Manufactured Awe:The Grand Canyon and the American Sublime by Charles Bivona
In the opening pages of his book, How the Canyon Became Grand, Stephen J. Pyne describes the Grand Canyon most people experience as "a cultural canyon" shaped by "geopolitical upheavals and the swell of empires, the flow of art, literature, science, and philosophy." The many fluctuations of culture that are erupting around the natural wonder leave a psychic fossil imprint on the canyon. According to Pyne, it is these forces that determine "the shape of Canyon meaning."
So what can be said about this "canyon meaning" in today's commodified America? If we invest in Pyne's idea of the canyon as a cultural mirror, romantically reflecting our own ideas back at us, then what will post-modern American visitors find as they approach the rim? In a culture that values the artificiality of reality television more than the weighty real-life decisions of politicians, how would something so undeniably real and unavoidable be mentally processed? And more importantly, how will the culture have imposed itself on one of the greatest sublime spectacles of nature?
A stark surprise awaits anyone seeking a realistic experience since the Grand Canyon of our time is comparable to an overpriced amusement park. Paved roads lead to strategically placed parking lots. Visitors await shuttle buses that carry human cargo, load by load, to the "designated viewing areas." The rim of the canyon is forcibly kept at a safe distance by a steel guardrail, complete with warning signs about the likelihood of falling into the gorge.
Some of these signs employ a type of non-verbal slapstick communication. A cartoon silhouette of a hiker is shown tumbling off a crumbling cliff, his walking stick flying through the air, his arms flailing about. The comical nature of these signs reassures the visitors, lets them know that, although this is a real possibility, safety measures have so completely choked the canyon that the chances of a deadly fall are laughably remote.
This sign, implying safe danger, can serve as a symbolic answer to at least one of the opening questions of this essay. Indeed the only way that the American mind can process something as vast and treacherous as the Grand Canyon is through a thin, illusory filter of created safety. If the traditional experience of sublimity is something akin to a sheltered terror--a safe, distant, awestruck paralysis in the face of something larger than one's own consciousness--then surely the American sublime is manufactured by transforming that unease into an amusement park thrill. The Grand Canyon, in all of its vastness, with all of its representative power, has to be precisely packaged for American consumption.
The macro level packaging is pervasive. Even the most daring of hikes into the canyon have been safely defined, mapped, sign-posted and reinforced. Hikers are only permitted to travel to a certain depth, at certain times of the year, and the finite number of possible hiking routes leads to safer group hikes. Even the celebrated Grand Canyon sunset is highly orchestrated. Park visitors are once again bussed, at dusk, to one of the few "recommended sunset viewing areas." Thirty minutes after the sun has fully set visitors are ushered from the park. And then the most amazing phenomenon in the packaging of this natural landscape occurs, the Grand Canyon closes for the night.
As revealing as these macro level contrivances are, it is the micro level, or human level phenomenon that can stagger the attentive observer. It is what one sees in any local market in or near the Grand Canyon State Park that drives home the artificiality of the experience. The American makers of commodity memory--the Grand Canyon brand toothpaste, potato chips, pretzels, bottled-water, powder, silverware, ashtrays, mugs, and miles of T-shirts, windbreakers, hiking sticks and hats--effectively solidify the feeling of plasticity that the roller coaster canyon ride had only hinted at. These treasures of an artificial adventure are the perfect tools for convincing consumers that they truly had "the Grand Canyon experience." But ultimately they serve to squash any individual unconscious suspicion about what had really occurred. "I CAME TO HIKE INTO THE GRAND CANYON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT."
Pyne, Stepehn J. How the Canyon Became Grand. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc. 1998. p. xii. ibid ibidNEXT ........ BACK TO ESSAYS INDEX