Knoxville is playing host to the world

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 12

Knoxville is playing host to the world

From “The Economist,” London

J. Edgar Hoover used to tell wayward F. 8.1. agents that his displeasure could result in their being sent to Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville is not that bad. In fact it is a pleasant city, close to the fine countryside of eastern Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. With a bit of cheek the city fathers are “playing host to the world" this year with the 1982 World’s Fair.

World’s Fairs used to be reserved for the great metropolitan’ centres. But since Spokane, Washington, managed to hold one successfully in 1974. second-division cities have been looked on with favour by the Bureau of International Expositions, the Paris-based outfit that licenses these jamborees of trade and folk novelties. Knoxville’s businessmen have ’selected energy as the theme, for 1982. The Federal Government has been snooty about Knoxville’s initiative- and many doubted that it' would all be organised on time; When President Reagan opened the fair on May Day there were still hundreds of carpenters and engineers sweating to complete their projects. The managers boast that the whole enterprise has been financed privately, although more than 51000 M worth of taxpayers’ money from 25 nations has been spent on the pavilions and exhibitions: Uncle Sam has spent $225M rebuilding the interstate highway system around the city, eliminating

"malfunction junction,'' one ot the most accident-prone intersections in the country. Downtown Knoxville has been entirely revived and the city hopes to enjoy the afterglow of the fair into the future.: The official theme means that government agencies have felt obliged to show off their latest energy ; technology — from windmills to sea platforms, from wave-power apparatus to wood-burning stoves. • But the organisers have had the sense to guess' the forecasted 11M visitors will prefer less serious shows.'Thus the event is partly a trade fair, but more a sort of Disneyland. Federal Express, which is based in Memphis, at the other end of Tennessee, is putting on what it claims is the world’s best laser show.

Hungary has Rubik’s cube as the centre-piece of its pavilion. Those countries with few modern marvels to boast of are exhibiting remnants of their past. The Peruvians have Inca memorabilia and the Chinese a whole chunk of the Great Wall. Egyptian mummies add a macabre interest. *

The tension between the futuristic and the antiquarian is repeated in the architecture. The old. Nashville and. Louisville- station and pre-civil war buildings have been lovingly restored next to science-fiction energy-efficient structures. The health pavilion offers all the latest gadgets and news of the latest diseases and cures. Computerised health profiles will help visitors worry about hy-

pertension, hair loss, hearing loss and marital infidelity. For those who can take in only so much technology, the folklike festival will, surely prove a boon with all things Appalachian: fiddling contests,, square dancing, dulcimers, clog dancing, quilting, horse-shoeing and so on.

- Knoxville owes much of its prosperity, to tax dollars. It is surrounded by the Tennessee Valley. Authority’s hydro works and the Oak Ridge nuclear research plant is nearby. But for all the temples to the spirit of mercantilism •of each national pavilion, Knoxville is. really celebrating its own confident Rotarian capitalism. It looks like being fun.