Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry" murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts
It was like a new bird was born out of the burnt ashes of the phoenix Sunday.
If you don't live in the U.S. you might not know about the big hype over TV ads they run during the Super Bowl, the playoff football game between the two conferences of the National Football League. Advertisements cost $3 million per thirty seconds of air time. People like me who don't care about American football watch between touchdowns when the ads come on, for the entertainment, and to see if they spent their money well. For the most part, they're a whole lotta money spent on silly. In fact, the ads were so mediocre Sunday that Don started flipping to other channels during ads. Poor Madison Avenue.
But apparently in the third quarter an ad aired that hadn't hit the Internet ahead of time like many ads had done. It was two minutes long, unprecedented for Super Bowl ads, and cost $9 million to produce and air. (Sounds like maybe they got a bargain.) After the Packers beat the Stealers, the buzz started, and the ad was aired by 2,000 news organizations, including the NBC evening news that we watched Monday night. I immediately loaded it on YouTube and watched. It had 1.5 million views by then after the first 24 hours. At the moment of this post it has 4,740,910 views. The ad was made for the new Chrysler 200 automobile, starring Eminem, but more than being a car ad, it is an ad for Detroit. It's called "Imported from Detroit." Be among the millions and watch the ad hereor at the bottom of this post. Chrysler is being criticized for taking the $15 billion bailout from us taxpayers, still being in debt, and then spending so much money on this ad. But as one of the "shareholders" of this loan (which won't be paid back, since they filed bankruptcy), I think the ad might be a good investment. The Chrysler 200 web site traffic has increased 1600%.
Of my 54 years, some of which I lived in Chicago, Oregon, California, and Istanbul, 43 years have been in Michigan, with Detroit down the road. Two years we lived a couple of miles from the General Motors proving grounds. I grew up when the population shifted from the city of Detroit to the suburbs, becoming one of the wealthiest metropolitan areas of the country, sadly and ironically, as the city of Detroit began collapsing in on itself. The peacock strutted as the phoenix burned. Simultaneously there was the excitement of Motown Records, making black musical artists like Stevie Wonder (from Lansing, where I was born) international stars. After the Twelfth Street race riot of 1967, we felt the heart of Detroit turn sour, as white flight, political corruption, a disappearing tax base, and the decline of the American-made automobile turned a once gilded city into a sepulchre. There was little to be proud of, it seemed, and we felt the shame as the whole world thought of Detroit as the armpit city of the U.S.
Slowly a few have started to invest in Detroit. I've been skeptical, wondering how those with money to invest would want to do so in a still failing city. While our daughter Lesley attended art school in the heart of Detroit's cultural center, the city buses stopped running at night. The workers in the city who had no cars of their own couldn't even get to a night job! Automobile plants closed one by one as imported cars like Toyota and Honda became more and more popular. Unemployment rose, until Michigan's economy was one of the worst in the country. In high school when Lesley went to punk rock concerts at venues in Detroit, I worried about her in Detroit at night, even with friends. In the last few years, when I've wanted to go photograph interesting neighborhood art projects there, Don hasn't wanted me to go alone, even in the daytime. It's just how we think of Detroit.
So when the Super Bowl ad titled "Imported from Detroit" played, a miracle happened. I could feel the city down the road rising up from its nearly burnt out forging fires. You can watch the two minute ad for yourself, and maybe you'll feel something of its power too. As my friend at work said, whose husband was a Detroit cop for twenty years (such terrible tales he tells!), "he was speechless, and I cried." What is so moving to me about this little film-ad is how it gets inside the very aspects of Detroit that we had thought were its weaknesses, and convinces me they are its strengths! The laboring class, abandoned buildings, keeping on with toughness, even when everyone says you're burned up and out.
This little ad has inspired me to turn my attention to Detroit and share things with you. In the ad you can see shots of Diego Rivera's 1932-33 Detroit Industry murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts (top photo of this post). I'll write about that eleven month project soon, the only Rivera murals in the U.S., and what he thought of as his most important work. This is across the street from a beautiful art deco hotel where he lived while he painted the fresco in the gorgeous atrium court of the DIA and his wife Frieda Kahlo visited, and where our Lesley lived while she went to art school a block away. I felt such pride as I watched the Chrysler ad, about just these murals alone. I want my friends to know something good about Detroit. But I promise I will show you some of the "sepulchre" along with the "gilt."
As long as I live in Michigan, I want to pay attention to this city, as it keeps rising and filling its dead, abandoned spaces again with life. Maybe it will be safe one day for me to take my future grandchildren to walk its streets any time, just as we will in Chicago and New York City.
Detroit skyline on the Detroit River, viewed from Windsor, Ontario, Canada taken the year we went to the North American Auto Show in 2007
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