Who Gets to Be Human in an Ed Ruscha print?
An analysis of Solomon (2006), Scarry (1996), and Klein (2016) through the lens of News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews, Dues. Written November 2021.
I. A Californian and an Englishman walk into a bar…
How well can a Californian imagine the English experience? How well can that same Californian distill this imagination into six rhyming words in gothic typeface? Ed Ruscha’s 1970 screen-print series News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews, Dues, which seeks to represent Englishness, can provide us an answer. As Ruscha explains, ‘News means that England is a tabloid-minded country. Mews is a little alleyway found in many towns. Pews is Westminster Cathedral. Brews refers to English beverages — beer, stout, ale. Stews is my idea of British cooking […] Dues is […] the story of Robin Hood, unfair taxation, the British protest.’ (Tate) There are many layers to this characterization. The British are simultaneously media-obsessed, quiet and homely, Catholic, big drinkers, big eaters, and revolutionaries against unjust capitalistic systems. Despite this, Ruscha’s Englishness narrative retains a sense of flatness and disinterest: a total of twenty-six characters and a limited, beige color palette with Stews almost illegible as the word fades into obscurity. The impression of England is confused and certainly brief. While Ed Ruscha lives in the same hemisphere as Queen Elizabeth and David Beckham, he struggles to understand or describe their universal experience.
This brings to light two key questions, that of imagining and that of representing ‘the other’. Ruscha evidently fails to understand or represent Englishness, but why is this? For lack of trying, lack of ability, or perhaps something else? Academic writing has sought to provide frameworks under which imagining and representation are possible and most effective, notably in the field of human rights, but using Ruscha’s work as a microcosm for relationships with ‘the other’ brings to light how these proposed solutions can be flawed and inapplicable in many situations.
II. Imagining: to be weightless or to be generous or not to be?
For writers like Naomi Klein and Alisa Solomon, imagining ‘the other’ can only be effective when this imagining is contextualized and intersectional, falling under the definition of generous imaginings. Solomon argues on a personal level, as people should be seen ‘in their fullness [granted] their pasts and their futures — their memories, hopes, opinions, and most especially, contradictions’ (Solomon 1592). Klein similarly argues for contextualization but on a larger scale, urging that the climate crisis ‘must be seen in the context of austerity and privatisation, of colonialism and militarism, and of the various systems of othering needed to sustain them all.’ (Klein 9) What they conclude is essentially the same, though separated by a more human versus more sociological approach: generous imaginings including context are integral to understanding ‘the other’.
Ed Ruscha’s print series runs in opposition to this theory of generous imaginings as it relies on the concept of decontextualization, stripping Englishness down to monosyllabic descriptors. The monotony of color, font, and layout highlight the work’s disinterest in creating the impression of pasts, futures, memories, hopes, opinions, and contradictions. Neither does Ruscha seek to represent austerity, privatization, colonialism, militarism, or systems of othering. This is because, in this work, contextualization is not desired or possible. Ruscha’s works are often short, to the point, and not meant to be taken seriously. It would be out of the ordinary, as well as incredibly emotionally and artistically taxing, for Ruscha to represent the entirety of Englishness. We can see this as a microcosm for everyday life as it is not always possible or desirable for us to contextualize constantly.
Elaine Scarry echoes this in her critique of generous imaginings, pointing out that this ‘framework of cosmopolitan largesse […] relies on the population to spontaneously and generously “imagine” other persons, and do so on a day-by-day basis.’ (Scarry 98) The importance lies in this idea of a ‘day-by-day basis’, one where we as artists, journalists, and viewers have to consider what is already an infinite and daunting amount of contextual detail on our own terms consistently. The ‘staggering mental labor’ of generous imagining proposed by Klein and Solomon is unsustainable and undesirable (Scarry 106).
Instead, Scarry gives an alternative: weightless imagining following the theories of Russel and Rawls. This ‘much more efficient strategy’ takes away the reliance on the generosity of the imaginer and instead asks the imaginer to forget everything they know about themselves to see others as equally weightless (Scarry 106). Scarry fails to realize that this theory of weightless imagining is just as flawed as the generous framework. If we look at News, Mews, Pews, etc. as a microcosm of artmaking and we see artmaking as a microcosm of human life, there is no way to separate the art from the artist just as it is impossible to separate ourselves from our lives.
