City of Angels 2017-18

Both Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust and La La Play on themes of chasing your dreams. Both pieces frame Los Angeles as where you go to make it Hollywood, shown in Faye in "day of the locust" and both protagonists in “La La Land.” Yet, in “La La Land” both characters end up getting (for the most part) what they dreamed of, while in Day of the Locust the Characters seem to be destined to failure. Evaluating both pieces perspectives on achieving goals and struggling, is Los Angeles a place where artists go to succeed? Is it a place for everyone to go and chase their dreams? What assumptions do people bring to Los Angeles when they come to chase their dreams? Does the success story of Sebastian in “La La Land” reveal anything about what it really takes to achieve your dreams? Are the stories of success in “La La Land” a reality or just a result of the character’s world being a La La Land?

        Over the past few weeks, our class read Day of the Locust by Nathanael West and Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies . Through many class dialogues, we discussed themes in each book. For Day of the Locust , we used the text to discuss and discover the dynamics of relationships between the characters in the novel (example: Faye and Tod) as well as the ways in which West viewed Los Angeles. For Los Angeles: the Architecture of Four Ecologies , we discussed Banham's view of Los Angeles and its architecture. While watching La La Land today in class, I saw many that related to each book.         These are my questions. What similarities do you see between La La Land and each book? Do any relationships in La La Land relate to any we discovered in Day of the Locust? How does Damien Chazelle, the director of La La Land, view Los Angeles? Is that view similar to either West or Ban...

We all know what Los Angeles is. It's a machine. Pumping out enough tropes, stereotypes and stories for the world to consume on a daily basis. These Hollywood products dominate an enormous amount of social discussion. Whether its celebrity gossip, the newest Marvel film or the latest hit by Bruno Mars, Los Angeles is responsible for a lot of what the rest of the world views on a daily basis. While this might be a conceited idea, I do believe our city has an inflated impact on modern life, socially, politically and economically. As we talk about the troubled past of LA and the various times of strife it has gone through, how do you think that has been reflected in pop culture, either of that time period or today? From what I know, LA is thought of as that City Upon a Hill. A land where you go to chase dreams, aspirations. A land where you can be yourself. Where a small, country girl, waitress can go and proceed to create multiple hit singles. Where an aspiring...

Since starting "The Day of the Locust," we have discussed the utopian ideology of Los Angeles. Tod's vision of Pinyon Canyon was kind of like another movie set: external aesthetic trying to make something seem like something it is not. He sees Angelinos acting out lives they wish to be living rather than the actual lives they are living. To Tod, Los Angeles is a try-hard. However, how Tod views this empty living and the architectural “monstrosities” could not be further from Banham’s perspective on LA. Banham sees authentic individuality behind the diversity of Los Angeles and believes it designs unequivocal beauty.  Both in terms of the people and the structural makeup, Los Angeles is an enigma. Is LA diverse or is it segregated? Does LA live up to expectations or does its reality fail its promise? Between Banham and West, which perspective resonates with you more? Using personal perspective and those of West and Banham, analyze how Los Angeles lives up to or fails exp...

As Dr. Stogdill mentioned in class, the topic that is most discussed in our class is gentrification. The issue of gentrification as we have seen includes so many different aspects and there are so many different perspectives and opinions on the issue. Even today during our Urban Lab, seeing the expensive coffee/breakfast shops for bikers and the expensive apartments right in the middle of industrial building and lower-class housing was a perfect example. We have been successful at unpacking the basis of gentrification and acknowledging the reality of the issue and how it’s so present in the Los Angeles area, but my question is about the financial aspect of it. We have talked about the “justifications” of gentrification but why do you think so much money goes into imposing expensive businesses and building expensive complexes, stores etc. in a neighborhood rather then using that money for something that would actually benefit the community of Los Angeles. For example why spend...

I have been going down to the Los Angeles River since I was eight. In the beginning, I would only go down to the river to learn to ride my bike and check out the height of the water after a night of rain. In seventh grade, I would occasionally go down to the river to pick up trash by myself and continued to do so for the next two years. I eventually joined an organization named FOLAR (Friends of the Los Angeles River) who hold three clean ups a year, however every clean up there are always protests. Usually locals protest the clean ups because they are afraid that cleaning of the L.A River will lead to the complete reinvention of frogtown and the surrounding neighborhoods just like the clean up of the highline in New York City led to the meat packing district to sprout in a matter of months. Today the river looked cleaner than I had ever seen it since 2009 when I first laid my eyes on its murky green currents, which is great but it is clear that not just the river is changing. Walkin...