Paternalism and Dinosaurs

Will someone please think of a better name for the rare moments when the educated refuse to patronise, talk down to or otherwise fling prolefeed at the majority than paternalism...? The phrase is useful in that it annoys some who deserve to be thoroughly annoyed, but has all manner of horrible connotations of the familial, the Fordist and most worryingly, the Fascist. The particular phenomenon that this is an inadequate phrase for was spotted most recently by me on a visit to the Natural History Museum, for the first time since I was around 8 years old. Incidentally: this is the sort of building that elicits thoughts of Deng's line on Mao's Mausoleum: 'it was wrong to build it, and it would be wrong to knock it down'. An incredible Gothic fantasy, with every possible available space filled with carved creatures: monkeys on pillars, deer poking out from the encrusted tops of columns, trilobites in the walls, as if to mock the rationalist intentions of such an institution. Aside from that, the combination of huge dinosaur skeleton and structure akin to Victorian train shed is very steampunk.



Anyway: the salient contrast is between the exhibits that are (fairly obviously) from the 70s or thereabouts, and those from the last few years. An example of the former is a little installation on the evolution of man from ape. The voice on the accompanying video is astoundingly patrician, the technology somewhat rickety, but the line is 'this is what we think happened. Here is some evidence'. For all the haughty tone, the visitor's intelligence is respected. Obviously, like much of the place, it's designed to be understandable to children: seeing as I last visited when at primary school, I don't recall feeling either patronised or confused (but then I was a bit of a swot). Then there's the newly designed Dinosaur enclosures. Now the cast skeletons are so obviously sensational you wouldn't think they needed extra jazzing up: but you're rammed into a maze like horror of interactive* exhibits, toys, cartoons and babytalk, with an ANIMATRONIC DINOSAUR at one end of a continuous, airport-like passageway (which is the only path allowed). One might be stuffy and ineffectual, but the other exemplifies nicely the forcible fun and queasy infantilising that is it's obverse.

* (Of course Interactiveness and the concomitant relational aesthetics is a plague that needs to be thoroughly denounced. Haing said that, a recent product of some major relational culprits, the new Serpentine pavilion, is interesting for just being a space in itself, without any accompanying jazziness other than an overpriced cafe. A shame perhaps about the ostentatious irregularity, which seems to be irksomely essential to all 21st century architecture - something I was pleased, if surprised, to find Koolhaas deriding recently.)