A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Ruin porn is a nasty thing and yet our objectification of all thing crumbling and abandoned is strong. Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan is the American automobile industry’s main squeeze. How can the home of Motown music legacies and Motor City mechanics be in such decay? You Know It When You See It takes a closer look.

Mobile social platforms are hot right now and a sustainable fashion app? Right up our alley. Writer Rowena Ritchie interviews GreenGlamGo founder, Clarissa Nicola, about her company’s new green fashion finder app in Sustainable Fashion? There’s An App For That.

We’ve seen too much of Charlie Sheen of late, but when it comes to celebrity consciousness, a star can take a cause a long way. George Clooney – who is certainly easier on the eyes – has a long and storied list of social activism. “Despite his involvement in bringing the Darfur genocide to light, he considers it ‘the greatest failure of my life’ – because little changed after he and his father smuggled cameras into a refugee camp to bring to light the horrors committed against an entire nation.” In Katherine Butler’s column, George Clooney Vs. Charlie Sheen: Welcome To Shade Grown Hollywood, we look at Hollywood without the rose-colored sunglasses.

We launched the new series Places & Spaces this week, and they all depict amazing representations of those idyllic places we all dream of and hope to go to. Shelter editor Leigha Oaks takes us on a visual vacation, first stop: Juvet Landscape Hotel.

The Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976. If you’ve never heard of it, Hyde ensures that federal money is not used to fund abortions on military bases, in Planned Parenthood facilities or anyplace else. “Anti-choice politicians and activists have spent a lot of time over the last few months making sure that there’s confusion about how government dollars are used to fund abortions. Here’s the quick answer: they’re not,” explains Libby Lowe. In Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…And Don’t You Dare Get Pregnant, we learn the most intrusive employer of all might just be the U.S. government.

All right, we can’t resist one more…

Has your gardening habit yielded yet another bumper crop of squash or greens you can’t give away fast enough? Plenty of people have the same problem and they’re turning the veggie surplus into a profitable cottage industry. In The Green Plate: Is Urban Farming The Next Green Cottage Industry? we get the update on how the urban farming legalization trend is sweeping the country, and putting green not just in our mouths, but in our wallets.

Image: Michael Ruiz

The post The Friday Five, Vol. 4 appeared first on EcoSalon.

Ruin porn and the objectification of Detroit.

Can someone explain to me what, exactly, “ruin porn” is? Recently, it’s been linked to Detroit, most notably in Chrysler’s now-legendary Super Bowl ad. How is ruin porn, which Detroit-born-and-raised writer Paul Clemens describes in his new book Punching Out as “the arty delectation of Detroit’s destruction,” any different from Chilean Miners Porn? Or 2011 Egyptian Revolution Porn? Or Portland, Oregon, Porn? Anything worth shooting, it would seem, is potential pornography. Yet critics are slinging the ruin porn term around, conflating genuine interest and concern with insatiable horniness. What gives?

I understand that there is something of an exploitative aspect to the visual documentation of Motown’s decline, a rubbernecking yet relieved sentiment solicited and received by Gothic depictions of wreck and ruin – but provocative isn’t porno. Good photography commands pathos; great photography demands it, and right now, Detroit requires our attention. But how the act of paying attention got mixed up with masturbation is a mystery to me. Am I watching Google Porn every time I check Gmail? Are you? Please, dear reader, close your inbox and pull your hand out of your pants.

Detroit, Michigan, circa 2011, is the most emotive, pathetic, and photogenic subject in America right now. The city’s vacant lots, shuttered automotive plants, and abandoned houses are fascinating and horrifying, and we can’t turn away. But does insatiable consumer demand or instinctual human curiosity suddenly transform something into porn?

What’s more, the assumption that any art – verbal or visual – inspired by the Motor City is pornographic is a slap in the face to anyone who’s ever tried to affect positive change in the world via words or images; i.e., writers and artists. No one ever accused Solzhenitsyn of writing gulag porn or Margaret Mitchell of antebellum porn. Things aren’t so rosy in Detroit right now; Americans should see what’s happening to a great city.

Mother Jones derides Chrysler for utilizing “the cynical racism (or at least colonialism) of positioning Chrysler as a tough, gritty, 8 Mile-style brand that’s perfect for what marketers call the ‘urban core’ demographic; and using Detroit poverty porn to hawk [its] product while simultaneously trying to deride the media’s recent Detroit poverty porn.” (For the moment, we’ll set aside the incongruity that it’s okay for MoJo to mock Chrysler for perpetrating “poverty porn” out of one side of its mouth while promoting its own version out of the other.)

First of all, it’s incredibly naive to fault a failing (or failed) corporation’s attempt to re-brand and re-introduce itself to a new generation of consumers. True, Chrysler’s modus operandi over the last half-century seems to have been “How not to run a business,” and true, the ailing automaker should probably have been put to sleep and made to suffer the consequences of its managerial idiocy. But whether or not you think Chrysler deserved its $15 billion in bailout funds, the fact of the matter is that it did indeed receive them, ostensibly to keep manufacturing cars and to provide some kind of lifeline to the Motor City. And whether or not you think those new cars are classic Chrysler POS’s, the fact of the matter is that they need to be sold to someone. There’s an entire generation of Honda drivers to convert, yet Mother Jones expects Detroit to do so with tail fins, muscle cars, and depictions of Hank Greenberg-era Tigertown.

