Plasticity of La La Land
The Plasticity of L.A. L.A. Land
"I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic." - Andy Warhol
“Probably no city in the Western world has a more negative image” - Richard Lehan, professor emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles
There are two visions of Los Angeles – one of a successful, sprawling ‘Jewel of the West Coast’ and one, the ‘‘nightmare’ anti-myth’ of superficial soullessness first depicted by Noir (Davis 21). Both perspectives fade in and out of fashion. Los Angeles’ founders hoped for a sprawling utopia, capable of usurping San Francisco. In the early 1940s however disenchanted artists and thinkers began spreading the dystropic perception of Los Angeles that still colors our perception of it. Noir’s gutless, rotten, Aryan, trophy wife ‘L.A.’ still lingers. As Mike Davis1 puts it ‘Noir made Los Angeles the city that American intellectuals love to hate’ (Davis 21). Recently however, a new wave of pro-Angelino literature has begun fighting back. Many Americans adamantly stereotype Los Angeles along Noir lines, but its become trendy to argue against the superficial and artificial reputation of this city. Its ‘paradoxical’ land (MacWilliams 184) has two faces. L.A. is both ‘the sunny refuge of White Protestant America’ (Davis 33) and the only city in the world more, or equally, as diverse as New York (Davis 80).
Simultaneously, the city fosters sell-outs, feeds off original thought, and hatches some of our nation’s greatest talents. The Beach Boys, Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein and Raymond Chandler were among the many visionaries who lived and worked in L.A. Los Angeles birthed Southern California’s science-based economy (Davis 1), some of the world’s greatest universities and artists, and inventions ranging from the hoola-hoop and In-N-Out, to the Internet and Mars Rover. Yet, its still widely considered a nest egg of birdbrains. Obviously, popular thought
"I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic." - Andy Warhol
“Probably no city in the Western world has a more negative image” - Richard Lehan, professor emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles
There are two visions of Los Angeles – one of a successful, sprawling ‘Jewel of the West Coast’ and one, the ‘‘nightmare’ anti-myth’ of superficial soullessness first depicted by Noir (Davis 21). Both perspectives fade in and out of fashion. Los Angeles’ founders hoped for a sprawling utopia, capable of usurping San Francisco. In the early 1940s however disenchanted artists and thinkers began spreading the dystropic perception of Los Angeles that still colors our perception of it. Noir’s gutless, rotten, Aryan, trophy wife ‘L.A.’ still lingers. As Mike Davis1 puts it ‘Noir made Los Angeles the city that American intellectuals love to hate’ (Davis 21). Recently however, a new wave of pro-Angelino literature has begun fighting back. Many Americans adamantly stereotype Los Angeles along Noir lines, but its become trendy to argue against the superficial and artificial reputation of this city. Its ‘paradoxical’ land (MacWilliams 184) has two faces. L.A. is both ‘the sunny refuge of White Protestant America’ (Davis 33) and the only city in the world more, or equally, as diverse as New York (Davis 80).
Simultaneously, the city fosters sell-outs, feeds off original thought, and hatches some of our nation’s greatest talents. The Beach Boys, Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein and Raymond Chandler were among the many visionaries who lived and worked in L.A. Los Angeles birthed Southern California’s science-based economy (Davis 1), some of the world’s greatest universities and artists, and inventions ranging from the hoola-hoop and In-N-Out, to the Internet and Mars Rover. Yet, its still widely considered a nest egg of birdbrains. Obviously, popular thought