The Aesthetics of Concealment: Weegee in the Movie Theater (1943-1950)

By DianaRamirez Jasso

Bachelorof Architecture InstitutoTecnol6gico y de EstudiosSuperiores de Occidente Tlaquepaque, Mexico, 1999

Submittedto the Departmentof Architecture in Partial Fulfillmentof the Requirementsfor the Degreeof Master of Sciencein ArchitectureStudies at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology September2002

Signatureof Author Diana RamirezJasso, Department of Architecture,August 8, 2002

Certifiedby Professor Mark Jarzbmbek, AssociateProfessor of Historyand Architecture, Thesis Supervisor

ProfessorErika Naginski,Assistant professor of the Historyof Art, ThesisSupervisor

Acceptedby Professor Julia Beinart,ProfeqforbPArchitecture , Chair, Committeeon GraduateStudents

Copyright2002 Diana Ramirez Jasso.All Rights Reserved. The authorhereby grants to MITpermission to reproduceand to distributepublicly paper and electronic copies of this thesisdocument in whole or in part. ACHUSETTSiNSTITUTE

OFTECHNOLOGY

LIBRARIES 2 Reader

ProfessorGiuliana Bruno Professorof Visualand Environmental Studies HarvardUniversity

3 4 TheAesthetics of Concealment: Weegee in the MovieTheater (1943-1950)

By Diana RamirezJasso

Submittedto theDepartment of Architecture in PartialFulfillment of the Requirementsfor the Degreeof Masterof Sciencein ArchitectureStudies

Abstract

Between1941 and 1945,movie theaters in the UnitedStates enjoyed a periodof intenseactivity marked by record levels of attendance.Film scholarshave explained this phenomenonby referring to the fascinationexerted by "escapist" Hollywood films, whicheither idealized or completelynegated the harsheconomic and socialconditions brought about by the outbreakof WorldWar 11.However, American photographer Arthur Fellig "Weegee" produced between 1943 and 1950 a seriesof photographs that reveala morecomplex reality of moviegoing. Using infrared film andan invisibleflash to cut throughthe almostcomplete darknessof thetheater, his pictures reveal a peculiarfunction of the moviehouse at a specificmoment in the historyof the United States.By analyzing these photographs in the contextof othersources of informationsuch as posters,newspapers and magazine articlesof the time,the darkand permissive interior of the movietheater emerges as an effectiverefuge from theviolent forms of visualinteraction that were established in publicspace as a consequenceof wartimethreats over American territory. Thus, at the time theyserve as a startingpoint to recovera forgottenmoment in the urbanhistory of the UnitedStates, the imagesprompt a reevaluationof the spatialconditions of the movietheater itself-a site for publicinteraction that, interestingly,fosters unique formsof privacyand intimate exchange.

ThesisSupervisors:

MarkJarzombek Title: AssociateProfessor of Historyand Architecture ErikaNaginski Title: Assistant Professorof the Historyof Art 6 TheAesthetics of Concealment: Weegeein the Movie Theater(1943-1950) 8 I wouldlike todedicate this workto Luis andto our baby,about to be born, for beingmy most loyal, generous and lovingcompanions throughout the writing of thisthesis; andto mybrother, Miguel, who sprinkledwith laughter the final daysof this process. 10 Acknowledgements

I wouldlike to expressmy deepestgratitude to ProfessorMark Jarzombek, whose piercing insights always openedup newways of lookingat things,and to ProfessorErika Naginski, who passionatelysupported my every initiativeand who sharedher brightnessby leading me to placesand ideasshe secretlyset up for meto discover.I would also like to thank ProfessorsGiuliana Bruno and ArindamDutta, for helpingme polish my work through compellingdiscussions; to the InternationalCenter of Photography,for givingme access to thevaluable material they hold as part of the Weegeearchive; and to the MexicanCouncil for Scienceand Technology,for sponsoringand endorsingthis project.Thanks also to my friends,Dan, Gustavo, Rohit, Ruth and Winnie,whose company over the lastfew monthswas an importantsource of energyand inspiration. 12 Contents

Abstract,5 Acknowledgements,11

Introduction:Reinventing Spectatorship, 15

1. Fromthe Streetto the MovieTheater, 29 Spectatorsof Death Sleepersand Loversat the Movies

2. The Visual Politicsof War, 51 War and Cinema Darknessand Vertical Visuality VisualViolence at StreetLevel

3. Theater as Shelter,73

Conclusion,85

Notes,91 Illustrations,97 Bibliography,175 Sourcesof illustration,187 14 Introduction: ReinventingSpectatorship

Despitethe particularitiesof its formsand functions,the physicalspace of the movie theater has rarelybeen addressedas an architecturalsite in its own right. Only until fairly recentlyhave a smallnumber of scholarsbegun to delveinto the architecturalforms and spatial qualitiesof the moviehouse, and to exploreits role in the phenomenonof film reception'.The generalizedomission of the moviehouse as containerand producerof the spatialbackground for film viewingseems to havebeen inherited. The seminaltheories of film establishedin the late nineteenfifties to seventiestraditionally neglected the materialand spatialqualities of the theaterwhen attempting to explainthe "cinemasituation". In this context,the moviehouse was oftenconstrued as a "blank"space for interpretation;as a blackbox unrelatedto the "real"world of the urbanfabric whose main function lay in its capacityto negateits own physicalreality in favorof thefantasized spaces and situations projected on thescreen. Most of theseanalyses of the cinematicexperience, that is, privilegedthe film as the main,and eventhe only,sphere of perceptionfor those audiences assembled in the spaceof thetheater. Not surprisingly, for these film theorists,one of the essentialpleasures of goingto the movieslay preciselyin the fact that the subject'svoyeuristic experience opened up the possibilityof transcendingthe actual, physical spaceand time of the movietheater in orderto inhabitthe imaginaryrealm of the film. For example,in the late nineteenfifties, Andre Bazinnoted that one of the mostimportant elementsin the experienceof film wasthe suspension ofthe spectator'sexistence in the world throughexperiencing the virtual spacesprovided by the screen, where"there is nothingto preventus from identifying ourselvesin imagination with the moving worldbefore us, which becomesthe world."2 Later, in the mid-seventies,Christian Metz prioritizedthe spatial experienceof film overthe "here" and "now"of the theaterto the pointof arguingthat cinema requires"a silent, motionlessspectator, a vacantspectator, constantly in a sub-motorand hyper-perceptivestate, a spectatorat once alienatedand happy,acrobatically hooked up to himselfby the invisiblethread of sight."3 Thus,for Metz,the physicalspace of the moviehouse servedmerely as a containerfor the vacant,that is to say,uninhabited bodies left behindby the spectatorsduring their intellectualand emotionalwanderings into filmicspace. The dramatic splitbetween body and mindexperienced by film viewers was expressed, according to Metz,as a violentdisjunction between their visual perception and their physical reality. After asserting the spectators'unavoidable disengagement from their own space and time, Metz went on to comparethem withfish who "[take]in everythingwith their eyes,nothing with their bodies."4 Thus,the experienceof film describedby both Bazin andMetz became essentially that ofan isolatedindividual whose immediatebodily perceptionwas abrogatedin favor of a visual experiencethat managedto standin for theworld. This approach, followed and reinforcedlater byother film scholars,established a broaderdiscursive context within film studies that reliedon the figureof a passivesubject who enteredthe movietheater prepared to put life on holdas he or she wastaken into an alteredphenomenological state. The mainstreaminterpretation of the spectatorbecame, in short,that of a transfixedand vacuousindividual who was incapableof escapingthe authoritativepower of the image. Nevertheless,such a modelof spectatorshipwas not exclusiveto filmicdiscourse. The spectatorassumed by such film theories elaborated, more to the point,an understandingof the metropolitansubject that emergedin the late nineteenthcentury within the contextof early critiquesof modernity.In a time whencinema was yet to makeits appearancein the public sphereof the modernworld, early sociologists, confronted by radically new forms of production, transportation,and entertainment,diagnosed an overwhelmingincrease in the perceptual demandsthat the cityimposed on its dwellers.Take Georg Simmel who, in a quotethat closely describedthe perceptualmechanisms of film viewing,denounced, in 1903,the aggressive featuresof metropolitanlife. For him, life in the city,with its "rapidcrowding of changingimages, the sharpdiscontinuity in the graspof a singleglance and the unexpectednessof onrushing impressions,"had its mostsignificant effect in a criticalerosion of subjectivity5."A[metropolitan] life in boundlesspursuit of pleasure,"Simmel claimed, "makes oneblase because it agitatesthe nervesto theirstrongest reactivity for sucha longtime that theyfinally cease to reactat all."6 It is notcoincidentally thatSimmel referred to "images","glances", and "onrushing impressions"- it was,in his view,specifically an excessof visualstimuli in the moderncity that producedsuch a radicaltransformation in the urbanpolitics of humaninteraction. Walter Benjamin, who later elaboratedon Simmel'sdiagnosis of the emergingmodes of visualstimulation in the modern city-although with a more positiveassessment of their effect on modernlife-cited an interestingpassage by Simmel where the latter explained the sourceof this perceptualincrease:

The interpersonalrelationships of peoplein bigcities are characterized by a markedly greateremphasis on theuse of the eyesthan that of theears. This can be attributed chieflyto the institutionof publicconveyances. Before buses, railroads, and streetcars becamefully establishedduring the nineteenthcentury, people were never put in a positionof havingto stareat oneanother for minutesor evenhours on endwithout exchanginga word.

Thus,construed as spectatorevenbefore the adventof cinema,the metropolitansubject enteredthe discourseof modernityas an unconcernedmember of the crowd,unable to react even to the most dramaticevents and incapableof critical receptionor meaningfulsocial intercourse.This interpretation-which has by now become mainstream-continued to influence theoriesnot only of film butof modernismand massculture throughout the twentieth century. By 1967,for example,Guy Debord,the famous leaderof the Situationistmovement, was still denouncingthe "trancelikebehavior" produced by a capitalistworld that presenteditself essentiallyin the form of spectacle-spectaclethat lured the urban subject into passive 8 acceptanceof the rulingeconomic order by over-stimulating the visual field of the city.Sight,he argued,is the "mosteasily deceived" of the senses. Notsurprisingly, the disenchantedassessment of the transformationof thefield of vision at the handsof modernityalso left its imprintin the sphere of art. Here, the depictionof audiencesoften followedthe modelestablished by these theoreticalinterpretations. When Simmelwas busy diagnosingan erosionof subjectivityin the metropolitancrowd, Georges Seuratwas working to depict circus audiencesas a monolithicmass of hyper-passive spectators.Cirque (1890-91), his last majorpainting, presents the viewerwith a strongspatial polaritybetween audience and performance.On the one hand,the circusring is presentedas an energeticsphere of movementwhere the flexible bodiesof animalsand performersare allowedto moveabout and pushtheir corporalexpression to the limit.On the otherhand, the audienceis depictedin the backgroundas a series of undetailedand extremelypassive spectatorswho, devoidof facial expressionsand dividedin sectionsby class,observe the spectaclefrom behindthe railsthat confinetheir bodies (fig. 1). The contrastposited between thosewho performand thosewho watch is all the more strikingif we considerthat the only movementthat can be perceivedbeyond the limits of the ring is that of anotherset of performers:a group of musiciansin the upper right corner of the canvaswhose tunes accompany theshow. Seurat seemsto suggest,as did the theoretical constructionsthat paralleledhis work, that the essence ofmodern forms of spectaclelay in the encounterbetween a group of hyperactiveagents of creationand a hyper-passivemass of uncriticalimage consumers.After Seurat, the representationaldiscourse remained widely unquestionedand eventuallycame to permeateother media. Sixty yearsafter Cirque, J. R. Eyermanproduced in photographyone of the mostwidely-distributed and exploited icons of thisrhetoric: the imageof an extremelyuniform and static movie audiencewearing 3-D glasses, publishedin Life magazinein 1952(fig 2). Hence,following the modelof the earlyblase metropolitan dweller assailed by visual stimulion the street, thefilm spectatorsimilarly came to be construedas an unimpressionable "automaton"who passivelysat in the movietheater, yielding to the hypnoticpower of moving images.Thus, the traditionalunderstanding of film receptionthat has remaineda point of referenceto the workof many filmtheorists to ourday is anchoredin a viewof modernforms of urbanvisuality that renderedthe subject incapableof escapinga manipulativepower that lay at the centerof the image.Of course,a numberof contemporarycritics have contestedearlier theoriesof the gazesuch as Metz's,by reinterpreting the spectator'svisual absorption not as a merelyhypnotic state but as a completeemotional, intellectual and evenphysical engagement withthe film. However,one mightargue that evenin these critiquesof the mainstreammodel, the spatialconditions of the moviehouse itself have continued to be neglectedby their failure to acknowledgethe way in whichthe theater as a physicalentity configures a spacewhose functiontranscends the fleetingreality of film viewing.It seems,more to the point,that many contemporarytheories of film receptionassume the theater'sarchitectural layout as an extremelyefficient disciplinaryarrangement: rows of stationaryindividual seats usually separatedby armrests and facingnothing but a screenplaced at thecenter of thefield of vision, markingthe existenceof two interactingspheres: a centralfocus where the filmic illusionis presented,and an ordered,restrictive space that ensuresthe attentivenessof immobile,uniform bodies.In otherwords, the traditionaldiscourse of film receptionalmost strictly adheres to an idea of the movietheater understood exclusively as a "theatron,"that is to say, as a place"to watch."It veryrarely allows space for the considerationof formsof physicalactivity that escape the unifyingpower of the screen.Aside from a few valuableexamples, scholars have still to delveinto the complexenvironment of the occupiedand operatingmovie theater with its noises, movement,smells, and darkness.They havestill to acknowledgethat the theaterfosters not only forms of attentivereception, but also different forms of idlenessand leisure, play, consumptionand erotic exchangein the almost complete absence of light that its architecture provides. An interestingexception to this generalized neglect,the work of Giuliana Bruno, in an insightful analysis of cinema going in Naples in the early decades of the twentieth century, points outthe important role of this neutralizationof visibilityand identity through thetheater's darkness and posits it as complementing thevisual pleasuresof film reception.Citing a quote by Charles Baudelaire,she notes the similarities between the film spectator and the f/sneur, whom Baudelairedescribed as follows:

