Megacities Must Not Lose Their HumanizingQualities
Worldview (WBEZ: Chicago Public Media)
Shanghai's population is approaching 20 million and as it, and other mega cities expand, Barry hopes that our global obsession with development doesn't come at a great cost…
Traveling through the world's megacities has resembled the journey described in Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. In this fictional masterpiece Marco Polo describes to Kubla Khan what he saw on his journey. After four decades of visits to megacities, it is also difficult to describe, let alone understand, the modern megacity, world city or global city. What they have in common are qualities of size, scale, shape and speed that are new in human development and unique in the history of globalization. For example, size proportionately affects both the physical and mental health of people and geometrically increases the global footprint of a city. We make cities, but they remake us.
The megacity, determined by a population of ten million or more, or the global city, determined by capital concentration, signals a new partition of the world. This spatial partition is represented within the city by formal vs. non-formal settlements or vertical vs. horizontal growth.
These new (in)human settlements are full with both promise and peril, beauty and barbarism. More important than the fact that half the world's population is living in cities is the emergence of the very large city. It is in the megacities that the fate of global and planetary development rests. In such cities there is a dance between promise and peril, each partner uncertain of who is leading.
The promise of the megacity can be the diversity of experience, people and cultures; economies of scale; human capital; or the concentration of science-technology-innovation. The peril of the megacity includes both planetary and global threats, such as inequality, pollution, violence or earthquakes. Martin Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, recognized that “Today's city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.”
The bewildering methods of defining and measuring urban population suggest that even our conception of the city is indefinite. The megacity has been the subject of numerous horrific fictional accounts. But no one has managed to depict a city of twenty, thirty or forty million people as equitable and ecological. Such an idea cannot be sustained in the imagination.
Cities are problems in “organized complexity,” stated Jane Jacobs in 1961. The most difficult challenge facing megacites is to discover the challenge of this “organized complexity”. It is the interaction between the hard and soft infrastructure that sustains the urban area, including the full array of global and planetary systems that engage or are engaged by cities. One obvious example is the Icelandic Volcano. A planetary event dramatically impacted the global system of air traffic, and related activities.
Looking at the movement in and out of people, freight, power, ideas, services, waste in cities, it is obvious that Tokyo, New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sao Paulo or Lagos represent distinct examples of “organized complexity.” They are driven by factors that are poorly understood in isolation, let alone in their interaction.
To Listen to the Episode
Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Monday, January 03, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
David C. Simmons: The Dysphoric Style in Contemporary American Independent Cinema
The Dysphoric Style in Contemporary American Independent Cinema
by David C. Simmons
The Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences
ABSTRACT
This dissertation argues that contemporary American independent cinema needs to be theorized in a new way. Film criticism has traditionally defined independent film in one of two ways: financing (which, as we see by George Lucas’ independently financed Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith [2005], is not an adequate approach) or anti-Hollywood content (which is problematic because it only explains what this cinema is not, rather than what it is). Instead, I argue that contemporary American independent cinema is best defined in terms of style. This style may best be described as dysphoric (a state of anxiety or restlessness specifically constructed for the spectator). Building from David Bordwell’s analysis of film form, I show how the dysphoric style structures the aspects of 1) narrative causality; 2) temporal relations; and 3) spatial relations. Such a style arises from and conveys the nihilistic themes that characterize contemporary American independent cinema.
Chapter 1 examines narrative, arguing that the dysphoric style constructs narratives
with loose causality, ambiguity, unresolved gaps, an open ending, and passive characters devoid of clear goals. Looking closely at the film Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998), I explicate how its narrative is distinct from a film with similar themes, but which arises from a completely different group style, A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard, 2001). Comparing and contrasting the pair of films in this and subsequent chapters allows for greater illumination of the distinct nature of the dysphoric style. I also provide additional examples of independent films in this and the following chapters to substantiate my argument. Chapter 2 examines the realm of temporality, arguing that Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2001) constructs time in a way that heightens ambiguity and leaves unresolved narrative gaps, something quite different than Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) which I show to be a mainstream film, despite its reputation. Chapter 3 looks at space, while providing a critique of Bordwell’s account using more recent scholarship. I argue that dysphoric space is fragmented, unstable, unclear, metaphoric, and subjective. Here SLC Punk (James vi Merendino, 1998) is revealed as being spatially dysphoric, while Mallrats (Kevin Smith, 1995), a film often considered independent, is really only performing the same old classical maneuvers. Chapter 4 describes the evolution of the dysphoric style, presenting a case about how it morphed from the existential styles of film noir and European Art Cinema of the 1960s. I also demonstrate how the dysphoric style in turn influences its own neighboring contemporary cinemas. This dissertation provides a new way to conceptualize, theorize, and discuss the phenomenon I am calling contemporary American independent cinema. It enables a more nuanced understanding of its films. It provides an opportunity to notice how contemporary American independent cinema intersects, informs, is distinguished from, and is influenced by other cinemas. Most importantly, it allows us to understand U.S.
culture in a more complex manner by seeing how this cinema not only reflects nihilism, but produces it.
