#futureofthecity

Milton Waddams in a comedic scene of Office Space

In 1999, 20th Century Fox released the film Office Space as a parody to the soul-sucking jobs of corporate America that have caused wide rates of burnouts among cubicle-trapped subjects. The plot features Peter Gibbons is a jaded computer-programmer and his two colleagues Samir Nagheenanajar and Milton Waddams. The three are constantly micro-managed and under the hands of the company, Initech’s, loathsome Bill Lumbergh, a representation of the labor power relations that have turned the three employees into what Michel Foucault calls “docile bodies” and what Martin Heidegger coined as “available equipment.” When two corporate consultants are invited to begin the downsizing of Initech, they actually are impressed by Peter’s intellectual insights and promote him, despite Lumbergh’s vocal resistance. However, Samir and Milton are fired. Angered by the “master’s tools” to dispose of bodies as they please, Peter, Michael, and Samir are fueled by revenge and hack Initech's accounting infrastructure with a computer virus that converts fractions of pennies into a bank account. This virus rapidly begins to coalesce into a substantially large sum of money of which the three disenfranchised employees are basically stealing from Initech.

Office Space is a cogent example of Steven Shaviro’s concept of Accelerationism, which states that “in political, aesthetical and philosophical ters . . .the only way out of capitalism is to the way through” (2). Shaviro believes that “[i]n order to overcome globalized neoliberal capitalism, we need to drain it to the dregs, push it to its most extreme point, follow it into its furthest and strangest consequences” (emphasis mine, 2). Therefore, “[t]he hope driving accelerationism is that . . . we will be able to exhaust it and thereby open access to something beyond it” (emphasis mine, 3). This something is much like the proletariat revolution Marx had always hoped for, where the poor are taking back from the rich. In Office Space these three docile bodies are accelerationists. Borrowing Audre Lorde’s famous phrase, they have actually used the master’s tools to tear down the master’s house, quite literally as we see at the end of the film when Milton burns down Initech’s offices in order to destroy evidence of Peter’s money-stealing virus. In fact, we can consider these three men as Creative Destructionist Marxist that Lee Konstantinou speaks of in his Pop Apocalypse, a radical group of Marxist-Leninist thought that believes “there’s money to be made off the destruction of the world” (1). In Hegel’s words, capitalism negates the being of workers by expropriating their labor, but “ironically creates the very conditions for, an even necessitates, its own supersession” (5). As Shaviro states, “[w]e cannot wait for capitalism to transform on its own” and Peter, Samir and Milton display this thought throughout the entire film by revolting against Initech, perfectly captured when the three men steal a dysfunctional printer out to a field and beat it to pieces with brute anger. Although this is one minor instance of going beyond capitalism, it does show some type of agency a la Fight Club. 

Docile bodies standing up against the real conditions of their existence

Dave Dameshek’s counterfactual series the N‘if’L. In this video he stepped into an alternate reality where Eli Manning stayed with the Chargers instead of requesting a trade to New York. 

In Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction and Social Dreaming, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby argue for other alternatives to design that aren’t simply problem solving. They believe that other possibilities for design are to “speculating how things could be—speculative design . . . [that] thrives on imagination and aims to open up new perspectives . . . to create spaces for discussion and debate about alternative ways of being, and to inspire and encourage people’s imaginations to flow freely . . . [which] can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality” (2). They present several categories and methods of speculative design throughout the book, but one that caught my attention the most was Ch. 5’s “A Methodological Playground: Fictional Worlds and Thought Experiments.” Raby and Dunne describe speculative design in literature, cinema, and art. For instance, “fictional world building” like Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake designs a speculative postapocalyptic world roaming with transgenic animals and a society that is desensitized to unethical capitalist practices, a fictional world that is “far more interested in the social, cultural, and ethical implications of science and technology than the technology itself” (78). Thought experiments, which “allow us to step outside reality for a moment to try something out . . . [t]hey make full use of the imagination and are often beautiful designs in themselves,” are closer to conceptual design than conventional design and allows us to step out of the factual and into the speculative and imaginative realm of possibilities (80). Two forms of thought experiments I am intrigued by are counterfactuals and what-ifs, both of which alter reality by enabling us to imagine an alternative past or future that change our present realities. A counterfactual is “[a] historical fact [that] is changed to see what might have happened, if . . .” key influences and events had turned out differently and how these alternate endings could have affected the world” (82). This made me think of Dave Dameshek, a radio personality, football analyst and writer for NFL.com, and his series called the “N‘if’L,” which is an animated series where he creates an alternate NFL landscape if notable events had gone differently than in reality. Being a Los Angeles Chargers fan, my favorite video is the one where Dameshek speculates a different NFL environment if Eli Manning had not forced a trade to the New York Giants and had stayed with the back-then San Diego Chargers in the 2004 NFL Draft. In this scenario Eli Manning would have stayed with the Chargers with the first overall pick, the Giants would have drafted Ben Roethlisberger at #4 and Philip Rivers would have fallen to the Steelers at #11. Best of all (for me), the Chargers would have won two Super Bowl rings under Eli Manning in ’06 and ’07 and altered NFL history as we know it. If only… What-ifs are similar to counterfactuals but are more future-oriented, speculating what the future could look like if certains situations unfold. They are “a simple way of excusing oneself from reality in order to entertain an . . . idea” (86). This time of year is what-if season in the NFL as the NFL draft approaches. Various NFL experts publish their “mock drafts,” an imaginative draft that attempts to predict what players NFL teams will be drafted based on the best available players, teams more urgent positional needs, the organization’s current infrastructural situation etc. These mock drafts serve as a way to create dialogue in the football community, especially in fantasy football discourse where anxious dynasty fantasy players are awaiting to see where this year’s promising class of rookies will land, thereby providing a situational context for which fantasy owners can assemble a draft strategy for their fantasy football team’s future (dynasty is a format that allows owners to keep their fantasy team each year rather than redraft format where a fantasy player drafts a new fantasy team each year, thereby delimiting the temporal limitations of fantasy football). These mock drafts change repeatedly throughout the draft season, too, like after the NFL combine and after trades or free agent signings have occurred, and analysts often give them different “version” names (X’s 2020 Mock 1.3, for instance). Mock drafts can be created by anyone, too, not just experts, which is the fun part about them. Anyone is welcome to participate in this speculative design of the NFL landscape with their own opinions.

A view of the neighborhoods surrounding Lambeau Field.

Rogério De Paula in “City spaces and spaces for design” argues that “[a] city is not just a static backdrop against which our everyday lives as city dwellers unfold. Rather it plays a critical role in shaping how its inhabitants experience their everyday lives.” Therefore, we should “consider the city . . . not just in terms of its infrastructures . . . but also in terms of its socioeconomic and aesthetic arrangement. De Paula categorizes three areas to consider when viewing the city from this perspective: Spaces of opportunity: how the environment creates intricate interactions among its elements and dwellers. Spaces of hope: how people find hope through the opportunities they are given in their environment. Spaces of vulnerability: atmospheres created through “often invisible socioeconomic-political boundaries of the city.”

All three of these categories came to my mind when I considered the urban area surrounding the Packers’ Lambeau Field. The majority of stadiums are built in downtown areas, near highways, but Lambeau Field is the only NFL stadium that is built around several neighborhoods.

De Paula mentions that in his fieldwork of São Paulo almost all the homes had a garage despite the fact that most people living there did not own cars. These garages created spaces of opportunities for these people as they used their garages as spaces for business growth, turning these garages into small businesses like bars, restaurants, mechanic shops, internet cafes, etc.

Likewise, these neighborhood Packers fans have used their homes as a space for socioeconomic growth by using their land as parking spaces for gameday. I couldn’t locate any specific rates that these owners charge for their land, but if the parking at Cowboys stadium is typically $60-80 dollars, these owners have a solid bargaining price for parking that is literally right across the street from the stadium. Not to mention the property value these homes have must be exponentially higher than other urban areas in Wisconsin. This close-knit community surrounding Lambeau Field also becomes a space of hope by engendering a strong fan community that interacts with one another as members of a collective whole supporting one of the greatest NFL franchises. It even gives visiting team fans an opportunity to experience Packer culture, which has been widely considered as one of the friendliest fanbases. However, some of these neighborhoods have also become a space of vulnerability as the Packers have purchased some of these neighborhoods to make way for additional parking, much of which is occupied for the stadium employees, media and other exclusive uses. This does not seem to be much of a growing concern though. I hope to go to Lambeau Field one day and experience this for myself.

A home located right in front of Lambeau Field.

Here’s a link to a Twitter post showing a live video of parking at a home behind the stadium: