Frank O’Hara’s view of New York City seems distinctly blissful and optimistic compared to J.G. Baillard’s view, mainly because of how the city seems to just sort of blend into the background of his poems. The subject is hardly ever the city itself — the subject of Having a Coke With You is instead O’Hara’s lover — and yet New York City plays an essential part in setting the relationship. Mentions of the art in the Frick museum downtown or how his lover’s beauty has somehow diminished the works of Marcel Duchamp, a prominent New York dadaist, make sure that the subject of the poem is not the city itself, and yet the city gets the appraise and mention it is worthy of in his works.
In a way, the Frick itself functions as a way for O’Hara to experience his love through the city, mentioning how he’s thankful “[he hasn’t] gone yet so [they] can go together for the first time.” The city is a place he wants to experience in his newfound love, and he wants to live vicariously through the eyes of his lover as he experiences its beauty for the first time, almost as a parallel to the newness of their courtship.
Baillard’s view meanwhile encompasses a sort of claustrophobia that is understandable in such a massive setting as New York City. In his hyperbolic futurist view, he manages to create a setting where people are not used to a room that isn’t filled with people (which realistically isn’t too far from the truth concerning the city — try finding a train that isn’t overcrowded during the day), and yet when his characters finally find a space that isn’t full of people, the setting becomes curious and new. Of course, this whole line of plot embodies a variety of dystopia that is more psychological than tyrannical, as it’s not necessarily the government’s fault that Ward and Rossiter aren’t used to closed spaces. Of course, the city eventually manages to corrupt the space, and Ward becomes the thing he hates when he turns into its landlord.
Bjork’s song “Enjoy” sort of embodies the exaggerated idea of city-goers that Baillard has characterized in Ward and Rossiter. One could say this song represents the city lover who has become so obsessed with the crowd and the speed of the crowded city that they’ve lost their sense of personality. Bjork’s song uses metaphor to discuss what it feels like to become in tune with the speed of the bustling activity of London in 1995, which could be translated into this futuristic overcrowded New York City.
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