Georges Teyssot response
In The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life, Georges Teyssot delineates the evolution of sociology surrounding the concept of “lawnspace.” At first, I struggled through the chapter and its history of lawn care and social perception, but the deeper into Teyssot’s work I read, I realized how relevant the discussion of lawn was to the ideology of suburbia – in general, to American culture itself. The chapter works in a convoluted chronology: it begins with discussing a [1970s] proposal of “envirionmental harmony,” which would involve eliminating the “industrial lawns” of manicured perfection, and installing “freedom lawns” of wild, unmowed spaces. Teyssot then highlights the response to this “new ecology” with the backlash of mowers who cherish the connotations of a well-cared for lawn space. When Teyssot quotes a political commentator as saying, “In an era where almost everything is beyond our control, our lawns are not,” he highlights perhaps the largest underlying principle of the chapter. Americans like their lawns – need their lawns – because it provides them with a sense of control over their immediate environments – and conceptually, their world.
Teyssot does not seem to leave out any piece of analysis about the American lawnscape. He bounces between the 19th and 20th centuries as he describes the observational, pleasant qualitites of lawn care. From the consideration of lawns as animals, to the American tendency to apply Victorian decorative themes to their lawns (circa 1850), to the terminology of velvet as a a descriptive quality of what a quality lawn should look like. The flatness of a lawn, Teyssot emphasizes, is generally presented as a positive attribute.
The ability to manipulate one’s lawn to perfection signals status as well – the status of the middle class. Lawnspace becomes an extension of the home’s interior carpet, with the potential to be tranformed and “embroidered” to display elemental beauty. In 1964, Fletcher Steele is cited as commenting on the refinement and cleanliness of a mowed lawnspace and how it is comparable to a cleanly shaven face. Furthermore, Steele’s example adds to Teyssot’s discussion of cleanliness: how we derive pleasure from making shapes in the grass, watching the patterns being cut away – and how the examination of a “perfection of cleanliness” has evolved into a measurement of social standing. Toward the beginning of the chapter, Teyssot mentions Micheal Pollan’s 1989 article in the New York Times Magazine, entitled “Why Mow?” Pollan uses the story of his father’s refusal to mow his lawn more than once a month as a commentation on society. He says that a notion has evolved in suburbia along the lines of: “mow your lawn or get out.”
The cookie cutter version of perfection available in the front lawns of every middle-class American carries the dual identification of “green desert” for Teyssot. The point where I really got into this work was where Lewis Mumford discussed society’s lawn obsession as the tendency to conform “in every way outward and inward in respect to a common mold.” Teyssot added to this by saying that the lawn acts as a law; it orders control over how one must live in suburbia. There are standards of upkeep. Most relevant to this idea of the social standards of lawn care is the British idea of the “borrowed view” mentioned by Teyssot. The openness of the suburb life (due to the absence/disapproval of fences) encourages neighbors to “watch each other” to a degree that they would not be capable of attaining in cityspaces.
There is a certain “democracy” about an open, inviting lawn that American society has sought to preserve – perhaps for our national consciousness. But there is a sense that one’s lawn is public space: I know my neighbors use my backyard at home to play football all the time. My dad complains when one of our neighbors does not mow his lawn, and many times caves in to performing the task himself. I think the obsession of our open spaces of lawn and the social pressure to maintain the cleanliness of suburban property has a lot to do with the point of control by which I began this response. Although Teyssot provides ample room in his chapter for the opinion that suburban landscape is “fatally monotonous” with monochromatic schemes and an invasion of private spaces, it represents the “American Dream.” There is almost an uncanny notion of “everyone being the same” – everyone being able to watch over one another due to the openness provided by the lawn space. Everyone serves their duty to society by preserving the small piece of “nature” in front of his/her homespace. Perhaps this contributes to the tragedy of the commons when we consider preserving nature spaces outside the vicinity of our home? Perhaps. I am a little creeped out, however, by how accurate Teyssot’s observations are of the American attitude toward lawnspaces.
Questions for Discussion:
1. To what extent does the care for one’s lawn become an art? To what extent do people avoid living in the suburbs because they do not want a lawn to care for? (social pressure etc.)
2. Do you think caring for one’s lawnspace creates a sense of apathy when it comes to trying to preserve nature outside the vicinity of the home?
3. Artists like Walt Whitman and his poem “Leaves of Grass” have elaborated more so on Teyssot’s idea of grass as “democratic” space. Do you agree with this idea? Why/Why not?