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  • Against The Los Angeles Auto Aesthetic

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    Stephen Connolly
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    Article about the auto in Los Angeles set fiction films

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    Article about the auto in Los Angeles set fiction films

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    16 vizualizări12 pagini

    Against The Los Angeles Auto Aesthetic

    Încărcat de

    Stephen Connolly
    Article about the auto in Los Angeles set fiction films

    Drepturi de autor:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Descărcați ca PDF sau citiți online pe Scribd
    Indicator pentru conținut neadecvat
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    AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC: UNPACKING THE RACIALIZED DISCOURSE OF THE AUTOMOBILE IN 1980s AND 1990s CINEMA! JUDE DAVIES "Gangs are mainly bused on colors and race,” raps M. C. Shan on the sounderack to Dennis Hopper’ 1988 movie Colors, “i's not everywhere, just in particular pilaces.”* Shan’s words conjure up several ironies, not lease because the track con- teses the violence of LA gang, culeure and its epresencation in ehe then-dominant forms of rap itself. Echoing down from NWA’ 1988 album Straight Outta Compton, and seen clearly in John Singleton’s Boy: N the Hond (1991), an insistence fo the specificity of ee local has been a principal focus for Black culcural produc- erin Los Angeles, for whom specific neighborhoods are locations of authenticity. Yer the commodification of lacatedness through hip-hop culeure has been heavily conditioned by the desires of a.majority white male youth for the vicarious con- sumption of violence and other forms of sexist and homophobic aggression, More particularly, che rap sounderack was related in complex ways to the production and dissemination of Glos In general, along with che LA gang culture portrayed in the film, the soundtrack provided an “authentic” local color backdrop to what ‘was essentially a white-centered police bucldy thriller. But the appearance of the sounderack album itself, presented asa rap compilation and lacking any pictorial AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC nce tothe film, suggested the acknowledgment by Warner Bros records ofa i Black cultural presence largely independent of the film itself, Shan’s rap, attempe to resist the symbolic appropriation of South Central LA neighbor- Is, yet partially circumscribed within their commodification as “gangland,” blematizes how the decade from the late 1980s on was a particularly intense of struggle over Los Angeles and its representations. ‘While ches ironies have wider resonances, they are also specific examples of a ly recognized attribute of Los Angeles—whac might be called the symbolic letermination of che city. Cinema has made a powerful, perhaps. pre- ene contibution to this LA symbolic. From 1940S noir to Chinatown, from Runner to Sirange Days, Los Angeles has been made into a series of “loca 5° in a process whereby historical and spatial specificity are dissolved by subjected co generic conventions such asthe testing of masculinity in mir, abstracted to provide generalizations about the human condition, and increas- ly from che 1970s on, the state of the nation, or “the future.” The resulting bolic overdetermination has become a commonplace for geographers and rural historians of Los Angeles such as Edward W. Soja, Mike Davis, and an M. Klein, summed up by Sojas reference in the se ngrapies to what were, by 1989, already familiar notions; cha ywhere” and "Everywhere seems also to be in Los Angeles Tn Gity of Quartz, Davis suggests several reasons for the intensification of the LA sbolic during the late 1980s and early 1990s: in the arts, the development of a cialized, tokenistic, and largely international official policy of multi- turalism, combined with social and cultural neglect of the inner city; the bivalent growch ofrap asa forceful and prominent cultural medium, yetonein to dominant ideologies of possessive individualism; and che explicit pro- ulgacion of Los Angeles as emblematic ofa national and international fucure ier the sign of postmodernity* This promulgation has been exemplified most oriously by Jean Baudrillard, buc aso, albeie inadvertently, by critics such as ja and Fredric Jameson.’ Hence the particular importance, for leftist critics hn as Davis and Klein, of combacing the erasure or “forgetting,” to use Klein's am, of echaic and classed spaces and histories. Significantly, che work of h Davis and Klein includes che direct recovery of histories previously forgot- fen or unwritcen, and critical interventions on filmic and other representations of a7 | } 218 SCREENING THE CITY Los Angeles, The latter takes on particular force in the early 1990s, when the dominant notion of Los Angeles as an éxemplary totality is made all the mote powerful through its configuration, via the most vulgar of multiculturalisms, as inclusive diversity. Tn this chapter, I want to trace how race and ethnicity are configured in three Les Angeles movies fom these years: firstly, Colors, secondly, a film that mighe be seen almost as its sequel, Joe! Schuracher’s Falling Down (1993); and a third film that is in some ways its antithesis, Devil in a Blue Dress, directed by Carl Franklin and released in 1995. I hope to show how the ways that these films rep- resent race are inseparable from discourses of postmoderaity, gender, and space. Out ofthese overlapping themes, Hollywood depictions ofthe automobile as a symbolic object emerge as a key means of sustaining discourses of Los Angeles as exemplary, and asa significant focus of racialized meaning and contestation over the erasures and exaggerations ofthe cinematic LA. Before looking at these films in more detail, I want to suggest an overview oF the discutsive production of the exemplaity of Los Angeles by reference