Okay. They hate us. In the embarrassing years after the fall of Communism, the Euros have had to grin and bear an American resurgence of overwhelming and insulting proportions (in that time, the stench of McDonald's has become pervasive in Europe). In some sense, we've done in the nineties, after the fall of the Eastern bloc, what we did after World War II -- we laid America on thick. Similarly, as it started to happen in the late fifties, it probably makes sense now to expect an anti-American backlash, even an epochal turning of the tide against our urge to commercially colonize and accordingly Americanize the world.
The anarchists -- already I write this as though anarchists were a commonplace, a definable group, a viable point of view -- seemed to imply a kind of science-fiction premise: faceless, massive, functionally undifferentiated corporations replacing legitimate states and governments, Rollerball-like. It was odd, therefore, that the most visible targets for the Seattle protesters were retail enterprises.
Is this just some inexact symbol? It would have been hard, after all, to make the trek out to Redmond to smash a Microsoft window. Perhaps they tell you in the protest-tactics course at Berkeley that you need a street-level target, and a really impressive expanse of plate glass, and a worldwide logo. Coca-Cola, of course, was for many years the symbol of U.S. vulgarity and crassness (and, indeed, having recently made Europeans sick en masse, is becoming unpopular once again).
But maybe it isn't just the shadowy corporate state that's the enemy of the new rejectionists. I'm thinking that, just in time, this could be a revolt against branding, which is a revolution I would join. Sort of one more logo and I'm going postal. An aesthetic opposition. Cybernetic guerrillas fighting perceptual imperialism. A throwing-off of the shackles of the Gap. Of this enforced orderliness. Of standardization. Suburbanization. Sameness = death. Fuck khakis! It is worth noting that the downtown Seattle that got messed up is virtually indistinguishable from downtown San Francisco or Austin or Boston or Chicago or Columbus Avenue.
Could this be it, then? The next big thing? Microsoft on the verge of break-up, together with the shattering of the windows at the Gap, and finally someone (besides me) taking a stand against McDonald's? If only we could include professional sports here, too.
On the other hand, speaking of globalism, my favorite restaurant in the world is a chain restaurant -- a highway restaurant called the Autogrill, which spans the coming and going lanes of Italy's Autostrade. It's an imitation of U.S. highway fast-food franchisees. Except that the food in these places in Italy is the most delicious (for the most reasonable price) I've ever had. Big pots of risotto. Mountains of mozzarella. Come-hither figs. And my favorite, a very un-vegan roasted pork shank (this meat just melts). The Autogrill -- controlled by the Benetton family, owners of the Italian competitors to the Gap -- recently completed its buyout of U.S. plastic-food giant Host Marriott Services. Now Autogrill will be running truck stops across America. Will it be serving wild-boar salami and penne arabbiata and deep-fried zucchini flowers on U.S. highways?
If so, then I am a free trader.
E-mail: michael@burnrate.com.
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