On the surface Los Angeles seems to be a beacon for dreamers. Here, the conventional myth recites, Cinderella realities are constructed on Hollywood back lots. The ugly become beautiful, the poor become rich, and the undesirable becomes desirable. In all, it appears, Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American dream. Yet, these Cinderella realities are quickly dismissed when one digs below the glimmering surface. In his work, City of Quartz, Mike Davis examines the socioeconomic history of Los Angeles. Moreover, Davis pulls the curtain back from the L.A. fairytale by showing us that the city is anything but an emerald city. Specifically, Davis looks at how physical and social space contribute to the formation of communal identities. In particular, Davis draws attention to Los Angeles’s culture industry, architecture, and power structures. In Davis’s illustration, Los Angeles is depicted as an “economic colony” for the globalized World economy.[1] Furthermore, for Davis, the City of Angels is a melting pot for various social and racial tensions. Importantly, this melting pot is on the verge of boiling over.
Davis begins his study by examining the culture industry of Los Angeles. Davis is primarily interested in “the history of culture produced about Los Angeles,” rather than culture simply produced in Los Angeles.[2] To explain the cultural elements of L.A., Davis identifies four influential groups: the boosters, the noirs, the exiles, and the mercenaries. As he describes the boosters, Davis calls to mind Sinclair Lewis famous text Babbitt. Here, Davis depicts an era in which prosperity and the pursuit of self-interest are upheld as universal human goals. In the booster era (1885-1925), Davis explains, there was a “continuous action of myth-making and literary invention with crude promotion of land values and health cures.” [3] With this continuous process of myth making, L.A. was displayed as the land of opportunity and the destined center for future economic powers.[4]
If the boosters’ created a positive picture of L.A., the people that represented the noir period created a backlash by casting a dark shadow on the enticing view. Like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, the Los Angeles of the noir period is a world turned upside down. During the 1930s and 40s, “Noir,” Davis explains, “was like a transformational grammar turning each charming ingredient of the boosters’ arcadia into a sinister equivalent.” [5] While boosters were concerned with prosperity, noirs looked to lower pursuits, such as the activities of gangsters, and official corruption. In contrast to the idealized L.A. of the boosters, noirs called attention to the seedy elements just below the surface.
The two subsequent strands (the exiles and the mercenaries) mirror their forbearers. Somewhat similar to the noirs, the exiles also called the idealized booster depiction of L.A. into question. Between the rise of the Nazism in Germany and the communist witch-hunts in Hollywood, some of Europe’s most celebrated intellectuals migrated to L.A. Yet, these intellectuals were unimpressed with their new home. For them, the region was a “anti-city,’ a Gobi of suburbs.” For instance, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno alleged the lack of urbanity distracts L.A. residents away from the crucial international cause of the proletariat. Moreover, the lack urbanity leads L.A. residents to be distracted with television and consumerism. [6] Like the noirs, the exiles reconstructed a negative image of L.A. However, the exiles focused their attention on the lack of urbanity and what they understood to be a hyperactive consumerism.
Recently, as Davis puts it, the mercenaries have set out to “build a cultural superstructure of Los Angeles’s emergence as a ‘world city.” Comprised mostly of developers and entertainment moguls, the mercenaries see the “cultural revalorization of Los Angeles” existing in material interests and land development.[7] For the mercenaries, attention is constantly orientated to the future. Moreover, as men of business and industry, mercenaries see themselves as the creators of the future.[8]
There is a catch. Davis argues that these mercenaries, specifically the developers, enrich the Westside and the Downtown areas at the expense of inner city regions.[9] The Westside and Downtown spaces are envisioned as posh regions, because developers have created an underclass “other.” These others are condemned to live in inner-city slums and ghettos. Davis concludes that this process leads to a social polarization within the city.
As Davis explains, through “slow growth” movements, middleclass (usually white) homeowners have attempted to prevent “undesirable” social classes and racial groups from moving into their neighborhoods. These homeowners have justified these initiatives as efforts to maintain the value of their homes. Yet, in effect, these initiatives have created and sustained social inequality.[10]
Additionally, as Davis contends, many middle-to-upper-class individuals are living in gated communities that thrive on their exclusive nature. Furthermore, their houses and business are insulated with astonishing levels of security. On the surface, these security measures are described as necessary measures to protect the successful from the violence of the unfortunate. Yet, as Davis maintains, “security has less to do with personal safety than with the degree of personal insulation, in residential, work, consumption, and travel environments from ‘unsavory’ groups and individuals, even crowds in general.” [11] The slow growth movements coupled with the exaggerated security measures have helped middle- to-upper class individuals preserve their status by holding the constructed “other” down.
In contrast to the fortified castles of the rich, lower-class individuals are forced to live in slums. As Davis explains, there is a heavy presence of security in these areas. For instance, the parks are littered with “bum-proof” benches. These benches are designed to make it impossible to sleep on.[12] Additionally, malls, schools, and libraries all seem to resemble Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. The panopticon was originally a layout for a prison, in which, an all seeing eye monitored the actions of prisoners. Overall, with this design, officials control lower-class individuals through observation and surveillance.[13] So, in effect, residents in the inner-city areas are treated as if they are innate and inevitable criminals, whose every action must be constantly monitored.
Is there a man behind the Los Angeles curtain? For Davis, there are many individuals behind the curtain. Developers, newspaper owners, architects, politicians, and police chiefs all play a menacing role in Davis’s narrative. However, the overreaching villain is the capitalistic world economy. Davis argues that since L.A. does not have an industrial base, it is essentially an economic colony or, in other words, a periphery to many different metropoles. As a result, jobs have been lost and social conditions on a whole have declined. Still, some inner-city individuals have created out their own profitable position in the global economy. According to Davis, these individuals have constructed their own roadmap to prosperity through the drug trade and gangster rap.[14]
There seems to be a polymorphous theme in Davis’s analysis of Los Angeles. Somewhat differently from Marx and Hegel’s classic dialectic, the power dynamics in L.A. are envisioned as interconnected and frequently re-constructed. Most of all, they surpass simple binaries. As new market conditions develop, alliances are broken while others are created. Yet, there does seem to be crucial instability to this polymorphous structure. The evolving economic and cultural conditions seem to be pushing the racial and class tensions into a volcanic web on the brink of eruption.
Is an escape from the fate of Los Angeles possible? Simply put, no. It seems, the instability of L.A., as depicted by Davis, also marks the conditions in America as a whole. While Los Angeles’s tremors might be more pronounced, they are not exceptional. Rather than setting L.A. apart, we must embrace its instability as our own. Davis offers a significant portrait of Los Angeles’ past and present. However, his illustration does not provide a full and final picture. While he calls attention to class and racial tensions, gender conditions are practically absent from his analysis. In the end, further examinations of Los Angeles are required. These examinations need to draw more attention to how Los Angeles fits into larger historical trends encompassing all of America and, for that matter, the World. Instead of escaping L.A., we need to face it head on. In this manner, we might awake from its alienating dream world and start conceptualizing reality.
–Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.
[1] Mike Davis City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 2006), xi.
[2] Ibid., 20.
[3] Ibid., 26.
[4] Ibid., 27-35.
[5] Ibid., 38.
[6] Ibid., 48.
[7] Ibid., 71.
[8] Ibid., 83.
[9] Ibid., 78-83.
[10] Ibid., 156-159.
[11]Ibid., 224.
[12] Ibid., 234-235.
[13] Ibid., 244-245.
[14]Ibid., 309-317.