to one ofits most extreme, but nonetheless symptomatic and influential elaborations, Jean Baucrillar!’s 1986 travelogue, America. In particular ic is worth focusing 6 the ways in which Baudrillard’s use of the automobile a a symbol strate cally engages with and disengages ftom explicit notions of race. Baudrillard cites the automobile in a seemingly neueral or universalist dis- course through most of the book. From its very fist paragraph, car based percep- tion, film, LA, the USA, and the hyperreal are continually associated with one another! “Drive ten chousand miles across America,” according to Baudrillard, “and you will know more about the country than all the institutes of sociology and political science put cogether.” Focusing on Los Angeles itself, he continues. ‘The city was bere before the freeway system, no doubt, but it now looks as hough the ‘metropolis has actually been built around ehis arterial network. Iti the same wich ‘American reality. ¢ was chee before the screen was invented, but everything about the way i is today suggests it was invented wieh the screen in mind, that i is the refraction of giant screen? ‘Through its primary status in relation co the freeway and the cinema screen, com- ‘munications systems seen as taking precedence over “reality,” Los Angeles here is AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC n co exemplify America as hyperreal In passages such as this i isthe car asa pmbolic objece that connects and grounds che cheorization of the hyperreal and {concretization in America, and especially Los Angeles. Later in che book, Bau- ilar reiterates the importance of car transport fr the hyperreality of LA: [No elevaror or subway in Los Angeles... che hyperteal scenario of deserts, freeways, ‘ocean, and sun.” x Baudrillard, Los Angeles is not only a specific space—ic also typifies erica and, in particular, the interpenetration of American actuality and ideal foimage. This exemplary status of the city is generated in a section of America itled “Los Angeles Freeways,” partly eheough Baudrillard’s sense of the ican city as being (especially to the European) inherently cinemati ‘Where isthe cinema? I sal around you outside, all over che city, that marvelous, continuous performance of films and scenarios... cis not che lease of America’s barns thar even outside che movie cheatres the whole councy is cinematic." hile Baudrillard’s discourse here is strikingly generalized, referring to “[elhe rt you pass through” and “[eJhe American ciey,” the suerounding paragraphs firmly locaced in California and especially in Los Angeles.” Hence LA stands ‘meconymically for America as a whole. This sense of the exemplarity of LA is ther grounded by Baudrillard’s juxtaposition of cinematic and car-based per- eption,s0 as 0 suggest homologies between the owe. “This trajectory in America has proved highly suggestive for recent attempts t0 “theorize the relations between the cinema and the city.” The cinematic emerges from this frame asa culcural form embedded in everyday life chrough the simi- Lacities becween the activity of wacching a film and the experience of post- ‘modern urbanicy as being struccured by or analogous to driving. Critics such as David Harvey and Arie Graafland have reiterated the homologies becween driving, the cinematic, and the “time/space compression” considered t0 be indicative of the postmodern. As Graafland has put it, “The speed of driving ‘reates cinematographic effect that many underestimace, The result is loss of sensible referents and a decay of architectonic matkers.”* Buc the textual practices of Baudrillard’s America have rightly been challenged, Elisabeth Mahoney notes the “persistence of metanarratives, objectification and a9 mo SCREENING THE CITY marginalization” within “playful, postmodern text(s),” including America." Else- where John Rundell has argued that Baudrillard’ notion of hyperreality, heavily al dependent as itis on notions of the car and the freeway as paradigmatic s forms, is iselfa “totalizing meta-narative” in which a certain modernism “goes unnoticed.”"” Moreover, in certain parts of America, the apotheosis of car culeure can be seen to collude with, ifnot actually to require, the presence of objectified racialized and gendered others. Consider, for example, Baudrillard’ description ofa group of people he calls the “Black and Puerto Rican women of New York.” Remarking upon their “beauty,” he adds it must be said that black, the pigmencaton ofthe dark races, like a natural make- ‘up that i sec off by he artificial kind co produce a beauty which is not sexual, hue sublime and animal—a beauey which the pale faces so desperately lack. Whiteness seems an extenuation of physical adornment, neutrality which, peehaps by that very token, claims all ehe exoreric powers of che Word, but ultimately will never possess the esoteric and real potency of artifice ‘The overt sexism and racism of these remarks derives direcly from the skewed racial history of modernism. This is compounded by Baudrillard’ reiteration of hitenessas neutrality and blankness, the self-image historically associated with the occupation by white men of the subject positions of viewers and possessor of knowledge and desire. Boch the voyeuristic pleasure and the stable, secure sense ‘of white selfhood evident in this passage are made possible by the positioning of the white viewing subject within the safe, interior space of the automobile. As such, the typology of car-based perception establishes white masculinity as the dominant subjectivity of the hyperrel, while simultaneously disavowing any sense of whiteness asa racial category If car-based perception is in this example implicitly racalized, Baudrillard does acknowledge the racialization of car culture in LA with the infamous comment that “Only immigrants from the Third World are allowed co walk. Ie is, ina sense, their privilege."” The sophisticated irony of this position is only possible ftom a position of power, being in the driving seut as it were, These are some ofthe most powerful bu extreme fantasies of cr culeut; not only vision of the freeways as unhindered flows, without congestion or gridlock, but also a paradise for the (white, male) voyeur. The freeway is never jammed, the gaze is AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC returned, Women, African-Americens, and immigrants are offered up as lar and abstracted models of absolute difference. Reed against che grain ike this, what turns out to be remarkable about Baudrillacd's America is the Kkness with which i acknowledges the interweaving of gendered and racial with visions of hyperreality—'the America of the empty, absolute «dom of the freeways.”