Forthe perfectflaneur, for the passionatespectator, it is an immensejoy to setup house in the heartof the multitude...To be away fromhome and yet to feeloneself everywhere at home;to seethe world, tobe at thecenter of the world,and yet to remain hiddenfrom the world-suchare a few of the slightestpleasures of thoseindependent, passionate, impartial natures... The spectator is a prince who everywhererejoices in his incognito...He is an "I" with an insatiable appetitefor the "non-I,"at every instant renderingand explaining it in picturesmore living than life itself,which is alwaysunstable andfugitive. 10

To the pleasure of the spectator'sown invisibility,which Bruno emphasizesover the mere experienceof what is "visible"on the screen,she further underscorestwo particularroles of the theater's darkness in the early modernity of Naples: on the one hand,it concealed the creatures of the underworld-"beggars, pimps, street urchins, idlers"-from the eyes of the socialelite of Napleswho wandered its elegant arcades; and on the otherhand, it createdof an eroticallycharged and protectedenvironment in whichwomen felt free to experimentdifferent formsof transgressivespatial practices." However,beyond Bruno's acknowledgement of darknessas a crucialelement in the generalexperience of moviegoing, we will exploreits transcendencein a specificperiod in the historyof the UnitedStates, particularly in relationto theway inwhich exterior public space was experiencedat the time,and througha seriesof photographicdocuments produced between 1943and 1950.Five decadesbefore scholars recognized the alternativepractices that take place in the movietheater, and while surroundedstill by the dominantdiscourse of the transfixed,hypnotized film viewer, American photographer Arthur Fellig "Weegee" 12 produceda seriesof photographsthat presenta complexinterpretation of the spacein whichaudiences find themselvesand which they themselves create. Emerging from the fissures of a pessimisticview of mass culture,and problematizingthis interpretation,Weegee offers a radicallydifferent portrayalof the film spectator.Exploring the intrinsiccontradictions of filmic pleasure,he capturedhis subjectsusing infrared film and invisibleflash amid the darkenedmovie palaces of New York. His picturesreclaimed the experienceof the audience'ssecret life in the dark, therebybringing to "light"a vividtake on thefilmic phenomenon, one that capturesa previously unacknowledgedcomplement to the voyeuristicjoy of cinema:the pleasureinherent in not watchingthe film. Overturningdramatically the one-dimensionallogic of the modernautomaton, Weegee'sphotographs present us with a multi-layeredunderstanding of the spatial and affectiveexperiences involved not onlyin watchingbut in "goingto" the movies. Weegee'simages, in contrastto thoserepresentations that illustratethe hypnoticpowers of modernspectacle such as J. R. Eyerman'sfamous photograph, focus less on the attentive "masses"than on particularforms of behavioramong individuals in the audience.His pictures display close-rangeshots of solitary subjects,couples, groups of children and general audiencesin whom a rangeof differentresponses to thespectacle can bediscerned. Weegee's cameraencounters dynamic and heterogeneousgroups of spectatorsthat are thematizedinto four maingroups: active children, young people enjoying the film, sleepingadults, and young loverskissing in the dark. Weegee'schildren, the mostactive of his subjects,eat, jump, play, sleepand make of their movieexperience a festivedisplay of corporalenjoyment (figs. 3-5). The youngpeople he capturesare often laughing,their postures make manifest comfort in the dark and a great degreeof spontaneity;in mostcases, their bodiesoverflow the restrictive structuresof theseats and challenge the organizing principles of the movietheater itself (figs. 6- 7). Similarly,while the sleepersclose their eyes and breakaway from the repressivefunctions of consciousnessas well as from the restrictivelayout of the theaterseats (figs. 8-10), the loverscuddle, kiss, and embracepassionately and uninhibitedly,many of them facing each other insteadof the screen(figs. 11-12).It is preciselyin these photographicsubjects, the sleepersand lovers,that we can beginto unravelmore effectively the secretenjoyment that the dark spaceof the theaterprovides. For thosewho sleepand kiss in the theater,the spatial experiencehas becomerefuge for a subversiveactivity that radicallydeviates from what at first appearsto be the main goal of the architecturallayout, namely, the attentiveand isolated perceptionof a film. It is importantto note, however,that Weegeedoes not alwaysreject the "automaton" model.His sympatheticapproach to movieaudiences stands in stark contrastto his incisive interpretationof otherforms of socialgrouping. Reversing the paradigmof the "numbed"film viewer,Weegee captured his own versionof an insipidsubject overcome by modern forms of life in differentcontexts. Consider, for example,his 1940 photographof a group of male "socialites"entering the opera(fig. 13). The armsof these subjectshang at the sidesof their inexpressivebodies with backs turn to the photographer,as the four of them exhibitincredibly similar coats and hats. The motif of social uniformityis repeatedwhen he photographs policemen(fig. 14)or childrenat a bar mitzvah(fig. 15).Weegee, just as sociologistsdid before him, also seemsto suggestan erodingof individualityand criticalperception in the modern urbandweller but, in his view, it is institutionsand commodities,instead of the spectacle,that producethis effect.Thus, as this strongjuxtaposition suggests, the consistencywith which Weegee'sphotographs reclaim and reevaluatethe phenomenonof moviegoing allowsus to rethinknot only the characteristicsof anyfilm audienceat any point in time, but also the particularsocial and spatialconditions from which Weegee's project originated. We will be able to discernimportant connections between the experienceattained by audiencesinside the movietheater and the specificconditions in the urban public spherebrought about by the outbreakof WorldWar 1l. Despitetheir originalityand their potentialto illuminatea spatial experiencerarely exploredthrough visual means, Weegee'spictures inside movie theaters have not been addressedor studied in their own right. Weegee scholarshiphas remainedcentered on Weegee'scrime-scene photography, considered by manyhis mostsignificant body of work. Hence,scholars have failedso far to acknowledgethese picturesas evidenceof Weegee's preoccupationwith the effectsof war on publicspace and to discoverin them a token of his acute spatialsensibility. Furthermore, the uniqueexperience that the imagesdocument has escaped,to thisday, the scrutinyof filmscholars and historians. The remainderof this paperwill examineWeegee's pictures in the movietheater as an attemptto unraveltheir important contribution to the understandingof Weegee'swork as wellas to the historyof the movietheater and its uses.Firstly, the studyof theseimages will not only recoverthem from a generalneglect but will also help to providea betterunderstanding of Weegee'sthematic interests and creative temperament. Secondly, the fact that Weegee's active subjectsdisrupt the long-respectedmodel of the film spectatoras a subjecttransfixed by the allureof the spectacleopens up a newarray of possibleinterpretations of boththe space of the movietheater and of the experienceof film in its premises.Thirdly, by examining other sources of informationand differentkinds of imagesfrom the criticalperiod 1941-1945, the pictures evidencean areaof scholarshipthat has remainedvirtually unexamined until now: the fear and anxietythat permeatedlife in the city duringthe war, and whichaffected the experienceof publicspace in a fundamentalway. Thus,the photographswill allowus to uncovera peculiar functionof the darknessand enclosureof the movietheater at a specificmoment in the history of the UnitedStates. In thefollowing sections, the imagescaptured by Weegee will serveas a pointof departurefor a reevaluationof the psychologicalimplications of the spaceof the movie theateras a sitefor publicinteraction that, interestingly, allows unique forms of privatebehavior and intimateexchange. 28 1 Fromthe Streetto the MovieTheater

Spectatorsof Death

Between1941 and 1945,movie theaters in the UnitedStates enjoyed a periodof intense activitymarked by record levels of attendance.With eighty-fivemillion spectators per week, the averageattendance for thesefive yearsexceeded that of the precedingdecade by more than twentypercent. After 1946, the weekly average for the nextdecade dropped dramatically to only forty-ninemillion viewers; in other words, by more than 40 percent.3 Film scholarshave explainedthis phenomenonby referring to thefascination exerted by "escapist" Hollywood films, whicheither idealized or negatedthe harsheconomic and socialconditions brought about by the outbreakof WorldWar II. Filmexhibitors of the time havealso characterizedthe wartime film experienceas a cheapsource of amusementand distraction for a nationin distress:"people wantedto escapethe radios and the newspapers, (...) withstories about what was happening in Europe.They went to the moviesfor escape."04 Whilethe thematiccontents and characterof wartimefilms has remainedthe mainelement by which the appealof goingto the moviesduring the war yearshas beenexplained, there are reasonsto believethat thetheaters as urbansites workedin thiscontext as hubsof a newkind of socialinteraction. Barbara Stones, for example, has notedthat "[c]apitalizingon theirpositions as importantcommunity centers, movie theaters becamethe focal points for scrap metaldrives and inventiverubber matinees designed to gathermuch needed raw materialfor thewar effort".5 Similarly,Maggie Valentine notes that the "movieswere a welcomeescape from privatedeprivation, but in additionthe theatersbecame communitycenters for war bonddrives and newsreelpresentations."' 6 ArthurFellig "Weegee", mostly known at thistime for his crime-scenepictures of the late nineteenthirties and earlyforties, secretly entered the movietheaters of NewYork duringthe periodin question,with the intentionof producingcandid portraits of moviegoersin the dark. Evidencinghis documentaryaspirations, Weegee's incognito approach involved the use of infraredfilm, and thus invisible infrared flash, to cut throughthe almostcomplete darkness of the movietheater while remaining unnoticed by the subjectshe photographed.As we will see,the photographshe capturedbring to lighta spatialelement that the strictlyfilmic "escapism" advancedby film scholarshas failedto address:the architectureof the movietheater itself as a sitefor escape. Archivalresearch shows that the experienceof the movietheater occupied Weegee's mindfor mostof the durationof the war, duringwhich he producedmore than one hundred photographsof movie spectators,only a handful of which have been published.17 The magnitudeand intensityof Weegee'smovie theater project puts into questionthe widespread notionthat his workof theseyears focused mainly on capturingthe aftermathof crimeor the harshnessof life in NewYork with its fires,disasters and starksocial contrasts. Nevertheless, thesepictures are still connectedin interestingways with the restof his work.While they stand on theirown as productsof a focusedthematic exploration, his photographs of movieaudiences also revealthemselves as a crucialphase in the evolutionof some of his more pervasive interests. In 1943,when he startedphotographing movie audiences, Weegee was already a well- knowncrime scene photographerwho sold his picturesto a large numberof tabloidsand newspapersin NewYork. In 1935, he had begunhis freelancecareer centering his activity aroundthe ManhattanPolice headquarters, making it his specialtythe captureof nocturnal murders,accidents, and fires.By 1938he hadbecome one of thefirst civilians-andaccording to someaccounts, the only photographer-tohave been granted special permission to installa policeradio in his car.This allowedhim to interceptall emergencydispatches and to rushto the scenesometimes before the policeor fire departmenthad arrived.This gave his picturesa rare senseof immediacy,a first-handdocumentary character highly valued both by news editors and 18 byreaders at large. AlthoughWeegee's interest in the movietheater only emerged in the mid- forties,the relationshipbetween space and spectatorshipwas alreadyevident throughout his work in crimephotography. His murderpictures, taken as a whole,suggest an evolutionthat goes from a close framing of the murdervictim to more distant shots that explore the spontaneouscrowds gathering around the scene.Take, as a startingpoint, one of his earliest photographsof a murderedgangster, which was publishedin the New YorkPost in 1936(fig. 16).In this picture,the inertbody of a manin a suitappears at the centerof a close-rangeshot. Theviolence of hisuncomposed posture stands in contrastto the artificially"posed" appearance of his hat and handgun,which are carefullypositioned next to him. In spatial terms,the photographisolates the victimfrom any external reference, preventing any informationfrom the surroundingsof the scenefrom entering the image.It limitsits scopeto the corpseas a static and objectifiedrepresentation of violence,construed thus not as an elementconnected with an actionand a particularcontext, as in a narrative,but as an objectextracted from its natural settingand thereforeperceived or graspedonly throughthe photographicmeans. It is no accidentthat the photographresorts to thekinds of representationalstrategies used by Edouard Manetin his Dead Toreadorof 1864 (fig. 17);Weegee seems to have had at least some backgroundin the historyof art, fromwhich he borroweda seriesof compositionalmodels. The photographerand the viewerof the picturebecome thus the only subjectsin relationto the image,the onlyvoyeurs of the body,as evidencedby the fact that it is illuminatedexclusively fromthe anglefrom which the imageis captured.9 Thus,in this photograph,the onlyvisual axis presentin the imageis the one directedfrom the cameratowards the victim, establishing betweenthe victim's body and its viewera typicalsubject-object relationship. By 1938, a powerfulnew elementhad emergedin Weegee'sphotojournalism: the spectator.In one photograph,for example,a group of men and womenappears behind the coveredremains of a car accidentvictim, at an awkwardlyexcessive distance from it (fig. 18). Here,the heterogeneousgroup of spectators,including a police officer,line up to pose for Weegee'scamera, only to producea neatlycomposed image. Within the perfectlyisolated foreground,the victim'sbody is stilldepicted as an object,but now it standsin relationnot to the photographeror the viewerof the imagebut to the disengagedgroup of passers-bywho have gatheredat the scene and who, interestingly,establish themselves as spectatorssimply by respectingan imaginaryline that dividestheir bodiesfrom that of the victim.Weegee, in other words,seems now to havebecome aware as muchof the spacein which death has takenplace as of the violentreaction that death provokesin its immediateaftermath. The corpse,by definitionunable to composeitself, to respondor to lookback at itsobservers has beencovered overwith a blanket.This protection from the pryingeyes of the crowdand of the intrusivelens of the cameraacts to negatethe very source of fascinationthat brought the spectatorstogether as a groupin the first place.In short,the onlookershere have gathered around the bodyof the victimtransforming the sidewalkinto the sceneof a crime,i.e., into a stagewhere a groupof subjectsis presentedwith a spectacleto bewatched. At thispoint, theviewer of the photographis confronted with a reciprocalvisual axis from whicha fundamentallyspatial depiction of the murder-sceneemerges. On the one hand,there is an implied(if invisible)axis that leads fromthe peoplegathering at the sceneto the bodyof the victim,which, ironically, no one bothersto look at. On the other hand,there is an actual (because enacted)axis between thecrowd andWeegee's camera, to which all expectantly gaze back.Like the spectatorswho avoidlooking towards the centerof the scene, Weegee himselfshows a differentvisual interest; while his photograph maintains prioritythe of the dead body's positionin the foreground-asthe object closestto us as viewers,completely isolated by two thirds of the pictorial space-the photographer'scritical gaze is now directedto the spontaneousbody of spectators.Death becomes at this pointin Weegee'spictures the source of a complexvisual and spatialproblem rather than just the subjectmatter. From this moment on, his photographswill invariablypresent the dead bodyas the sourceand causeof a spatial transformationevolving in timeas opposedto an isolatedobject of contemplationextracted from the narrativeof a violentaction. The armscasually crossed overchests, the smilingfaces of thoseonlookers who react to the presenceof the camera ratherthan tothe gorydetails of the event,the uniformedpolice officerwho, detached from the crime,poses for the picture whilelining up at the samedistance as the restof the crowd,begin to revealthe violence inherentin the social act of gatheringat the crimescene. Such details emphasize the powerrelation posited in Weegee'sportrayal of victim and onlookers.While the corpseremains spread out horizontallyon the ground-that is to say, at the (literally)lowest level of visualinteraction-the spectators stand close to, and loomabove, the body,their potential gazes positioned at a higherlevel, following a verticalscheme of visual domination.In otherwords, Weegee captures not only thespectators' disconnectedness from the victim. Their predatorynature and privilegedposition over the spectacleof death also becomesevident in the image.Later picturessuch as Murderon theRoof (1941)(fig. 19)show Weegee'scontinued explorationof this scenic aspect.Unlike the previousexample, where spectatorsare dividedfrom spectacle by an imaginaryline, in this imagetwo detectives interact with thebody of a man murderedon a roof,while theaudience watches from a neighboring building,contained by a wallas wellas bythe gap betweenboth structures, positioned againat a higher level thanthe body. Like Seurat'sCirque, Weegee's picture depicts a physical distinctionbetween a space where the performanceis watched and a place reserved exclusivelyfor observation,which reminds the viewer of the prototypeof the theateror circusin connectionto the casualobservation of death. Fromhis first crime-scenephotograph of the 1936murder until the earlyforties, then, Weegee'sobsession with the urbanwitnesses to violencebecame increasingly evident. The themebecomes so pervasivethat some of his most famous picturesfocus strictly on the onlookers,leaving out the victimsaltogether. For instance,in 1940,Weegee shot Murderin Hell'sKitchen, which, despite the suggestionmade by its title, did notdepict a murderbut rather a groupof neighborswho look out from two windows of a buildingwe can assumewas adjacent to the crime-scene(fig. 20). While at one windowsome look backdirectly at Weegee'scamera, othersfrom a second windowlook at the murderscene with excitement.One year later, Weegeecaptures the perverseeagerness of a groupof childrenwho, thrilled by the possibility of glimpsingtheir "first"murder victim, violently push each other in orderto maketheir way to the spotoutside their school where a gamblerwas shot in his car(fig. 21). It would be easy to assumethat Weegee'sinterest in movie audiencessprang exclusivelyfrom his earlierfocus on urbanspectators of death.As we willsee, eventhough he showedinterest in spectatorshipbefore 1943 in the contextof urbanmurders, the emergenceof thefilm viewer was impacted by external factors. Nevertheless, a photographtaken in 1942(fig. 22) links his murderscene pictureswith his movietheater photographs in interestingways, illuminatingthe relationshipbetween his interest in the cinemaand hisearlier work on the urban politicsof visualinteraction. The photographin questionframes a scenewhere a group of spectatorshas gathered around a deadman's body lying on the sidewalkbeneath the marquee of a movietheater. The bodyis coveredwith severallayers of newspaperunder which only the feet are visibleto the lowerright corner of the picture.Two policeofficers are caughtin the act of placingstill anotherlayer of brownpaper over the body,to which one of the spectators (probablyan usherfrom the cinema, judging by his uniform)reacts with an inquisitivedownward look,his arms crossed tightly over his chest. The picturecreates a complexspatial composition. If we analyzethe gazesinvolved in the scene,we discernthat while the officersand the usher directtheir gazes at the body(that is, at a sourcestrictly within the limitsof the pictorialspace), the croppedhead of a manwith a hat entersthe picturefrom the left. The man looksback directlyat thecamera and to thisreflected gaze Weegee's own visual focus acts as counterpart. In an exhibitionof his characteristicblack humor, which emerges in the photographby virtue of an associationof the murderscenes with the signsof massculture in closeproximity, Weegee givesthis printthe title Joy of Living.The titleserves as evidencefor the positioningof his own gazeonto something that lieswell beyond the eventsof the foreground,of the "here"and "now." The focusof the image,then, becomesnot the crime-sceneitself but its relationshipwith the marqueein the background,which announces a double-billof musicalcomedies, one of which is "Joy of Living,"a film releasedin 1938 starringIrene Dunneand DouglasFairbanks Jr. Weegee'sframing and title establisha link betweenthe streetas a violentlandscape of death that is depictedin the foregroundand an idealizedspace thatexists beyond what is visiblein the photograph: theinterior of the movietheater, where the "joyof living"is announcedto reside.20 Because theinterior space of the movietheater remains visually inaccessible both to the peopleon the scene as well as to the viewerof the photograph,the imagesets up an incisiveconfrontation between the visualprotection offered by the moviehouse and thebrutality of the urbansetting where vulnerable bodies are exposedto pryingeyes. In thissense, Weegee does not overlook the notionof "cover"as protection.In fact,one mightargue that this verynotion offers the link betweenexterior and interior,between urban spaceand the movietheater. In a gesturethat complicatesthe relationshipbetween scene and signs,Weegee is carefulto highlightin theupper right angle an advertisingsignboard that reads "LewisClothing Exchange. We buy and sell newand slightly used clothing.""Lewis" and "clothing"are the mostclearly visible words to the viewerof the photograph.The resultis a photographicinsistence on a poignantrelationship between theadvertising sloganand the action carriedout beneathit bythe officerson the scene;in orderto protectthe bodyfrom the invasive verticalgaze of the publicaround it, they "clothe"or "cover"it withthe "slightlyused" shieldof newspaperthey carefullyplace between its surfaceand the "outside" world. We should note herethat, interestingly,the word "dark"derives from the old Englishwork deorc,which ultimatelysprang from an Indo-Europeanworld that alsoproduced the German tarnen, "to mask or screen."Thus, we also see etymologicalconnections between "dark" and "to clothe." It is not surprising,then, that Weegeewould begin at thisjuncture to take photographs insideof movietheaters, to representthe "joy"with which children, young couples, and middle- agedadults alike responded to film projection.His pictureswould present the movietheater as an enclosedand safehaven from the violence of urbanlife. Echoing the protectiveshield placed overthe dead bodyon thestreet in Joyof Living,the movietheater series would posit darkness andenclosure as a defensefrom the potentialthreat of visualexchange in the publicrealm.

