This essay will consist of the representation of cities within films. There will be also evidence of how the city has an impact on the way it makes us feel for example; a utopian city may make us feel amazed, happy and peaceful. There will be evidence on what in that specific city makes us feel that way and what makes it a utopian/ dystopian city.
There are many other different theories as to what a utopia and dystopia is. Utopian place is the idealistic set and society. The word utopia was first used in 1516 by Sir Thomas More (Utopia). The word utopia is similar to the greek words ‘outopos’ meaning no place and ‘eutopos’ meaning good place. There are many other books that have represented the ideal society such as Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. World peace is often seen as a utopian thought of all humans, with the exceptions, so there is a political side to thinking about other possibilities of what a utopian place might be and it can be more than just the look of a place. A dystopian place is a set that focuses on the poverty and suffering that we have brought on ourselves. Most books mainly show what is happening in real life in which case often shows a dystopian set. Dystopian can often be set in an apocalyptic world that may not have been caused by humans but in some cases it is. Utopias and dystopias aren’t only presented in films, they can be shown through many different media sources from books to games and animations. Mannheim argues "utopia is a concept (even a force) with both positive and negative dimension, each counterbalanced by ideology". Which also enforces that utopias can not always be what they seem (perfect) they can sometimes have unlying problems with in them, so are they actually utopian?. Well a utopian city is meant to be a place where you can feel happy at all times without any complications. Mannheims argument coincides with the feeling of a place not actually being perfect, it may just be the look of perfection/ the ideal of perfection but it could have social problems hidden with in it. It is the idealistic places that have the advantages of being perfect with only needing the odd tweaks which may not be possible with the world we live in now a days. Nathaniel Coleman writes "Comprehensible patterns of social life - and architecture, as an arrangement of configurative patterns, reveals that the potential complex order in architecture has utopian character". With the hectic streets of modern cities, the buildings still have a calming, beautiful architecture, this adds to the utopian style of buildings but without the utopian society.
Cities affect how we think and feel, it is about the relationship between humans and the city. Each city has a different impact on each individual such as a run down, old, broken city could make you feel uneasy, scared and uncomfortable. When you are making a film you need to think about what the main atmosphere of your film is going to be, you then need to be able to base your city in the film around this atmosphere you are trying to create. The film Judge Dredd does this in a good way as you get the feeling that it is in the future but it is full of crime and overwhelming crowds. This then gives off the feeling of wanting to break free out of this city. "Cinema is, however, even closer to architecture than music, not solely because of it's temporal and spatial structure, but fundamentally because both architecture and cinema articulate lived space" As Pallasmaa explains cinema and cities are connected in the way that they both represent lived space/ habitats for people. The structure of any city allow people to inhabit it and allow for homes to be created which is what it is like in films. Films are created to set a scene depending on the genre, this scene is then livable to the people. Pallasmaa expresses "the inherent architecture of cinematic expression, and the cinematic essence of architectural experience - is equally many-sided." This is representing that the feel of a space is as much needed as the look of the space, you need to know how you want your space in the film as much as you need to know how you want your space to look like. Both are equally needed for different things like how you want the audience to feel when this space comes to the scene. Spaces in cinema are very important there are many things that are needed like sizes, colour and style. You have to think about these very carefully in order to get the correct audience age wise and other possible audiences you intend to get interested.
Cities and cinema has been linked for many years, since the nineteenth century. The cinema has been trying to represent different lifestyles, social and political aspects and the conditions of the city from Lumiere Brothers' Paris and John Woo's Hong Kong. 'The cinema has long played an important role in the cultural economies of cities all over the world' this portrays that cities have been used to represent the atmosphere of movies from dark, crowded films to happy bright cities. Cities have come along way in being represented in films, as we now have computer generated effects to create a whole new world but years ago they only had matte painting to create a huge city, as much as matte painting is beautiful to look at it isn't as realistic as the CG effects. Pallasmaa wrote "Fantasy architecture suspended between reality and dream; how the two-dimensional imagery of cinema represents the three-dimensional and multi-sensory world or how the montage of separate experimental fragments produces an impression of continuous and real word through the utilisation of the properties and deficiency of human perceptual mechanisms". A world that you can imagine up, is a world that you are able to create through the cinema whether it be something that is completely unrealistic it is still possible to create especially with the software we have today like Maya, After Effects etc. The important thing is that you are able to conceptualise it, and get the whole three-dimensional look of your city you want to create. The possibilities are endless. Being able to create various images of your creation before hand helps you to expand what you are trying to create it also helps you to come up with bigger ideas. Having buildings and so on are here to show we as people exist as you can see from "The mental task of buildings and cities is to structure our being-in-the-world and to articulate the surface between the experiencing self and the world" Pallasmaa explains that our existence in the world is shown through the buildings and cities we create. We are not seen through other living creatures unless we have our habitat on show for the world to see. The spaces we create show our inner selves as Pallasmaa explains" Lived space resembles the structures of dream and the unconscious, organised independently of the boundaries of physical space and time". When finding your perfect home to inhabit you picture how you want it to look first, you then try your hardest to get what you imagined. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices and give up certain aspects as it may not be idealistic. Also spaces through time decay and change so it will never stay how you first imagined, this is something you have to think about whether making a film or finding your dream home.