® It is only when the freeways are conceived of as pty, expunged of racial difference, chae they can function to reiterate the iyperreal symbolic of America Here and in reference to the “privilege” of walking, America betrays a nostal- ia chat s recognizably modernist. Truly Baudcillad’s ideal driver replicates the steristics ofthe flanur “in an intensified form.” In terms ofits interiority ls ideal driver may be considered co be subject co an intensified version of the nist double-bind, as defined for example by Adorno and Horkheimer in 8 of enlightenment and reification, or pechaps more ditectly in terms of spowerment and alienation: ively white, male and heterosexual subjectivties of dominant modernisms, is (pos:)modernist sense of the dialecrcal nature of the interiorty ofthe ideal iver must be supplemented by a concern with the structural and contingent usions generated by cars as both material and symbolic objects ‘Among others, Marshall Berman, Mike Davis, and Norman Klein have drawn tention ro such material exclusions in the respective contexts of New York and Angeles. For such critics, the costs of the apparene frecdoms conferred by romobile rave! are ro be seen not only in terms of the individual alienation of the driver, buc also in the destruction of city neighborhoods for highway con- Struction, che decay of public transportation systems, the geographical concen- tration of wealth and poverty associated with suburbanization and disinvestment Indownrown areas, anda hos of further environmental problems. What is sug- {ested by this work is a very different modernist sense of the car as a symbolic ‘object, Via Marx, the car appears asa dialectical combination of civilization and barbarism, and against chis cotalizing, fancastical, and implicitly white and ‘masculinized discourse of automobile freedom, historians suchas Berman, Davis, anc Klein assert the specificity of those ethnicized communities erased to make way for the feeway. Pursuing a differenc but complementary trajectory, in the remainder of this lowever, iit is not to remain within the unre ni m SCREENING THE CITY ‘chapter I want, therefore, to examine in more detail the ways in which auromo- biles function in film to produce certain kinds of white and Black masculinity. ‘This examination will ental a process of unmasking the manipulation of racial and gender difference (found more explicitly in Baudrillad), whereby Holly- wwood's presentation of the automobile as an apparently universal symbolic objec is part of a reiteration of the centrality of white middle class masculinity ‘Yee I want to call attention aso to the ways in which the spatial representation of cars and car relations on film can be seen as showing up the fissures, uneven ‘developments, and inequalities of power relations mediated by the automobile, and highlighting the contestation ofthis dominant discourse ofthe car. ‘Throughout the t980s and 1990s, in Hollywood representations of Los Angeles the car was a potent emblem of the positive pole of modernity, a “mobile intimate realm” epitomizing an ideology of masculinized self-sufficiency.® In ‘general, recent Hollywood films have reiterated the radiionally dominant asso- ciations of che ear with mobility both geographical and social, with personal secu- rity and self-falfillment, Like “America” itself, che car in Hollywood movies embodies a fantasy of democratic freedom, self-presence, and control, character- ined, as John Orr bas observed, by "possessive individualism, the open road and the eriumph of the heroic machine In movies set in Los Angeles from Prity Woman (Gatry Marshall, 1990) to Get ‘Shorty (Barey Sonnenfeld, 1996), from the Beverly Hills Cop series (Marcin Brest, +3984; Tony Scott, 1987; John Landis, 1994) to Grand Canyon (Lawrence Kasdan, 1991}, automobiles are framed by dominant and long-standing US discourses of cross-country travel sttongly linked with notions of social mebility, escape, and leisure, Such representations of the automobile connect it self-evidently to sec- ‘rity, glamor, freedom, ancl power, in ways that are so naturalized as co be taken for granted by most audiences. These semiotic links have become so conventional in Hollywood representations of private autos, police cars, and limousines that they are used as the basis for the production offurcher meanings. For example, in the opening minuces of Pretty Woman, the power and status of the Richard Gere character Edward are confirmed by his use of his lawyer's ‘expensive sports car. Yet his inability to control the cat's manual transmission signals a lack in his classed and gendered identity, which in the film is elabo- rated in ewo contexts: Edward's personal relationships, such that previous, AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC ices have failed due to his lack of commitment; and his professional lifeas a ce capitalist. He is, the audience leans later, a corporate raider who [profits from closing down companies rather than producing commodities. The fe with which prostitute Vivian (Julia Roberts) operates the stick-shift is a oken of her good sense, which the film asks audiences to read both in terms of ecality and of morality. By the end of the film this good sense has enabled ness in general, Vivian, meanwhile is rewarded by being able to marry both for and for money, a