“Are You Talking to Me?”—New York and the Cinema of Urban Alienation

ABSTRACT

New York is a city in which a substantial number of films depicting urban alienation have been set and filmed, although New York films are neither exclusively nor exhaustive of such films. The conditions for alienation derive from several aspects of urbanism also addressed in this essay. This subject deals with the social and psychological estrangement that is often reflected in antisocial behavior in the City, but may also be an expression of idiosyncratic and esoteric lifestyle choices that result in an urban menagerie of rich and varied social types and groups, among them rogues and loners, and urban cowboys.

The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life.

Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Modern Life [1903]

Notes

Having improved the process for making two-foot models look like giant apes RKO reprised the theme in 1949 with Mighty Joe Young. This time the beast's weakness is for actress Terry Moore and the relationship closer to that of Lassie than Kong's ardor. Kong turns up again in the Dino DiLaurentis remake with blonde Jessica Lang as the object of his desires. So far the only blonde to go chasing apes was in Gorillas in the Mist [1988] the story of the primatologist and ill-fated gorilla activist, Diane Fossey, which the film critic Pauline Kael called a “…feminist version of King Kong.”

The visitors to the City are typically but not always outsized animals. In 1942, a Tarzan film plot brought the “lord of the jungle” to the jungle of the big city—in this case, as is often the case, to New York City.

This is a message that has been sounded in literature from the Bible to the present day. See Marx 1964 and Clapp 1978.

Several of these images are reproduced in Jeffry 1977. While it is not insignificant that these images are also a reflection of the social breakdown in Germany prior to WWI, the prominent use of urban images and social types reflects strong antiurban sentiments.

Consider the unending debate over free speech, flag-burning, and pornography, as prime examples of this feature of urban society.

It should not go unnoted that the T-Rex of the Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World, was brought to San Diego, California, to give that city a good thrashing, or that most of the Godzilla films make a wasteland of Tokyo, Japan's equivalent of NYC. Moreover, the occasional small town provides a suitable setting for the vengeance of Nature, as in Jaws and its sequels. It should also be recognized that Nature's heavyweights never come out on top against the big City, or even the small town. If, as they often are, they are created by urban technology (radioactivity being the prime culprit), then they are usually dispatched with the same technological superiority of the City.

Idyllic urban films (at least those set in New York, such as Top Hat, On the Town, Barefoot in the Park, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and The Out of Towners, among others) always seem “stagey.” Perhaps because many such films are musicals and comedies, the typical menagerie of the City is cast more in the form of the chorus and props than as drivers of plot.

As early as 1866 the Englishman Charles Dilke felt it appropriate in a description of his visit to New York to record the joke that, “Every New Yorker has come a good half-hour late into the world and is trying all his life to make it up.” Over a century later, according to the comedian Jackie Mason, the frantic pace of New Yorkers has not abated: “They look like they're being chased or trying to catch somebody. People never walk slowly, even if they have no place to go. There's nothing more pathetic to a New Yorker than somebody who doesn't look busy” [Clapp 1994].

Examine, in particular, the paintings of Edward Hopper, with their solitary urbanites posed in the stark urban void like so many insects encased in amber. Also, Donald B. Kuspit, writing about modern painting in New York City, states that: “The way the city allows isolation, as a choice—as a village would not, with its demands of communal participation and conformity—is also a confirmation, however ironic, of its belief in individuality. The much-lamented loneliness of the city is as much a symbol of its opportunity as of its oppression” [Kuspit 1977].

New York also affords settings ranging from some of the highest buildings in the world to subway netherworlds deep beneath the streets of the city. A notable example, relevant to the theme of this paper, is The Taking of Pelham 123 [1974], about the hijacking of a New York subway train for a million-dollar ransom. The “city beneath the city” is also employed to an almost Dante-esque effect in Mimic [1997], in which a plague of giant genetically-altered insects inhabit the netherworld of the subway and prey upon humans, again employing the well-trod theme of urban-based technology turning Nature towards unexpected bad results.

It is significant that Murnau used panchromatic negative film, developed for color photography in the early 1920s, in shooting this black and white film, which along with incandescent tungsten lighting enhanced the psychological moods of the film with more dramatically rich chiaroscuro.

It should also be noted that what appears as the latter film's outright plagiarism of plot elements and visuals from Midnight Cowboy is difficult to miss. Consider the obvious similarities of the scenes in both films dealing with the “cowboy” walking down a long-lens compressed view of Fifth Avenue, the scenes with transvestites, and the Art Party scene.

DePalma's film did not receive the positive critical acclaim received by Tom Wolfe's book, on which the movie is based. It is also worth reading Wolfe's essay about writing the “new” social novel and about the City [Wolfe 1989].

Theodore Dreiser's classic novel [1990] was filmed by Paramount Pictures in 1952 simply as Carrie with Jennifer Jones in the title role (directed by William Wyler). Not to be confused with Stephen King's horror Carrie, the 1976 film directed by Brian DePalma, which has a relevant, if somewhat attenuated connection to the present theme.

1950, 20th Century Fox. The picture won six academy awards. It may take something as thin on plot and upbeat as a musical to counter the theme of the ruthless understudy. In 42nd Street [1933] a small town girl, Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler), is actually the heroine, saving the Broadway show from having to close because of an injury to its star.

Working Girl might be contrasted with the earlier film, 9 to 5 [1980], also a rather simple-minded comedy, but one in which the antagonist is a corporate male. Compare also the female leads in The Apartment [1960] played by Shirley Maclaine, and Desk Set [1957], played by Katherine Hepburn.

There was an ironic connection between film and reality in this scene. On March 30, 1981, five years after the release of Taxi Driver, a 25-year-old drifter named John W. Hinckley, Jr., shot and seriously wounded the President. Hinckley was no replica of Travis Bickle, but he was, before the assassination attempt and in prison to this day, obsessed with the actress Jodie Foster.

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James A. Clapp

JAMES A. CLAPP is emeritus professor of Urbanism and City Planning at San Diego State University. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong in 2000 and a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris in 1989 and 1999. His most recent book, writing as Sebastian Gerard, is Life Lines, the forthcoming one is This Urban Life, and he is currently writing a novel about the Three Gorges Dam in China. He is president of Urbis Media Productions. E-mail: [email protected]