whitebait

on the joys of being a left historian in the age of neo-liberal reproduction

Following a recent post about Mike Davis, Whitebait came across this really interesting article by Paul Brennan in the OC Weekly on various flimsy attacks on his this historian's work. In the past Whitebait was aware of a concerted campaign launched in the wake of Davis' publication of Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster:

Bradley Westwater, who set up a website devoted to exposing Davis’ "errors" (many of which turned out not to be errors at all)... [T]he biggest error on the site was the claim that Bradley Westwater existed: "Westwater," it turned out, was a pseudonym for Ross Ernest Shockley, a Malibu realtor. One of the chapters in Ecology of Fear, it should be noted, is titled "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn."

This time it is a Guardian writer who is getting upset about what he perceives to be Davis' besmirching of Winston Churchill's name in Dead Cities. As Brennan begins:

Until recently, the sperm of UC Irvine professors was not among the many subjects covered in the pages of The Guardian, one of England’s leading daily newspapers. But there it was in John Sutherland’s Sept. 30 column: "Tell Me Lies About Iraq: Politicians, generals and authors are all fighting the fiercest battle of all—to make us believe their side of the story."

Despite the column’s title, no politician’s statements are scrutinized. No general is mentioned. And the examination of authors is limited to one: UC Irvine history professor Mike Davis.

Sutherland accuses Davis of aligning himself with the forces of darkness by using his new book, Dead Cities: And Other Tales, to poison the public debate in the U.K. over a "preemptive" war against Iraq. "The Iraqi lie factories are in full production," Sutherland writes. "Davis has his product out early."

This is strange because Dead Cities isn’t about Iraq. But then Sutherland isn’t actually attacking Davis for anything he has written about Iraq. Instead, he’s infuriated by something Dead Cities reveals in passing about the late, great Winston Churchill in a chapter on the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Sutherland is so upset he uses 14 of the column’s 15 paragraphs to attack Davis as a scholar and a person, in a way that is remarkable for its sneering disregard for the truth and for its incompetence.

Davis says Dead Cities is a study of "‘the radical contingency of cities,’ as well as the Urban West." One of the book’s "dead cities" is the German Village, whose remains still stand at the Dugway Proving Ground. The U.S. Army Air Corps constructed the German Village during World War II to determine the best way to bomb Germany. "Best" in this context means "most destructive," and "Germany" means "German civilians."

And this is where Churchill enters the story.

Read on here.

      

excavating the future

One of the books that triggered my intense interest in urban culture and politics (and that seemed to communicate to quite a broad base of academic and non-academic readers at the time and afterwards) was Mike Davis' City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990). We used to have two copies in our household but the excellence of this 'contemporary history' of Los Angeles can partly marked by the fact that both of these seemed to have ben 'permanently borowed' by an academic friend and, perhaps?, a former student.

A postgraduate student of mine was kind enough recently to pass on a copy of the additional preface (written in April 2006) to the latest edition of the book.  It is an interesting, quick read. The delightful Chandler-esque flavour of Davis' academic-activist approach is still there: 'City of Quartz, to use one of those Parisian terms that I usually try to run over with my pick-up truck, is the biography of a conjoncture: one of those moments, ripe withparadox and non-linearity, when previously separate currents of history suddenly converge with profoundly unpredictable results.'

It is an interesting move - recognising in retrospect that what he was writing about and trying to describe at the time was a located form of globalisation in  process. I think it is a reasonable claim.

One particularly interesting section of the preface (for me) notes the transience of the city's centrality as an economic command-and-control centre for networked Californian and Asia-Pacific rim economies. Boosters in the 1980s played up this vision of the city's future but, as he notes, a combination of susbsequent factors (ranging from the withdrawal of Japanese capital in the 90s recession to the local social unrest/uprisings stemming largely from ongoing economic processes such as re/de-industrialisation) means that contemporary Los Angeles  'has entered the twenty-first century, as it did the twentieth, largely as an economic colony of corporations and investors headquartered elsewhere: San Francisco, Charlotte, New York, Chicago and Tokyo.'

Davis ends on a 'cautious note of optimism' that has some interesting Australian resonances.Kevin Rudd and friends might benefit from this advice (in terms of a necessary shift from a popularity based on anti-Howardism (or simply being 'over' Johnny and his crew) to something more sustainable.