Sleepersand Lovers at the Movies

Eventhough Weegee devoted a fair numberof his movietheater photographs to adults and childrenattending to the film,the mainthrust of thethemes he explored were those of sleep and sex: eitherhe focusedon youngand middle-agedadults sleeping in theirtheater seats in statesof completewithdrawal, or he focusedon loverskissing, embracing and cuddlingin the dark. As suggestedearlier, these examples,which move awayfrom the spectacleand its hypnotizedobservers, reflect morestrongly Weegee's awareness of the movietheater as a spatial problemon its own. For just as the evolutionof his murderphotographs emphasize Weegee'sattention to the subtle mechanicsof visualityin public space,his movietheater picturessimilarly denote an interestingdistinction between the safety ofthis particular space and the violenceof the exteriorenvironment that existsbeyond its perimeter.It is importantto notethat what distinguishesWeegee's pictures of deathon the streetfrom his photographsof sleepersand lovers in the movietheater is how the latter exhibita degreeof comfortand relaxationrarely presentin those subjects he captureson the outside. Rememberthat Weegee'spictures of crime andeveryday life in the citybear witness to the chaosand anxiety that prevailedin the streetsof New York,as well as to the overwhelmingthreat that vision exertedover its dwellers.Regarding the unsettlingenvironment brought about by the war,take WomanLooking at ElectricSign on theNew York TimesBuilding (June 7, 1944);or Timeis Short (March23, 1942) (figs. 23-24).On the inquisitorialpower of sight,consider Barber confessesto Murderof EinerSporrer (1937), The Lineup (1939), Charles Sodokoff and Arthur WebberUse Their Top Hats to Hide TheirFaces (1942), or HenryRosen and HarveyStemmer WereArrested for BribingBasketball Players (1945) (figs. 25-28). Weegee'swork establishes thus a sharpdistinction between the violent everyday sphere of the city and the idealizedform of life that existedwithin the movietheater's walls. In a 1943 photograph,for example,a womansleeps at the endof rowseat in a completestate of disarray (fig.29). Her torso is tuckedup againstthe corner of her seat,while her armslanguidly fall on its armrests,and her head inclinesbackwards. Her mouthis openjust enoughto resemblethe imageof a tranquildeath. Her unconstrained body language seems even more jarring given that she is fully dressed;her restrictivecoat is still in place(although somewhat disarranged), her purse still hangsfrom her right wrist and a paperbag sits in her lap. The imagebecomes evidenceof a strangeclash between two spatiallyderived states: on the one hand,the public characterof the placewhere she finds herselfwhich is suggestedby the seat whereshe sits, the spectatorbehind her and the bag, purseand clothingshe wears;on the other hand,the privateact of sleepingto whichshe has so unselfconsciouslyyielded. In anotherinteresting photograph from the same year, the connectionbetween the movietheater and sleepingis explored(fig. 30). In an overheadshot of an emptyzone of a theater,a middle-agedman with a strongphysique slumbers, again in completewithdrawal. His wrinkled,dirty clothes suggest the endof an intenseday of physicalwork. A closerlook reveals that he has unbuckledhis belt.In contrastto the womanin her coat,this sleeperhas optedto relinquishhimself fully to the comfortof dark privacy.In both photographs,then, the imageof sleepcommunicates simultaneously a senseof withdrawalfrom the filmicexperience; but we are forced, as viewers,to wonderwhether sleep was an involuntaryconsequence of the boredomproduced by a bad movie,or, moreto the point,the sign of a retreatinto the movie theaterspecifically to avoid theharsh environment of the street. Lookingat the largenumber of photographsin whichWeegee captures a total withdrawalon the partof his subjects (figs.31- 33),we are forcedto speculatewhether they enteredthe theaterprecisely in orderto restand abandon theweight of existencewhile under the protectionof its capacityto suspendtime and space. This protection-this suspension of space and time-is even more forcefully foregroundedin the imagesof couples thatWeegee surreptitiouslycaptures in the darkness. The theater seems to provide the lovers the ultimate cover, allowingthem to construct microcosmsof intimacyin the midstof a wideaudience. In a 1945photograph, Weegee catches a manand a womanwhose hands intertwine in an eroticallycharged form of play.For him, the film is clearlyno longerof interest(fig. 34). Over and over,Weegee's camera finds and recovers the stages of"making out." One photograph,featuring a "sailor"and a "girl"(fig. 35), offersa moreintense physical exchange, as his handadvances beneath her blouse;yet anothershows a mankissing a womanwhile his eyes remain fixed on the screen(fig. 36). In one series,Lovers at the PalaceTheater (c. 1945),four photographstrace the progressof loveas a youngcouple, surroundedby spectators with three-dimensional glasses, relinquish their interest in the movie and indulge in a ratherlong and extendedencounter of kissing(judging by the numberof picturesthat Weegeewas able to take)21 (figs.37-40). Thesecond of thesefour photographs,Lovers at thePalace Theater //, is worthlooking at more closely(fig. 38). The lovers,placed at the lower left half of the photograph,are juxtaposedwith the figure of a solitaryspectator at the top right,whose left handcovers the side of his facethat is closestto the photographer.It is a gesturethat suggestshis awarenessof the camera;he probablyheard it click.The manand womankissing do not, however,seem to be awareof thecamera, much less of anythingor anyoneelse. Furthermore, whereas he seemsto be takingthe initiative-holdinghis companion'sbody with one arm whiletouching one of her ankleswith his free hand-she has removedher shoesand restsher feet on the backof the seatin frontof her.In a gesturethat echoesher lover'stouching of her ankle,she caressesher own calf as to completean imaginarybracket around this part of her body. Three other membersof the audience wearing three-dimensionalglasses are barely visible in the background,two of whom focus completelyon the film while the other looks back in the directionof the camerawith an inquisitivelook. The reactionsof the two men who seem to exhibitat leasta partialawareness of Weegee'spresence emphasize the couple'sincapacity to perceivethe eventsaround them; theirs is a completewithdrawal into a privatesphere of passionatetouch. Here Weegee's picture places a new importanceon sensesbesides that of vision:while suggesting the audience'scapacity to maintaina certainperceptual distance from the visualdomain of the film, the imagealso evidencesthe role of hearingand touch in the spatialexperience of the movietheater. Even more importantly-beyond, that is, thesuggestion that the movietheater functions in ways other than a primaryobjective of "watching"-theimage revealsthe radicalextent to which thedarkness of thespace and the three-dimensionalglasses of the otherspectators neutralize the visualinteraction of the theateraltogether; what emerges insteadis the mostprivate and intimatekind of humanencounter. Like his crime-scenes,Weegee's framing of the couplesin relationto the rest of the audienceevolves. He becomesincreasingly interested in the interactionbetween couples and attentivefilm observers.His earlypictures present lovers within a framejust wide enoughto containtheir bodies. As the projectprogresses, he beginsto moveback, at first just enoughto makethe settingevident and to includea few membersof the audience.By 1950,Weegee wouldsituate a kissingcouple in a muchwider context, surrounded by ten rowsof viewers(fig. 41). This was one of Weegee'slast photographsof film audiences.Shot from one of the theater'sbalconies, it stressesmore than everwith its bird'seye viewthe oppositionbetween thosewho watch movies and those who do not. However,the membersof thisaudience do not complywith the automatonmodel, either: they manifestan arrayof differentreactions to the film. A youngwoman three rows behindthe lovers,for example,leans over her neighborin a gestureof boredom.Other spectators laugh or talk. However,they are all moreor lessfocused on the film and-except for the womanwho leansto the left so as to avoidthe distraction causedby the loversseating directly in front of her-they all continueto be indifferentto the privatepractices that unfoldin the centerof the photograph.The lovers,in this context,are the onlyones who faceeach other and, furthermore, she is oneof onlytwo peoplein the audience (echoedagain by the sameyoung woman three rows behind her) to havetaken her coatoff. In general,the mostcompelling aspect of Weegee'sphotographs of sleepersand lovers is the statementthey seemto makeabout visualitywithin the movietheater. The spacethe latterprovides not only allows a rupturefrom the "visual"center-the film-that has traditionally beenthought of as the mainpoint of moviegoing. That space, furthermore, is moreessentially one of neutralizedvision, where an almostcomplete darkness allows for the creationof an intimatesphere of interaction(sex) and inaction(sleep). Looking a Weegee'sphotographs we can problematizethe notionof a unifiedaudience that uncriticallycomplies with the rulesof behaviorimposed by the theater layout, by claiming that thesespaces provide the spectatornot onlywith a placeto see,but actuallyand moreimportantly, with a collectivespace in whichit is still possibleto eludethe intimidatingviolence of urbanvisibility. Let us remember,first of all, that the movietheater institutes a uniqueform of visualexperience and establishesa visual politicsthat dramaticallydiffers from the visualpractices promoted in othersight-focused public spaces.To a far greaterdegree than the opera house, the stadiumor the livedrama theatre, the moviehouse allows a rupturefrom externalreality as well as from the audienceassembled at the auditorium.This can be attributedmainly tothe darknessthat has traditionallybeen part of the cinematicexperience from the emergenceof the dioramato the popularizationof the cinemascopescreen. The contrastbetween the movies andthe theateras dramaticperformance is particularly illuminatingin our approachto the moviehouse. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, for example,in his studyof the lightingtechniques used from the baroquetheater to the late nineteenthcentury, has pointedout the greatimportance attributedto the lightingof the auditoriumin the caseof theatricalperformance. In his view,an importantaspect in this regardhas beenthe audiences' desireto watch not only the performanceon the stage,but also that of the spectatorsin the audience.As Watelet-Levequecommented, in 1793,the audienceof dramatic performances "wantedto see the stage,wanted to see the actors;but aboveall, they wantedto see each other and,if we maysay so, to take in every detail"22. Hence,Schivelbush asserts: "the social desire to see and be seen has survivedin the theatre,despite illusionism,realism and naturalism.Even when gas and electriclight broughta total blackoutwithin easy reach, Europeanauditoriums were not plungedinto darkness, but onlyinto a duskylight." 2 In stark contrastwith this evidentlysocial environment of dramatheaters, the movie houseoperates essentially in the oppositeway, by reducingand sometimesprecluding any visualengagement between spectators. In this sense,German psychologist Hugo Mauerhofer defined, in his article entitled "Psychologyof Film Experience",the perceptualatmosphere of what he called the "cinema situation" by assertingthat "the ideal theatre would be one where there are absolutelyno sourcesof light (such as emergencyand exit lighting, etc.), except the screen itself'.4 Mauerhofer'stext, one of the first and few ones to directly address the problem of darkness within the movietheater, was published,not coincidentally,shortly after the war in 1949. In it, he goes on to assert:

