Another Three Chapters from Visualizing the City
by Alan Marcus and Dietrich Neumann

Notes made whilst reading further chapters

 
Chapter 8: The City Being Itself? The case of Paris in La Haine
Francois Penz, pp. 143-157

According to Penz, there are different kinds of cities in films:
- Real Cities (on location)
- Reconstructed Cities (in studio)
- Virtual Cities (produced digitally)

Penz himself is only concerned with the first, the Real Cities, in his analysis of La Haine (1995) and how it represents Paris and its suburb Chanteloup-Les-Vignes. The suburb was built in the 1970’s, designed by architect Emile Aillaud in collaboration with artist Fabio Rieti. Because of the large murals on a number of buildings and oversized sculptures scattered about, Penz suggests that Chanteloup-Les-Vignes presents elements of a utopian architectural vision. Rather poignant, since it became the setting for a dystopia both on film and in real life.

La Haine was filmed in full colour, but the final output is in black and white. This was a conscious decision, where the BW effect has been used to transform and unify the film. Colours were deemed distracting and counteracting the director’s vision. Other visual strategies used to explore the concepts of suburb vs. city and express or deny a sense of belonging include:

- depth of field
- focus/blur
- motion
- use of perspective

An important term used is ‘referential space’, whereby a film often is identified from the outset, and rooted both geographically, socially and historically.

Penz concludes the chapter by elaborating on the impact of architecture in film:

“City planners and decision makers can use the moving image to harness the power of cinema to promote an identity. This makes it crucial for designers, architects and planners to be able to understand better the mechanisms through which they, too, can convey their vision of a future city.” (p. 155)

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Chapter 9: Composing London Visually
Robert Tavernor, pp. 159-178

Tavernor analyses how London is designed from a series of viewpoints around and within the city. Ant planning decisions made include assessments of the development’s visual impact on photographically recorded images of London from fixed viewing points. This approach to planning is unique to London, and is incredibly interesting from a cinematic point of view.

He refers to Camillo Sitte and his statement that city planning could, and should, be seen as art and uses this to argue that all urban planning should be considered in the same fashion. Sitte’s principles are also shown to be present in the 2000 By Design document by DETR.

Is determining the future vision of a city based on (selected!) static views really a good thing? As Tavernor points out;

“We experience cities kinetically” (p. 176)

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Chapter 12: Rain in the City
Jill Stoner, pp. 217-236

Stoner presents a critique of filmic and cinematic aspects of the city and discusses the architectural potentials of transparency (film) and motion (cinema). Her essay is a call for fantasy, for producing fantastic images and asking them to enter our urban life. But, the inherent problem of the fantastic is, that once it is realised it can no longer be just that - fantastic. The crucial distinction is whether it is in front or behind our eyes. The point of fantasies, according to Stoner, is not to construct them. But:

“Fantasy serves another purpose – to alert us to what is missing in our cities, without necessarily suggesting its form.” (p. 217)

Stoner goes on to talk about rain at length. To her, rain is ‘blurry and imprecise’. Its formlessness can, even in a city, suggest an absence of architecture, setting free our imagination. Perhaps this blur can hold clues to a redefinition of architecture;

“…it acts both literally and metaphorically as an agent of chaos, of emptiness and of chance, and these three qualities offer liberating alternatives to the current conventions of urban design” (p. 219)

Perhaps the rainy, blurry, imprecise dystopia of Blade Runner can act as a starting point of utopian designs of future cities?

Out on a Limb? Urban Traumas on the West Pacific Rim
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald

Chapter 7 in Visualising the City pp. 127-142
Edited by Alan Marcus and Dietrich Neumann

The 9/11 attacks made a bold statement on the cinematic hierarchy of world cities. The attack on the New York skyline was as taken from one of numerous American disaster films. The Western world reacted strongly, as if home had been hit. Has the sheer number of prominent American disaster films conditioned us to think of New York (or Los Angeles, or any other large American city) as a symbol for the entire Western world?

If it can happen in America, can it happen in Europe too?

The main question Donald asks is why American film involves so much destruction of suburban architecture and of city landmarks. She presents three immediate reasons:

-  The pleasure afforded and curiosity caused by illusions of
    destruction and catastrophe (the same reason we slow down to
    look at road accidents)
-  The advanced skills and technological infrastructure available more
    readily available to filmmakers in America
-  The traditions of slapstick in American film comedy

Donald’s essay makes many references to Mike Davis’ books Ecology of Fear (1999) and Dead Cities (2002) and in turn discuss, analyse and critique parts of his work.
(I keep noticing a pattern of cross referencing between a number of authors and cannot help but wonder how legitimate their writings are if they all keep referring to each other’s work in a closed circle of ‘friends’.)

