UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations

UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Dystopian Cityscape in Postmodern Literature and Film Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9hc9g65x Author Hicks, Jeffrey Loyl Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE The Dystopian Cityscape in Postmodern Literature and Film A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Jeffrey Loyl Hicks August 2014 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Rob Latham Chairperson Dr. Steven Axelrod Dr. Katherine Kinney Copyright by Jeffrey Loyl Hicks 2014 The Dissertation of Jeffrey Loyl Hicks is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements Portions of Chapter Three of this dissertation were published in Marxism and Urban Culture, edited by Benjamin Fraser. I also wish to acknowledge the contributions of Drs. Steven Axelrod and Katherine Kinney of my dissertation committee. Their guidance helped me to clarify my vision and the scope of my project. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the patience, the experience, and the incredible effort made by my dissertation chair and my friend, Rob Latham. Finally, I have to thank my supportive and understanding wife, Cheryl, for putting up with me during this process and for giving me feedback when I needed it. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Dystopian Cityscape in Postmodern Literature and Film by Jeffrey Loyl Hicks Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, August 2014 Dr. Rob Latham, Chairperson By focusing on what I call the urban dystopia, this dissertation uses cultural, social, and economic histories of urban development to identify the ways in which authors and filmmakers have helped to create our understanding of urban space. In particular, I examine how postmodern literature and film have responded to the forces of late capitalism, especially the explosion of urban populations and the geographic expansion of urban areas, and in the process consider not only those who stand to benefit from this ongoing growth but also those who have suffered the effects of poverty and spatial segregation. My research suggests that dystopian authors and filmmakers used their visions of the city in crisis to challenge our conception of urban space and our place within it. “The Dystopian Cityscape in Postmodern Literature and Film” brings together urban, literary, and film theory to assay the dystopian critique found at the heart of many of the postmodern textual and filmic conceptions of the city. v Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One…………………………………………………………………..………….17 Standing Room Only: Overpopulation and the Urban Imaginary Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………………...56 The Violent City Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………………...121 No Room at the Top: Isolation and Wealth in the Gated City Chapter Four……………………………………………………………………………169 The City of Yesterday, Tomorrow: Neo-Noir and the Illegible City Chapter Five…………………………………………………………………………….214 Coda: Post-Apocalyptic New York, 9/11, and the Case against Gentrification Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….239 vi The Dystopian Cityscape in Postmodern Literature and Film Introduction Mike Davis begins his indispensable study of Los Angeles, City of Quartz, by surveying the intellectual and literary depiction of the city from its founding to the present. Davis suggests that “Los Angeles…has come to play the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism” and that “any late twentieth-century intellectual…must eventually come to take a peep and render some opinion on whether ‘Los Angeles Brings it All Together’ (official slogan), or is, rather, the nightmare at the terminus of American history” (19-20). Davis sees the literary (and filmic) conceptions of Los Angeles as either valorizations or condemnations of the city’s place as one of the centers of American and global development during the period of late capitalism. But as Davis’s focus is on the development and construction of the city itself, he uses this cursory survey of L.A.’s literature as a mere introduction to the more complicated social and cultural battles being fought throughout the history of Los Angeles. This dissertation presents the obverse side of Davis’s work. By focusing on the genre of the urban dystopia, this work makes use of the cultural, social, and economic histories of urban development in order to identify the ways in which authors and filmmakers have helped to create our understanding of urban space. It is my goal to research the spaces where postmodern literature and film have responded to the forces Davis anatomizes: to the explosion of urban populations and the geographic territory of urban areas, considering not only those who suffer the effects of poverty and spatial segregation but also those who stand to benefit from this ongoing growth. From Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles to Martin Scorsese’s New York, authors and filmmakers have been 1 helping us to imagine the cities in which we live and the communities of which we are a part. My research extends this idea by suggesting that the cities of film and literature actually work to define our conception of urban space and our place within it. More specifically, much of the film and literature of the late twentieth century has turned away from the utopian promise of the Disneyesque Tomorrowland present in so much of the science fiction found in the early twentieth century to present the city as instead a place of poverty, crime, and alienation. In this way, the postmodern literature and film that I am using here belongs to a larger history of authors and filmmakers—from Charles Dickens to Fritz Lang—who have undermined the notion of a utopian cityscape by presenting its darker underside. In using the term “dystopian,” I mean to indicate the impulse in postmodern depictions of urban areas to mount a sociopolitical critique of their failings and flaws that takes into account the complex economic realities of late capitalism. As Tom Moylan suggests in his critical study of utopian and dystopian fiction: “Crucial to dystopia’s vision in all its manifestations is this ability to register the impact of an unseen and unexamined social system on the everyday lives of everyday people” (Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia xiii). Although it might be difficult to argue that urban space in the twentieth century was either “unseen” or “unexamined,” the conscious construction and use of urban space by landowners; city, state, and local governments; and city residents themselves has become progressively more complex, necessitating a more nuanced examination of metropolitan areas. One of the main goals of dystopian literature is to identify social, cultural, and political problems affecting nations, communities, and diverse groups of people and then illuminate those problems in the hopes of effecting positive change. Whether coming from a progressive or conservative point of view, the 2 crises depicted in dystopian literature almost always involve an examination of the class divide and of racial formation and segregation found at the heart of any productive evaluation of everyday life. As scholars such as Moylan would most likely point out, dystopian literature is itself an enduring literary genre comprised of its own specific generic qualities, and my project here includes texts that are not usually considered part of that genre. In this dissertation, I am using a more flexible definition of the term dystopia to allow for texts that possess the formal generic conventions of the dystopia, without necessarily being regarded as part of the genre by those working in the field. While Joan Didion’s novel Play it as it Lays (1970) is generally considered a realist text, it displays the same conscious critique of the alienation and distance felt by the upper classes towards the working poor as that found in John Brunner’s overtly dystopian novel Stand on Zanzibar (1968). Because this dissertation makes use of a broader definition of dystopia, I am also able to engage in the ongoing theoretical debate about the boundaries of dystopian literature, thus making my work more relevant to the field. By using the term “cityscape,” I am referring not only to the encompassing physical spaces that comprise metropolitan areas, but also to the complex relationships that are forged among living spaces, work spaces, and leisure spaces and the people who inhabit them. In order to pose a more concrete and specific examination of the construction, conceptions, and utilization of space, I deploy Henri Lefebvre’s articulation of the three loci of spatial production and use in postmodernity. In Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, he labels these forms: Spatial Practice—the places where space as created and put into practice by urban planners, city governments, and landowners are used by those who live within them; Representations of 3 Space—space as first conceived of by urban planners and city officials; and, Spaces of Representation—the use of landmarks, city centers, and meeting places as part of the imagination of those who live within urban areas (38-9). Lefebvre suggests that the forces of capital make conscious use of the first two forms to ensure an initial and continuing control of urban space. In other words, landowners, city governments, and the state use their domination of urban space to control the populations of those who live therein. Lefebvre also asserts that it is in the third form—Spaces of Representation—that we can find places of resistance to the seemingly totalizing conception of urban space created by capital and where authors and filmmakers might find a space to affect or alter what I am referring to as the urban imaginary. We can find the impetus behind the urban dystopia within the spaces of representation, and the texts I analyze seek to spend their creative energies helping to (trans)form these spaces in order to affect the urban imaginary.

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