Neitherin the dimly lit concerthall nor in the darkenedtheater are the spectators,in relationto oneanother, subjected to suchanonymity as in the cinema.In the first place, neitherof the former is darkenedto such an extent as the cinemais for technical reasons.Secondly, the intervalsserve to makeat leastvisual contact with our neighbors as well as withthe orchestraor theatercast. For this reason,too, it is impossiblefor a 'community'in the originalsense of theword, to beformed in a cinema.This is prevented bythe individualizingeffect of the experienceof film, as well as bythe almostcomplete anonymityof the spectator.We only sensethe presenceof our neighbor.He is usually alreadythere when we arrive, and is goneby the time we leave.In the legitimatetheatre and at concertsthe individualspectators are frequentlyfused together in an emotional communityof objectiveexperience. In the cinemathe privateand personal participation of the individualis intensified.There is no morethan a diffusemass formation. Apart from this,the individualis thrownback upon his mostprivate associations.

Even though Mauerhofer ended up defining the cinema situation again in terms of isolated spectators who invariably "watch" the film, it is interesting to note that he was neverthelessconscious of a spatial dimensionembedded in movie going, which defined it and distinguishedit from other formsof spectacle,and whichhad to do with the darknessof the auditorium."[A] psychological result of visual seclusionin a darkenedroom"-he wrote-"is a changein one'sSense of Space."26 A few yearsbefore Mauerhofer,Weegee also seemsto have been consciousof this radicalform of spatialityin the movietheater, especiallywhen compared to the operahouse. Duringthe yearswhen he photographedmovie audiences, he also capturedopera spectators arrivingat the theaterin elaborateoutfits, hats, andjewels, prepared not only to see the show but offeringthemselves as spectacleto be visuallyconsumed (figs. 42-43)27.In a different photographthat depictsthe activitiesof the audienceduring theperformance, Weegee perspicaciouslycatches a groupof spectatorsamong whoma woman uses a pairof binoculars to lookat otherpeople in the audience(fig. 44). Thesocial context that is so evidentlypresent in Weegee'sopera house, both in the prelusivespace of the lobbyas well as during the performance,is conspicuouslyabsent in the movietheater. The darknessof the cinemashuts out any form of visualinteraction allowing the emergenceof manyintimate spheres. Thus, in stark contrastwith the violent negotiationof sight on the streets,where dead bodiesare surveyedwith curiosity; and atthe opera,where visual interaction is a formof socialexchange amongspectators, the movietheater is positedin Weegee'spictures as a safe,permissive, and comfortableplace where visual intersubjectivityis, so to speak,neutralized. Weegee's images revealthus the extentto whichcinema-going representsas much a viewingexperience as a pleasurethat consistsin indulgingin activitiesthat can onlybe madepossible while immersed in the particularspatial conditions provided by the theater'senvironment. His picturesallow us to considerthe "here"and "now"of the movietheater, the spatialtraits of that site where the audienceassembles and the spacethe audienceitself creates with its gathering.By doing so, his photographsnot only problematizethe model of spectatorshipestablished with the emergenceof modernity;they also establish a counterpointto filmtheories which have failed to addressthe experienceof thosewho use the movietheater for activitiesother than watching the film. While thesetheories are basedon an understandingof the movietheater as a neutral containerof "unoccupied"bodies that is thereto be negatedand transcended in favor of "filmic space",Weegee's photographs recapture the spaceof the cinemain its ownvalue and allowus to reexamineits intrinsic qualities, especially in relationto the urbanand social contexts in which theatersare embedded.Weegee's subjects have indeed escaped the public realm of the street, but notonly to be absorbedinto the fictional space of the film. In reality,the loversand sleepers that Weegeeextirpates from the audienceare caughtin an intersticebetween two public spaces:the actual exterior realm of thestreet and the imaginary space presented on the screen. In otherwords, they are caughtin a privatespace that liesbetween the everydaynegotiation of visualcuriosity and a fantasticsphere of visualabsorption. In theirabsolute "hereness," these subjectsreclaim the movietheater -the physicalspace left behindby those viewerswho activelytraveled into the film-for theirown, intimate purposes. 2 The VisualPolitics of War

War and Cinema

Themovie audience as a thememarks a specificperiod in Weegee'swork that extends from 1942 until 1945,with only a brief return around 1950. Little has been writtenon this obsessionof Weegee,even though the picturesreveal such a dramaticturning point in hiswork that severalquestions seem difficultto ignore.Why, for instance,would such a proudand relentless"street" photographer turn suddenlyfrom photographingthe most open forms of publicspace, the sidewalksin NewYork, to an enclosed,inward-looking building? Why would he turn to infraredphotography, when one of the maintraits of hiswork was that he invariably shothis subjectswith the harshestflashbulbs? Why would he turnfrom rawscenes of violence to the mostsecretive scenes of pleasure,and from photographing extraordinary events such as murdersand disastersto capturingthe everydaypractices of ordinarypeople? In otherwords, how can we explainthe powerfulcontrast between his photographsof deathon the streetand his photographsof life in the dark, or his transitionfrom photographingurban insensitivity to capturingsensuality and livebodies refusing to be absorbedby the film? It is importantto note herethat his first photographs movie of audiences were included with otherimages of everydaylife in the city,as well as with shotsof fires and murders,in his bookNaked City, which waspublished in 1945.Weegee's biographers have speculated on the reasons whyhe wouldturn his attentionto the ordinary practicesof NewYork dwellers during the earlyforties. Weegee reveals in his autobiography that,following the exhibitionof someof his photographsof murders anddisasters at the Museumof ModernArt in 1943,friends and colleaguessuggested he publisheda book. In his accountof the situation,Weegee mentions that he was havinggreat difficultygetting the publishersto accepthis selectionof disaster pictures.What they wanted to see was,according to Weegee,cliche images of everydaylife in NewYork. Althoughhe doesnot mentionany consequentthematization on his part,when he finallypersuaded Duell, Sloan & Pearceto publishNaked City, relatively very few of the images were crime and disasterpictures. From this, we may at first wonderif he felt that putting togethera collectionof interestingphotographs of dailylife inthe city wouldbring a contractwith the publishers.However, there seemsto be a far more powerfulissue emerging at that very momentin the context of public space that may have influencedhis thematicturnabout. Weegeerefers to this in his introductionto the book: I havebeen told that my picturesshould be in a book,that theywere a great social document.As I keepto myself,belong to no group,like to be left alonewith no axe to grind,I wouldn'tknow. Then something happened. There was a suddendrop in Murders andFires (my two bestsellers, my breadand butter). I couldn'tunderstand that. With so manymillions of people,it just wasn'tnormal, but it didgive me a chanceto lookover the picturesI hadbeen accumulating. Put together, they seemed to form a pattern.I pasted the photographsinto a "dummy"book and left it withthe publisherswith a note"This is my brainchild... handle with care please." 29

Clearly,Weegee did not take the suddendecrease in murdersonly as an excuseto put togetherother kinds of picturestaken previously.The lack of crime images also brought him to experimentwith his cameraon hithertounexplored themes and sites,such as the movietheater. However,Weegee's referenceto the occurrenceof a dramaticchange in the usual qualities of public space during this period is extremelyilluminating. What kind of sudden transformation could be operatingin the public realm so as to affect the incidenceof crimeto such a degree as to jeopardizethe sourceof incomeof a crime-scenephotographer? It is telling that his first two movie theater photographs published in Naked City are presented under the heading "escapists."Naturally, the relentlesspressures of World War 11 made themselves evident in the environment of the city and, consequently, in Weegee's portrayal of everyday life. As we have argued, if one looks at histories of cinema, it does not seem strangethat a pictorialaccount of New York in the forties would includethe movietheater as an importantsite of wartimelife. As mentionedearlier, statistics reveal a meteoricincrease in theaterattendance and, according to cinemahistorians, the sudden popularity of movietheaters can be explainedby looking at the economicand social conditions produced by the war 0 .While most historiansargue that the movieswere a cheapsource of laughsin a periodof financial deprivation,Barbara Stones argues that theemerging needs associated with the war created jobs foralmost every American, producing in turn a waveof prosperitythat allowedthem to spendmore on entertainment31 . The pointis that, while some resortedto the moviesas an inexpensiveform of withdrawal,others saw them as a luxury they could finally afford. In addition,gas rationingand travel restrictions turned the accessiblecinemas into popular centers for socialgathering, where all kindsof drivesand activitiesin supportof thewar were organized. As we haveseen, the "escapist"aspect of the moviesremains, however, always at the coreof everyhistorian's explanation of the filmicboom of the forties.According to these accounts,not only did the moviesallow a rupturefrom the realityof war, but theyalso allowedthe viewersto confrontalternative and morebenign readings of the conflict.The convenience of usingfilms to advancecertain views of thesituation in Europeand the homefront became evident as earlyas 1942, when FranklinD. Rooseveltacknowledged in a public statementthe importanceof keeping motionpictures operative "to maintainthe morale of the public" and to present propagandafilms. Hence,the Rooseveltadministration granted the film industrya priority classificationof "AA,"which meant governmentalsupport for repairsand replacementof equipmentfor theatersound systems. 32 WalterWinchell, whom Weegee respected to as "the world'sgreatest newspaperman," announced the news:

AttentionMr. and Mrs. United States: The Government has certified the motion picture industryas a necessarywar industry. This is notthe creation of a specialprivilege. It is an honestrecognition of the importanceof the movies-theAmerican Way of Life...Almost as a unit, themen andwomen of the screenhave volunteered to stand behinda gun. The findingthat their work is an essentialservice means that a movie camerais as muchan instrumentof waras a machine-gunand that an actor'swork can 33 beas helpful as a riveter's...

The Americanpublic quickly acceptedthe idea that films were effectiveagents of distractionand amusementthat madepeople forget the harshnessof the outsidecrisis with its limitedresources, intense ideological campaigns and worries about the safetyof the lovedones at the front.Only a few days afterthe entranceof the UnitedStates into the war,certain films were alreadyopenly advertised as escapist(fig. 45). However,we will see that the issue of escapismfails to acknowledgea spatialdimension that affectedmovie attendance during the war. It is importantto acknowledgethat, with the financial support of the government, Hollywood'sfilms presentedpatriotic stories with happy endingsthat connectedaudiences emotionallywith those at thefront and helpedrally support for thewar byidealizing the causeof the UnitedStates and itsAllies. One mightargue, then,that the"escape" thatfilms were able to provideaccording to historianswas really only a journeyinto a chargeddiscursive sphere that reproducedthe same propagandisticmechanisms that prevailedon the street.Films became key instrumentsin consensusbuilding and distributorsof propagandathat continuedand perfected thecampaigns on the radio,through posters, and in the press. Strangelyenough at first, Weegeeseems to sharethe view of the moviesas an antidote to the harshnessof reality.Alongside his movietheater photographs in the chapterentitled "escapists"in Naked New York, he writes:"Laugh-it's good for you...forget all about shoe coupons...red stamps...and gas rationing...and that lonely ache in your heart every night waitingfor FirstClass PrivateG. 1.Joe to comehome safely.... AlthoughWeegee seems to advocatefor the films as salutary entertainment,it is importantto rememberthat his imagesinsistently focus on peoplewho do notwatch the movies but insteadlinger in the spaceof thetheater without being captured by the ideologicalsphere of the film.There seems to be in his photographsa formof escapethat is suspendedbetween the outsideand the screen.This is the fundamentalaspect we will be ableto unravelby historicizing Weegee'sphotographs. We can beginby saying that the harshnessof the situationin the UnitedStates cannot be exclusivelysummed up in termsof materialshortages and worriesabout the war frontin Europe.If we takea closerlook at the spatialdimension in Weegee'sphotographs and at what life in NewYork meant at the timewhen these pictures were produced, we willfind that the war set in placea particularset of conditionswhich dramatically altered the way in whichpublic spacewas perceived. Thus, we willbe ableto see theseimages as partof a largerdiscourse on surveillance,concealment, and darknessthat emergedduring the politicallytense years of the early forties.Furthermore, they will allow us to challengethe idea of an exclusively"filmic" escapeadvanced by film historians,and to revealthe extentto whichthe spatialconditions of the movietheater itself played a role in thevery escapeand shelter that the audiencerequired.

