The Joker, Live from the City of Raleigh

 
          Universals take us by surprise. Even I sometimes forget that Gotham is not alone. Hives of activity, of self-declared order and law, exist everywhere, and in every case they deny themselves the truth. Such is the case in New York, in Philadelphia, in Los Angeles, and in the happy little capital city of lovely little North Carolina: Raleigh. If you have been following my correspondence this far, you might have caught onto a few little things already. New agents, new ideas, big bad mailmen just begging to be chased by mad dogs… I need a new project to wet my tongue while the police bar Gotham against me. It’ll be a short vacation, I’m sure. They will forget me—oh, humans are sure to forget—but until then, I ask you, why not have a little fun? And so here we are, at the moment when I introduce to you my delightful friend the city of Raleigh. How complacent it seems, how content in its suburban norms, its happy statuses, its normalities! John and Jane going about their business in the Research Triangle Park, sitting for hours in traffic on I-540—my associates suppose that the people deserve this injection of chaos. But I mustn’t give the whole story away at once! Where’s the fun in that?

Consider Raleigh’s history. I think Joe A. Mobley puts it best in his delightful read Raleigh, North Carolina: a Brief History, a book filled with his perception of the great whys of the city. The order behind the development, behind almost everything major that has happened to Raleigh in all its days: it’s all here in his indispensable estimation. He takes phenomena and, like we all do, reassures himself with explanations, with false rules and trends that make us feel that we have accounted for our lives and our safety. Incredible specimen! In Chapter Six: Raleigh Comes of Age, you’ll see, he argues that Raleigh has undergone incredible growth because of its citizens’ commitment “to establishing and maintaining the best life possible for all the inhabitants” (171).

It’s funny, really. Mobley spends the beginning of the chapter rattling off a list of the city’s major illusions, clinging to them in the natural disposition towards false hope. Why has Raleigh grown? New homes, rising construction industries, idyllic suburbs, shopping malls, he says. J. W. York and R. A. Bryan build Cameron Village in 1954! He mentions Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills, South Glenwood, and we are just giddy with pride and self-satisfaction. College basketball! College football! The Progress Energy Center and Walnut Creek Amphitheatre! He thinks of these things as emblems of the supremacy of human control and happy dominance over the state of their lives; as for me, I see them all as one great game.

           Even Mobley, the sweetheart, must admit that his order isn’t all just milk and honey. The city, as he discusses, resisted the deletion of its own inner divisions; it persisted in denying sections of its own citizens coverage under their system of ostensible justice. As he discusses racial segregation in the city, Mobley cannot reframe Raleigh’s insistence on an unfair order. He mentions Brown v. Board of Education and the state’s Pearsall Plan, but, unable to reconcile the paradox in his perception of the established organization, concludes without giving indication that the city redeemed itself for undermining the former and furthering the latter. In his misguided attempt at objectivity, Mobley must acknowledge, too, the city’s other problems, which he blankly states in all their multiplicity. Air pollution, crime, filth, poverty, traffic—each one of these, it seems, is just another part of the plan.

And since Mobley ends by calling to mind the problems that Raleigh will face in the coming decades, I think I will add another to the list. It’s funny, in that way that really gets you when you least expect it. The barbarities that the natural world will inflict upon itself are not terribly different from the self-inflicted evils of our precious human world. John and Jane think that they are safe sitting alone in their little suburban home in the cozy heart of quiet little Raleigh, but soon they will see the truth of the matter. And oh, will it be hilarious.

Mobley, Joe A. Raleigh, North Carolina: a Brief History. New York: The History Press, 2009. Print.