all images from DistrictNY
To sell a property, realtors used to remove "all the individuating elements so buyers can imagine living there with their stuff," but times have changed. Buyers who need to borrow their identity from the outside world might feel alienated and anxious looking at a prospective home stripped bare of other people's selves. It only reflects the narcissist's internal sense of terrifying emptiness. So realtors stuff their model condos with lifestyle markers to say, "This is who you could be."
This trend began with the William Beaver House. Closets stuffed with someone else's wardrobe, cartoon images of sexy model-people, "lifestyle consultants"--all of it serves as a narcissistic parent figure, stuffing the buyers full of false selfhood, like their own parents did throughout their lives. Narcissists were not allowed to develop true selves--they were forced to adopt their parents' wished-for styles, tastes, and personalities. This creates a yawning, painful gap between true self and impossible ideal.
The condo-makers fill that gap--or, at least, they pretend to. It's like feeding pictures of food to a person dying of starvation. Delusional from severe hunger, they only think they're eating.
"I wonder if nowadays people just want to be in a hotel all day,” said architect Annabelle Selldorf in the article, “But if you’re young and you’re not from New York and you have a lot of money and work really hard, maybe it appeals to have a life that’s catered-to and ready-made.”
Take a look at District's marketing film. It bears a strong resemblance to American Psycho. I wrote about this before, but I do believe that Bateman embodies the narcissistic rage that lies deep within yunnies, a rage born from that agonizing gap between true and false self--it's a matricidal/patricidal rage that is barely below the surface in a culture that destroys everything that went before it, replacing it with its own glossy fake-self images.
3 comments:
wow, that video was creepy. I thought it was depressing how isolated the models were...never a picture of them actually participating in city life with other people, just looking up at the disembodied old buildings around them from their bubble in the sky.
For an industry publishing dreck, the holier than thou attitude re: American Psycho was amusing. Mr. Ellis has the last laugh; Patrick Bateman will not die, he survives. How does one terminate a narcissistic cannibal devouring the city in which he sleeps? Yuppies became yunnies; what next? American Psycho was observant and prescient: vanity, thy name is Manhattan.
This is how women/girls have always been sold fashion & cosmetics. Buy this, you will be six feet tall, 110 pounds, and be with that brooding guy in the background.
Then again, what about Keds and P.F. Flyers? Kids were explicity told that they would "jump higher, run faster"!
Sadly, the story here is helping to destroy a city; the ones I cited only put a crimp in one's wallet. They all have the same end, though: No one ever morphs into the idea that is being sold.
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