The Landlord shows the gradual growth and change of relationships in an ethnic neighborhood between the “natives” and the “outsider.”  At first Elgar, a wealthy young man from the suburbs, does not fit in with the tenants of his tenement house in Park Slope.  He is definitely not understood by these inner city natives and comes into strange confrontations with them.  As the film progresses, however, these relations definitely improve as Elgar earns the trust and respect of his tenants.  Though the tenants’ tolerance of Elgar at first comes from a degree of fear and intimidation because he is their landlord, as can be seen when Elgar first meets Marge and Fanny, his relationships become more genuine as he gains their respect.

This movie seems to start out as a movie about gentrification.  Elgar plans on driving out the residents of the building and renovating the tenement house into a posh flat for himself to live in.  These actions would be ones that indicate gentrification and “upscaling” of the neighborhood.  There is a definite clear distinction between the world of the tenement house in Park Slope and the Ender family’s world.  Everything in Elgar’s family’s house is extremely white and bright and clean or sterile looking while the world of Park Slope was dark and dingy, reflecting the inhabitants of both scenes.  These striking differences seem kind of odd thinking about it in present times since Park Slope is a very wealthy community.  This indicates that yes, gentrification did occur in Park Slope and is probably still acting on the community and those surrounding it.  However, I think that a sort of anti-gentrification happened in this movie.  When I think of gentrification I think of wealthy people moving into a neighborhood and kicking the current residents out. While this was the initial goal of Elgar, it isn’t how it ended up.  Instead, he blended and integrated himself into their lifestyle.  He didn’t drive people out, he mixed, he became a member of the already existing community of Park Slope, both by his physical residence and by the relationships he forms and the relationships he breaks.  The fact that he eventually left the house to residents of the building further shows how he doesn’t embody the gentrification spirit of today that occurs throughout New York City. Gentrifiers don’t seek to integrate themselves into existing culture, but rather to make their own culture the dominant force.

As for the case of Elgar, I think The Landlord only exemplifies the beginnings of gentrification, if that. The neighborhood, Park Slope, that he moved into was still significantly black when the movie ended. His family was still ridiculously ignorant as well. To me, this movie did not signify any type of progression into gentrification. In its entirety, I believe this film just about a man who runs away from home (but still maintains the most of the same values) and knocks a girl up.

No, I really do not think that Elgar embodies the spirit of gentrification. The true definition of the term is “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.” Do I think Elgar fits this criteria? No, not at all. When Elgar arrived in Park Slope he almost assimilated within the neighborhood instead of kicking them out like the definition of gentrification suggests.

However, within the first few scenes of the movie Elgar says something along the lines of “I wan’t to fix the place up and just kick out those tenants.” His attitude here resembles that of his entire family. The ignorance of his entire family is seriously incredible. The first sign that Elgar himself is not interested in gentrifying his tenant house anymore is when he calls his family octoroons. This “major insult” drives his family to basically disown him. From this point on, Elgar begins to become more and more like his tenants.

So, does Elgar embody gentrification as it happens today? No. Rather than displace all of poor families that live in his neighborhood, he basically attempts to become one of them. I think it can even be said that Elgar’s actions were that of a revolting rich boy against his parents. He “ran away” to live on his own, then he had sex with a black women and continued to be in a relationship with another one. Every one of his actions were against what his parents desired. In my opinion, I don’t believe Elgar ever had a sincere interest in Park Slope.

Through the recent history of New York City, gentrification has played an important role in changing the population patterns within the city. As the city takes on a more prominent economic and political position nationally and internationally, gentrification seems to be a necessary process for the city to maintain its status. The change of population patterns as a result of gentrification would be an interesting topic to discuss in relation with the film The Landlord.

We can hardly imagine today’s Park Slope in Brooklyn from The Landlord. In about four decades since the movie was filmed, Park Slope has been transformed from an African American dominant ghetto to a white Americans populated wealthy neighborhood. Today’s Park Slope has about sixty percent of whites, twenty percent of Hispanics, and less than ten percent of African Americans. It’s also one of the best and wealthiest neighborhoods in New York City. The contrast between The Landlord and today’s Park Slope provides strong evidence about how gentrification has changed the population pattern in New York City.

The Park Slope in the film was a ghetto dominated with African Americans. The living conditions, as shown by Elgar’s tenement house, were very poor. The neighborhood also had many problems like other ghettoes such as poverty and teenage problems. While I think The Landlord was more about racism and the relations between white and African Americans, the film certainly constituted a crucial aspect of gentrification. The fact that Elgar, being a wealthy white man, purchased property and moved into the neighborhood was a symbol of gentrification. After Elgar moved into the house, he began to talk about the rent problems to his tenants, and to repair and improve the conditions of his house. This also represented the beginning of gentrification of the neighborhood. Yet, I believed that racism was still an important theme and should deserve some discussion. For instance, the scenes about Elgar’s family gatherings always had white and bright lighting while the scenes about the Elgar’s house in Park Slope had very dark lighting. In addition, when Elgar told his mother he might be in love with an African American woman, Elgar’s mother immediately thought of a native African woman dressing in traditional costumes, and when Fanny told Elgar she was pregnant, Elgar’s mother immediately thought of a group of African American children wearing white dresses surrounded and listened to her singing. All of these provided examples about racism and stereotypes toward African Americans during the mid-twentieth century.

The reason I discussed the theme of racism in The Landlord was that racial discrimination could greatly hinder gentrification in certain neighborhoods. As the article “The Gentrification of Harlem?” pointed out, Harlem could hardly be gentrified if it couldn’t attract investments outside of the neighborhood, and the main sources of investments came from white Americans since there were very limited numbers of high-income African American families in New York City. However, if white Americans continued to conceive Harlem as a dangerous neighborhood, Harlem could hardly attract any investments and gentrify in a way that would improve the conditions in the neighborhood. Although the article was published in 1986 and the data might not be true anymore, the arguments were still true. While there were successful examples of gentrification such as Park Slope, Brooklyn, there are many underprivileged neighborhoods that could hardly gentrify within the next several decades because of people’s misconceptions toward the neighborhoods. Indeed, gentrification is an essential process for the development of New York City. Neighborhoods should continuously improve their living and working conditions for their residents in order to create a better city and society. Positive gentrifications can help underprivileged people to attain better living conditions without displacing them. While this is a difficult topic for city planning, it can greatly benefit the urban development of the city.

Gentrification is a necessary process for the urban development many cities. Many neighborhoods in New York City have been gentrified and would be re-gentrified according to the needs of the city and society.

Readings:

• gentrification_harlem

• Seiving-Black Hollywood Meets New Hollywood-Landlord

PROMPT:

Ostensibly, The Landlord is about one white man who moves into a Black neighborhood.   But might we also read the film as being about neighborhood change more generally?  How might we evaluate the film as a narrative about gentrification?  Does Elgar embody the spirit of gentrification–as it happens even today? If so, why?  If not, why not?