Baroque Los Angeles

William May Final Norman Klein Saturday, November 29, 2014

When you look at the events, which are concurrent with many other events, that formed this city, it’s a picture that’s hardly simple. Deeply rooted decisions were made to ensure the city was different from the ones of the east coast. Pockets of residential neighborhoods uphold traditional values, San Marino, Beverly Hills, North Santa Monica, Hancock Park. Many of these areas began as a sprouting of homes utilizing traditional roman and greek architecture, external walls to keep the home a secluded and private space. Gates to further separate themselves from the exterior, and wide long neighborhood streets used to prevent cars from accidentally driving down them if they do not live on them. These areas are growing, are modernizing and progressing into a contemporary style, but the social structure is kept in tact through financial boundaries, security and excessive transparency. In a way stating “my life has nothing left to hide, nothing more to secure. Look at me while I dress myself in furs and walk into town unencumbered by the grief previous wealth dealt with.” There is a contradiction here in how the wealthy represent themselves as commoners. We’ve grown accustomed to various levels of wealth present on a single street in Los Angeles, but consider for a moment how drastic the amounts of wealth one is able to accumulate is. Forty percent of the wealth in america is accumulated by a single percentage of the community. This single percentage has the influence and power to uphold traditional

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values, to create the conditions necessary to influence growth toward a specific environment wherein their wealth only accumulates.



This post-structural view of “the city” is perhaps best represented by the

philosophical idea of the hyperreal by Baudrillard. Why it looks the way it does, what it means, what it obscures are questions exposed quite literally in Los Angeles in comparison to other cities. “Los Angeles is the location where reality and representation gets muddled”, because this city is founded on ideals of modernity anything can happen. The shameless nature of Los Angeles with it’s boosterism, acceptance of being an original copy, and the social imaginary. Los Angeles in particular is a major topic in his book America. Quotes like "in America, the arrival of night time or periods of rest cannot be accepted", and "there has to be no let up in man's artificial power" are led into more in concern with Los Angeles than any other US city. This transposes a future of America circa 2020 written in 1986. Our lives in Los Angeles will be reliant upon mechanized servants that handle daily tasks, humans will find time to manage creatively beyond the renaissance progressions. The artificial power a ruling class obtains can be delegitimized with an acceptance of utilizing technology to manage the high labor and low wages being produced by corporate greed. The major trouble is, money then has little merit. When humans no longer work, the corporate scheme fails to continue. The sub-sect of the class structure that produces creatively will be regarded as more valuable because this task is beyond robotic ability. It becomes more financially viable than ever to be an artist.

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In comparing Los Angeles to Heironymous Bosch's Hell, the chaos and

hyperreality elements are introduced to the city, in addition to an air of baroque sensibility. His belief in hyperrealism makes complete sense with the structure of Los Angeles. Everything becomes a stage, life is a stage. Baudrillard brings into play European cities calling them "medieval cities", that Los Angeles "condenses by night the entire future geometry of the networks of human relations, gleaming in their abstraction, luminous in their extension, astral in their reproduction to infinity". If the Baroque period was defined by the idea of momento mori, Los Angeles is defined by the idea of living forever in a lifetime. Los Angeles’ car culture stemmed from partially a fear response in public transit, and mainly because it was financially lucrative to do so. As real estate prices increase, I see a growing population below the poverty line doing the same, and even friends of mine attending art school on loans. The car has become a living space, a refuge, a safety net. I know that when I’m in stopped traffic on the 405, I certainly try my best to make myself at home in my not-so-spacious car. I put on relaxing music, utilize the mint oil I keep to soothe. Baudrillard writes that "All you need to know about American society can be gleaned from an anthropology of its driving behavior.”, and he’s certainly correct in that. Every social class can be determined from the car you drive in Los Angeles, such a decision can hardly be determined elsewhere.



In the Baroque era, expression was maximized, special effects were invented

and excess was everywhere if you were in the “right” class. In the internet era we are seeing much of the same thing. My generation expresses themselves at rapid-fire, as long as you have access to the internet your voice can be heard. With nearly everyone

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able to take control of an internet presence, chaos structures have become more apparent. People shouting at once to get their voice heard works lesser than a single concise moment of attention. Warhol’s vision of a moment of fame for everyone seems wasteful in a world wherein there are so many people devoted to mediocrity and accepting of a system that keeps them in it. Baudrillard wrote half his sentences as farce to prove how little truth there is to glean from reality, how disparate our perspectives are. His work extends beyond the page into practice, ensuring it is understood by utilizing the topics he is discussing. LA transcended Baudrillard’s vision of the hyperreal, and provoked a post-hyper reality where everything is a copy and originals don’t exist. Being the first “original copy”, Los Angeles is unapologetic about it’s brash and sometimes superficial cultural values. The Los Angeles ideal has shifted over the past few years, but it’s certainly still a veneer of authenticity, of cultural integrity and history. Unlike most cities, wherein buildings were designed to suit growth, and to vitalize a cultural segment, Los Angeles’ growth was separated with many small towns convening to pool resources and share a name. The style of homes varies greatly even within the same year of building. An amalgamation of “culture”, personal desires, and this ideal of being whatever you want has always plagued Los Angeles, for better or worse.





Cited:

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Klein, Norman M. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory. London: Verso, 1998. Print. Baudrillard, Jean. America. London: Verso, 1989. Print. Klein, Norman M. The Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects. New York: New :, 2004. Print. Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso, 1990. Print. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. Web. 9 Nov. 2014. . United States. National Park Service. "Nrb Suburbs Part 3: Historic Residential Suburbs: Guidelines for Evaluation and Documentation for the National Register of Historic Places." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior. Web. 9 Nov. 2014. .

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