Darknessand Vertical Visuality

On December7, 1941,Japanese planes carried out a surpriseattack on the United Statesnaval base at PearlHarbor, Hawaii. On the Americanside, twenty-one battleships and naval vessels were sunk or badly damaged,close to 200 aircraft were destroyed,and approximately3,000 people were killed or wounded.The attack,considered to this day one of the mostpainful passages in Americanhistory 3 , markedthe entrance of the UnitedStates into WorldWar 11on theside of the allies,and againstJapan, Germany, and Italy. Even though the official photographsof the attack would not be releasedby the governmentuntil late December,the newswere immediatelyreported and illustratedusing a very peculiarset of images:the obscuresilhouette of Americancities deprivedof light during emergencyblackouts produced in preventionof imminentair raidson civilianpopulation. On its issuedated December22, for example,Life magazinepresented, under the heading "America Goesto War', a clear depictionof the radicaleffects of the Japanese attackon the experience of urban space in the mainland:the article comparedtwo photographsof the Capitol in WashingtonD.C. before and after a blackoutthat was imposedon the city.Significantly, the article stated:"In the nation'scapital and in citieson bothcontinental coasts the lightsof peace flickedoff" (fig.46)36. Whereas in thiscase theconfused and inexperiencedauthorities had left the streetlightson aftercompletely obscuring the buildings,it wassoon realized that thesetrails of lightcould guide enemy bombers toward important military targets. As a result,total blackouts wereprescribed for the followingweeks, leaving the city in completegloom. A few weeksafter the first article,it was thecompletely black silhouetteof WashingtonMonument at duskthat appearedunder the title"Washington Goes to War"(fig. 47). In a generalsense, it was not far-fetchedto fear airborneattacks over American cities. World War II was the first modernconflict in whichlarge citiesand civilianpopulations were systematicallytargeted for massivebombardments. After Hitler'sBlitzkrieg devastated Warsaw in 1939,it was clearthat a new set of warfarerules was in the writing:it was now plausibleto use advancedtechnology to encircleand destroynonmilitary targets full of civiliansin orderto force a militarysurrender from their government.Between September 1940 and May 1941, Germanplanes destroyed vast areasof Londonthrough intense bombings. As manyas 30,000 Londonersdied, and another50,000 were injured. More than 130,000houses were destroyed. The London"blitz" introduced the British,and the rest of the world,to a newstrategy of terror and destruction:the furiousoffensive of 71 continuousmajor raids over civilian targets. Ironically,the newsreelsbrought the imagesof the terribledestruction in Europeto the UnitedStates. The threat of aerialattacks thus begunto take shapein the imaginationof the Americanpublic long beforethe attackon PearlHarbor. By the timethe threathad becomea realityon the Hawaiianbase, Americans were ready to speculateon the bombingof American citiesand, in the absenceof photographsof the disasterin Hawaii,they wereready to illustrate the newsand their fears bydrawing from their filmic experience (fig. 48). Immediatelyafter news of the bombardmentwere received in the mainland,a senseof fear beganto spreadthrough all layersof life in the UnitedStates, as evidencedin the images and discoursespublished by different media. Symptomatically, the RedCross launched a War Fundcampaign using the imageof a smallgirl who, surroundedby a deep darkness,asked: "Arethey comingover hereto fight,daddy?" (fig. 49). On a morespecific form of guesswork, Life magazinebegan to speculateon "How Nazi PlanesMay Bomb NewYork." The article showeda planof thecity beingapproached from the southeastby enemy aircraft, illustrating the effectof the bombson the urbansetting (fig. 50). The first reactionsof fear immediatelygave way to protectiveactions. Air patrolswere sent off to detectand interceptenemy planes and submarines(fig. 51) and anti-aircraftgun emplacementswere set up along the coaststo protectmajor cities, harbors,and industrial plants(fig. 52). Interceptorcommands were also set up overnightin NewYork and othercities, whereboth government officials and civiliansspent long hours tryingto identifyenemy aircraft (fig. 53). Accordingto the originalcaption of this photograph,published in 1945, "men and women,old and young,learned to identifyfriendly and enemy planes." 37 The large extentto whichthe new conditionsof urbanlife requiredthe involvementof civilianpopulation in the protectionand defenseof theircities is an importantfact to keep in mindwhen lookingat Weegee'sphotographs. Life reportedon the immediateeffects of Pearl Harborby presenting the emergenceof this civilianresponse in an articleentitled "Air Alerts & Blackouts:Both Coasts Prepare for Attacksfrom Air" (fig. 54).The articleshowed a nightview of NewYork City with its countlesswindows flanked by a coupleof vigilantair-raid wardens establishedatop the EmpireState building, and reproducedimages of peoplecrossing out with tape their apartmentwindows and blackingthem out with thick cloth after replacingtheir electric lightswith candles.The situationwas describedas follows:

In notime at all, the civiliansgot a tasteof war.Air-raid alarms shrieked on bothcoasts. Big citiesblacked out, or tried to. Therewere dozens of casualties,mostly from auto accidentsin the darkenedstreets. The testsshowed that the citizenshad very little idea of whatto do whenbombers come. But they also showed that thecountry was quick and eagerto learn.Monday night, air-raid alerts startled the WestCoast. Enemy planes were reportedcoming in over San Francisco.Searchlights could not find them and they droppedno bombs[...] In LosAngeles and San Diego,the greataircraft center, there wasa testalert on Wednesdaywhich sent 17,000 men home from darkenedplants. Next day companiesbegan painting windows black to save the vital night-shiftwork. In Hollywoodthe darknessfell impartiallyon moviestar and stumblebum alike. The citizens of the city of klieglights and floodlit grocery stores found a newbeauty in simplestarlight. [...] Seattlehad practiced blackouts last spring, went at the problemwith a comparatively professionalair. Firstblackout night 2,000 citizens went on a window-smashingspree, brokethe frontsof 26 storeswhich did not turn their lightsoff. Theeastern U.S. had its air-raidalarm on Tuesdaywhen news came that enemy planes were coming in at New York from the Atlantic.Some army menafterward classed the newsas a "phonytip," othersas a testalert. Interceptors whirred up to meetthe enemy.

Life magazinecontributed, as did every source of news of the time, to promotethe fear of attackand to incite a collectiveeffort of civilian defense. In its December22 issue, one of its articles discussed "How to Identify Enemy Craft that Might Attack the U. S." (fig. 55) With a fatalistic tone, the article stated: "How to spot Japaneseplanes is made easy on this and the followingpages. If you see thefull undersidesilhouette (shown left above),a bombmay hit near you in the next split second.If you see the fullfront view (abovecenter), you shouldthrow yourselfflat on the groundagainst possible machine-gun fire. If you see the sideview (above right),you are still in dangerof beinggunned by the reargunner in the bombingand observation planes."39 Along with the new forms of danger,an unprecedenteddiscourse of frantic fear, surveillance,protection, and concealmentwas emergingin the urban cultureof the United States.Taking the form of a verticalvisual axis, the citywas found to be threatenedfrom above by the powerfuleye of the enemy,to whichthe only effectiveresponse lay in eitherof two strategies:being able to detectand neutralizethe agentof aggressionwith searchlightsand anti-aircraftguns, or coveringup potentialtargets with differentforms of protectiveblankets in order to at least neutralizeits menacinggaze. The UnitedStates itself usedthe aesthetics broughtabout by the imminentthreat and its new visualaxis for its own purposes.Images of Americanwarplanes and theiraerial gunners pointing their machine-guns at sometarget below werewidely distributed in the popularmedia throughout the duration of thewar (fig.56), as were all kindsof aerialphotographs of destructionof enemysites produced by the allies(fig. 57). Thus,public space in mostlarge cities of the Eastand Westcoast of the UnitedStates beganto be construedas beingunder continuous surveillance by the enemy.Before the war, when the early plansto preventdownward visibility over urban areas were conceivedin preventionof attackslike thoseover London, they weredone thinking of the threatexclusively as a nighttimeproblem and solutionsprescribed in termsof blackouts.However, discussions extendedto all sorts of camouflageagainst potentialdaytime raids. "Smokeouts,"which consistedin producingdense clouds of smokeover energy plants and key militarysites, becamea daytimealternative to blackouts(fig. 58). Countless government documents focused on seekingways to concealgunners and urbanand militarylandmarks by using different elementssuch as paint,foliage and decoytargets. 40 However,the discoursebehind, and the planningof, concealmentstrategies did not remainlimited to the governmentalsphere. Citizens receivedthrough newspapers and pamphletsabundant information on how to use blankets, paper,exterior paints, and full-foliagetrees in the concealmentof theirdwellings, and they set out to put it in practice.Colleges and universitiesalso joined the cover-upendeavor: right after the attackon PearlHarbor, the Collegeof FineArts at SyracuseUniversity added a courseon protectiveconcealment to its curriculum41; and, in February1942, the first generationof artists with specialtraining on militarycamouflage graduated from theArt Schoolof the PrattInstitute in NewYork 42 The extentto whichthe threaton Americancities was understoodeven at the time as part a new form of visual politics is illustratedby the very sourcesthat disseminatedthe discourseof protection.The Office of Emergency Managementdistributed in 1942a posterin whichthe enemywas depictedas a menacingpair of eyeswatching from beneatha stylized versionof a Nazihelmet. The posterwarned: "He'swatching you" (fig.59). Despiteall creativeenterprises focused on daytimeconcealment, darkness remained the main refugeand symbolof protectionfor a wartimepublic who understoodthe reduced probabilityof daytimeraids, due to theincreased chanceof detectingenemy planes as they approached.Ironically, even when the nightseemed to represent thedaunting battlefieldof the newwar, daylight presented even a moreterrifying threat. If planeswere to attackurban centers byday it wouldbe impossibleto protectthe cityas a whole,and the only hopewould remain for those official structuresor landmarksconcealed or camouflagedunder different identities. Conversely,complete obscuration of a city duringnighttime air raidswould reportedlyprovide effectiveprotection for a widersection of the population.Thus, in responseto the riseof a new visualpolitics, we seeemerging in the publicarena of the UnitedStates a newconceptualization of dangerand safety,and a completelynew reappraisalof darkness". Weegee'smove into an explorationof the spatialproblematic of the movietheater coincideswith this very momentof rediscoveryof the city and its visual vulnerability.It is important,then, to juxtaposethe imagesof abandonedsleepers and comfortablecouples that Weegeecaptures in the darkwith the exteriorcontext from which those subjects have, indeed, "escaped': a societyobsessed with the fear of its ownvisibility and excessivelyconcerned with a connectionbetween survival and darkness.It is importanthere to go backto Weegee's1942 photograph,Joy of Living(fig. 22),and to notethat boththe theaterfagade -which announces the "pleasures"of "life" beyondits doors-and the protective"clothing" being set up overthe dead man'sbody, point to the very essenceof the problematicof publicspace at the moment the photographwas taken. The effectiveand metaphoricalclothing or coverprovided both by the paperover the victimand by the darknessof the movietheater neutralize two levelsof pervasiveand violentsystems of verticalvisuality. While the paper rendersineffective the downwardexamination of the urban spectatorover the corpse,the structureof the movie theaterdisables the omniscient eye of the enemyover New York. It is not surprisingthat it is the movietheater and not any other urbanstructure that servesas shelterfrom this lineof sight.As the darkestpublic space within the urbanfabric, the experienceattained within its wallsclearly resembled the idealizedprotection that darknesswas able to providefor a communityin the processof discoveringthe ultimateextent of theirvisual vulnerability44. VisualViolence atStreet Level

The discourseof dangerwas not limited to the verticalthreat that enemy planesposited over the Americanterritory. Although thiswas the mostpopular and mostwidely distributed renderingof thethreat, its representationsevolved until therewere alsoinstances that depicted the effectsof the enemy's presenceat the levelof the street.Thus, thevertical axis of visual violenceintersected with a horizontalaxis of threatat the urbanlevel. Thisperpendicular hinge is clearlyillustrated by two posters producedby the KrogerGrocery and BakingCompany as partof its effortto supportthe distributionof patrioticmessages to the Americanpublic in 1942. Thetwo posters-whosemain objective was to summonthe viewerto purchasewar bondsand stamps-employsimilar representational strategies, but situatethe enemyin differentterms in relationto the city, producingtwo divergentbut complementarydepictions of danger.On the one hand,one of the postersemphasizes the needto buywar bonds"before it's too late",while depictingthe blurred,deep blacksilhouette of an urbansetting, against which a womanand a childembrace each other in terrorunder the menacingimage of an enemybomber that fliesjust abovetheir heads (fig. 60). While the child'shands hold on to the woman'sclothes in desperate fear, the womanlooks up at the sourceof danger,her facialexpression revealing a profound anxiety.Contrastingly, in a secondposter, it is not the imageof the enemy'smachinery but of the enemyitself that is presented.In this case,a muchcloser reference to the cityserves as the background:a typical Americanneighborhood brick wall in frontof whicha streetlamp bears an Americanroute sign. In the foreground,the figureof a manin Naziuniform looks back at the camera, hisgaze reaching the viewerhorizontally as he menacinglybrandishes a bayonet.With this imageof an embodiedenemy established already at groundlevel in the UnitedStates, the posterpleaded: "Keep him off yourstreet!" (fig. 61). Beyondthe rhetoricalmaneuvers that establishedthe immediate neighborhood street as a potentially threateningspace, the realityof urbaninteraction was alreadyevidencing itself as an increasinglydangerous arena. Oneof the earlyinstances of this violencewere the attacks carriedout byAmerican civilians againstpeople of both Chineseand Japanesedecent in an attemptto retaliatefor the attackat PearlHarbor (an initiative thatwould later be supportedby the government,as we all know, with the forcible internmentand relocationof peopleof Japaneseancestry in differentcamps in the West Coast).According to Life, the threat to Chineseimmigrants on the streetwas so serious,that theirconsulates were prepared to "tag their nationalswith identificationbuttons." 45 The article pointed out unfair the nature of these attacksnot for being exertedon civiliansas a whole, but for being directedat "innocent" Chinese,"whose homeland is our stanchally." 46 In this context,Life took the opportunityto provide whatthey thoughtto be a form of publicservice: in orderto be able to distinguish Japanese from Chinese civilians, the magazine"adduced" "a rule-of-thumbfrom the anthropometricconformations that distinguishfriendly Chinese from enemy alien Japs."47 The article,published on December22, 1941and entitled"How to Tell Japs from the Chinese", includedanthropometrical analyses laid over the photographic portraits of twofamous Japanese andChinese government figures: Ong Wenhao, Chinese Minister of EconomicAffairs, and the JapanesePremier and General,Hideki Tojo. Along with these facial studies, the articleincluded genericfull-body comparisons of Chineseand Japaneseadult men (fig. 62). Timemagazine similarlypublished an articleentitled "How to Tell yourFriends from the Japs,"on December22. Time'sphotographic comparisons of Japaneseand Chinesemen did notdisplay measurements or annotationsover their portraits.However, the socialaim of the articlewas the sameas the one publishedby Life.