A significant example of this is the idea of Pews representing the Catholic Westminster Cathedral which seems out of place considering Britain is officially an Anglican country where Westminster Abbey is considered more culturally significant as the center of the Church of England, the place of all royal weddings and funerals, and a burial site for many famous Britons. Either Ruscha is purposefully highlighting the Catholic place of worship given his Catholic upbringing or he is unconsciously factually incorrect due to an incomplete knowledge of English landmarks. The truth is not relevant; both of these alternatives point towards the glaring fact that Ruscha’s artmaking is informed by his personal outlook on life — including his upbringing and capacity of knowledge — which he cannot, and doesn’t want to, escape. Ruscha will always make an artwork, however intentionally or unintentionally flawed, based on his personal experiences and knowledge just as we go about our lives interacting with others in ways dictated to by our individual outlooks. It is therefore an emotional labor to try and deny our personal experiences and knowledge when imagining ‘the other’. Hence, Scarry’s idea of weightless imagining, though an admirable way to build a society in theory, still relies on the generosity of the imaginer to put immense effort into forgetting themselves and doing so on a day-by-day basis. Both systems of imagining, therefore, are taxing, unsustainable, and inadequate.
Scarry admits that these frameworks are not sufficient on their own and argues for constitutional change that eradicates the concept of ‘the other’ to reinforce generous and weightless imagining. Her appraisal of constitutional change uses examples from the 11th- and 12th-centuries to show that eradicating ‘the other’ is entirely possible and even easy. However, these examples do not hold against the reality of a 21st-century world. There has been a recent cultural shift towards polarization, stratification, and especial hatred of ‘the other’. Distrust of foreigners as ‘the other’ can be seen in the UK from tabloid headlines such as ‘SEND IN ARMY TO HALT MIGRANT INVASION’, the growth of anti-immigration parties like UKIP and Reform UK, and the Brexit movement of 2016 (Reynolds). This is also seen in America where, while foreigners are similarly villainized, political hyper-partisanship and extremism reveal systems of othering within the national population. This is encouraged by news media, which has become increasingly party-affiliated while presenting fake or biased stories villainizing the other side. The effects of this can be seen in events like the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rally of 2017 and the storming of the Capitol in 2021. It is further shown in general cultural attitudes, such as the percentage of Republicans saying they would be displeased if their child married a Democrat rising by almost 1000% between 1960 and 2010 (Drutman 2017).
There are constitutional frameworks already in place that attempt to reduce or eradicate the concept of ‘the other’, such as laws in the UK that support asylum seekers, the neutrality of the US Supreme Court, or majorities in Congress that encourage political bipartisanship, but this does not mean that this is mirrored culturally. Society obsesses over the separation of groups and the classification of ‘the other’, just as Ruscha’s work is built on the concept of defining Englishness, which will persist regardless of constitutional or codified law. Essentially, Scarry’s constitutional claim does not make sense in our current partisan world due to the influence of modern news media, which encourages stratification and hatred of ‘the other’. But why has modern news media provoked these cultural phenomena and what does this have to do with Ruscha?
III. Ed Ruscha and Anderson Cooper
Solomon has an answer to this: news media is increasingly being seen by its makers and consumers as a form of art. When it comes to art, the work is more often than not centered around the perceptions of the audience. Consider Marcel Duchamp’s remark ‘A work of art is completed by the viewer.’ News, Mews, Pews, etc. pushes this to its limit by using a lack of representational imagery to allow the viewer to become an artist in their own right as they imagine the meaning of each word. Pews could bring to mind the quietness of an empty church or the echo of hymns. The combined image of Brews, Stews, and Dues is perhaps that of feudal England with a Robin Hood character drinking stout and wearing tights. This ties into the worrying shift in the culture around news media that Solomon highlights, which ‘positions the viewer as a spectator and consumer [which causes] stupefaction of the intellect and numbing of the heart’ (Solomon 1586). By pandering to the emotions of viewers, news media loses sight of its purpose of informing the public.
A direct consequence of this is the frequent use of melodrama, such as relying on the cliché of the innocent victim — or, in the contexts of villainizing ‘the other’, the dangerous immigrant or the militant left — in an attempt to appeal to the emotions of viewers, keep them watching, and make more money. News-making in its current form, as Solomon points out, tends to ‘favor anecdote over analysis’, putting the journalist’s personal experience at the forefront of the piece where they become a form of artist themselves, fabricating and dramatizing their own stories (Solomon 1591). Ruscha is melodramatic through his use of caricature and stereotype, such as that slightly ridiculous image of Robin Hood in a ye olde pub, showing the priority in this work of humor over truth-telling. He does this precisely because it is a work of art and does not need to be factual. News, on the other hand, should not pander to viewers or be viewed in the same way as art; if it is, this is indicative of a structural issue.