Labor's forward march in Los Angeles ... depends in my opinion, upon further consolidation of a programmatic vision, built around a human needs agenda, that is not hostage to any individual campaign or political personality. Los Angeles needs, in short, a more, not less, ideological politics. I find nothing praiseworthy in current calls for more "centrism" or "pragmatism": euphemisms fo the continual process of incremental adjustment to the rightward drift of the Democratic Party. In contrast, conservative Christian groups have built impressive political bases in local suburban politics largely through unyeilding, programmatic tenacity. Odd to say, but many conservatives seem to have a better grasp of Gramsci than many on the Left. Above all, they understand the principle that a hegemonic politics must represent a consistent continuum of values: it must embody a morally coherent way of life.

crash vs wonderland

Whitebait finally managed to watch Crash a couple of weekends ago. He was going to post something lengthy on it (yeah, sure!) but frankly the film doesn't deserve it. Formally the film it is very good, technically well-executed and it has a number of good performances, but overall  it leaves this viewer feeling Siberian. The much earlier Falling Down, despite its conservative sentiments, does the LA racially divided thing much better (Crash tries to historically update in a sense by finally including Iranians--mistaken for Arabs--in the LA racial/ethnic panopoly post-9/11, whereas Falling Down's defining historical moment was the city's 1992 post-Rodney King uprising). Short Cuts and Magnolia are in another league in terms of the multiple characters and intersecting narratives form. Crash doesn't really move on or offer anything different to these films: it could have easily have taken an Oscar for soulless, calculated liberalism.  Disappointing.

Luckily Whitebait also got out Michael WInterbottom's Wonderland (definitely not the one with Val Kilmer in it) for a rerun that same weekend. Resolutely lo-fi  and partially improvised it is still brilliant and deserves the comment I gave on my earlier holiday screenings list (possibly the most effort Whitebait has put into a single post). And -- sorry but this could be considered a spoiler -- it makes one of the cleverest moves re the old 'strangers in the city - how are they connected?' device. It only very slowly unfolds that these are all members of the same family. The irony, the brilliance!

methods for studying particular cities

A favourite old quote chanced upon by Whitebait today - from Reyner Banham's classic Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies(1971:23).

One can most properly begin by learning the local language; and the language of design, architecture, and urbanism in Los Angeles is the language of movement. Mobility outweighs monumentality there to a unique degree ... So, like earlier generations of earlier English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original, I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original.

What 'language' does one learn to read somewhere like Tokyo? Not just Japanese, perhaps, but a particular mode of being in the city. And it's frickin'  hard work. 

 

holiday screenings

So it’s that time of year when some serious listing begins (for a really mental take on this--in the best sense--check Woebot’s beautiful scans of his top 100 records when they are successfully loaded).

So, Whitebait would like to offer his guide to twenty classic ‘city’ films worth watching for the first time or once again. This list is for when you might be lurking at the video shop over the next week or so looking for something interesting to watch. Get more details on each release at imd. Nothing surprising nor obscurantist here – just a mix of generally well know popular/fun/arty stuff. He isn’t arguing that these are ‘the’ best city films (and do pitch in with your own recommendations in the comments please), just the ones that have tended to lodge in his mind for whatever reason. His definition of a ‘city film’ is one where the urban setting or environment takes on the status of an actor, or becomes a key point of meditation.

So, it isn’t enough that the film is just has the city as a backdrop - that would be too easy wouldn’t it.

In alphabetical order (doh!):

1. All About My Mother - this may seem tenuous given the criteria but it gets on the list for that one perfect Freudian scene when Manuela is shuttling from Madrid to Barcelona. A train tunnel, an exquisite musical buildup and then a taxi past Sagrada Familiar.  One of the most exhilarating moments of recent cinema.

2. Bladerunner – is it Los Angeles or really Tokyo? Doesn’t matter as it is still stands brilliantly today as we keep on marching into the cyborg future that arrived 100 years ago.

3. Chinatown – yes, Los Angeles figures strongly. Crooked water politics and noir in the land of sunshine.

4. Chungking Express – crowded and deserted Hong Kong exteriors and the gorgeous Faye Wong sneaking into a policeman’s house to provide a free makeover (life before Queer Eye!).

