A Cheap Holiday in Other People's Misery
|
Some of the themes we’ve examined in this course so far have been the demarcation of space, mapping (and who/what is worthy of being mapped), and how location influences action. Roman Polanski’s film, “Chinatown,” was released in 1974 and stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. The film centers around the disputes of water and land incorporation in the Greater Los Angeles area. However, there’s also the simultaneous storyline involving incest and rape. The problems surrounding the water wars and Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway) don’t exactly get resolved in a “neat” fashion per se. Mulwray tries to escape to Mexico with her daughter/sister, Katherine, but is fatally shot in Chinatown as she attempts to make her getaway. Mulwray’s father, Noah Cross, ends up taking back Katherine --which was was what Mulwray was trying to prevent all along. Gittes (Nicholson), who was helping Mulwray, is taken aback by her sudden death and how unfair the whole situation seems to be. As Gittes looks onto the scene of a dead Mulwray, a weeping Katherine, and an intrusive Cross, one of his colleagues tells him, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
The movie may be named “Chinatown” but the Los Angeles neighborhood doesn’t make an appearance until the very end with the search and car chase involving Mulwray, Cross, and the police. Life in Chinatown is disrupted by the presence of these white, Outsider bodies. The real inhabitants of Chinatown are going about their own business in the background and when the violence erupts, they become passive onlookers. The end of “Chinatown” bothers me because it serves as another example of #whitepeopleproblems and white entitlement to create despapaye in spaces/places/locations where they don’t have to deal with the consequences of their actions. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” What does that really mean? Had the car chase and murder occurred in say, Beverly Hills, would it had been worthwhile to investigate? Was it dismissed simply because of the people who reside in Chinatown? Do Chinatown regulars experience other forms of violence? And, if the police looked into Mulwray’s situation (thus, acknowledging violence exists in Chinatown), would they then be obligated to retroactively look at all cases of injustice that took place in Chinatown? My questions all tie back to the ideas of [a] place, how the stereotype of a location influences “accepted” behavior, and who ends up having to deal with the consequences. We still see this today in other cities as well. Las Vegas is one of the first examples that comes to mind. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Or when college kids go to border towns for Spring Break. Reckless debauchery is enacted in places that have been made permissible to do so by media and society. How do we negotiate this in the stories we tell? Will the stories we will write for this course provide counternarratives for the locations we choose to incorporate into our stories? |
I have no idea if I am posting comments correctly but here goes. I was on the same wavelength as you in terms of your inquiry of valid spaces worthy of mapping. Whose experiences get recorded? Emma Perez broaches this topic in The Decolonial Imaginary when she compares the writings of Mary Austin Holley, Stephen F. Austin's cousin, and those (if any) of Malintzin. Holley's papers are housed at UT Austin yet we have no idea if the maligned Tenepal authored anything. To answer your question about our stories providing "counternarratives"....I think we need to consider our stories simply as narratives countering the hegemonic myths that we have been colonized with for centuries. I would have written a similar entry but I've been watching the coverage of the Baltimore Uprising and I'm feeling rage, despair, and a slew of other dark emotions.