Many films created, have historic values within the certain settings. It depends on what sort of background you want to create in order to make the setting feel the way it is to the audience at that moment in time. "Every place has it's history and symbolic connotations which merge into the incident" History helps to create drama and horror in films, they also help to lead on to major parts in films. Sometimes you find out the history of a certain place later on in the film in order to give reason for the incident, it also adds to the suspense as the audience try to figure out why someone is being haunted or possessed for example. Historic values can be very important in films as they can give explanations and give more of a back story to the architecture. When using a famous building there is a lot of research needed on that building to make it make more sense as you can not create a whole new background to a famous building when it already has history, however you can add to that history to give it more personality. "In the final sequences of Psycho the different floors of the Bates house obtain their meaning in accordance with Bachelard's oneiric house" The "oneiric house" has three or four floors, the middles ones show the stages of everyday life, the attic represents a storage for pleasant memories, whereas the basement is the representation of unpleasant remembrances. In the final sequences of psycho is in accordance to this theory. Lila is forced down to the basement where she then finds a mummified corpse of Norman's mother. This is showing that the basement is clearly the place of unpleasant memories. Architecture has had a mental impact on the human minds, the atmosphere of certain space affect how we think and feel "Architecture serves a metaphor for the human mind in accordance with the traditional psychoanalytical view: characteristics of architecture are reflected in mental structures and mental contents are projected in architecture ... Jack Torrance's breaking into the reactive psychosis or paranoid schizophrenia is a psychic projection of the utterly alienating condition of the empty hotel, isolated both in space and time, that crushes the scale of the individual and family" Being trapped away from the rest of the world or "isolated" cause cause a massive impact on the human mind. We then get trapped in our own thoughts and become "paranoid". The Shining is the pure example of this, it shows a complete breakdown of the mental state of a man being an outcast to the rest of the world due to being trapped by a snowstorm having to look at the same four walls everyday can send people insane which is broken down in The Shining with the different mental stages that the main character goes through he ends up at breaking point and tries to kill his family. The hotel is what is persuading Jack to kill his family, in accordance to this the architecture and props change as Jack becomes more insane such as the famous scene where he breaks the door with an axe and the found paper with the words written "REDRUM" which spells murder backwards. Also the architecture changes in order to make Jack more insane such as the walls running with blood. It is the hotel that is driving him crazy to the point of killing his family.
There are many cities in various films, it is how it is represented and adds to the atmosphere that makes the city noticeable. Fritz Lang Metropolis (1927) presents the futuristic style city, this then shows the development in technology and progress we could have on a city in the future. Fritz Lang tries to create the old fashioned style of the streets with the futuristic buildings and machinery. Metropolis has the suggestion of danger in the city this could be interpreted as a dystopian style vision of urban modernity. Langs film was created using highly artificial set. Metropolis was updated by a Japanese animator. This version loosely follows the same basic story, it is pretty much about the rise and fall of machines.It also shows the psychological relationship with the city and the people in the city. It could be interpreted as relying on the machinery too much within the film. “The Metropolis is defined by Simmel as a place of money economy, which for him goes hand-in-glove with the metropolitan rationality that redefines human relationships in terms of exchange value and turns all action in the metropolis into “production for the market” what Mennel is saying is that Simmel believes that the human relationship to the city relies on the economy, money wise. Metropolis the film is a representation of this. The use of urban sociology is relied on very much when trying to interpret a city that will set your scene in the film. You would have to go to similar places that you have in your ideas in order to get the feel of the atmosphere.
When you watch films you start to realise that most films you can interpret them into two categories, utopia or dystopia. The main theory of a utopia is a beautiful, colourful, clean place, some of them can have very round futuristic style. Whereas a dystopia mainly is dark, gloomy, destroyed city. They are pretty much opposite of each other. Not all the movies have a city some can be based in the countryside or one building like The Shining which is set in one building where the hotel makes a man go psycho and kills his whole family. This could be seen as a dystopian type of set as this building is haunting this innocent man and the walls end up blood spilled.
