A Mediator in Material Form

May 19, 2007

At the end of Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang we encounter the image of young Freder joining the hands of his father and the representative of the workmen. A caption tells us that between the head and the hands there must be a mediator. The film throughout has been a thinly veiled allegory.. but here the moral becomes explicit: a Christ-like mediator is needed to bring together the wealthy and the workingmen. Without a mediator both are doomed to destruction.

In my recent re-reading of Twenty Years at Hull House I noticed how Jane Addams, with her ideas about Settlement houses, is proposing a similar religious allegory. This allegory would not be realized in a cultural product like a film or novel, but rather in the material context of Hull House. Her radical social project encouraged urban readings which were at heart allegorical.

Here is a quotation from an essay by Jane Addams (taken from a website which provides an amazingly complete context for the work of Jane Addams):

These hopes may be loosely formulated thus: that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which every associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air; until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Addams is here emphasizing the necessity of elite cultural values making their way to the masses.. but quickly she reverses this and notes the importance of the common life finding its way into the pristine world of higher culture.

The overall image is of a need for cross-pollination between the masses and those fortunate enough to spend their leisure involved in cultural pursuits. Hull House (and the Settlement Movement more broadly) represents a way to bring about this difficult connection. In other words, Hull House will serve as a mediator between the head and the hands.. and will allow both to meet their greater potential. Hull House becomes a rather spectacular example of an abstract concept becoming embodied in a material context.

The above image gives a sense of the material context for Hull House. This crowded neighborhood served as home for numerous ethnic groups. It is a section of the city which could easily be ignored by the wealthy. There was a range of economic levels within these living areas, but the poorest would have lived in conditions similar to what Jacob Riis found in New York City toward the end of the 19th century.

This portrait of a family betrays scant opportunities for moral improvement or the cultivation of abstract religious thought. I'm not claiming that religious sentiments aren't there.. I just think that in this kind of conditions they will be hard to find.

Now look at an interior view of Hull House:

It is not a room "dumbed-down" for poor people.. but one that strongly encourages abstraction and re-connection to aesthetic sensibilities. It is a room for meditation and creation. Rooms like this existed in cultured and wealthy upper class households all over America, but what is unique about this room was its placement in the midst of poverty such as what was documented by Jacob Riis. In that context, this room becomes an image of the mediation that Jane Addams was working to accomplish. It is space to lift up the poor and also space for the cultured to encounter something of the common life. The room can thus be read.. and understood as a concrete representation of an abstract ideal.

One direction in which my mind has been going is to wonder what the analogue to this would be in Cairo. The level of poverty on display in a Jacob Riis photograph can be found today in the unplanned neighborhoods of Cairo. But what would the social aid look like? The Settlement House program set forward by Jane Addams strikes me as being difficult to translate across the cultures. The difficulty lies in the fact that Hull House is not just a "good idea" but an outcome of a Christian conceptual framework. The idea of a mediator between head and hands would not be culturally in play in the Islamic world. But that doesn't mean there will not be some more appropriate model that draws on Islamic concepts. It would be valuable to explore the philosophies behind charity work by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. How are those movements placing into a material context an abstract ideal?