THE FINAL POST

As the class comes to a close, I find myself trying to draw conclusions from everything that we have done this semester.  I have convinced myself that both Dr. Stogdill and Mr. Donnell are attempting to convey some sort of grand message about L.A. that we as a class are supposed to discern.  With every project, reading, movie, discussion, experiment, etc… that we have done, it is my belief that our teachers have guided us to some sort of greater understanding of the city that most of us have lived our whole lives in (sorry to Midge, Alex, and any other person who might have been born elsewhere).  So,  without further adieu, I present my take away from the City of Angeles Class of 2015.

The City of Los Angeles that I know and love is really centered around Pasadena.  Other than water polo tournaments and the occasional DTLA outing, I rarely venture into "the city."  "The city" for me is really only a few buildings that I pass by on the way to LAX.  The question now becomes why?  Why are cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, etc… known for their bustling urban settings filled with life, vitality, and community while L.A. is know as a sprawling, laid back oasis with beaches, babes, and Hollywood?  There obviously is not one answer, but I think that L.A. Plays Itself has started to point me in one possible direction.

In L.A. Plays Itself, we see a city that is exploited and molded to fit whatever role that it needs to play.  It does not have one true character, but thousands of ever changing roles.  From the site of alien invasions to the home of a mobster to a place of unchecked lawlessness, L.A. is whatever the next movie director wants it to be.  When it comes to the movie industry, it has no identity; it is a place that can be whatever you want it to be as long as you are willing to pay the right price.  Although we have yet to finish the movie and do not know what conclusions are going to be drawn, I think that it is important to look at what L.A. is, if anything, outside of the movie business.

Los Angeles is a place where you can have six different styles of architecture on one street.  L.A. is the place where you can spend a relaxing and warm day on the beach in January.  It is the place where an ethnic enclave like Little Bangladeshi has almost no people of the Bangladeshi ethnicity living there.            
It is a place where freeways and cars are part of the culture.  It is a place with at least ten colleges in a fifty mile vicinity.  It is a place that is so much more than Hollywood and celebrities, and it is my hope that sometime in the future L.A. will be able to break away from its movie industry reputation.  

Hollywood: Hardly Working

From the books we've read this semester, it has become clear that work in Hollywood is a different kind of work.  Maybe it has something to do with the movie industry, or the laid-back attitude that everyone associates with the West Coast, but, regardless, both Nathanael West and Budd Schulberg argue that work here is unusual at best and nonexistent at worst.

For example, In Day of the Locust, hardly anyone works at all, despite the fact that Tod and Faye both have jobs in Hollywood.  Yet Faye is happier letting Homer dote on her (that is, until she gets bored of him and runs away with Miguel) and Tod is happy obsessing over Faye and envisioning Los Angeles in flames.  The jobless Homer, unable to put his restless hands to work, becomes anxious and destructive with nothing to do but stare at lizards.  Soon the citizens of Hollywood, unable to be satisfied by poorly-paying jobs, react similarly, all their aggression bubbling to the surface and culminating in the riot at the end of the book.

Similarly, in What Makes Sammy Run?, work is hard to find.  With Glicks who gained their status through manipulation and animalistic hunger at the top, the real workers are the ones who struggle to make ends meet. Back in New York, Al is content as a writer, but in Hollywood, he discovers that working traditionally gets you nowhere.  The multitude of writers who have come to Hollywood to work find themselves time and time again tricked by the industry and left with nothing to show for their honest efforts.  It seems that in Hollywood, the only way to get work done is the Glick way, by working the crowd.  

I wonder why manipulation and fakery has become such a trademark of Hollywood. Clearly, you could find Glicks anywhere, but West and Schulberg seem to argue that Hollywood seems to have an effect on its inhabitants, making them listless and scheming, or that it attracts those with Glick-ish tendencies. Today in class, we talked about how we have learned to take every movie, even the noblest “artistic” movies with a grain of salt, because we know what their main purpose is: to turn a profit in the same way the inevitable “Fast and Furious 23” will.  We have learned to be wary of what Hollywood tells us (even though we can’t help but consume it), because we know that entertainment is a business that loves manipulating its customers, luring them in with catchy titles and explosions and romance so that it can bolster its own paycheck.  

Clearly, people really do work hard in the entertainment industry (there are some movies that aren’t just sequels), but many people have the perception that those in entertainment are slimy, always looking for the easiest way to get the biggest pay, and I wonder how that has happened.  Why do we believe that the business of Hollywood discourages normal work-ethic, or that work doesn’t exist here?

Fame and Misfortune: Representation in Hollywood Cinema

One of the many things I can deduce from this semester of class is that Hollywood is the one topic everyone loves to hate. Our ideas have held strong that the movie business and everyone involved is simply as hollow and superficial as the facades that make up their movie sets. We have yet to put Hollywood in a positive light and our discussions usually end with our fingers pointing blame at Hollywood. The least attractive characters to the reader (yet most desirable in our text), like Faye from Day of the Locust, seem to represent Hollywood. Even in the documentary, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Andersen blames the abbreviation of Los Angeles to L.A. on its portrayal in cinema. I believe it is important for us to recognize just why we feel this way about Hollywood. Is the movie industry that lies within Hollywood really that despicable?

While working on the character project, I have come across the vast perpetuation of social stereotypes in Hollywood Cinema. My avatar was an Asian American female who worked in the entertainment industry during the 1980-90s. From my research, I found that there were few positions for Asian females in Hollywood, except for their racist roles as characters in film. There was very little portrayal of Asians in film, but if they were shown, they were almost always used for two reasons: the Asian American male actors were portrayed as asexual and emasculate (usually as nerds or servants) but they most always know martial arts, and the Asian American females were shown as "Dragon Ladies" or exotic temptresses whose existence was only to serve the needs of white males. Both radiate derogatory characteristics that cater to the entertainment of white America. Even during our viewing of Los Angeles Plays Itself in class today, there was a clip of an Asian actor who walked into an office and instantly started karate chopping desks and roundhouse kicking the ceiling fan. Of course, this representation was used as a comical relief to the tension of the clip, but that does not justify the stereotypes that were used. Asian Americans were also never depicted as Americans, they were always cast for the role of foreigners, thus perpetuating the idea that Asian Americans are aliens in our country and that they do not belong.

Of course, their portrayal is very different now than it was in the past and Asians were not the only ones targeted (in fact, all minorities were shown in negative stereotypical roles), but that should not be overlooked from the vast history of Hollywood films. Only in recent time has the image of the Asian American started incorporating respectable roles and even main characters.

Hollywood films have widely exaggerated stereotypes and warped the public perception of the world. Far too often, the general public will assume that what is displayed in movies can be an authentic substitute for reality. For example, the film Zero Dark Thirty interprets the location and execution of Osama Bin Laden. Many who have seen the film seem to think that the exact strategies that were carried out in the movie were the same ones that the U.S. Government organized for the real-life situation.  Of course, this is completely false because the movie is simply a dramatization of the event and we cannot judge the actions of our government from the film. Another current example is the perception of North Korea in the film The Interview. The film has recently received scrutiny for not truthfully representing the oppression of the North Korean people. We must remember that this film was a comedy that featured the likes of Seth Rogen and James Franco, and should not be seen as accurate representation.

In the same regard, we cannot judge everything that Hollywood produces as fictional and appropriate. Hollywood has had a strong influence over American culture for the past century but we need to be conscious of how easily it can skew our views of people and events.