San Francisco: the past in the present...

Students at the department of public relations and communication at the Technological and Educational Institute of the Ionian Islands based in Cefalonia, Greece, are taught on public relations in tourism. When writing their undergraduate dissertations on tourism, they talk about the tourist package and include the whole experience from the moment one prepares and locks his front door until the moment he unlocks it having returned from his holidays. Still, an aspect of the emotional dimension involved in this package lingers and the enthusiastic tourist can cling on to his memories or bought artifacts for days after the holiday has ended.

I am here reflecting on my self and my most recent short visit-students are taught to call it city break- to San Francisco.

My status, that of a tourist, provided me with a variety of opportunities: things to taste, see, experience. In engaging in such tasks, I found myself  observing how the city is presented to tourists: what strategies and means people had employed in order to preserve and promote their "heritage". Here follow some of them, to the extent I could grasp them:

• Within this framework of preservation and promotion, I could see the extent to which locals complied with several rules which forwarded aspects of heritage and, quite often, presented them with obstacles. To be more specific and as I hope to show through my own photographs in the posts to follow, I am here talking about means of transportation which slow drivers down but nobody complains, as I could register.
• Whether moving or standing such strategies and means, better say: channels, are readily available to the senses. You can see and hear and touch, you can see and hear but keep off- limitations to the availability of sensory perception are dictated by safety and health rules. You can see, hear and imagine... There is no end to the combination of senses, only limits in certain cases, as I hope will become evident .
• Space is used in its open as well as in closed forms.  The boundary is not clear, given that small and big buildings exist side by side with open space and the display of objects of art or of the past. Still, this complex of open and closed space  signifies a special place, a transformed space and becomes highly important.

 

I see this as an introduction to what will follow and can guide us to view San Francisco from a fresh angle.

 

 

 



Photo essays on Halloween: the last moment: TRICK OR TREAT?

Halloween is just over. Children are left with a merry moment and a huge number of treats!

Here are my last photographs for this feast, bringing together decorations and sweeties.



Photo essays on Halloween (6): R.I. P

Here are some photographs from cases b and c as briefly stated in the last post.

 

Photo essays on Halloween (5): R. I. P

  Halloween is only a few hours away and, on the one hand people are shopping and preparing for the "trick or treat" game, while, on the other stores are rushing to remove all  Halloween paraphernalia and replace them with Christmas decoration.

 Within the framework of time, let me give some more aspects of decoration for this feast.  My guide, J. Santino  talks about representations of death and underworld. Walking around West Los Angeles avenues I have seen that this is the most famous topic of and for decoration.  Most front garden and front doors are decorated with such a wide range of objects that is not easy to represent in a few posts here. So I shall limit myself to some photographs which cover the following views: a1) cardboard whole skeletons (whether in stores or gardens or pavement trees)   a2) skeletons covered in cloth b) human skeleton parts scattered here and there or hanging from trees c)the most famous R.I.P ,which apparently stands for: rest in pieces. The R..I.P inscription is oftentimes replaced by some verses.

Any observations on the carnivalesque as analysed by M.Bakhtin and meaning the turning of world upside down are more than successfully applied in this feast....

 

Here are a few samples from cases a1 , a2 and b.



Photo essays on Halloween (4): Jack-o'- lantern -part 2.

Here are photographs from sections c and d as stated in the last post, namely material and uses: Jack-o'-lantern in material other than wood and more elaborate drawings  and the carved squash used for garden decoration.

                                                                                     

Photo essays on Halloween (3): jack o' lantern

Today's series of posts are dedicated to a central figure of Halloween: the carved as (or painted) jack- o' -lantern squash. Jack Santino, my main source of reference as is shown in these posts, considers the carved squash as: " personal statements made in a participatory group or community situation, using culturally valued and shared symbols, most of which are centuries old".(p.2)  In his paper, Santino refers to different interpretations of the pumpkin, from nostalgia about rural life to the story of Jack as is best known in Europe and hence extended meanings to cover life and death. Santino writes:  "The pumpkin is carved and given a face. This is especially obvious when the jack-o'-lantern is seen in the dark, lit by a candle within. It then takes on a much more eerie, ambivalent, and frightening demeanor. Other than by carving, the pumpkin is transformed by means of painting or by using other vegetables as appendages. Houses may feature cutouts and paper representations of the jack-o'-lantern, either homemade or store bought, and of other Halloween figures as well. In fact, the transformation of pumpkin into jack-o'-lantern also extends to the growing number of "harvest figures," which may or may not be built upon a vegetable or organic base" (pp 15-16).  He also stresses : "a cultural act is performed upon the vegetable: it is carved into a jack-o'-lantern, given an identity, and is thus connected to the other- world and the supernatural. The jack-o'-lantern, as we have seen, is one of a number of marginal creatures associated with death and the underworld[..]" (p. 16).

 

 Having received such information from European lore and anthropological interpretations, let us wander around stores and front garden decorations and record as wide a range as possible in which jack-o'-lantern appears. I have divided my own photographs to several  sections: a)postcards b) wood carved to jack-o'-lantern c) other material and elaborate forms d) public displays in gardens.

 

Here follow sections a and b

Photo essays on Halloween (2): bringing nature to culture

Jack Santino (1983: 15) writes on ideas that shape Halloween decorations, as I briefly stated in my last post. I am here taking the issue up and will illustrate one of his points. My material comes from West Los Angeles.

Santino touches on issues that have been concerning folklorists and anthropologists and on which they have been observing and publishing their works. One such issue refers to nature and culture. Santino talks about decorations picked from a natural environment and then carried to a built environment, such as pumkins, apples and vegetables. He talks about journeys that people make- or used to make- to the countryside in order to buy  fruits and vegetables and then display them:
 

"What has happened, then, is the following: people from a built en vironment travel into a relatively natural environment, return with a physical embodiment of that natural environment, and display it as part of their built environment. We can see here a dichotomy of rural and urban, natural and built, and, ultimately, of nature versus culture. Bringing the pumpkins and the corn back into the city represents a movement to bring nature into, and display it as part of, culture.The tasteful, aesthetic arranging and displaying of these fruits and vegetables is in itself a cultural act ."

 

Walking around West Los Angeles and observing Halloween decorations, I could not but notice an additional object of decoration which is not mentioned in Santino's text. Scarecrows are very rare and as such they can attract attention. I would here like to add another view of nature brought to culture within the context of Halloween seen as harvest time and perhaps question the clear dichotomies that Santino sees. Scarecrows are also symbols of and for a safe harvest, they are symbols of and for peoples' struggle against nature, they are peoples' emotional investments in their sustenance. Bringing such  man- made objects for display into an urban environment is also  a cultural act, one which includes negotiated relationships between nature and culture....