happy ending achieved in the film's closing scenes which in invoke the automobile as symbolic object. Edward depends upon his feur to find Vivian's flat, but eaves his limousine waiting as he climbs the scape co propose. ‘Thereby Pretty Woman signals Edward's willingness to rgo che enervating, confined security of economic privilege, and to cake the driving seat, as it were, in his personal life Vivian's trajectory, which as Hilary Radner has pointed oat takes the form of negotiacing her way from prostitute to wife, i anticipated in che early scene on set Boulevard, when Vivian talks her way from streetwalker to driver.” As « alker, Vivian/Roberts had been the object of the looks both of the camera nd of Edward as he drove up Sunset Boulevard. However, ic i far From clear the film goes on to grant 10 her the privileges ofthe look associared with the divers position. The sense of Vivian's empowerment, as D. Soyini Madison has gacsted, derives instead from the covert workings of codes of racial identity fivia’s whiteness links her to the Female stars of screwball comedy, and distin- {Buishes her from che largely Black and Latina prostitutes of the teal Sunsec Boulevard. A key figure here, as I have argued elsewhere, is “Skinny Marie," & sereetgirl who atthe beginning of the film is suid to have been murdered and lfc {na dampster.” While the film does not assign racial or ethnic identity co this characte, she occupies the position of che racialized and ethnicized underclass in ‘ontrise co which Vivian is defined. Vivian's whiceness is thus highly symbolic ‘while remaining unspecified and in a sense “invisible.” Blsewhere in Holly wood, and far less frequently, car culcure is associated with modernity in its negative sense, Probably the best example is American Gigulo (Paul Schrader, 1980), in which Richard Gere also starred, where automobile ‘transport, along with designer clothes and interiors, signifies Los Angeles in ns i) m4 SCREENING THE CITY terms of a moral and ethical vacuum. In American Gigolo, the black Mercedes which Gere drives around a bleak LA is an instrument of self-alienation. As John rr has suggested, that Gere is driving a foreign car helps to preserve the domi- nant fantasy of car ownership in American cinema." Ic is in such moments of dlisavowal that the car becomes most visible in terms ofthe interior dialectic of modernist selfhood, signaling both empowerment and alienation ‘As I suggested eatlie, this dialectic of modernity in cae culeure is itself ideo- logical, and can serve to displace a sense ofthe exclusionary practices predicated on the automobile both historically and symbolically. Ie was significant then thae in the late 1980s and 1990s questions of power and exclusion were made visible ina series of films and television spectacles. Dysfunctional or limit-cases of driving-as-autonomy were broadcast nationwide via the video footage taken by George Holliday of the beating of Rodney King (widely shown in 1991-92), the LA uprising (April/May 1992), and the pursuit and arrest of O. J. Simpson in June r994, Each ofthese raised questions of the racial and economic limits of the dominant ideology of car freedoms, or what I have termed the “ideal driver.” For many viewers of these spectacles, the protection offered by the automobile ‘was revealed actually and symbolically as being subjected to power relations based on race and class. Rodney King was, of course, allegedly stopped for motoring offenses, while often-replayed footage from che LA uprising of che ateack on white truck driver Reginald Denny provided a graphic illuseration of the breakdown of law and order where not even the high cab of ehe truck could protect its occupant. Although less important in terms of historical actuality, the much-replayed live television coverage of O. J. Simpson’ fight in his feiend Al Cowling’s white Ford Bronco, and its low-speed pursuit by numerous police cars is pechaps the most complex of these representations. It also garnered the highest viewing figures—some 100 million. On one level, the coverage demonstrated the limits of the procection that can be afforded by the automobile. Here, on nacional tele- vision, was played out the tension between juridical and police power and the freedom of the individual as emblematized by auto-mobility. And for many miles and many minutes of screen time this tension was in fine balance. The forces of law and order, emblematized by at least rwelve police cruisers, pursued ‘Simpson, but for whatever reason were unable or unwilling to penetrate the AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC rior of the Bronco, At the same time, as part of the Simpson episode more rally the incident raised the questions of race and wealth in connection with to privilege and protection from the racially skewed power of the LAPD. tis ence, the television coverage served asa precursor to popula and zacially ced readings of the subsequent murder trial. As such, the Ford Bronco upied che metaphorical position of Simpson's legal defense team, At yer er level, for purely technical reasons the incident enacted some elements of hyperreal. The slow speed of the pursuit made it appear an inferior copy of chases familiar from film represencations, On its action alone, che footage id not be dynamic enough for one of the “eeue life” shows such as Cops or The fills Most Dangerous Car Chases chat it helped to spaven, and which ace now popular chan their fictive councerpars Bat chere was something more going on here than simply a demonstration of ¢ ideological limits oFcar culture. These examples were not just limit cases of inant ideology, but could also be readin terms of an aleernative or councer- nurse whereby cars are represented as emblems of power and cools for trolling limics of exclusion and inclusion, This counter-discourse is articulated ‘much African-American film of the 1980s and t990s, most abviously in the eptesentations of police cas in the films of Spike Lee, Matty Rich, and Mario Van bes, and in