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(February 26, 2006) --
For all the brouhaha on
Tribe
and
ePlaya
last year, by the time the Discovery Times Channel
presented its Burning Man television documentary in
January, it was anti-climactic. It was not – as some
Burners had feared -- a sell-out, it probably will not
encourage a boatload of tourists to show up this
August, and it did not provide any event-threatening
revelations. It also was not great journalism.
I watched it with a non-Burner friend (the only person
I knew with a big enough package of digital channels
to get Discovery Times). She was more intrigued by
this program than she had been by my tales and photos
of six years on the Playa. Judging from the reactions
on Tribe.net, its main effect on Burners was to make
us homesick.
This show is part of a series called Only in America,
whose premise is a study of American subcultures as
visited by Charlie LeDuff, a New York Times reporter.
In addition to Burners, these “hidden and closed
societies,” to quote the Discovery Times website,
include bikers, gay rodeo riders, arena football
players, battle re-enactors, and fashion models.
LeDuff used to write a column in the Sunday City
section called “Bending Elbows,” in which he reported
on proletarian issues from bars around New York.
Amusing, but like his colleagues Judith Miller and
Jayson Blair, he might have benefited from a few more
years of practical experience covering water board
meetings, crime, and school lunches and learning the
importance of accuracy and fairness before trying to
establish himself as a national media star. Rather
like the Karate Kid learning “wax on, wax off” as a
prelude to actually hitting someone.
When we meet LeDuff, he is Media Man. This is his idea
of participation: he’ll embrace what he conceives to
be the Burners’ stereotype of the mass media. He is
wearing a tan jacket, a loud American flag tie, and,
incongruously, a straw hat secured to his head by some
kind of black lingerie so that he looks like a
frontierswoman in a bonnet. We see him at the Greeters
station, giddily informing us that he is in the “guts
of the Nevada desert” attending “the Burning Maaaan
some kind of festival. Mayhem. Self-expression. Lord
knows what else. I say we go for a journey. Don’t you?
Follow me. The Media Man.” He does not sound like a
virgin entering Black Rock City for the first time,
but rather a television reporter, slightly inebriated,
trying to act like the parody of a television reporter
while unconsciously portraying a pretty accurate
version of himself.
LeDuff is shown arriving solo on a bicycle built for
two, without baggage. An inauspicious start, as real
Burners know, he did not bike 90 miles from Reno in a
blazer without breaking a sweat. Rather than a
clichéd TV shot, a more realistic introduction to
Black Rock City might have been the drive through the
desert in whatever vehicle he genuinely used, that
last stop in Empire, where Burners in costume stock up
on last-minute necessities and virgins wonder what
they’ve gotten themselves into as the tanks are topped
off for the last leg of the trip. But in a 60-minute
show jam-packed with commercials for computer servers,
insurance and baldness cures, perspective can be hard
to provide.
So he rings the bell, but there is no mention of
spanking, and then he sets off on his “freak.” Away
he goes, talking to various TV-ready Burners about
some of the things you might ask them. For the first
eight minutes or so of the show, he wears his Media
Man outfit, which continues to include the hat,
thankfully sans chinstrap. Then, he decides to get a
better Burning Man look and have his head partially
shaved into something vaguely resembling a mohawk. We
see a Burner running a razor over his head, but it
seems painfully obvious that he has had the mohawk for
some time and that the reason he wears a hat in the
opening scenes is because they were shot after he
spent some time in Black Rock City. A documentary,
maybe, gritty realism, not. Because he is filming as
he goes along, LeDuff never gets to experience Burning
Man as a normal virgin. Mohawk or not, he really IS
Media Man.
And so it goes. We see LeDuff trying his hand at
radical self-expression by throwing eggs at the Man.
The Rangers try to discourage him, but he has
permission from Larry Harvey. Still, there’s no
mention of moop. The concept of Leave No Trace is not
part of this show. There is tons of talk about drugs,
and more than a few references to sex, though exposed
body parts are blurred. Boring explanations of cleanup
and government permits apparently do not make for good
television, nor did he address the practical questions
of where people bathe and relieve themselves.
Accuracy? They show a map of Black Rock City to
explain the layout. Unfortunately, they show the 2004
map from the Vault of Heaven, where the streets were
named after planets. The description of the 2005
street names a few minutes later in the program does
not match up, but why sweat the details? What this
show really wants to be about is LeDuff. No need to
take my word for it, here is how the New York Times
reviewed the series (the article was written by a
freelancer):
“Mr. LeDuff too often gets between us and the people
he wants to introduce to us. He has a sense of humor,
and one can appreciate the gameness of a reporter who
will dress up in drag to fall off a steer, but there's
just too much of him, and he can't seem to get over
himself.” Amusingly, this review ran on Sept. 2, when,
presumably, LeDuff was in Black Rock City.
Along with the annoying host-as-protagonist and
lackadaisical approach to facts (note to LeDuff: the
major artworks are not ALL within the area encircled
by the Esplanade), there is a lack of perspective. We
are told about the techno music, but oddly, the show
never lets you hear any or see a large-scale sound
camp. Nor do you get a sense for the scale of the
city, which easily could have been shown by an aerial
shot or at least a climb up one of the higher
structures. Instead, we are treated to a
not-all-that-interesting fire-breathing lesson, and
LeDuff’s uncomfortable effort to be part of the
gifting economy – at the end of the obligatory Larry
Harvey interview, LeDuff strips off his pants and
hands them to the Burning Man founder, who is left to
react as gracefully as he can under the circumstances.
That sums up the problems with this program. LeDuff
keeps trying to make his ass the focal point, rather
than tell the world something it didn’t know about
Burning Man. Bits seep through, but this program is
not good journalism and LeDuff does not truly become
part of Black Rock City. A more sympathetic and barely
less realistic view of Burning Man was last year’s
Malcolm in the Middle
episode.
To See More on the Discovery Times series, Only in America
click here.
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