Secondly, the advertisement seeks to glorify Detroit, not wallow in its decline. There are no cheap Coney Island hot dog joints here, no bombed out buildings. “Imported From Detroit” promotes Motown as the city of Joe Louis; of the Larry Callahan & Selected of God choir; of Eminem. If that’s pornography, then so is this. Chrysler bet $9 million – a Super Bowl record – on their two-minute spot; it was seen by 111 million viewers during the most-watched spectacle in American television history, and as I write, the viral video has gotten more than 9 million hits on YouTube.  “Likes” outnumber “dislikes” by more than 20 to 1.  “Imported From Detroit” is easily the most discussed television advertisement since last year’s epic “Write the Future” campaign from Nike.

There’s no outcry over “Marilyn Porn” when Vanity Fair puts the long-deceased Ms. Monroe on its cover twice in two years (I’ve had magazines reject pitches because editors have deemed them too similar to articles published six years prior), yet there’s virtually no argument to be made about her contemporary newsworthiness (or lack thereof). Graydon Carter knows enough about magazines and marketing to give his customers what they want; is he a pornographer, too?

Image: JSFauxtaugraphy

The post You Know It When You See It appeared first on EcoSalon.

“Real Americans Buy American.” Growing up in the Motor City in the 1970s, that ubiquitous message, proudly displayed on the rear bumpers of so many Mustangs, Caddies and Pontiacs led this young man to wonder what the problem was. If the red, white and blue declarative were true, why would the Detroit Free Press be running what seemed to be a serialized front-page obituary for our town and our industry? Why would that big black number in The News’ headline have so many zeros after it? (How many people were laid off yesterday?) As near as I could tell, there were plenty of Americans around, and if they did what those bumper stickers told me they do, why was Detroit blight central rather than the boomtown my parents grew up in?

Eventually I learned the truth: Real Americans don’t buy American. Real Americans buy what they want.

This bitter truth periodically hits Detroit hard, and each time one has to wonder if the American auto industry’s hubris has led to its final death knell. I watched firsthand the slow motion response of the Big Three to real world energy and design challenges and the resulting economic devastation of the mid- and late-70s, and again in the late-80s and early-90s (when my parents lost their home and the family’s electrical supply business). Today, watching from my safe haven of California, I read stories of urban dystopia and (literally) scorched earth, the only hope being an unusually creative, industrious and determined population.

But once again, and like always it seems, there’s a blip in the flatline. Could there be life?

As Detroit’s North American International Auto Show enters its 23rd year as an international event, the city’s hometown industry isn’t looking so bad. Last year, reports Business Insider , saw Ford get back its number-two U.S. automaker slot after having lost that position to decelerating Toyota, while the top three fastest-growing brands were from General Motors. “Even Chrysler — a company once left for dead — gained U.S. market share and closed the gap with Honda, despite having a dearth of new models versus its well-stocked Japanese competitors.” (Tangentially, Business Insider, probably a good idea to can the “Pearl Harbor in reverse” rhetoric. It’s a bad week for kill-the-enemy hyperbole.)

Here’s more good news from the Wall Street Journal: Ford announced that it’s going to hire 7,000 workers and is expected to report that 2010 was one of the most profitable years in its 100-plus-year history. Meanwhile, GM says it had a strong end to the year, finishing with more than $20 billion in liquidity and that it expects to hire more U.S. workers if annual sales meet their expected forecasts. As for offerings, reports the Journal, the “40 new vehicles that will be unveiled represent an increase from 27 new models that debuted at the 2010 edition of the show… Chrysler will show off 13 models in addition to the 300 that have been completely redesigned or significantly overhauled. GM will show the Sonic and a compact Buick. Ford will feature a compact minivan based on the European C-Max model, as well as a battery-powered version of its Focus.”

Could the Big Three be getting it? Are they finally giving Americans what they want? Consider that this better-than-okay news is emerging from a horrifying industry free fall that began in 2008 and featured the bankruptcy reorganizations of GM and Chrysler in 2009. “Last year’s show had a funereal feel—spartan displays, sparse attendance, few of the lights, loud music and theatrical unveilings that had become the show’s trademark,” reports the WSJ. So keep in mind from where this upbeat news is coming from. When there’s nowhere to go but up, you won’t be penalized for thinking that any movement is good movement.

It also remains to be seen if this upswing is the result of a slow but sure economic surge that has buyers beginning to make those big purchases they put off for so long. Whether or not new offerings and reconfigured corporate structures will have the impact everyone hopes for won’t be determined in the immediate future. But one thing’s for certain; the old adage is true: “when the nation catches a cold, Detroit gets pneumonia.” The thing is, for the infirm, pneumonia can be fatal. And for Detroit, that adage isn’t funny anymore.

Image: country_boy_shane

The post Making It In Motown: Give the People What They Want appeared first on EcoSalon.