The American playground
Coney Island through the eyes of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Lou Reed
By Lucia Billing
"Everything is sordid, shoddy, thin as pasteboard. A Coney Island of the mind. The amusement shacks are running full blast, ..."
— Henry Miller, in Black Spring
Amusement parks seem to have always occupied a curiously large extent of our collective imagination. Considering how often most of us visit amusement parks – once or twice a year at most – they appear to be disproportionately represented in popular culture. They’re symbols of youth and playfulness, a valued backdrop for their bright and colourful lights, and inspire feelings of childhood nostalgia. At the same time, they serve as allegories for societal illusion and alienation: The archetypal “carny” being characterised as a sleazy predator, their ‘freakshows’ past, and the constant danger of a ride malfunction…
The amusement park is a transposable milieu; there is no substantial difference between most parks worldwide, they have similar attractions such as carousels, rides, and carnival games. Part of the appeal and quality of such locations is their interchangeability, as they appear almost displaced and detached from the city and country in which they find themselves. Despite this, amusement parks are characteristically American. Not only owing to their tradition of excess and indulgence, but also to their emergence and proliferation in the United States during the Gilded Age. While fairs have existed since the Mediaeval times, the amusement park as we know it is an invention originating from the post-Civil War US.
Throughout the years they have become a bit of a ‘lost art’, as interest in them seems to have wound down. They have even been quietly replaced by ‘corporate’ versions in opposition to their folk roots. The most notable examples of this phenomenon are Disneyland, Legoland and Universal Studios. These branded parks obviously enjoy much more funding than most amusement parks, therefore attracting many more visitors. The traditional amusement park has – in the US at least – sunk into a sort of obscurity. The prevailing notion of amusement parks as seedy, rickety, and decrepit emerges from this development. Yet, the impact this particular milieu has had on the arts is unmistakable. Coney Island in particular has been the backdrop of many notable works by an array of artists: Hubert Selby Jr, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Magnetic Fields, GY!BE, José Marti, Gordon Parks…
Coney Island is a place which – even as it is being experienced – exists in that slightly transitory dreamlike state. Such ambience was the scenery of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry collection “A Coney Island of the Mind”. Ferlinghetti’s most significant mark on us today may be that he co-founded City Lights publishing – known for its Pocket Poets series. Still, his poetry – reminiscent of the Beats and O'Hara – is accessible, sweet, and ironic. His generation, at that point in time, was the latest instance of genuine romanticisation of America. They wrote about their country with both love and pity. The americana in which Ferlinghetti’s poetry takes place in was, even at the time, a simulacrum. Yet, now it has achieved such disconnect from reality that it can barely be accessed through nostalgia. The amusement park became the allegorical projected image of the US for the rest of the world – even as this image has become largely intangible.
Coney Island has undergone great changes throughout the years. It oscillated between being an amusement park in the Gilded Age, experiencing cycles of decay and reconstruction, and being the site for several housing projects… The place obviously owes its importance to its location, as being part of New York intrinsically injects some notoriety to it. The park has, parallel to the rest of the city, become that satinised and controlled version of its former self. America has, for most of its history, contrasted from that careful sensibility of Europe. The city of New York was the epitome of such distinction.
At the moment, we can observe the massive encroachment of ascetic tendencies in hegemonic US popular culture – a relatively recent development. Until the early 1980s, US cultural output seemed to be more or less official propaganda for ‘sex and drugs and rock’ n’ roll’. Only since then has it lapsed into a series of strange passions: cosmetic surgery; fanaticism with regard to orderly teeth, hair and clothing; meticulous tanning and bleaching; body-building; the epidemic of jogging; scrupulously administered, discriminatory smoking bans; the petty regulations, for example, specifying that alcohol can be transported in the boot but not the passenger section of a car.
– Robert Pfaller, in On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without Owners
Such popular culture had its last hurrah in the 80s (for quite obvious reasons), and its last figurehead passed in 2013. Lou Reed was the last of (and in some ways only) one of his kind. It is fairly unknown to have such an influence as he did, while at the same time remaining on the periphery of the music scene (during the latter part of the 20th century). Rock’n’ Roll does not, and cannot exist in the same capacity which it used to.
In the realm of guitar music – and of those bands that characterise themselves to be rock – the UK has largely asserted dominance over the US. While there are of course exceptions and inconsistencies to the proposed principle, the US has largely become the producer of Pop music in the new millennium. Across the pond, a steady – albeit oversaturated – flow of rock music is being pumped out. There is, however, a bit of an unease and discomfort with this new music. It’s as if it is unable to characterise itself, in a world where musical success through streaming is largely dependent on categorisation. This has led to some quite unfortunate genre name inventions: crankwave, post-brexit new wave, windmill-core…
Reed was able to balance the self-detached, ironic, and blasé image of the “rockstar” with genuine grace, and even sincerity when needed. It is the most favourable position for any artist, in that fine space between cowardice displayed as self-aware ridicule and pretentious arrogance. Reed’s most sincere album stands to be the 1976 release Coney Island Baby, largely written for Rachel Humphreys, his girlfriend at the time.
The ending of his relationship with Humphreys caused him to swear off his previous vices, declaring himself to have become “clean and straight”. Such a lifestyle shift would then be followed by the general culture in the US. It is a pity that the album was somewhat poorly regarded by the artist after his separation from Humphreys, stating that his music would be no more “dyed-hair faggot junkie trip” – for it showcased an optimistic and sincere love of one’s surroundings. That sort of heart, quickly followed by regret and shame does seem to be analogical to the singer’s drug of choice. And subsequently, the singer himself has become an all too perfect symbol for that shift in the American cultural ethos.
That time frame, symbolised by the elusive “Coney Island of the Mind”, was the delirious state of American culture, one which may never reappear – despite any attempt. The image of it, however, has become more and more material, as it has fully distanced itself from reality enough to become just a silkscreen.
'One of those paintings that would not die' its warring image once conceived would not leave the leaded ground no matter how many times he hounded it into oblivion Painting over it did no good It kept on coming through the wood and canvas and as it came it cried at him a terrible bedtime song wherein each bed a grave mined with unearthly alarmclocks hollered horribly for lovers and sleepers
— 12, Lawrence Ferlinghetti