Thus,the experienceof the streethad changeddramatically from the days beforethe UnitedStates entered the war. Streets had become battlefields where some citizens were ready to retaliateover the attack on Hawaii,while others had to wearidentification buttons in ordernot to be attacked.It is interestingto noticethat, even in the caseof intersubjectiverelations on the street,the problemremained within the sphereof visuality.Close visual analysisof faces allowedthe averageAmerican to distinguishbetween friends and foes, whilegraphic shields such as identificationbuttons became a form of protectionwhose effectiveness depended preciselyon beingexamined by strangers as partof that intensifiedform of visualinteraction. In additionto this violentvisual negotiation on the street,there were, however, physical dangersin the urban setting that affected U.S. residentsin general, regardlessof their nationalityor racialbackground. The first blackoutscarried out immediatelyafter the attackon PearlHarbor, for example,produced numerous injuries and casualties:people were hit or run overby cars on the darkenedstreets; others walked into sewers and canals or fell downsteps in the total darknessof the sidewalks.Within the confusionthat prevailedin the city duringthe blackouts,panicked Americans crashed their cars into buildingsor wereshot for not stoppingat militarycheckpoints. In fact, the drasticeffects of the blackoutat street level were partially predictedby the Officeof CivilianDefense who, in its educationalmanual entitled "Blackouts,"" warnedcitizens of the dangersthey wouldencounter and suggestedpreventive measures to avoidor counteractthem. The manual,published and distributedin 1941as the probabilityof attacksover American cities began to rise,includes, on page24, a seriesof explanationsof the imminentdangers the averagecitizen would be exposedto duringa blackout,among these: runninginto otherpeople or trippingover unleashed pets, getting lost, going unnoticedin the dark whilegravely injured, or inadvertentlyalerting the enemyby directing a flashlightonto a reflective surface. The manual illustratedthis section with a series of obscure and dreadful depictionsof urban space (fig. 63). Later, in its brochure"What to do in an Air Raid",dated 1941 and distributedmost likely right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, theOffice of Civilian Defense posited the home as the safest place in an air raid. The brochure warned:"Stay off the streets.The enemywants you to run out into the streets,create a mob, start a panic.Don't do it!"49 However,life within the space of the home itself was transformed and threatened by the need to accommodate special defensivemeasures. The brochure instructed:

Whetheror notblack-out is ordered,don't showmore light than is necessary.If planes comeover, put out or coverall lightsat once-don't waitfor the black-out order.The light that can'tbe seen will neverguide a Jap.Remember a candlelight may be seenfor miles from the air.If you have portieresor curtains,arrange a doublethickness over your windows.Blankets will do.

Proximityto the windowswas similarly proscribed:

Stayaway from windows. Glassshatters easily, so stayaway fromwindows. Don't goto windowsand lookout in an air raid. It is a dangerousthing, and helpsthe enemy.(...) Againwe say,get off the streetif planescome over. At night,there is dangerof being caughtin blastfrom explosives. Antiaircraft fire meansfalling shrapnel. You aresafe from it indoors,away fromwindows. The needto totallyenclose the house,transforming it into a window-lessblack box with no visualrelation to the outsideworld, practicallyestablished a siege over domesticspace. Withinit, the wholefamily was obligedto collideand interact underthe mostanxiety producing of situations.The imagethat illustratesthis sectionof the Officeof CivilianDefense's pamphlet evenseems to acknowledgethe stressfulconditions to be livedindoors: while a youngwoman shuts the curtainsand her brothertunes in the radio, the father turns off a lampwith an exasperatedgesture. Similarly, themother shows a franklydistressed expression as she carries a platterof food to the centerof the room,where thefamily will gatherfor an unknownnumber of hours (fig.64). To thisfar fromcomfortable domestic situation, we cansee howthe movietheater acted as a counterpoint:a windowless,completely dark spacein itself, the conditionsprescribed by the officialprotective discourse prevailed withinits structure,at the timeit continuedto providea potential alternative sphereof fantasy. In the cinema,the screenserved a twofoldtask: firstly, that ofproviding a site for imaginaryescape for those eagerto watch,and secondly, thatof neutralizingthe gaze of other spectatorsover those who would rather escapethe general politicsof wartimevisuality to experiencethe immediatespace of the theateras they kissedor slept.In the lattercase, as I have alreadyargued, the escapewould be effectively carried out by remainingin a spaceaway from any ideological interpretationof the current realityof the city,a spacesuspended between two spheres of rhetorical,as well as potentiallyreal, bombardment. If we addto this that,besides the problematicnegotiation of spaceat streetlevel, the horizontal mobilityalso becamerestricted by gas rationingand the limitedopportunity to travelby train due to the increasedneed to movetroops across the country(see fig. 65),we can thinkof themovie theateras the closestand mostaccessible site for entertainment,as well as the mostreadily availablepsychological substitute for an air raidshelter in the localcommunity. In contrastto the violentspace of visualnegotiation that the streetentailed, and awayfrom the enclosed,fearful environmentof the house,the protective,permissive, anonymous sphere of the movietheater establisheditself as an idealalternative. 3 Theateras Shelter

An official pamphleton communalair raids publishedby the Office of Civilian Defense and distributed in 1942 stressed, beyond the need for real protection from the attack of the enemy, the importanceof psychologicalaspects when choosing a shelter. In this sense, the pamphlet described the benefits of the communal shelter over the domestic one for the anonymityit allowedwhile still promotingreciprocal help among those sheltered:

The psychologyof shelteringfrom air raidsis very difficultto evaluate.There is good evidence,observed during actual heavy air raidsabroad, that in a raid, peoplelike company.Some families will preferto takerefuge in smalldomestic shelters, which may be safer than their own homes,but will be less comfortable.Others will prefermore companythan the familyaffords, and alsowill take accountof the fact that the headof the familymay not be at home.Therefore, they will preferthe joint comfortand moral supportwhich is possiblein the communalshelter, together with the possibilityof more effectivejoint action in an emergency.Some peoplewill prefer to be sheltered undergroundfor purelypsychological reasons, and others will, for similarreasons, prefer to besheltered on the surface.In eithercase the preferencewill be emotionalrather than logical.52 Interestingly,Sigmund Freud's study of non-pathologicalanxiety, that is to say, the one producedby real,external dangers as opposedto the pathological,internalized fear produced by psychologicalstimuli, may supportthe Office'stheories. Freud's writings establish a strong causalconnection between anxiety and withdrawal,that is to say, betweenthe experienceof danger and the search of alternative,safe, spaces. Accordingto Freud, "the psyche is overtakenby the affect ofanxiety if it feels that it is incapableof dealingby an appropriate reactionwith a task(a danger)approaching from outside."53 If we thinkof the movietheater as a naturalshelter from the generalized threat over the citybetween 1941 and 1945,our description will closely correspondto the Office's psychologicalconsiderations and tothe Freudian explanationof withdrawalas a defensemechanism from anxiety: "in thecase of externaldanger the organismhas recourseto attemptsat flight.The first thing it does is to withdrawcathexis from the perceptionof the dangerousobject; later on it discovers thatit is a better plan to performmuscular movements of sucha sort as will render perceptionof the dangerous object impossibleeven in the absenceof any refusalto perceiveit-that it is a betterplan, that is, to removeitself from the sphere of danger."54 It is, then, througheffectively advancing into a radicallydifferent space, and not onlythrough mere voluntarydistraction that, accordingto Freud,the psycheis betterable to deal witha realdanger that is too powerfulto confront. Interestingly,Freud once referred tothe act of birth as"the fist experience of anxiety, and thusthe sourceand prototypeof the affect of anxiety."55 Freud'sdisciple, Otto Rank,later suggestedthat all attacksof anxietywere in fact attemptsat recallingthe originalexperience of birth. Could we be lookingthen at a sort of collectiveresponse to anxietyin the form of regression,since the spatialprototype into which Weegee's anxious subjects retreat recalls the mother'swomb, that is to say, the only spatial structurethat antedatesthe subject'sfirst experienceof anxiety?With its singleentrance, its total enclosure,and completedarkness, the movietheater strikingly resembles the veryspace within which the psyche'soriginal memory of undisturbedsafety resides. For these same reasons,it is possibleto advancethe thesis that the moviehouse compliedwith manyof the physicaland psychologicalrequirements for the communalair raid shelterduring the war, but was even moreeffective in counteractinga threatthat was very intenselydefined in terms of visual violence.We have alreadyestablished the general advantagesthat the movietheater as a site presentsin the neutralizationof visualnegotiation as an effectof its uniquespatial conditions. We haveanalyzed its characteristicenclosure and how its near-totaldarkness provides protection from the gazeof others.Now, after examining the plethoraof examplesthat allowus to reconstructthe ideologyof threatand protectionthat emergedwith the entranceof the UnitedStates into the SecondWorld War, it is not difficultto understandthe movie theateras a kind of circumscribedblackout space within whichthe violenceof verticalas wellas horizontalvisibility was rendered innocuous. This may explain why Weegee'ssubjects seem tohave consciouslyretreated into the movietheater to enjoy its enclosed,dark, and permissivespace, and why Weegee found their activities to be particularly interesting.Nonetheless, the neutralizationof intersubjectivevisuality is particularly importantif we analyzeWeegee's interest in subjectswho sleepor kissin the dark.Besides the importance the movietheater holds in relationto thegeneral logic of escapingthe visual vulnerability ofthe city,for thesetwo groups there were even further discursive enterprises that couldexplain their retreatinto its visualvacuum. It is impossibleto ignore,when looking at the solitary individuals who reclineon the theater'sseats, abandoningtheir bodiesand consciousnessto the drifting rhythmof dreams,that outside,in the spacedominated by fear and propaganda,a powerful campaigndemanded Americans to exercisetheir patrioticduties in differentways, one of which wasengaging in non-stopwork. The beginningof the war requirednot only that the Americanindustries shifted from producingconsumer goods to war materials,but also that theyincreased productivity in orderto supplythe armywith the necessarytools to defeatthe enemy.After completely obscuring all of their windows,factories of all sorts began to produce militarygoods around the clock. Employersand labor unionsurged workers to makeindividual sacrifices by increasing the hours of theirshifts and the qualityof theirwork. Government offices and privatecompanies launched an intensecampaign reminding workers that, since they were not themselves on the battlefield, their patrioticduty was to at leastprovide those who wererisking their lives withthe necessary materialsto fight the enemy.In 1942,a posterproduced by GeneralMotors motivated their workersby claiming that "Non-stopwork will win" (fig. 66). In a moreguilt-producing tone, one publishedby Walter Kidde & companyshowed a cartoonof AdolphHitler congratulating a lazy worker:"Thanks for loafing,pal!" (fig. 67). The NavyDepartment similarly reminded workers that "Theenemy never kills time", and, in a moredramatic fashion, North American Aviation claimed that "Killingtime is killingmen" (figs. 68-69). Hence,the exhaustedsleepers in Weegee'spictures seem to havefound in the movie theaternot only a protectiveshield from theviolent visuality of the enemyat differentlevels but also a safe haven away from the reality of non-stopproductivity. In this sense, we may speculatewhether Weegee's photographs reflect an implicit"support" of this particularkind of "escapist"activity in the theater,or whetherhe is documenting,as he did in his murderpictures, the "evidence"for a crimecommitted by sleeping workers who deviatedfrom their patriotic duty. A similarcontext exists for the kissingcouples in Weegee'sphotographs. When, on December29, 1941,Life magazinepublished the recentlyreleased official picturesof the disasterat PearlHarbor, nine full pageswere dedicated to imagesof smoke,wrecked planes, burningcars and buildings, as well aswounded soldiers and corpses. However, the last pageof the sectionpresented a full-blownphotograph of a kissingcouple with the followingcaption: "Afterthe attack:a staff sergeantand his wife findeach other aliveand unhurt" (fig.70). This wouldmark the emergenceof the kiss aspart of an iconographyof relief,hope, and unitythat wouldpermeate thenext few yearsof pressphotography in the UnitedStates. Kissing, and love in general, appeared in this context as the perfect antidotes to distress, and their representationswould standfor a reiterationof the country'sultimate capacity to survive.As explainedby American Army Sergeant John Horn Burns, "in a war one hasto love,if onlyto re- assertthat he'svery muchalive in theface of destruction.Whoever has lovedin wartimetakes partin a passionatereaffirmation of his life."56 Notsurprisingly, immediately after the attack,Christmas leaves were canceled for most armypersonnel, and journals began to aboundwith imagesof younggirls and soldierskissing eachother goodbye before the latterwent back to theircamps (fig. 71).The advertising industry sooncashed in on this new romanticizedemblem of Americanpatriotism and madeeffective use of the powersof kissingto sell fromafter-shave lotion to toothpaste.By January1942, Listerinetoothpaste ads thatwere previously illustrated with the imageof a manholding a daisy (fig. 72) wouldnow show a lonelywoman and a couplekissing passionately in the background and ask, "When'sthe last time you werekissed?" (fig. 73). A shavingcream ad similarly presentedthe potentialconsumer with the pictureof a couplewho kissedand, afterasserting that the hearttends to grow"fonder with absence", it alertedmale readers of the importanceof givinga closely-shavedgood-bye kiss with "Barbasol" (fig. 74). It is not surprisingthen, that Weegee'scouples would so eagerlyenjoy the newlyre- discoveredand romanticizednature of kissing,nor that he wouldbe interestedin photographing this popularicon of thetime. However,the connectionsbetween eroticism and the movie theaterat this particulartime are not only iconographic.In fact, they are embeddedin a more complexsexual politics that operatedduring the war. On the one hand,histories of sexualityin the UnitedStates claim that World War II, as mostwars, was a periodof heightenedsexual energyand relaxedmoral constraints. John Costello, for example,has pointedout thatthe war "stimulatedthe urge to love and be loved."57 Accordingto him, withinthe contextof strictly rationed goods and constantthreat experiencedby the population,sex wasconstrued, 58 especiallyby young men and women, as "oneof thefew wartimepleasures available to all." The increasinganxiety of youngcouples who were aboutto be separatedby the war (especiallythose who were not married59), as well as the economicand social freedom recently foundby women who wereentering the urbanworkforce away from their domestic enclosure, playeda role in this suddentransformation of romanceand sexuality.Let us rememberthat, in fact, psychoanalytictheory connectsfear of death and fear of losing a loved object with increasedsexual urgency.Again, SigmundFreud, in his Thoughtson War and Death, suggestedthat wartime disillusionment and stress produced in the averagesubject an involution fromthe civilized forms of the "social"into the egoisticinstinctual nature of the "erotic."Similarly, Costelloposits the intensificationof sexualactivity as aneffect of thetraumatic events which the populationwas forcedto undergoat thetime of the war: "thelives and moralattitudes of many millionsof people had undergonean extensiveemotional trauma, and in the unsettled conditionsof wartimemany social inhibitionshad losttheir restrainingforce. Making the bestof the presentwithout thinking about the future had led to pleasure-seekingand increased promiscuity."60 Indeed,this "urge"for loveeventually came tobe expressedas sharpincreases in rates of venereal disease,illegitimate births, and sexualdelinquency. However, even sexual favors acquireda patriotictint. Duringthe war,one of the mostinteresting phenomena in the sexual arenawas theemergence of whatthe American press called "patriotutes": young girls whowent "uniform-hunting"at railroadstations and busterminals to engagein whatThe American Social HygieneAssociation later called "sexualdelinquency of a non-commercialcharacter". In other words,they performedsexual favors foryoung soldiers who were leavingto the front, without askingfor any paymentin return.When detainedby the police,these girlsoften claimedthat theydid this becauseit wastheir "patriotic duty" to "comfortthe poor boys who may go overseas and get killed."61 The dramaticrelaxation of the sexualpolitics in Americaturned the attentionof the disciplinaryforces of the governmentagainst juvenile sexuality. Young women began to be considereda healththreat for the soldiers.The armywarned their menagainst engaging in sexualrelations with girls of highschool age, who were considered the army'sbiggest enemy as a potentialsource of disease.Later, political discourse began to link militaryvictory in the war witha returnto formsof pre-warmorality in the UnitedStates. Former president Herbert Hoover has beenquoted as saying,in 1944:"The moral life of Americais in danger[... ] We mustaccept thefact thattotal war relaxesmoral standards on the homefront and that this imperilsthe whole front of humandecency" 62 . Reportedly,he went on to suggestthat militaryvictory in the war shouldbe accompaniedby moral victoryin the home front. Thus, the logic of thisformula somehowconstructed a bizarreequation between the atrocitiesof the enemyat the European front,with the liberatedsexual behavior of youngAmericans, both of whichhad to be stopped andovercome. As the newlyrevived forms of sexualitybecame more evident, police surveillance began to target any publicdisplay of affectionthat wouldsuggest moral relaxation. In New York,a WaywardMinors Court had to be institutedto dealwith the large numberof casesof female minorsarrested for not being "properlyescorted" after ten o'clockin the TimesSquare area. Thus,like it did withthe sleepers,the movietheater began to receivethrongs of youngcouples and to shieldthem fromthe ideologicalapparatus thathad beenestablished against sexuality. Shelteredfrom the officialsurveillance that targetedeven subtle forms of physicalaffection in public space,inside thetheater they werefree to engagein passionateencounters for the durationof a film. On a more architecturalnote, the layout of the theater also echoedthe structures intendedto provide physicalprotection against the powerfuleffects of real air raidsover Americancities. Immediatelyafter the attack on Pearl Harbor, theAmerican Construction Company,which advertiseditself as the "buildersof the CaliforniaCottage" beganthe constructionof undergroundbomb shelters in LosAngeles (fig. 75).By February14, 1942,the ChristianScience Monitor reported that the LosAngeles Defense Councilwas alsobeginning to sell plansof "American-style"air-raid shelters (fig.76). Theaim of this initiative wasto institute an "official"model that would counteract theeffect of contractors beginningto advertise themselvesas "specialists"in air-raidshelters. At forty cents apiece,the project wasalso expectedto dissipatethe public fear that protectionwas beyond thereach of the average American'sbudget. As specifiedby official recommendationsby the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense,and echoingthe typicalarchitecture of the movietheater, including its darkness,the shelterswere "almost bare", had no windows,and werelaid out on freefloor planswith oneor severalrows of seatsand a singleentrance. According to the ChristianScience Monitor, "no provision[was] made for wiredlighting or heating.Candles, flashlights, and sweatersor coats will be all that's necessary."63 Interestingly,in the caseof the AmericanConstruction Company, it was this very layoutwhich made it possibleto telltheir clientsthat, if no air raidswere to be deployedover the city,the shelterscould still be convertedinto either of two "California 64 delights":"a swimmingpool or a sound-proofrumpus room. Thus,what wouldappear to be a set of extremelyopposed functions of architecture, namely,the most basic and immediate protection of life, andthe allocation of themost mundane andescapist pleasures of entertainment,coexisted during the war withinthe samearchitectural structuresand functionedunder similarspatial politics.The air-raidshelter and the movie theaterparalleled each other duringWorld War 11in their duty of providingprotection and entertainmentat once. While both endedup fulfillingboth ambitions,the one attemptedto providea physicalprotection from an attackthat nevercame; the other,an effectiveprotection fromthe anxiety that the possibility of thoseattacks, and the realityof the violentvisuality on the street,entailed. 84 Conclusion

Weegeetook his last pictureinside a movietheater in 1950.After that, he rarelyreturned to infraredphotography. He focusedinstead on producingportraits of celebritiesand politicians wherehe alteredthe proportionsof theirfacial traits and distortedtheir expressions. In relation to therest of hiswork, the movietheater period was established in sucha strictparallelism with thewar thatit is impossibleto think ofit on its own,that is to say, as severedfrom the aesthetic and politicaldiscourse that, as we haveargued, ended up establishingthe moviehouse as a protectivesite in a time of nationalcrisis. However, within the violentsystems of publicvisuality that we haveexplored so far, namely,the threateningeye of the enemyover the city and the horizontalmenace of thedifferent levels of visualnegotiation of publicspace, Weegee's camera assumeda privilegedposition. Let us rememberthat Weegee'sphotographs were produced with infraredfilm and invisibleflash, which allowed the photographerto capturethe sceneof his choicewithout alerting his subjectsof his presence.In contrastto thewidely advertised threat of Japaneseor Nazi planesover the city, Weegee'ssecret surveillance went unnoticedand his gaze did not encounterany form of resistance.Thus, his photographsin the movietheater embody theultimate victory of sightover concealment. He, the photographer,remained the only individualeffectively protected from everyone else's gaze. It is importantto rememberhere that World War 11not only producedan aestheticsof concealment,which has beenup untilnow our maininterest for its effectsin the perceptionof urbanspace; it also madeevident a completelynew cultureof espionage.Newspapers and magazinescontinuously reported on the threat thatenemy spies,particularly German, presentedto the country,and on the wayin whichtheir techniquesof infiltrationwere usedto gainaccess to vitaland otherwise inaccessible secrets. Photography, not surprisingly, occupied the center stage of these technical resources.From microfilmreproductions of secret documentsto aerial photographsof militarysites, picturesremained the most reliableand widelyused mediumfor the transmissionof visualinformation to the enemy.In the case of aerialphotography, even though it wasinvented in the mid-nineteencentury 5 and usedfor war purposesshortly after this, it reacheda completelynew dimensionduring World War 11.The interpretationof documentsof aerial photoreconnaissancebecame in this perioda highly sophisticatedand systematicprocedure. Specialists in communication,defense, radar, aircraft and submarineproduction, scrutinizedthe images lookingfor informationon the enemy's resourcesand activities.Fliers were able to produceas manyas 3,000,000prints every month, and film was developedin modernmachines that were ableto turnout as manyas 500 prints per hour66. Thus,the generalizeddiscourse of concealmentthat we haveanalyzed above was counterbalancedwith an aesthetics ofintrusion, of whichWeegee's work servesas a powerful example.In this sense,Weegee almost appears to assumethe positionof the enemyover the unsuspectingsubjects photographs.The invasivenature of his enterpriseand, particularly, his useof technicalfeatures such as infraredfilm, position him within the sphereof reconnaissance. Nonetheless,while he adheresto the strategy ofthe spy, thenature of his picturespresent him more asan advocateof the pleasurablelife insidethe movietheater than as itsdenouncer. We shallremember that his photographsjuxtapose in a verydramatic way a chaoticinterpretation of life on the streets ofNew York with a sympathetictake on thosewho escapeits harshnessby retreatinginto the dark.His camera strips the children,lovers, and sleepersfrom their camouflage,but bydoing so, the imagesestablish and advertisethe movietheater as a party scene,a securerefuge, a womb. Hence,his picturescontribute to the undoingof a desperate logic of fear and hopelessness;they counteracta pervasivediscourse of politicaladherence, and recoverthe basicpleasures of the individualbody and of life. All,ironically, while leaving intactthe delicate shield of darknessunder which the subjectstake cover, leaving it undisturbed underhis infraredflash. Darkness remained, after all, the elementmost carefully preserved in Weegee'sphotographs. Precisely at a timewhen it embodiedthe most definite trait of the urban condition,Weegee managed to leaveit untouched, capturingfor posterity the distinctivepolitics of spacethat emergedat this momentin history. It doesnot seemdifficult now to characterize WorldWar 11in the contextof the United States as a period of darknessthat began to "lightenup" after 1945. While this set of circumstancescan onlybe detectedfrom a certainhistorical distance and bylooking at different sourcesof news, images,and discourse,articles ofthe time seemedto predictwhat later generationswould encounter when looking back at this period.A few months before theend of the war, HouseBeautiful published an articleon domesticsystems of lightingentitled "Brighter Nightsfor yourPostwar Days" by Florence Paine (fig.77). The article was in fact an analysisof howthe developmentof modernsystems of lightingwould change, in the nearand far future, the qualityof domestic spacein America.However, in what wouldappear to bethe displayof an acutesense of historicalconsciousness, Paine's first sentenceread: "Ten years from nowyou will look back on todayas the 'darkages'. We meanthat quite literally."67 It is now a lot more than ten years after the war, but through our explorationof different discoursesand representationalstrategies in the UnitedStates from 1941to 1945,we haveconfronted an array of examplesthat allowus to do just that:to go backin timeto rediscovera "darkage" and, by lookingat Weegee'sphotographs, to reassessthe roleof an urbansite that effectivelyprovided concealmentand protectionfor the dwellersof NewYork as they sawtheir city under siege: the enclosed, dark,and safespace of the movietheater. 90 Notes