Bioshock Infinite has a city in the sky (Columbia), it is clean and utopian style. However there is underlying problems such as racism. The city appears to be what christian vision of what heaven is, with the huge gates, clouds and so on, you may say it could be the perfect utopia, although instead of worshipping god and Jesus the characters worship Comstock. The city has regressed to a time when racism was prevalent, so is it really utopian. It is quite common in films and games, when there is a utopia based setting that there is underlying problems so they aren't really utopias for everybody. The Matrix is similar to Bioshock Infinite's Columbia in a way, due to the underlying problem aspect. The main difference is that instead of there being a utopian style city it is simply the same as our in between style city where it is not perfect but it is not hell either. In The Matrix everyday life is a computer simulation created by machines to enslave humanity. Once the humans come out of their simulation the real world is completely dystopian with the tall dark buildings and the overwhelming machines that have taken over. There are beliefs that these two are similar as nobody sees the problems of the racism in Columbia in Bioshock which is the same as nobody realising that they in a simulation and the world has been taken over. It is the things that don’t get noticed by the people within the cities that really show what type of atmosphere you are living in.
Mad Max is a film based on a dystopian, futuristic world. The civilisation has collapsed due to energy and oil supplies shortage. Human progression has stopped so people now act like animals and take what they want without a care for who they hurt in the progress. In Mad Max they have the Thunderdome which draw parallels to the Roman coliseum, how the collapsing civilisation has regressed back to the time when we would force people to fight to the death for entertainment purposes. The Dome is what causes fear to people that have been captured and forced to fight, just the thought of being in the centre of the dome encourages fear and anxiety. That is the main architecture that you intend on keeping as far away as possible, being any where near it could ultimately lead to your death. Fallout has pretty much come from Mad Max but they just took it further by cities being rebuilt all over with the underlying problems still being there such as slavery and child slavery. There are places which coincide with the domes, places that have more threat on your life whilst being there. There are monsters that are very dangerous, the difference with Fallout is that it is obviously a game so if you die you can simply replay the level. So you still have chance to redo the level and complete it.
There are some exceptions as to having a city representing the utopia or dystopia, one of them being Dogville. Dogville is incredibly different to your usual film as it doesn't have full buildings, it is literally just a map on the floor with the odd door representing a door. It is very minimal in the stage like sets. Mulligan the main character has to gain acceptance from everyone in the town in order to stay there. She is wanting to stay there as she is hiding from mobsters and without having acceptance from everyone in the town she has to leave which isn't an option as her life is at risk. Her staying there changes the lives of many people in the town in many ways. Dogville has been criticised for having a strong anti-American message which is shown with in the credits from the sequence of images along side them. Von Trier states that the point of the film is “evil can rise anywhere, as long as the situation is right”. So whether it is a utopian, perfect stage, evil can still surface which is what has been said previously (utopias have underlying problems). Dystopian cities seem to be much easier to broadcast to the audience as in order to keep the audience interested through a utopian style film there has to be some sort of conflict. However with the dystopian theme the audience have so many problems that they see such as the apocalyptic style where you constantly see people fighting to survive.
Overall there are many different types of media that show various dystopian society and utopian society, they are used mostly in the cinema. There are also many abstract ways that the cities can be shown for example Dogville. Each person in the audience gets to interpret the environments within the media, the interpretations are almost always some what similar to what the creator wants you as the audience to think.
References For Each quote used.
- Nathaniel Coleman (2005) Utopias and Architecture, Abingdon, England: Routledge. Page 10
- Nathaniel Coleman (2005) Utopias and Architecture, Abingdon, England: Routledge. Page 11
- Juhani Pallasmaa (n.d.) The Architecture of Image: existential space in cinema. , : Building Information Ltd (Rakennustieto Oy). Page 13
- Juhani Pallasmaa (n.d.) The Architecture of Image: existential space in cinema. , : Building Information Ltd (Rakennustieto Oy). Page 14
- Juhani Pallasmaa (n.d.) The Architecture of Image: existential space in cinema. , : Building Information Ltd (Rakennustieto Oy). Page 14
- Juhani Pallasmaa (n.d.) The Architecture of Image: existential space in cinema. , : Building Information Ltd (Rakennustieto Oy). Page 17
- Juhani Pallasmaa (n.d.) The Architecture of Image: existential space in cinema. , : Building Information Ltd (Rakennustieto Oy). Page 18
- Juhani Pallasmaa (n.d.) The Architecture of Image: existential space in cinema. , : Building Information Ltd (Rakennustieto Oy). Page 20
- Juhani Pallasmaa (n.d.) The Architecture of Image: existential space in cinema. , : Building Information Ltd (Rakennustieto Oy). Page 27
- Barbara Mennel (2008) Cities and Cinema, Abingdon, England: Routledge. Page 26
Information Gathered from:
- http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Columbia. Accessed 13th March 2014
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/. Accessed 14th March 2014
- http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/dogville.htm. Accessed 14th March 2014
- http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/the-giver/critical-essays/what-are-utopias-and-dystopias. Accessed 13th March 2014
Images References
- http://www.leninimports.com/metropolis.jpg Accessed 20th March 2014
- http://fightingside.forumfree.it/?t=58016136 Accessed 20th March 2014
- http://uluselsupermartf.info/book/the-shining-girls-4/ Accessed 20th March 2014
- http://classicmoviemonsters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-psycho-house.html Accessed 20th March 2014
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