This mentally super-sized Midwest is further present in the statistical use of its people and cities as the American standard “average.” The substitution of a Midwesterner for the typical American is an important tool in culture industries and in measuring the progress and prosperity of America. Everytown, USA is certainly located there. “Will it play in Peoria?” (referring to Peoria, IL) is a saying that is used to evaluate the appeal of a product in mainstream America. 3 At some point it was established that Peoria possessed the broad range of demographic and psychographic attributes of the most typical American consumer market. Even today, Peoria is still the test market capital and cultural yardstick of the United States. Boundary pushing comedians like Sam Kinison and bands like Metallica or Bob Dylan often begin their tours there to practice and perfect their performances. If a routine is too outlandish for Peoria, it will most likely make the rest of the country uncomfortable as well. As such, the Midwest exports a middle point of view. Like sandpaper, it helps to shape culture without producing it directly. As a testing ground, its grit and contact yields more polished results. Even the speech patterns of US television news anchors, designed to appeal to the broadest audience possible, all use what is typically considered a generalized Midwestern accent. However, the ability of the Midwest to represent the ordinary is also a main ingredient in the recipe for its dismissal. Characteristics that pass for average often go unnoticed or are assumed to lack any specific qualities of their own. Newscasters aren’t perceived to have an
accent and when they pronounce the words Don and dawn alike, it seems “normal.” From above, the “flyover states” moniker references the monotony of this particular leg of a journey on an airplane between coasts. Beyond the undifferentiated terrain, the term also connotes the perceived lack of other “qualities” in this region, mostly referring to cultural identity and production. When viewed from this direction - rendered from the outside - it appears like a sponge that merely absorbs, enduring as no more than a product of its surroundings. It continues to accommodate the average consumer, but certainly not the typical producer and its composition includes an amalgam of imports from the coasts. This struggle with identity and the Midwestern landscape come together curiously in the writing of ecstatic realist author David Foster Wallace. In particular, in his first novel, The Broom of the System, the theme of identity is a plotline of both the characters and of the Midwestern settings themselves. Lenore, the main character, is merely the accumulation of other’s expectations that are projected upon her. She is ultimately like the broom who’s “meaning is nothing more or less than its function.” The broom is sometimes valued for its ability to sweep, where the bristles form its identity. Conversely, it is also sometimes used to break a window and the handle is “clearly the fundamental essence of the broom.” This question is further solidified when Gramma Lenore is in the nursing home and suffers a “perceived loss of identity without function.” Identity is defined as merely the use value it contains at any given time. 70