Does Elgar Enders embody the spirit of gentrification? Not quite.
The movie The Landlord (1970) posits the intent of gentrification immediately after it begins, with the acquisition of Park Slope property by Elgar. However, we soon find out that this notion of gentrification is the backdrop for a man’s coming of age journey. Elgar displays strong resolve in maintaining and refurbishing his property, especially in the face of his doubting and slightly racist parents, more to prove his independence than out of a sincere desire to renovate and improve his apartment building. While Elgar intrinsically does not embody the spirit of gentrification, which by definition would imply that he himself wishes to renovate his apartment to conform to his bourgeois taste, his acquisition of property in the heavily black neighborhood of Park Slope presents us with a slightly different take on gentrification—one that does not completely eliminate what came before in favor of new middle class ventures.
Elgar’s actions, primarily fueled by the desire to be his own man and possess his own property, are atypical of the gentrifying spirit of the time. His sexual escapades with Franny and Lanie are certainly not part of the gentrifying process, however, they illuminate his liberal views and willingness to conform, in the slightest, to his new neighborhood. It is this process of almost necessary assimilation that leads me to believe that Elgar does not want to become the tyrant landlord that oppresses his tenants with threats of eviction, as implied by the clear animosity some tenants display and the forced affection others display. The successive cuts from the pure white background in which Elgar expresses his views to the darker backdrops in which the tenants express their discontent, in addition to the reference to the white man owning property that houses subservient black people, in which a clear connection to plantations was drawn in my mind, suggests an oppressive nature of gentrification. However, Elgar seems drawn to black culture and tries hard, against the conservative views of his parents, to work within the community for its benefit.
In the end, racial tensions prevent Elgar from continuing his renovations of the apartment building and from raising a baby with Franny. While the suggested gentrification does not work so well with the polarized black community, a sliver of hope is presented at the end of the movie, when Elgar assumedly moves in with Lanie, bringing his half-white, half-black baby with him. This scene suggests that perhaps gentrification is possible, and is happening, through those who share both white and black parents; a new wave of inhabitance in the community, not so much middle-class gents, but those who share common ground between white and black, inner city and middle class.
