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Teenagers, pop culture & suburban architecture

Teenagers & Suburbia


© Harmony Korine, extrait de Gummo (1997)

La blogueuse Tavi Gevinson, 16 ans au compteur, discute de son rapport à la banlieue avec une copine. Cette petite en a décidément sous le capot.

“TAVI: HEY. ARE YOU READY TO TALK ABOUT THE SUBURBS?

[…]

HAZEL: The place gets boring.
So, in suburbia or in a small hometown that you’ve been in, it’s understandable that most teens would be like “UGH GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS TOWN.” And because teenagers love to exaggerate EVERYTHING, ALL of the time (haha), suburbia and hometowns sort of become, like, THE DEPTHS OF HELL.

TAVI: It’s like what Damian Kulash said when he did Ask a Grown Man—everything is exaggerated when you’re a teenager. And being a teenager means changing all the time, and you start to hate parts of that you used to be before you’re able to find them funny, so that past part of you is ALL AROUND YOU in your hometown. Like I hate going to this one Starbucks because we went there all the time in middle school because we thought we were really adult or something. So it’s like, constant reminders of when you sucked.

[…]

HAZEL: To love suburbia you have to appreciate how weird people are.

TAVI: Or how normal people are! Normal people are secretly weird too. You have to look for it.

[…]

TAVI: Aesthetically speaking I think suburbia is kind of great too, for feeling like you’re in a movie or whatever. And I don’t even live, like I said, in a Stepford, where everything looks creepy perfect, or where everything looks old. But there are still parts of my town that are picket-fence-y. Or houses that haven’t been changed since the ’60s or ’70s. Along with people-watching, I love HOUSE watching. Every now and then there’s like someone with a lot of furniture in their backyard. And that’s my idea of fun, looking for those weird parts. And it’s great for taking photos, too! If you can seek out a weird church or alley or something. Getting into photography will make it way easier to see the place you live in as your little experiment, kind of. Autumn de Wilde’s post for us about finding a spot and isolating it was great, too.”

“Getting Over the Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues”, sur Rookie.

Highway to Health

Course : niveau passable
Marche : bon niveau
Alimentation : niveau insuffisant

1er mai - 5,2 km

4 mai - 3,8 km

14 mai - 3,8 km

15 mai - 7,4 km

16 mai - 4,3 km

1er juin - 3,4 km

23 juillet - 7,8 km

26 juillet - 9,7 km

Mais je rappelle que

Je deballe ma bibliotheque

“Pour le collectionneur, tel qu’il doit être, la possession est la relation la plus profonde que l’on puisse entretenir avec les choses : non qu’elles soient vivantes en lui, c’est lui-même au contraire qui habite en elles.”

Walter Benjamin, Je déballe ma bibliothèque, Rivages Poche, Petite Bibliothèque, Paris, 2000, p. 56.

Sac a main : mode d emploi

“De fait, ils voyageaient léger. James, par exemple, ne transportait plus de gros sac à dos, simplement un petit sac de boy-scout qui contenait un poncho et une pelle de tranchée, sept chargeurs de vingt balles chacun, quelques talismans sentimentaux - capotes, jetons de poker et confiseries -, plusieurs doses d’antimoustique et des bandanas bien imprégnés de ce produit. Il était arrivé à cette conclusion que manquer de quelque chose était d’ordinaire moins pénible que de le transporter.”

Denis Johnson, Arbre de fumée, 2007 (traduction française : Brice Matthieussent, 10/18, Christian Bourgois éditeur, 2008, p. 414).