive truck or stuffed python.
The whole principle of the fair is to make us briefly forget the infernal rhythms of work: we pay to forget how we earn our daily bread and our bi-weekly paycheck when we try to pin the tail on the donkey. The fair is the overturning of the puritan work ethic, which is turned on its head - for a price. When the game hawker stuffs the plastic toy in our hands after we've popped our three balloons, it feels as if we have defied the fates - for a price, the price of admissions, which we forget because it seems as if we've gotten something for our putative skills as a dart thrower.
Just as the roller coaster ride evokes false dangers and risks, the fair 'game' evokes the logic of chance and the denial of persistence.
For the carnies, it's all in a day's work.
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