Tuesday, 27 November 2012

OUGD501 - Lecture 4 - Cities and Film


There is a relationship of the individual to the crowd in the city and how the city creates the man in the street
The city in modernism and the possibility of urban sociology
As both a public and private space 
City in postmodernism
George Simmel 1858 - 1918 was a German sociologist
Dresden Exhibition 1903, he was asked to lecture on the role of intellectual life in the city.
He instead reverses this idea and chooses to write about the effect of the city on the individual as mentioned above.
He mentions how the man can negotiate the environment.



Lewis Hine 1932
Talks about the vulnerability of the human amongst the city, and how the individual can become warped and engulfed. 
Louis Sullivan -Creation of modern sky scraper
Occurs after fires damage buildings from the war.
Urban regeneration can begin to re-shape the cities and power drive the economical state.
Flaneur

Rather than being swallowed by the city like the working classes, the flaneur wanders the streets looking for experiences such as art, architecture, meals, sounds etc.

Herbert Beyer 'Lonely Metropolitan - 1932'



Scheeler
Celebrates the shape of industry
Fordism which is coined from Ford cars being made in a revolutionary way River Rouge, Detroit 1927
Antonio Gramsci in his essay 'Americanism and Fordism' coins the fraise.

    Mass production is born, creates the cycle of production and consumption
    Charlie Chaplin makes  comment aspect of modernity, a critical point of view on the body being swallowed by machines he produces a comedy sequence whereby a man struggles with machine and is eventually swallowed

    Charles Baudellaire "...a person that walks the city in order to experience it."
    Links to flaneur comment above.

    Janet Wolf
    Woman on the street is a prostitute or bag lady.
    She assumes that the female is alone in the city.

    WeeGee
    Photos of murder victims in the streets, had a police radio but people assume he talks with spirits
    Press photographer on the lower east side New York
    Book 'The Naked City'
    Echoed in video game 'LA Noire'
    LA Noire game - uses the cities as a style as well as a setting, set in 1940's. 

    Ridley Scott
    Future dystopian cities are depicted in most of his films and visions.
    When millions are around you in the city you are still alone.
    Meyerowitz
    City bombards us with information
    There is a confusion of imagery and no subject in her work.




    Further Research






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