5. Collateral – brilliant in every way. And a great tongue-in-cheek thriller ending in the sense that like all good recent LA films it slams the idea that there is life in the city beyond car travel - by equating the metro rail system with death.

6. Dark City – familiar sci-fi noir themes but very handsomely and adeptly executed.

7. Falling Down – yes, this film has a crappy racist politics at the heart of it but it is one hundred times more complex and intelligent in the way it goes about these complex politics than detractors will acknowledge. And in doing so it offers some handy insights into the politics of city space and mobility.

8. Fellini’s Roma/La Dolce Vita – Whitebait learnt some Italian for a while and this was a great way to practice. He likes the essay-like Roma just because it seemed a damn weird movie the first time around. And the second time.

9. La Haine – was a film of note before the recent Parisian uprisings but W. suspects it might be even more gripping and pertinent now.

10. L.A. Story – still some great and eminently repeatable one-liners despite the unsatisfying romance narrative at the centre. And a reference to that great Martin poem, ‘Oh pointy birds, oh pointy pointy …’

11. Manhattan – Whitebait remembers a time when he did trust film critics who would write that the latest Woody Allen film was worth shelling out for at the cinema.

12. Naked – a brutal and funny film in equal doses. Life on some very dark English streets

13. Short Cuts – this is tied up in some bad memories for Whitebait (and he still hasn’t plucked up the courage to see it again) but because Raymond Carver’s stories were the inspiration it still goes on the list.

14. Summer of Sam / Do the Right Thing – while DtRT is the acknowledged classic (so damn hot and tense on those New York streets) … SoS goes back to the late seventies and reworks similar themes with another great soundtrack.

15. The Big Sleep – who knew it rained in Los Angeles so much?

16. The End of Violence / Wings of Desire – EoV isn’t a successful film but it has a great eerie take on L.A. and Bill Pulman is in great form. More interesting than satisfying. If you aren’t in the mood for that then go straight to WoD.

17. The Last Wave – a completely different representation of Sydney in its articulation of the unease that remains in a place forcibly acquired from its indigenous inhabitants.

18. Tokyo Story - it is nearly all studio sets and yet it paints a damning picture of the role of the urban in the disintegration of familial bonds and individual selfishness (Beware – the pace is slow in a good way).

19. Sans Soleil – more an essay on memory and therefore quite a different viewing experience. But many of the scenes from Tokyo remain etched in my mind.

20. Wonderland – would contend for number one if that was the objective of this exercise. A moped riding through the streets, trains in the night, a Michael Nyman score, blind dating, London streets, a barking neighbour’s dog who drives a woman to the brink … this is The Poetry of City Life 101. Exceptional.

Still think you suck Qantas

Never got round to writing this entry a few weeks back. Aaah, the instantaneity of the internet and the blog. Just quickly type in your thoughts they say. All you need is a  functioning dialup internet connection and computer. Easy as that.

Anway, Whitebait made a sudden executive decision at that time to carry out a (not so) random equipment test on a data projector belonging to his workplace. It seemed crucial to add to the greater knowledge of how similar devices function not only in the institutional settings but in the rigorous environs of domestic space. And the first sample dvd to grace Whitebait's lounge wall: none other than Collateral (2004). Whitebait did of course know it would be great - a useful technique called 'having actually seen the film before'. Crucially, he had watched on an international flight on one of those back-of-the-airline-seat-type screens and it was absolutely enthralling (not usually an adjective that would come within 5 million miles of the airline known as Quaint-ass). Re-watching the film again worked wonderfully. Los Angeles and night just go together so well.

Whitebait directs your attention to the great, early scene in the film in which Max (Jamie Foxx) and Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) start talking and getting interested in each other despite the improbable taxi driver/lawyer-getting-it-on scenario. Mann really is good enough to make you think yeah maybe just this once something might get going in this ordinary encounter. The music especially  is so perfect for this scene (and what a surprise to find out that the track playing is actually Groove Armada's 'Hands of Time' which I hadn't heard before). It so completely says sexy evening drive happening. And the best thing is that when Annie asks Max to turn the music up (how cool is that as a tentative expression of interest - 'lend me some sugar, I am your neighbour'), he replies along the lines of 'so... you like the classics'. So postmodern LA.