To Read the Dissertation
by David C. Simmons
The Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences
ABSTRACT
This dissertation argues that contemporary American independent cinema needs to be theorized in a new way. Film criticism has traditionally defined independent film in one of two ways: financing (which, as we see by George Lucas’ independently financed Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith [2005], is not an adequate approach) or anti-Hollywood content (which is problematic because it only explains what this cinema is not, rather than what it is). Instead, I argue that contemporary American independent cinema is best defined in terms of style. This style may best be described as dysphoric (a state of anxiety or restlessness specifically constructed for the spectator). Building from David Bordwell’s analysis of film form, I show how the dysphoric style structures the aspects of 1) narrative causality; 2) temporal relations; and 3) spatial relations. Such a style arises from and conveys the nihilistic themes that characterize contemporary American independent cinema.
Chapter 1 examines narrative, arguing that the dysphoric style constructs narratives
with loose causality, ambiguity, unresolved gaps, an open ending, and passive characters devoid of clear goals. Looking closely at the film Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998), I explicate how its narrative is distinct from a film with similar themes, but which arises from a completely different group style, A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard, 2001). Comparing and contrasting the pair of films in this and subsequent chapters allows for greater illumination of the distinct nature of the dysphoric style. I also provide additional examples of independent films in this and the following chapters to substantiate my argument. Chapter 2 examines the realm of temporality, arguing that Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2001) constructs time in a way that heightens ambiguity and leaves unresolved narrative gaps, something quite different than Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) which I show to be a mainstream film, despite its reputation. Chapter 3 looks at space, while providing a critique of Bordwell’s account using more recent scholarship. I argue that dysphoric space is fragmented, unstable, unclear, metaphoric, and subjective. Here SLC Punk (James vi Merendino, 1998) is revealed as being spatially dysphoric, while Mallrats (Kevin Smith, 1995), a film often considered independent, is really only performing the same old classical maneuvers. Chapter 4 describes the evolution of the dysphoric style, presenting a case about how it morphed from the existential styles of film noir and European Art Cinema of the 1960s. I also demonstrate how the dysphoric style in turn influences its own neighboring contemporary cinemas. This dissertation provides a new way to conceptualize, theorize, and discuss the phenomenon I am calling contemporary American independent cinema. It enables a more nuanced understanding of its films. It provides an opportunity to notice how contemporary American independent cinema intersects, informs, is distinguished from, and is influenced by other cinemas. Most importantly, it allows us to understand U.S.
culture in a more complex manner by seeing how this cinema not only reflects nihilism, but produces it.
To Read the Dissertation
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Eimi Ozawa: Remaking Corporeality and Spatiality: U.S. Adaptations of Japanese Horror Films
“Remaking Corporeality and Spatiality: U.S. Adaptations of Japanese Horror Films”
by Eimi Ozawa
49th Parallel
Introduction
Since the golden age of the genre in the late 1960s, American horror films have always existed as indices of the status of American society and culture. For one thing, this is because the horror genre has been dominated by the U.S in terms of both production and sales; as Marilyn Manson, in an interview in Bowling for Columbine, assumes that what the American media are doing is a “campaign of fear and consumption, and that's what I think it's all based on, the whole idea of 'keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume.” Fear is deeply incorporated into the essential part of what makes America. Hollywood horror films also have been a product of globalization, being aligned with cultural capitalism; for instance, they had been monopolizing the market of the genre in Japan until the Asian horror boom has occurred past the decade.
The other thing is that, since the birth of the genre, horror films have mirrored what American people fear, which is entangled with the pleasure of watching; and what makes them feel fear heavily depends on the complicit relationship between biological human bodies in jeopardy and the cultural surroundings in which they live. In this case, what does the recent huge Hollywood phenomenon of remaking Japanese horror films mean? This paper aims to examine this question by focusing on the U.S. and Japanese versions of The Ring (2002)/ Ringu (1998). Through comparison of the two versions, I will explore the questions of how cultural translation was made here, and what the differences between two works might mean.
To Read the Essay
by Eimi Ozawa
49th Parallel
Introduction
Since the golden age of the genre in the late 1960s, American horror films have always existed as indices of the status of American society and culture. For one thing, this is because the horror genre has been dominated by the U.S in terms of both production and sales; as Marilyn Manson, in an interview in Bowling for Columbine, assumes that what the American media are doing is a “campaign of fear and consumption, and that's what I think it's all based on, the whole idea of 'keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume.” Fear is deeply incorporated into the essential part of what makes America. Hollywood horror films also have been a product of globalization, being aligned with cultural capitalism; for instance, they had been monopolizing the market of the genre in Japan until the Asian horror boom has occurred past the decade.
The other thing is that, since the birth of the genre, horror films have mirrored what American people fear, which is entangled with the pleasure of watching; and what makes them feel fear heavily depends on the complicit relationship between biological human bodies in jeopardy and the cultural surroundings in which they live. In this case, what does the recent huge Hollywood phenomenon of remaking Japanese horror films mean? This paper aims to examine this question by focusing on the U.S. and Japanese versions of The Ring (2002)/ Ringu (1998). Through comparison of the two versions, I will explore the questions of how cultural translation was made here, and what the differences between two works might mean.
To Read the Essay
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