"Cabinet" Means "Milkshake" in Rhode Island [Core Response]

But what does it house?

Beatriz Colomina's "Domesticity at War" seems to operating on three levels, that is: 1.) the character of domestic life is similar to that of war, and thus is an engine of the military industrial complex; 2.) The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair represents this perfect curdling of Modernist efficiency into Postmodern kitsch; 3.) TV is like, everywhere, man.

That first level, to which Colomina returns at the end to (in my opinion) dubious effect, appeals to my personal interests.  The fascist leanings of Modernism are inescapable; if the ideal modernist house, factory, and bunker should be indistinguishable, then its inhabitants should simultaneously be ready to live, produce, and wage war.  The false binary of the domestic (read: feminine) sphere and the military-economic (male) sphere is made as apparent as EPCOT Center castmembers' unisex jumpsuits.

EPCOT makes for a good transition to the '64-'65 World's Fair.  Its twin icons are Robert Moses, the closest thing New York has had to a terraforming god-emperor, and Walt Disney, a man who literally moved mountains, put roller coasters in them, then had lunch in his apartment tastefully down the street from a fairy tale castle.  The reading addresses concerns from the 1960s that the Fair's architecture was "without masters" (Colomina 4), but, of course, the Buckminster Fullers of themed design were all staffed by Disney's WED Enterprises.  If "the traditional status of architecture" was "against the direct threat posed by new technologies," (Colomina 5), that war was lost by 1965.  To tie into the Morse reading (whose density, I think, requires more attention before I can really respond), Disneyland is a mall, a television, and (shockingly still) home to a celebration of the freeway as a futuristic wonder.

Where this piece collapses for me is the final section.  While the McLuhanist in me certainly agrees that television is part of a larger swath of cultural changes, what draws me to McLuhan is that he lets things be new.  I believe that people can differentiate between television, windows, and even the different uses of television.  Perhaps this is a key change thanks to Web 2.0, but I suspect people are even more aware of the lines between private and public than in the Modernist days of the early 20th century.