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Hollywoods
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Prev: Parallel Universes Up: Contents Next: The Toxic Rim
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8. Hollywood(s): Powers of Simulation
For the last seventy-five years there has been an uneasy fit between
movie-made HOLLYWOOD glamour and the dowdy Hollywood district. Movie
stars, of course, have never lived in the tenement flatlands, and most
of the big studios moved long ago to the suburbs. The actual Hollywood
of the 1930s was best described by Nathanial West: home of the "flea
people" -- -the extras, laborers, grips and failed starlets.
The HOLLYWOOD in the imagination of the world's movie public,
therefore, was kept tenuously anchored to its namesake location by
regular rituals (premieres, the Academy Awards, etc.) and the magical
investment of a dozen or so places (the Bowl, Graumann's, etc.) as
tourist shrines. But over the last generation, as the real Hollywood
has become a hyper-violent slum, the rituals have ceased and the magic
has waned. As the linkages between historic signifier and its
signified decayed, the opportunity arose to resurrect HOLLYWOOD in a
safer neighborhood. Thus in Orlando, Disney created a stunning Art
Deco mirage of MGM's golden age, while arch-competitor MCA countered
with its own idealized versions of Hollywood Boulevard and Rodeo Drive
at Universal Studios Florida.
Meanwhile, the elopement of Disney and HOLLYWOOD to Florida further
depressed real-estate back in real-time Hollywood. After bitter
battles with local homeowners, the major landowners were able to win
city authorization for a $1 billion facelift of Hollywood Boulevard.
In their scheme, the Boulevard would be transformed into a gated,
linear theme park, anchored by mega-entertainment complexes at each
end. But while the redevelopers were still negotiating with potential
investors, MCA pulled the rug out from under Hollywood Redux with the
announcement that its nearby tax-dodge enclave, Universal City, would
construct a parallel urban reality called "CityWalk."
Designed by master illusionist Jon Jerde, CityWalk is an "idealized
reality," the best features of Olvera Street, Hollywood and the West
Side synthesized in "easy, bite-sized pieces" for consumption by
tourists and residents who "don't need the excitement of dodging
bullets ... in the Third World country" that Los Angeles has become.
CityWalk incorporates examples of Mission Revival, Deco, streamlined
Moderne, and "L.A. Vernacular" (the Brown Derby), as well as 3-D
billboards, "a huge blue King Kong hanging from a 70-foot neon totem
pole," and a sheriff's substation for security. To alleviate the sense
of artificiality in this melange, a "patina of age" and a "dash of
grit" have been added:
Using decorative sleight of hand, the designers plan to wrap the
brand new street in a cloak of instant history -- on opening day,
some buildings will be painted to suggest that they have been
occupied before. Candy wrappers will be embedded in the terrazzo
flooring, as if discarded by previous visitors.
Hollywood redevelopers immediately responded to construction of
CityWalk with a $4.3 million beautification plan that includes paving
Hollywood Blvd. with "glitz" made from recycled glass. But even
spruced up and glitzified there is almost no way that the old
Boulevard can compete with the hyper-real perfection on Universal's
hill. As its MCA proprietors have taken pains to emphasize, CityWalk
is "not a mall" but a "revolution in urban design ... a new kind of
neighborhood." -- an urban simulator. Indeed, some critics wonder if
it isn't the moral equivalent of the neutron bomb: the city emptied of
all lived human experience. With its fake fossil candy wrappers and
other deceits, CityWalk sneeringly mocks us as it erases any trace of
our real joy, pain or labor.
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Prev: Parallel Universes Up: Contents Next: The Toxic Rim