Davis offers another reason to the question about destruction in American cinema. He speculates that disasters can be read as an allegory of contemporary urban character and despair, that film makers express disintegration and despair in urban communities through visions of destruction (and hope for a new beginning?).

Donald recommends the last chapter of Davis’ Dead Cities. I will try to find it at a later date - hopefully it will be useful.

Returning to the main question, Donald writes that “disaster is not necessarily crucial to the grammar of national cinemas, other than American” (p.130, emphasis added). So, in relation to Davis’ comments about destruction being an indicator of despair, are there any other ways in which cities on film can deal with fear and loathing? Often, the city represents or at least acknowledges the chaos and indeterminacy (both in real life and on film!) through the darkness lurking in the backstreets of the modern idyll where its inhabitants may nor may not consider capitalism as a necessary evil. 

If the city itself represents this uneasy atmosphere, when does it stop? The city does not close or rest, and as Donald point ou, the end of the film is often considered a respite and not a final ‘coming to rest’. The city order is itself based on doubt and uncertainty. Does it ever stop?

The final part of Donald’s essay I want to mention is when she draws reference to Freud’s story about a boy who loves playing a game of disappearance and return. (i.e. throwing his toys away into a messy corner of his room and taking great delight in searching for and eventually finding it) She compares this story to American film cinema, with the victim-self is the saviour, interpreter as well as creator of the event. A kind of self-inflicted critical dystopia.

“In American disaster films, the worst is confirmed, the loss of America, on the grounds that the best must still be possible, the continuation of America.” (p.140)

On a slightly different note, Donald writes about how we learn/write most about American films, much because American cinema has established itself as the international standard for commercial genre films. European cities, when they are mentioned or studied, usually include London, Paris and Berlin (and sometimes Rome). If focusing on an European film for my thesis case study, Upside Down may prove a good contender. Based on the trailer (the film is not yet released) there seem to be a number of parallels to Berlin and East/West Germany. Existing case studies on Berlin cinema would, indeed, be useful.

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Marcus, A. and Neumann, D. (2007) Visualising the City. Abingdon: Routledge.

The VJ of Everyday: Remixing the Urban Visual
Scott Burnham

Chapter 10 in Visualising the City pp.181-196
Edited by Alan Marcus and Dietrich Neumann
(note the Metropolis set design cover image by Erich Kettelhut, Otto Hunte and Karl Vollbrecht. These designs were heavily influenced by Hugh Ferriss. This image also appears on the cover of Annette Kuhn’s Alien Zone II. The edition I have has got an image of the light memorial of the Twin Towers)

In 2005, a conference called ‘Visualising the City’ was held at the University of Manchester. The event brought together some 150 speakers in the space of three days. (Split into groups by subject area – it would have been impossible to hear all of them!)

One of the speakers was Scott Burnham. He describes himself as an ‘urban strategist, creative director and writer, reprogramming our relationship with design and the city’. He has written chapter 10 ‘The VJ of Everyday: Remixing the Urban Visual’ in the book called ‘Visualising the City’. (The book is edited by the chair and a speaker from the Manchester conference – I don’t know if their 2007 book is somehow inspired by the 2005 conference…)

This chapter is a bit farfetched in relation to the rest of my work, but some interesting thoughts came out of it. Burnham writes about a sense of ‘here’ (as in ‘I like it here’ or ‘I live here’) and how this ‘here’ can be very small or rather big. He expresses a personal longing for a big ‘here’ after telling a story about a lady who limits her sense of ‘here’ to her small New York loft apartment.

A sense of belonging, of ‘here’, is about creating a personal relevance within what Burnham calls ‘deeply impersonal urban landscapes’. He speculates that increased urban density increases the desire for personal connectivity. As a result, the definitions of the public/private and legal/illegal blur. (He gives an example where illegal graffiti becomes art when it is accepted/liked/approved by the community)

I wonder if complete disconnection from our immediate (county/city/neighbourhood/street) surroundings could be considered a small scale (or even private?) urban dystopia.

With regard to disconnection, Davies and Parrinder write in their article ‘Part of the Process’:

“Spontaneous social relations are vanishing in the information age as communication becomes restricted to particular areas of consumption: coffee shops, pubs and bars, art galleries and so on.” P.21

Is social isolation part of a developing urban dystopia? And is consumption, previously described as the penultimate utopia (the shopping mall and Disneyland again!) nothing but a restrictive dystopia?

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Marcus, A. and Neumann, D. (2007) Visualising the City. Abingdon: Routledge.

Davies, C. and Parrinder, M. (2006) ‘Part of the Process’, Eye, 59 (Spring): 18-25