Midwestern Gothic

the aesthetic of the sacrifice zone: from Lagos to Kansas

if you like me, or my content, please consider subscribing :)

I wear a metal bird-skull ring. When I look at it, I try to remember that life is fleeting—a memento mori. I collect skulls and skin roadkill (just skinned a raccoon today!) for that same reason.

When I look around Salina Kansas, the suburban decay I see is like a memo mori, an announcement of the death of post-war prosperity and optimism. But unlike a memento mori, there was nothing inevitable about this decay.

The agricultural midwest is a sacrifice zone: an area negatively—and permanently—changed by environmental disaster or economic disinvestment. The scars of sacrifice zones are etched all around the United States, and the world. In Nigeria, these scars are from the environmental devastation of oil exploitation by multinationals like Shell and Exxon. In Cancer Alley, along the Mississippi River, this sacrifice takes the form of high rates of cancer due to the presence of oil refineries and other carcinogenic industries. In Kansas, it is the loss of industry—the closing of the mills and factories, as neoliberal globalism took hold in the late-1900s—that caused the decay. What all of these places and peoples have in common is their poverty, and therefore their disempowerment.

The aesthetic of the sacrifice zone is fascinating. Think Carhartt boots on uncallused feet, The Florida Project, Carnival and Mardi Gras. I recently watched a TikTok from creator Joris Lechêne where he criticizes the appropriation of Carnival in Brazil—not because rich people shouldn’t be allowed to celebrate, but because poor people (predominantly people of color) have to work the festival, and cannot celebrate it, when they originated the tradition. When I attended Jazz Fest in New Orleans, it was sardonically comical to see a bunch of wealthy, white outsiders walk past Black children selling bottled water.