Lee's use ofthe video footage of the Rodney King beating in the pening ticles of Maltolm X (1992), presumably co signal che historical con- fnuties of African-American experience, Both dominant and counterdiscourses articulated with racial inflections in gangsta films such as Menace Il Saiety {Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes, 1993), where private cars were presented as ‘embodying economic success and social status, and police cars as the mobile panopticons ofthe state. It is important to bear in mind these multiple and overlapping, though still Ppowerinflected, ideological discourses of che car when considering Colors, Felling Down, and Devil ina Blue Drs. In each of these films & dominant point-of-view, biffered cinematographicaly, strongly resembles, and is frequently identified as, that from a car window. However, due in no small pact to the film grammar of ‘shot and reverse shot, these movies cannot help but also offer a¢ lease a doubled poine of view, whereby the driver is presented in the positions of the viewer and. the viewed. Each ofthese films offers a direce representation ofthe historical Los ns ns SCREENING THE CITY ‘Angeles (ofthe 1980s, 1990s, and 1940s respectively), and each represents the ‘experiential and cultural spaces of LA in connection with both auromobile ccleure and power relations articulated on racial lines.” ‘Against che background of gang conflict in downtown Los Angeles, Colors focuses on the telationship of two white cops, macho authoritarian rookie McGavin (played by Sean Penn), and the more avuncular Hodges (Robert Duvall) who is one year from retirement when the two are partnered at the ‘opening of the film. This scenario re-enacts the abstraction ofthe local associated with classic mir. Puc simply, gangland tension between Crips and Bloods, and the alleys of Watts, become backgrounds to a narrative about the relationship between and resting of different models of blue-collar white masculinity. Hence alors is subject to the criticism Norman Klein makes of classic mir as “essen- tially a mythos about white male panic—the white knight in a cesspool of urban decay."* ‘Yee two related aspects of the film suggest a more complex representation of race and space, In parallel to the Penn/Duvall narrative, Colors was marketed on the back of a notion of authenticity derived fom research in Watts and the fea turing of actual gang-members, together with several scenes dramatizing gang life. Such scenes convinced reviewer Roger Ebert of the film’s represencational value, and even Pauline Kael, who rejected what she regarded as Hopper's ses- theticization of LA gang life, nevertheless classed the film as “muck-raking ‘melodrama.”* However, this espect ofthe film in general, and in particular its misleading depiction of an attack by a Black gang on Chicanos, is excoriated by avis.” More complex than its deployment of gangs for local color were the ‘ways that, as briefly mentioned above, Color also signified itselfas authentic by reference to the localized Black cultural forms of rap and hip-hop. The sound- track featured noc only specially wriccen tracks by artists such as Ice-T’ and Roxanne Shante, but also a version of Eric B. and Rakims seminal "Paid in Full’—probably the archetypal assertion of rap as a politicized take on the history of Black cultural production. However compromised by commodifica- tion, this overlap of gang with gangsta introduces into the racial symbolic ‘economy of Colors a Blackness which derives from cafural production rather than simply location. At the same time, the exclusion from the album of material fea- tured in the film but not performed by African-Americans, emphasizes the AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC espenecration of commercial imperatives with the racial identification of rap a culeural form, Tn some respects, cas function in Colors as a means of negotiating these racial ind gender relations. The film directly invokes associations of the car with wer and the privileged position of che subject of the gaze. For much of its ch, Hodges and McGavin patrol Waccs in a succession of unmarked police getting ouc co make contace with gang members and to cake part in a series ‘aids, during one of which Hodges is eventually killed. Moreover, the opening dle sequence normalizes both the association ofthe car wich the gaze of power id whice racial identity, and the drive's perspective on Los Angeles The ticle sequence takes viewers on a car journey radiating outwards from sal LA, to the sound of Latino band Los Lobes (a song not included on the lusively rap soundtrack CD), The film cuts from the interior of the LAPD leacquarters, (the scene of a pre-credit sequence I will discuss shortly), to an rior shoe of Cicy Hall from a car, which fleetingly suggests the intimidating ight of the Cieadel. Cinematic point-of-view maintains the perspective of vet and/or front-seat passenger as the car exits the Central Business District traverses the run-down areas of downtown, where African-Americans and ino/as are visible as individuals and in groups on the sidewalk. These images interspersed very occasionally with views of MeGavin and Hodges through car windscreen, Significantly, this is nota reverse shot but stands in for one. fiewers ate positioned with che (white) policemen as they gaze ae the (non- bite) pedestrians on the sidewalk, but instead of returning this look cinematic {Poine-of-view switches to the front racher than the side of the cat. ‘The tiles Sequence is concluded by a cut toa wide focus view of the skyscrapers downtown at night, which must be either from a tall building or a helicopter. Although seamless for viewers (and his seamlessness illusrates che mutually sustaining ‘potmitive power of cat-based perception and Hollywood conventions of point- cof-view), chs shift of perspective can also be regarded as the first ofa series of ways in which the film shows up che limits of che power attributed to car-based subjectiviy. ~_Throughouc the