Solomon highlights that news, through the 24-hour cycle or tabloid format, is presented to the viewer among carefully curated but intellectually meaningless accompaniments such as sports, advertisements, and celebrity gossip. While art can be viewed as fluff, such as Ruscha’s larger body of works that are often absurd, humorous, or purposefully meaningless, if reporting on human rights is seen in this way this is a fundamental problem. Taking away the seriousness of news that represents the life-or-death situations of others ‘dampen[s] an urge towards civic engagement’ (Solomon 1586). This makes it blatantly clear, if it wasn’t already, that there is something structurally wrong in the way news media prioritizes commercial interests and larger viewership rather than informative and effective news. Scarry makes the distinction between prioritizing wealth or morality, ‘What kind of arrangements will make the most money?’ versus ‘what kind of [structures] will produce the best citizens?’ (Scarry 109) It is clear where the heads of news corporations in the modern day stand on this issue.
Nevertheless, Solomon’s final call to action is not aimed at changing the outlooks of the heads of news corporations or calling into question the very structures that are polluting news reporting. She focuses on individual journalists’ outlooks, asking them to further contextualize and ax melodrama in their stories, but does not realize that it is the frameworks of the tabloid press and the 24-hour news cycle, not the journalists themselves, that control this. Ed Ruscha cannot put forward a nuanced view of Englishness because of the framework that allows for only six words, each four to five letters long. Similarly, journalists cannot put forward nuanced and contextualized stories, even if they wanted to, because of the constraints of the tabloid format, the 24-hour news cycle, and commercial interests that favor money, fluff, and drama. This is a microcosm of Scarry’s argument, where she points out that any kind of philosophical change is meaningless unless we have structural change. To appropriate her analysis, if we don’t tackle the root of the problem — the structural faults of the modern news cycle — ‘all our conversations about [journalism] will be idle’ and the systems of othering present in news media will continue (Scarry 99).
IV. Concluding
Ed Ruscha’s print series highlights the issues with imagining, as within the framework of the piece there is no desire or ability to imagine generously or weightlessly. As such, we can see that there are contexts in which we cannot or do not want to put emotional labor into imagination and that structures of imagining cannot be relied on as the only ways to humanize ‘the other’. Scarry’s alternative, constitutional change, is also not enough on its own to eradicate the position of ‘the other’ as we have reached a cultural point of no return due to the stratification of society caused by news media. This detrimental cultural shift has been caused as the 24-hour news cycle and tabloid format promote commercialism and fluff instead of providing a format for serious, contextualized truth-telling. This shift from news-making and news-viewing towards artmaking and spectatorship is made most evident when comparing news media to an actual work of art in the form of News, Mews, Pews, etc. Modern news media must be altered fundamentally, therefore, to no longer replicate art and instead facilitate constructive, informed discourse and a cultural embracement of ‘the other’. This can be bolstered — but not solely caused — by individual imagining and constitutional change.
WORKS CITED
Drutman, Lee. “We need political parties. But their rabid partisanship could destroy American democracy.” Vox News, 5 Sept. 2017, https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/9/5/16227700/hyperpartisanship-identity-american-democracy-problems-solutions-doom-loop. Accessed 25 Oct. 2021.
Gallery label for News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews, Dues by Ed Ruscha. In the permanent collection at the Tate Modern, London, UK. Seen on: 13 Oct. 2019.
Klein, Naomi. “Let Them Drown.” London Review of Books, 2 June 2016, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown. Accessed 17 Oct. 2021.
Reynolds, Mark. “SEND IN ARMY TO HALT IMMIGRANT INVASION.” Daily Express, 30 July 2015. Pressreader, https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-express/20150730/281479275121172. Accessed 5 Nov. 2021.
Scarry, Elaine. “The Difficulty of Imagining Other People.” The Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence, edited by Eugene Weiner, Continuum, 1998, pp. 99–110.
Solomon, Alisa. “Who gets to Be Human on the Evening News?” PMLA, vol. 121, no. 5, 2006, pp. 1585–1592.
