Chapter 6

Opening sequence exercise – film:
               
View two contrasting films which examine city life in different ways, such as Taxi Driver and Saturday Night Fever, and think about some or all of the following questions.

  • How are the central characters introduced to the audience and what kinds of impressions do they create? How is this conveyed to us? Look at body language, relations with others, the way the camera surveys the people.
  • How do they interconnect with their environment? Do they seem confident, at home, relaxed etc., or is there evidence of other relations – if so, what, and again how is this conveyed to the audience?
  • Where is the camera, and at what angles does it address its subjects? Does this affect how we respond to them, and how we respond to the city (remind yourself of de Certeau’s comments on how we see the city)?
  • Soundtrack is significant in each sequence, but they can be very different. Describe them both and say how they are related to the mood being established and the way we are responding to place and character.  
  • How is the city being conveyed here, both through the visual messages and through the script and soundtrack?

Literary analysis – Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893):

  • Chapter 2 – Before Maggie is introduced, Crane conveys a strong sense of environment to us. How does he do this and what impression does it create of the city and its effects? Be specific in your attention to the language Crane uses to describe the place, as his words are chosen very deliberately to create certain precise connotations for the reader.
  • Chapter 6 – How is the bar a representative place in the city? Crane uses repeated patterns of language to establish the impres­sion of the bar as a particular type of place, which in the mode of Naturalism that Crane employs influences and shapes the people who occupy that space. What are these patterns, how do they work and how do they relate to the paragraph that describes the fragments of food etc. all around the room?
  • How do films such as Crash (2005), L.A. Story, Boyz n the Hood and The Exiles represent Los Angeles?
  • Research the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, the Columbian Exposition and comment on their significance for the ways in which cities were seen at the time and into the future. Alan Trachtenberg’s The Incorporation of America (1982: Chapter 7) is a good starting point.
  • Connect this chapter with those on ethnicity and African Americans and discuss the relationship between the city and ethnic experience. You might read about the Harlem Renaissance, the Autobiography of Malcolm X (1968), Ann Petry’s The Street (1986) or Hispanic texts such as Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984) or Caramelo (2002).
  • Analyse an episode of CSI for what it tells us about the city of Las Vegas, its values and attitudes, and how these contrast with the actions of the investigators.
  • Read Waldie’s Holy Land and think about the ways it represents the suburbs as a series of overlapping stories. Comment on the style of the book and its different ‘voices’.
  • Explore the American Routes special edition on Los Angeles: Soundtrack for the Angels. In particular listen to the Cambodian-born rapper praCh Ly from Long Beach (adjacent to Waldie’s Lakewood). The variety of music examined here shows the mixed economy of music in a city like LA.