film, ther car isa haven of security for McGavin and Hodges, yetthey mast Frequently leave ic and become vulnerable, The space they traverse isalways dif cule—primarily itis the bumpy, dusty alleys of Watts. The pair are nr ne SCREENING THE CITY never shown driving the freeways, but only on these alleys and city streets. Like their contzastive styles of masculinity, linked in the film to notions of community policing (Hodges) and overt aggression (McGavin), che power ofthe car is pre- sented in terms of performativity. And it is exactly the testing of these masculin- ities and the power conferred by the car that forms the narrative interest of the film, displacing toa large extent the dynamics of gang conflce and overt racial difference which, though privileged in terms of the film’s title and sounderack, function largely asa backdrop, The opening pre-tile sequence of Colors begins with a washroom discussion ‘of masculinity, in which Hodges compares contemporary gangbangets invid ‘ously with John Wayne, before McGavin introduces himself jokingly as “Rocky Six.” When the older Hodges sarcastically asks what his job is, McGavin responds, "Tm a guardian of masculinity, man.” This statemene is quickly ionized when the effectiveness of Hodges’ brand of masculinity becomes appar- ent, while McGavin’s aggression only alienates the public. McGavin's aggressive diving occupies a pivoral point in che narrative, linking his own rice of passage into mature and caring masculinity wich the gang strife that provides the film's background. His determined pursuit of gang members in a car driven by @ Latina results not only in ee death ofthe occupants but also in the destruction of che unmarked police ea, The replacement car, a shabby yellow sedan, draws ridicule from their colleagues and results in a temporary loss of prestige. By the end of Cols, car use is repositioned in terms of stasis rather than ‘mobility, in contradistinction co the helicopter. After a raid on a drug-dealer in he middle section ofthe film, a police chopper is shown occupying exactly the position of the powerful subject of the gaze that in the opening tiles sequence had becn identified with a carbased point-of-view: Later, as Hodges lies faally shot, che sound of «helicopter vies to drown out his last words. Most strikingly ofall, atthe instant Hodges dies, McGavin raises his face to the sky and cries out in anger, sorrow, and frustration, and the cinematic point-of-view moves back sharply ¢0 give an aerial view of the death scene, as fom « helicopter, Hodges’ death is followed by a brief coda, in which McGavin is shown imparting the wisdom of his dead colleague to his new partner, rookie African- ‘American. The film proper chen closes with a wordless twenty-five-second shot ‘of McGavin at the wheel. The effect is a somewhat contradictory mixture of AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC 0r and dull professionalism, of submission co the disciplines of police work hile invoking also the Western motifof the cowboy’ fundamental maryinality ‘exteriority co “civilization,” Having looked down on McGavin and the dead ldges from the position ofthe helicopter, viewers are encouraged by these cin- tic conventions co read driving from outside, differentiating themselves mit as driving is fixed as a blue-collar activity which places the cops in prox- ity to the gangs on which chey seck co impose their authority. A second coda of sorts follows during the end titles.” These are interspersed ih stills and very brief shots of downtown street scenes as sen from a ca, asin ie opening rites, but this time alternating with images of an arese of several tican-American and Latino gang members. These are closely cropped, focus- ing in on handcuffs and groups of the arrested until, in the final shor, a wider spective reveals rhe aresting offices, who is Black. As with the final scene of film proper, the effect is ambiguous. Following from that scene, in one sense ls Sequence suggests a trajectory whereby African-Americans are now inhabit- if the position of the ideal driver, a position whose whiteness was taken for anted in the opening ticle sequence. Yee this is tokenistic: chere has been no ‘ountershot ro establish the presence ofthe African-American driver, and audi- ‘ences are enabled to read the driving position in terms of Blackness only reero- spectively and with a ltele effort. 1993's Falling Down in part employs a similar grammar of car and helicopter Color. ‘The opening, and initializing scene is see in a erafc jam. The grid- Tocked highway is just the frst of a series of emblematic images and discourses in the film representing Los Angeles in terms of a highly territorialized and Socially fragmented space (territory is policed by Latino gang members, « golf lub, helicopters, and white police officers, among others) (22). These territories ate traversed by che film's central protagonist D-Fens (named for his car license plate), a sacked defense worker played by Michael Douglas, whose decision to abandon his car in the gridlock noc only inixiates the action but also symbolizes the failure ofthe automobile as modernise idea The opening scene presents automobile dysfunction in both general and spe- cific ways. D-Fens’ lost status is exemplified by his perspiracion, the lack of air Conditioning in his car, and his broken window winder, while the gridlock sug- {ests a more general malaise, This conjunction opens up the car interior to the ny 20 SCREENING THE CITY 22 Joel Schuacher's Fling Down (1993) (Copyright Warner Bros, An AOL-Time Warner Entertainment Company, 1993) penetrating state of gendered, ethnicized, and generational others, most obvi- ‘ously in the form of children on a school bus. Here then the car window no longer functions as both windsren and windshield, and can therefore be read as demon- scrating the racial, gendered, and economic limis of automobile fantasies, a least, for this particular unemployed white male. Falling Down has been widely seen as relating