If we use the word “gentrification” to refer to the changes that occur when the “gentry” – wealthy (white) people – acquire or rent property in low income and working class neighborhoods, then we should have no problem saying that – at least, initially – twenty-nine-year-old Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) embodies the spirit of gentrification in The Landlord (1970). After all, he is a young, white male from a rich family (which lives in a completely whitewashed world), and he decides to buy a tenement in “the ghetto” (a world comprised of various shades of brown) for the sole purpose of evicting all of its occupants, knocking it down, and building himself a luxury home. He has that part of the definition of gentrification down.
However, things become a little murky when Elgar actually begins to live in Park Slope. He spends more and more time there and less and less time at his parents’ whitewashed estate. And the more time he spends with Marge (Pearl Bailey), Fanny (Diana Sands), and the other residents (and the less with his racist parents), the further he seems to depart from his initial plans to convert the tenement, and the more integrated he becomes into the black community of Park Slope. By the end of the film, he seems to have become fully immersed in the black community – he has traded his luxury home for a cramped tenement apartment, his starched white clothing for a loose and earth tone wardrobe, and his racist mother and father for a black girlfriend and child. Elgar Enders is changed, but he has failed to implement any of the changes that are meant to accompany gentrification.
And while others may think this means he failed to live up to being the embodiment of the spirit of gentrification, I am not so sure that is the case. He is one person. He may not have been able to implement the changes he wanted to, but others may hear about how a white man is living among the “natives.” These people might be attracted to the idea and may wish to experience a similar immersion, thus prompting them to move into the neighborhood as well. And at the same time as this group of people is moving into the neighborhood for its culture, another section of people may move in because it is the “hip” thing to do. These people may start buying up property and building up new apartment complexes, expensive boutiques, and fancy restaurants – thus, drawing in even more people with money and nothing better to spend it on – until yuppies and hipsters outnumber the natives.
It has happened in Alphabet City and many other neighborhoods throughout New York. Who is to say Park Slope was any different? Gentrification is a gradual process and it is not only one person who brings about all of the changes within a neighborhood that is undergoing the process. It requires time and people who have a reason to want to be in that neighborhood – whether as an investment opportunity or as a chance to experience a different culture – and the money to make their dreams come true. A person like Elgar Enders would simply be the catalyst that set the entire process into motion.