An interestingexample is the workof GiulianaBruno. See her Streetwalking on a RuinedMap: Cultural Theory andthe City Filmsof ElviraNotari (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 2 AndreBazin, What Is Cinema?Volume 1 (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1967), 102. 3 ChristianMetz, The Imaginary Signifier, Trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster and Alfred Guzzetti Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1982), 96. Ibid. GeorgSimmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life" in KurtWolff (Ed.) The Sociology of GeorgSimmel (New York: TheFree Press, 1950), 410. 6 Ibid.,414. Citedin WalterBenjamin in "On Some Motifsin Baudelaire"Illuminations (New York:Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968),191. 8 GuyDebord, The Society of Spectacle(New York: Zone Books, 1995). 9 Formore information on Seurat'swork, see Robert L. Herbertet al., GeorgesSeurat 1859-1891 (New York: The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, 1991). 10 Citedin GiulianaBruno, Streetwalking on a RuinedMap: CulturalTheory and the City Filmsof ElviraNotari (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1993), 48. SeeBruno, Streetwalking on a RuinedMap, 43, 53. Bornin 1899in Lemberg,Austria, Weegee arrived in NewYork in 1910.Famous for his incisiveportrayal of gangstermurders in NewYork, his productivelife startedat age14 as a photoassistant and takingstreet photographsof childrenin the LowerEast Side. In 1921,he got a steadyjob as a helperin the darkroomsof the NewYork Times, and fifteen years later, he beganhis free-lance career centering his work around the Manhattan PoliceHeadquarters, taking crime pictures, which he soldto differentnewspapers. "Murder is my business"was the title of his first exhibitionin 1941.Two years later, some of hiswork was exhibited at the Museumof Modern Art in NewYork. During the ten yearsof hisfree lancecareer he producedmost of the picturesthat would be later publishedin twocollections: Naked City (1945 and 1973) and Weegee's People (1946 and 1976). Weegee died in NewYork on December26, 1968. 13 For statisticsand general information on theaterattendance for the period1941-1945, see Maggie Valentine, The ShowStarts on the Sidewalk:An ArchitecturalHistory of the MovieTheatre, Starring S. CharlesLee (New Havenand London: Yale University Press, 1994), particularly chapter 6, "Newsreel:The Impactof WorldWar II" andAppendix A. 14 EastCoast exhibitor Bernard Myerson, cited in BarbaraStones, America Goes to the Movies:100 Years of MotionPicture Exhibition (Hollywood, National Association of TheatreOwners, 1993), 115. '5 Stones,America Goes to the Movies,117. 16 Valentine,The Show Starts on the Sidewalk,128. "It is strangethat Weegee's movie photographs have remained unexplored and almost unacknowledged to this day. As partof my archivalresearch, I havebeen able to examineover one hundredprints of photographsof movieaudiences that Weegeeproduced between 1943 and 1950.The sheerquantity of imagescaptured by Weegeeon this topicpoints to the projectas an importantmoment in Weegee'swork that still demandscloser study. 1 The mostpopular account as to howWeegee got his nicknamehas to do withthe immediacyand rawness of his photographs.It has been said that "Weegee" was a phoneticrendering of "ouija,"which referred to his ability to predictwhere a violentdeath would happen. Others claim thatan earliernickname he got whenhe workedin the darkroomsof the NewYork Times,"squeegee boy" (referringto the tool he usedto removethe excess moisturefrom the prints),transformed into "Weegee" later on. 1 Thecareful composition of the image,which roughly uses the bodyto transcribea diagonalfrom the upperleft to the lowerright corner of the pictorialspace, using regular parameters to locateit withina grid of linesthat looselydivide the photographin thirds,also suggeststhat Weegeewas awareof his picturesas aesthetic productsdespite their seemingly evidential and documentary character. 0 The title "Joyof Living"resonates with a representationaltradition in a differentmedium: painting. In 1905-06, Matisse produceda work with the sametitle wherehe positedan idealizedrepresentation of bodiesin harmony with nature.Later, Picasso followed Matisse and produced, in 1946,a similarlyidealized representation of "La Joiede Vivre." 21 It is interestingto seethat, by capturing sequential takes on activitiesthat evolve through time, Weegee amalgamatesthe techniqueof photographywith the aestheticsof "filmic"language. 22 Citedin WolfgangSchivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the NineteenthCentury. Trans.Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1988), 208. 23 Ibid.,209. 24 HugoMauerhofer, "Psychology of Film Experience,"in ThePenguin Film ReviewVol. II, ed. RogerManvell. London:Penguin Books, 1949), 103. IIbid., 107. 26 Ibid.,104 2 It is importantto acknowledgehere that this photographcontains not only a spatialingredient but also a powerfulclass critique. If we contextualizethe photograph(1943) within the spaceof restrictionsthat theSecond WorldWar entailed,the imageappears as an evidentattack on a socialclass was cynicalenough to showoff theirjewels at the operahouse. As we will seelater, while the governmentalpropaganda summoned the working classto producearound the clock,allowing no spacefor leisure,Weegee's photograph captures the bourgeoisie whilethey comfortably enjoy their usual forms of entertainment,and refusing thus the "collective" spirit of workfor victory. 28 SeeWeegee (Arthur Fellig), Weegee by Weegee: An Autobiography(New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), 82. 29 Weegee(Arthur Fellig), Naked City (New York: EssentialBooks, 1945), 11. 30We shouldnote that the emergenceof televisionplayed an importantrole in drasticallyreducing theater attendanceduring the postwaryears. Between 1947 and 1957,90 percentof Americanhouseholds acquired a televisionset. 31 SeeBarbara Stones, America Goes to the Movies,115. 32 See Maggie Valentine, The Show Starts on the Sidewalk, 129. eCitedin Valentine, The Show Starts on the Sidewalk,129. 34Weegee,Naked City, 94. 3 Onlythe attackon the WorldTrade Center on September11, 2001, has been compared to the attackon Pearl Harbor. Aswe will see,the effectsof the recentterrorist attack in NewYork has produced spatial transformations andiconographic strategies that could be easily compared to thoseof the attackon the U.S.naval base in Hawaii in 1941. 36 See"America Goes to War."Life, 22 December1941, 13. 37 See HermanC. Morrisand HarryB. Henderson(Eds.) World War II in Pictures,Vol. II. (Clevelandand New York:The WorldPublishing Company, 1945) 280. 38 "Air Alertsand Blackouts: Both Coasts Prepare for Attacks from Air," Life, 22 December1941, 20. 39"Japanese Planes:How to IdentifyEnemy Craft that Might Attack the U. S.,"Life, 22 December1941, 36. 4 SeeCamouflage Section, Engineer Board, Fort Belvoir,Virginia. Notes on ModernCamouflage (Fort Belvoir, Virginia,September 18, 1941)and "Paintsfor ProtectiveConcealment" (Fort Belvoir,Virginia, September 18, 1941). 41 See"Syracuse Trainsin Camouflage," New York Times,Sunday, 24 May 1942.Interestingly, thearticle also describesthe useof photographyto determinethe effectivenessof the concealment strategiesput into placeby thestudents in models of hypothetical situations.We will seethis very modelat work in Weegee'sportrayal of the moviegoers. 42 See"The Artist Goes to War,"PM, Monday, 29 December1941, p. 14. 43 It is notcoincidentally that the films producedand released during this period were to be lateridentified as "dark film" or "film noir",a styleconsidered now typically American and limited to theearly nineteen forties. The issues of obscurity,sexuality, violence, and mystery present in the urbansphere imbuedeven filmic production. On the relationshipbetween the wartime urban environment and film noir,see Nicholas Christopher,Somewhere in the Night:Film Noir and the American City(New York: The Free Press, 1997). In an interestingnote, a numberof scholarshave also considered Weegee's work to be connectedwith the aestheticsof film noir.See, for example, AlainBergala, "Weegee and FilmNoir," in Weegee's World.Ed. Miles Barth (Boston:Bulfinch Press, 1997) 69-77. 44Antonia Lant hasexplored the relationshipbetween films, movietheaters, and urban space in Englandduring WorldWar 11.An interestingdifference between the experiencesin Englandand in the UnitedStates is that, whereasthe Englishpublic sphere waseffectively immersed in aerialbombardments, in the UnitedStates similar reactionswhere producedonly by the possibilityof enemyattacks over the city. Furthermore,whereas the experienceof Englandunder these circumstances has gone into historyas a fact, in the caseof the UnitedStates the publicfear experiencedduring the war hasremained almost undocumented and unacknowledged. For more on the Englishcase, see AntoniaLant, Blackout:Reinventing Women for WartimeBritish Cinema (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1991). See "Howto Tell Japsfrom the Chinese:Angry Citizens Victimize Allies with EmotionalOutburst at Enemy," Life,22 December1941, 81. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48United StatesWar Department/ UnitedStates Office of Civilian Defense,Blackouts (Washington, D.C.: GovernmentPrinting Office, August 1941). 49 UnitedStates Office of CivilianDefense, What to Do in an Air Raid(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,1941). 5 Ibid. IIbid. 52 UnitedStates Office of CivilianDefense, Communal Air RaidShelters (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,November 1942), 1. 53 SigmundFreud, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Trans. Alix Strachey(New York: W. W. Norton,1959), 6. 54 Ibid,18. 56 Ibid,10. 56 John HornBurns, cited byJohn Costello in VirtueUnder Fire: How WorldWar // ChangedOur Socialand SexualAttitudes (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 307. 57 JohnCostello, Virtue Under Fire: How WorldWar I/ ChangedOur Socialand SexualAttitudes (Boston and Toronto:Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 10. 58 Ibid. Duringthe first stagesof the war,marriage and parenthoodserved as deterrentsto beingdrafted. Under the 1940Selective Service Act, fatherswith young children had a lowerrating. 64Costello, Virtue Under Fire, 258. 61 Ibid.,207. 62 Ibid.,260. 63 See"Los Angeles Sells Plans for RaidShelters," The Christian Science Monitor (14 February 1942). "Speakingof Pictures:Southern California Company Builds its Air-raidShelter No. 1 in a VacantLot," Life, 29 December1941, 21. The ideaof aerialphotography was bornwith aviation itself. In 1858,Nadar produced the first photographsof Parisfrom a flying balloonand in 1859,he declinedan invitationby the FrenchMinister for War to apply his experimentsto themilitary field. According to somehistorians, the first photographsfor a militarypurpose where takenfrom a balloonin 1862.The printswere used to explorethe positionof the Confederatetroops during the AmericanCivil War. 66 For moreinformation on aerialphotography and its usesin warfaresee Constance Babington Smith, Evidence in Camera:the Story of PhotographicIntelligence in WorldWar II (London:Chatto and Windus,1958) and BeaumontNewhall, Airborne camera: The Worldfrom the Air and OuterSpace (New York: HastingsHouse, 1969). 67 FlorencePaine, "Brighter Nights for yourPostwar Days," House Beautiful 48, no.2 (February1945), 62. Illustrations

Fig. 2 Fig. 1 J. R. Eyerman GeorgesSeurat AudienceWatches Premiere of BwanaDevil Cirque,1890-91 WearingPolaroid Spectacles to Enjoythe Oil on canvas.Musee d'Orsay, Paris Three-DimensionalSequences, 1952 Gelatinsilver print 98 Fig. 3 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Fig.4 Children,Palace Theater, c. 1943 Weegee(Arthur Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative Fellig) Children,Palace Theater, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print,from infrared negative 100 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Children'sPerformance, c. 1943 At the Movies,c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative Gelatinsilver print, frominfrared negative

101 102 I

Fig. 7 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) At theMovies, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, frominfrared negative

Fig. 8 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) YoungWoman Sleeping at a MovieTheater c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative @Weegee / International Center of Photography/ Getty Images

103 104 Fig. 9 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Sleepingat the Movies,c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, frominfrared negative Fig.10

Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Man,Wearing 3-D glasses, Sleeping in a MovieTheater, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print,from infrared negative @Weegee / International Center of Photography/ Getty Images

105 106 I

Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Loversat the Palace Theater,c. 1945 Loversat the Movies, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative Gelatinsilver print, from infrarednegative

107 108 I

Fig. 14 Fig. 13 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Weegee(Arthur Fellig) A Bunchof Cops,n. d. TheOpera Opened Last Night, Dec. 3, 1940 Gelatinsilver print Gelatinsilver print

109 110 Fig.15 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Bar Mitzvah,n. d. Gelatinsilver print

Fig. 16 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Corpse withRevolver, August 7, 1936 Gelatinsilver print

111 112 Fig. 17 EdoardManet DeadToreador, 1964 Oil on canvas

Fig. 18 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) AutoAccident Victim, 1938 Gelatinsilver print

113 114 I

Fig. 20 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Murderin Hell'sKitchen, c. 1940 Gelatinsilver print

Fig. 19 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Murderon the Roof,August 14, 1941 Gelatinsilver print

115 116 I - - m

Fig. 21 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) TheirFirst Murder, October 9, 1941 Gelatinsilver print

Fig. 22 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Joy of Living,April 17, 1942 Gelatinsilver print

117 118 I

Fig. 24 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Timeis Short,March 23, 1942 Gelatinsilver print

Fig. 23 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) WomanLooking at ElectricSign on theNew YorkTimes Building, June 7, 1944 Gelatinsilver print

119 120 Fig. 26 Fig. 25 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Weegee(Arthur Fellig) TheLineup,1939 Barberconfesses to Murderof EinerSporrer, Gelatinsilver print March21, 1937 Gelatinsilver print

121 122 Fig. 27 Fellig) Weegee(Arthur Fig. 28 CharlesSodokoff and Arthur WebberUse TheirTop Hats to Hide Their Faces, Weegee (ArthurFellig) January27, 1942 HenryRosen (left) andHarvey Stemmer Gelatinsilver print (center)Were Arrested for BribingBasketball Players,January 25, 1945 Gelatinsilver print

123 124 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) WomanSleeping in MovieTheater, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print,from infrarednegative

Fig. 30 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) OverheadView of TheaterSleeper, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative

125 126 Fig. 31 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) YoungWoman Sleeping at a MovieTheater c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative @Weegee / International Center of Photography/ Getty Images

Fig. 32 Weegee (ArthurFellig) ManSleeping in a MovieTheater, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative @Weegee / International Center of Photography/ Getty Images

127 128 Fig. 33 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) ManSleeping in a MovieTheater, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative @Weegee / International Center of Photography/ Getty Images Fig. 34 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Loversat the Movies,c. 1945 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative @Weegee / International Center ofPhotography / Getty Images

129 130 Fig. 36 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Coupleat thePalace Theater, c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative

Fig. 35 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Sailorand Girl at the Movie,c. 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative

131 132 I

Fig. 37 Fig. 38 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Weegee Loversat the PalaceTheater /, c. 1945 (ArthurFellig) Loversat thePalace Gelatinsilver print, frominfrared negative Theater//, c. 1945 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative

133 134 I

Fig. 39 Fig. 40 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Loversat the Palace Theater, Loversat the PalaceTheater l/l, c. 1945 c. 1945 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative Gelatinsilver print, frominfrared negative

135 136 I

Fig. 42 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Fig. 41 TheFashionable People, December 6, 1943 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) Gelatinsilver print Audiencein the PalaceTheater, c. 1950 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative

137 138 Fig. 43 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) In the Lobbyat the MetropolitanOpera, OpeningNight, November22, 1943 Gelatinsilver print, from infrared negative

Fig. 44 Weegee(Arthur Fellig) OpeningNight at the 'Met', December3, 1944 Gelatinsilver print,from infrarednegative

139 140 Fig. 45 "LuisianaPurchase is a GoodExample of Fig. 46 EscapistFarce for WartimePublic" "AmericaGoes to War"" Life,January 19, 1942 Life,December 22, 1941

141 142 Fig. 48 "RememberPearl Harbor" Life,December 22, 1941

Fig. 47 "WashingtonGoes to War"" Life,January 5, 1942

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145 146 Fig. 51

Air interceptorcommand set up immediately Fig. 52 afterthe outbreakof warto interceptpossible air attackson U.S. Anti-aircraftgun emplacements were set up Here,Patrol receives instructions alongboth coasts to guardmajor cities, harbors beforetake off. andindustrial plants.

147 148 I

Fig. 54 ""AirAlerts and Blackouts: Both Coasts Prepare Fig.53 for Attacksfrom Air". Interceptorcommands established along the Life,December 22, 1941. coastswere modeled after those in England. Here,civilians sat through the nighttrying to spot enemyplanes.

149 150 I

Fig. 55 Fig. 56 "JapanesePlanes: Howto IdentifyEnemy Craft "U.S.Aerial Gunner" thatMight Attack the U.S." Life,December 29, 1941 Life,December 22, 1941.

151 152 Fig. 57 Fig. 58 "NaziBattleships Bombed" "Speakingof Pictures:This is a Smokeout" Life,Jan 19, 1942 Life,Jan 12, 1942

153 154 Fig. 60 KrogerGrocery and Baking Company Poster,1942

Fig. 59 Officefor EmergencyManagement, Divisionof Information Poster,1942

155 156 I

Fig. 62 Fig. 61 "Howto TellJaps from the Chinese" KrogerGrocery and Baking Company Life, December22, 1941 Poster,1942

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Fig. 63 Drawingsillustrating the different dangers to whichthe citizenwould be exposed during a blackout.. In "Blackouts",the officialpamphlet on the subjectdistributed by the UnitedStates Office of CivilianDefense, August 1941

159 160 Millions of troops are on the move...

Fig. 64 Familypreparing for an air-raid. In "Whatto Do in anAir Raid", pamphletdistributed by the Officeof Civilian Defense,1941. IsYOURtrip necessary? DrFFCfOfDtfENSL 1RANriATION Fig. 65 U.S.Office of DefenseTransportation Poster,1943 Artist:Montgomery Melbourne

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163 164 Fig. 68 Fig. 69 NormtAmerican Aviation U.S.Navy Department, Incentive Division Poster,1943. Poster,n. d. Artist:Reynold Brown

165 166 Fig. 70 Fig. 71 "Afterthe attack:a staff sergeantand his wife find eachother alive and unhurt" "SoldiersSay FarewellTo GirlsAs Christmas Life,December 29, 1941. Leavesare Canceled" Life,December 15, 1941

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189 190