specifically o the development of a new cultural visibility of white mas- culinity in che 1990s." In chis context, the abandonment of che car by D-Fens ‘emblematizes what the film portrays as his exclusion from the economic and social status traditionally associated with whiteness. Is significance is underlined by the helicopter sounds that recue throughout the film, especially noticeable at the close ofthe scene when he abandons his ca, and at later moments of crisis, sig- naling unease and surveillance, a do similar sounds in Boyz N she Had. Like Colors (with which it shares some locations), Falling Down makes a sym- bolic accommodation between white and African-American males. Unlike Color which hardly admits the possibility of police racism, Falling Down, which was ‘made in the wake of the dissemination ofthe Rodney King video, and whose pro- duction was interrupced by the LA uprising, presents the association of African- ‘American and disenfranchised white males as being generated against police AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC ct Ina scene superfluous to the main narrative, D-Fens is associated with an ffican-American protesting against the alleged racism of a bank. Played by Jodie Curtis Hall, che protester is identified in the film’s closing credies as the ot economically viable man,” after the words on a placard he holds. As he is ested and driven away in an LAPD squad car, he exchanges glances with D- ens. His wors, “Don forget me” are heard. A the conclusion ofthe film, when -Fens is involved in a face-off with cop Prendergast (Robert Duvall), he repeats words on the protester’ placard, "I'm not economically viable.” ‘The cerritorialized cy of Falling Down, and its symbolic represencation of car helicopter, is heavily overdetermined by debates over race and gender issues tegratel into its action and extra-textually framing its consumption as a “state of the nation” film. D-Fens’ encounter with the Black protester has been read, for sxample by Liam Kennedy, as appropriating Black history imperialisiclly, Using the protester figure to give extra credibility to white suffering. However, its tepresentation of the LAPD car links it to the counter-discourses described ove.” The complexity of Falling Down in chis respece is thrown into relief by ‘comparison with Grand Canon (Lawrence Kasdan, 1991), which is initiated “With a similar representation of the potential dysfunctionality of the car as mod- frnise symbol. Kasdan's film begins when the Lexus of Mack (Kevin Kline) bres down in Inglewood and he is threatened by Black gang members. Mack is “saved” by an African-American tow-cruck driver played by Danay Glover. Both Grand Canyon and Falling Down explicitly display a conceen with white- ness a5 a raialized identity, in addition o the focus on styles of masculiniey in Gols. This can be seen most clearly by comparing, the characcers played, by Rotere Duvall in Colorsand in Falling Down, Duvall reprises his role as an avun- ‘ula, cating cop due for retirement, only this time the film’ action rakes place ‘on whac is intended to be his last day in the job. But in contrast to Color, the late: film goes out of its way to portray Duvall’s character, Prendergast, as a white officer in a multi-ethnic force, negotiating racial and echnic distinctions, a5 well as gender status, wich his colleagues. While Grand Canyon and Falling Don alike call attention to the importance of reconciling racial difference, Grand Canon keeps faith with modernity, the automobile, and American excep- tlonalism, all of which are employed to realize a heavily symbolic racial accom- modation via a family road crip co the Grand Canyon at its climax. Yee for all BI m SCREENING THE CITY their comparable gestures of racial negotiation and chei different constructions cof whiteness itself, all chree remain whie-centered films. More generally, Falling Down's bid to be taken as a “state of the nation” film also relies on two versions of the exemplarity of Los Angeles. Kennedy persua sively reads the film through the lens of what Mike Davis calls “paranoid spatial ity,” the tertitorialization of space associated with "fortress LA.” At the same time, the narrative sequencing of the film, asa series of discontinuous scenes of conflict, reiterates the decentered, post-urban landscape widely asociated with Los Angeles and car culture—a city of voids and open, empty spaces." Reliant in any case, as Elisabeth Mahoney has shown, on a gendered distinction between publicand private space, Falling Dawn sometimes erases, sometimes rewrites the racial and ethnic specificity of Los Angeles. In compatison with boch Colors and Falling Down, Devil in a Blue Dress makes no claims for topicality (itis set with meticulous detail in the Los Angeles of 1948), but its evocation of the racialized and class-based power of automobile (ownership amounts to a revisionist take on Hollywood traditions of car ownes- ship. Carl Franklin’ film does feature a scene in which a police car functions to maintain white power, as two policemen cruise by abusing the African-American protagonist Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) (23). Bur as an aspirational blue- collar African-American, who has left the South to pursue industrial work in Californie, Easy Rains’ own car is very imporeane to him. The film opens with Rawlins driving home through his suburban neighborhood and the car remains visible in much of the film, largely asa safe haven. These representations place Rawlins firmly in che driving seat, occupying the normative space ofthe driver as exemplified in Colors. Ina scene that deliberately echoes Chinatown and reiverares the logic of Colors, the mobility conferred by the car is potentially dangerous as soon as one steps outside it, Ravlins is actacked by two white police officers just ashe gets out ofthe car in his drive. This danger is also articulated in specifically racialized terms when the car allows Ravlins to cravel to parts of town where his presence