Lighting That's Class-y (This Is Not About Dreamgirls)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Arco floor lamp, designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in 1962, manufactured by Flos and currently appearing in Dreamgirls, the movie.

That's right, I said it. Dreamgirls.

Set designers and dressers love the Arco floor lamp – especially when they're designing bourgie pads. Why? Well, because the Arco floor lamp is one of those design objects that communicates much more than just the graceful relationship between form, material, and function - it has come to signify a social standing, a particular class of consuming citizen.

Last night, I watched Dreamgirls (again) and loved every second of it (I would like to believe that I reject the stereotype of gay men who love musicals, but sometimes you just gotta sing!). This time around, I noticed that the Arco floor lamp makes an appearance in the scene in which Beyonce and Jamie Foxx argue in their nice, big, white (!) house. There it was, prominently placed among other "designy" furniture, the white vertical marble base of the lamp offset by the curving metal that springs from it. Why, I thought, was this an important design addition to the set of Dreamgirls?
1) The lamp communicates a certain kind of whiteness (or for $555 extra dollars a certain kind of blackness). The point is driven by the use of white marble, a material that resonates with the (literal) foundations of Imperial Rome, long held as the birthplace of Western Civvy. It is a historically charged material, and an expensive one too! It is interesting and completely intentional that Foxx and Beyonce's new digs are an almost monochromatic white (relating to the meteoric rise of the Dreamgirls and their attempts to please/pose/produce for a white consuming public - which is not cool with Beyonce). The artist Faith Ringgold at one point vowed to get rid of the color white in her painting practice because she said it stole all the light. It's physically true! All the more interesting that the object, itself, is a light. The white house (from Dreamgirls to Washington D.C.) is the pinnacle of achievement, the realization of distinctly American class fantasies.

2) The lamp communicates wealth. All I really need to do to support this is to guide you to the current price of an Arco floor lamp listed on the Design "Within Reach" website. For a mere $2,500, this floor lamp could be yours!

Race and class are entirely dependent upon one another here. Look for the Arco floor lamp to show up on TV, in film, and in advertisements - I have seen it numerous times, all within similar settings meant to promote wealth and whiteness.

As a postscript:

It's interesting that no one seems to be able to talk about class and race in regard to design. Instead, oftentimes, we are meant to believe that design can only be boiled down to a formalist experience. We are encouraged by designers, writers, and retail establishments to curtail our analytical minds in favor of the "see it, want it, get it" mentality.

From this poor grad student's perspective, it's painfully apparent. Disagree? There's always room for comments below!