As the gamut of profitable goods becomes stagnant and market competition reaches its limit, the final marketable aspect is experience. This is why high-end restaurants have turned into performance art shows. You can’t really compete just on food anymore, you have to provide a unique experience. The future of commerce is selling experiences more than selling quality goods.
I don’t know much about Italian politics but I assume Rome is strapped for cash as well as other major tourist locations featuring historical sites. I think the various orgs who own and run these sites are going to start doing this kind of stuff. They’re going to turn the sites into unique locals for restaurants, venues, and other businesses. A restaurant in The Great Pyramid. A U2 concert in the Colosseum. A strip mall on Stonehenge.
Of course it won’t happen fast and it won’t be as gaudy starting out.
https://archive.is/5V4Yf#selection-991.0-995.244
One decision has already been made which may disappoint fans of Gladiator, the Oscar-winning film. Despite earlier plans to bring back gladiators for mock battles, Ms Russo said that the ministry was aiming higher. She said: “The arena will be used for high culture, meaning concerts or theatre but no gladiator shows.”
Yes it will start out as high-tech but historically respectful. Preserve the site, but offer some flexibility in how it’s displayed. Only “high culture” allowed. So opera, theater, that kind of stuff. That is until a decade or two from now when Rome needs even more cash and they decide to start letting pop bands play there. If they can pull it off then other places will start doing it to make up revenue.
Sure this isn’t super new. People have been exploiting these sites for centuries. But I feel a lot of them have been able to strike a balance between commercialization and being a museum. With everything going to shit though, I think things will tip into commercialization’s favor and we’re going to get billboards on the great wonders of the world. Or they’ll slowly be chopped up and sold off to commercial/private interests. We’re going to see a hiving off of culture the way we’ve seen it happen to all public interests.
I think it’s a good idea, The Colosseum was never a noble temple, it was an entertainment venue. We over glamorize the past far too much. In any cause I’d love to see “protectwesterncivilization88” get really mad on Twitter.
You’re right and all that but they’ve done concerts in the Colloseum for ages, I think Elton John performed there lol, and they do like opera. Also it is meant to have a floor, I believe it before this had a permanent partial floor and it originally had a floor ofc. They also frequently do Christian services there which it wasn’t built for. Actually it has over history variously been a marketplace, housing, different types of manufactories. A concert venue is more in line with the original purpose so is better for preservation (disuse and reuse of the materials being what left it looking like that). Also its original purpose was for slaves to fight animals in and concerts are sort of our version of that.
You know what really sucks: 200 years ago it was a total ruin, much of it coverered in soil; wildflowers were said to grow out of every wall on every tier, some wildflowers that could be found nowhere else, and at night in spring you could be assured if you went you would be alone among them. No flowers and no solitude there now. But still its in better condition because of these renovations, even if they are a stupid “public private partnership”
i mean, fuck the coliseum anyway tho… wasn’t it just a way to force slaves to kill each other for the entertainment of nobles and spectators as a way of propaganda to maintain allegiance to the state?
to be fair though it’s not like tourists visiting Rome are looking at the coliseum and thinking to themselves: :sicko-yes: “YES YES I LOVE MY MONUMENT TO SLAVE LABOR”
-7DeadlyFetishes
wasn’t it just a way to force slaves to kill each other for the entertainment of nobles and spectators as a way of propaganda to maintain allegiance to the state
A lot more really. Definitely entertainment for both nobles and the masses, and I would say a lot more important for the masses (there are some famous riots that came out of chariot races). Some emperors did use it for propaganda, going as far as even fighting in the arena. And slaves were probably forced to fight each other as execution - romans were creative in the way they execute people. But if you’re thinking of gladiators - I think it would be hard to find justification that they were forced. The gladiators themselves were not always slaves, and, were also basically the rockstars at the time and had the wealth and prestige to show for it. The gladiatorial fights are more aking to bloody MMA mixed with WWF rather than dedicated fight to the death (even though that did happen, and was part of the spectacle and risk of the profession). The equipment they wear is a testament to that, protecting the areas that hits were most likely to land or to look spectacular (a great example is the Myrmidon helmet, which makes a very delightful and spectacular bang when hit and it can be seen from far away, while offering excellent protection).
As profit declines, and the need for more needs increases, we move from ‘being’, acquiring goods and experiences to change one’s self, or attempt to, then move into ‘having’ (speak for itself, consumption and possession as identity), into ‘seeming’ (appearing to be a certain self through signals and signs). I think we have gone further past yet and come back around into ‘being’ again, where the sign and signifier have been swapped, and the attempt to appear as something other causes a transformation in the attempt. So the greatest Roman theater returns to its original purpose.
A boss at an old job insisted on being social and invited my wife and I to have dinner with him and his boyfriend at a restaurant in Chicago called Alinea. What a scam, it was something like $800 a couple for pretty mediocre food served in the most ostentatious way someone could possibly imagine. That definitely jump started my radicalization; spending essentially multiple months’ rent on maybe 600 calories per person just for an “experience” made me want to vomit.
I once had a friend whom we took out to sushi to try for the first time, he forked five pieces together and ate them all and said “I don’t get it what’s the big deal, I could of bought 10 McDoubles for this.” We paid for him.
Not sure if this post is this energy or if Alinea is actually dumb.