ateracts the atention of white racists. During the course of the film, as Ravlins is drawn somewhat unwillingly into the role of private eye, the conver tions of classical Hollywood are reworked around racial difference. At one point, while driving a white woman across town, he wonders to himself atthe danger of being found by the police with her in his ca. (In an ironic twist i is eventually AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMAOLIC 2B Gr! Franklin's Deu in a Blue Dress (15 1995) (Copyright Columbia Pictures Industries Tevealed that the woman, Daphne Monet, played by Jennifer Beales, is actually passing for whice.) Hence, Devil in a Blue Dras engages a dual Black history—che struggle for 1cces 0 postwar suburbia, and the continued threat of legalized white-on-black Violeace outside the South—while ac che same time self-consciously rewriting the mir genre, Another scene cals attention tothe ways in which the ideology of the cr is imbricated within power relations structured by economic power and facial and ethnic identity. Here, while walking home at night from a police station, Rawlins is persuaded to ger into an expensive car. The passenger com- partment is dark, gloomy, and threatenis Weight white man kisses a Latino boy, whom he introduces as “Jésus, my ‘adopted son,” and begins to address Rawlins, Here Franklin effectively reverses the logic set up in the opening scenes. The incerior space of the automobile is white-dominated and threatening, parc ofan over-arching field of power which A middle-aged and rather over- a 24 SCREENING THE CITY Ravens has already experienced at the hands ofthe LA cops. At the same time, the identification ofthe young boy as Latino implies that tobe outside the dom inane ideology of car culture is to be positioned not as “Black” but as “non- white.” In this scene, with both the boy and Ravlins incarcerated against their ‘own interests, the automobile is For them more akin toa mobil jail chan a liber- atory mode of transport. Tn-conclusion, I hope I have suggested some of the ways in which contempo- rary philosophical and cinematic representations of Los Angeles configure race, ‘gender, and class through the automobile as a symbolic object. I have tried to ‘unmask the persistence of modernist subjectivities centered on white masculi ity in the LA symbolic epitomized by Baudrillard’s America, visible in the strare- sic deployment of racidlized and non-racialized descriptions of relations beeween divers and pedestrians. This combined symbolism of LA and the automobile has its analogues in conventions shared by many classical and contemporary Hollywood films. However, | have also pointed co the complexity of cinematic renderings ofcars and Los Angeles inthe late 1980s nd 1990s, In Colors, Falling Dow, and Devil in a Blue Drs instances of the dysfunctionality of the auco- ‘mobile as symbolic objec, and/or of the Limitations of car culture, serve to carry a tange of significances, especially in configuring relations beeween different racial, gendered, and classed positions In both Celor and Falling Down the automobile is presented asa fragile pro- tection for the status of white males, threatened by their dangerous work or the loss of status engendered by unemployment and divorce. While Hoppers film operates within white-centered genre conventions and uses simplistic vision of Black gang violence as context forthe testing of white masculinities, cis racial hierarchy is inverted by the forcefalness of rapthip-hop as the culeural form of urban authenticity. Falling Dow again deploys the magical discourse that pre- sents white masculinity as both specific and universal, but makes explicit, if highly problematic, attempts to identify the condition ofits white male in crisis, with that of African-Americans, “Guardians of masculinity” as Hodges and “McGavin ar, they lack the everyman starus that Schumacher claims for D-Fens both through his whiteness and through the victimhood that he supposedly shares with the Black protester. If Falling Down pivots uncertainly between explicie and implicit discourses of AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES SYMBOLIC ‘ce, Devil in « Blue Dress is doubled in a different way. Franklin's film plays out ‘positive and negative versions of the symbolic aucomobile, exemplified by Rawlins’ own car, on the one hand, and those of the police and white officials, on the other, More obviously than the other films discussed here, Deri! thus shows tp che ambivalence of automobiles as cinematic symbols, as much indices of ‘power as they are instruments of self-fulfliment NOTES 1, Many ofthe ideas chat inform this chapece were intially developed in connection ‘with the collaborative work of the Ghent Urban Studies Team (GUST), in whose ‘edited collection, The Urkam Corton, some of ehem were fst worked out. My thanks are due to GUST, and in particular to Bare Eeckhout, for comments and su- gestions on tharearly draft. Thanks are also due to Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmavrice for eheie helpful and suggestive comments, and to he delegates and hosts atthe Dublin Cinema andthe City Conference (1998), especially James Hay. Finally, Iam grateful ro Russell Whit for frsedrawing my attention wo the continved production of “aucheniciey” under the sign ofthe local i rap culeue, and for sustaining along and feuieful dialogue. 2. M.C.Shan,"A Mind ia Terrible Thing to Waste” (8, Moke, M. Williams), Cad Chillin’ Masic Publishing/Merley Mac Internacional, ASCAP, ftom Cols, Original Morin PctreSoundrack, Warner Bros Records, #25713, 1988. 4. Edward W. Soja, Potnudern Gevgraphies: The Reasrtion of Space in Critical Socal ‘Tinory, London: Vets, 1989, pp. 222-3, Soja uses these phrases co setup a doable problematic for the study of LA. On the one hand, LA is multiply overexposed ‘The city is “everywhere” dhrough “es almost ubiquitous screening of ise asa ec- tangulie dieam machine for the word,” composed

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