Its pure, transparent style, the regime of living it offers to its residents, is equated with the arrogance of wealth and power. In this film, modernist architecture is no longer associated with the innovations of the avant-garde – as it was in the 1920s and 1930s – but with the establishment, the well-heeled, the older generation. The film just described is Antonioni‘s Zabriskie Point(1969) and it provides a good starting point for a discussion of postmodern architecture. These emblems of a materialistic culture epitomize a society gone astray, an instrumentalized world which 1960s’ youth refuses in the name of fundamental rights and natural values. As the highly aesthetic modernist house bursts into flames, it is followed up by further iconoclastic demonstrations: fridges, clothes, all sorts of commodities are blasted into the air. Having understood the full significance of the house and its residents, the woman imagines it being blown up, being dramatically ripped apart by an explosive rejection. Water is not to be treasured for its natural properties but for the business opportunities it opens up, in this case, the construction of a marina, pier and airstrip, and perhaps hotel complexes, so as to turn the place into a marketable resort. Value isonly to be assessed in terms of what can be extracted financially. He reminds his business contact, hesitant about signing a deal with him for the development of a shoreside site, that ‘the price of anything is neither high nor low except in relation to its potential use’.
For her boss, by contrast, value is not something intrinsic in things or people but rather a product of commercial speculation. She exchanges knowing looks with the Native American servants in the house and appears to sense what natural values might be as she gives herself up to a waterfall in the grounds of the house. She can now see through its refined design to its impure preconditions: its slick form, cleverly unobtrusive as it, parasitically clings to the natural surrounding, sums up the exploitation rife in society at large. She arrives at her destination in the middle of the desert, and enters her boss’s house – a splendid modernist oasis, a cantilevered steel frame with strip windows, which perches on the edge of an arid rocky outcrop.
Thanks to this encounter, her eyes are opened as to the capitalist materialism surrounding her the prevalence of consumer culture social inequality and the shady dealings of big business. While motoring across the Californian desert, a young woman encounters a young male student engaged in the militant activities of May 1968.
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