Peopling of New York City, Spring 2012

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?

Spike Lee’s depiction of the Bed-Stuy neighborhood is quite opposite of what it was in the past and what it is like now, and no, it was not a mistake. Lee portrayed the neighborhood in that specific way in order to get his political message across and to deviate from the stereotypes of African Americans that are all too common. In his neighborhood, he places poor but dignified African Americans that are, for the most part, happy go lucky characters (which is mentioned in the readings). Also mentioned in the readings was Lee’s decision to place very few Whites and immigrants in the movie (not unusual for this neighborhood), families, and social characters that meet up to converse. What I find to be the most interesting, however, is the things that he purposely omits such as drug use and street gangs. Essentially, he is representing a ghetto neighborhood that is well known for its public housing and high number of welfare recipients without including some of the primary reasons for such and the dangers found within such a neighborhood. Why did he choose to show the neighborhood this way instead of the way it really was? Well there are three main reasons for this. One reason being to discourage Whites from associating Blacks with violence and crime, another reason being to express how “we create the conditions of social unrest, when we fail to address pent up anger and frustration” and the third reason being to show that the Blacks were innocent and undeserving of the brutality that they received.

Lee strategically uses both auditory and visual effects in order to emphasize the issues that he presents to his audience. Lee’s musical choices speak a lot about what he is trying to tell us. For example, the very first song played in the movie that repeatedly mentioned “fighting the power” represents the African Americans fighting unfair treatment and oppression from the Whites, specifically the police. Which is later show when Radio Raheem is killed by an overly violent and unjust police officer. The readings that we read this week, those that discussed the musical components of the movie, explained how the film is “characterized by the use of multiple musical styles which connote black production, artistry, and history” and the importance of the rap, jazz, radio, and historic nostalgic themes. The same article also stated that the radio “binds neighborhood inhabitants together into a community of listener participants” The radio served as a sort of mediator between the two racial groups. Visuals, such as costume and lighting, play an important role in the movie as well. For example, in the beginning scene with the women dancing there is one that is wearing a boxer’s outfit. Wearing this outfit symbolizes the preparedness of the people to fight. As for the lighting, and this could just be my interpretation, seems to be rather low. By this I mean that most of the movie seems to be filmed with a great deal of shadows. To me this could be representative of the people that had to live in the shadows or in the darkness. Also the change from red to dark shows the change in emotion (anger). Although these are important factors, the simplest visual aspect to analyze would be the actual neighborhood in which he chose to film the movie. Bed-Stuy is a very run down and chaotic neighborhood that is in need of major maintenance, which is analogous to the position of the characters in the movie.

There is a lot of debating over the true motive behind Mookie throwing the trash can but the reason that I will stick to is: his inner and suppressed feelings of racism that resurfaced after Radio Raheem’s death. He wanted to get revenge for his death.The proof of such feelings can be seen when he yells the word “hate” before throwing the trashcan. The loss of such a great influence in his life triggered his anger and destructive actions. There are many critics that would argue that he did in fact end up saving Sal’s life. My response to that would be that the intention of saving his life was not at all the original thought in Mookie’s mind; therefore it wasn’t the reason behind him doing what he did.

When reading the Ella Shohat article, I immediately saw the genius of Spike Lee’s movie. We have been seeing a lot of films lately where, as stated in an older article, white people are just thought of as “people”, while black individuals are thought of primarily as being “black”. Spike Lee managed to break down each and every ethnicity in Do The Right Thing, making white just as much a set ethnicity as black. The normally marginalized ethnicities remained so but white was no longer the norm due to its portrayal in the film. The only white individuals in the film were police officers, and every police officer in the film was white. This served to make sure that white people were considered a part of the whole, not simply the norm. Spike Lee made a lovely little soup of different ethnic groups such as blacks, whites, Italians, Koreans, etc.

Relationships devolve for no real reason. Lee’s emphasis on the differences of the groups serve to show the viewers the tensions evident due to those differences. This tension leads people to see slights and insults where there are none and things spiral downwards from there. This change is mainly signaled by the lighting. The movie starts in the morning and everyone seems cheerful and viewers are tricked into thinking that this is going to be a happy film. As the day progresses, more and more issues arise and people who were so pleasant earlier in the day turn vicious. The police who let the men playing with the fire hydrant get off easy strangle a man. Those who were unwilling to boycott Sal’s help destroy his store. Tensions escalates and tempers flare until the situation becomes explosive. The next morning, life goes back to normal and everyone is cheerfully frolicking in the street again.

This film really upset me so in answer to the question as to why Mookie threw the garbage can, I will draw from the reading, Mosaic City. He did it to draw attention away from Sal so that people would focus their destructive energies on the shop instead of on Sal. I would really like to believe in enduring loyalty, respect, and love between individuals and groups despite external influences.

Do The Right Thing has to be the best movie out of all the movies we saw so far. It is one that realistically portrays the tension between different ethnicities that spend time in the same area. Although E.B. White’s “Here is New York” stated that people are willing to tolerate their neighbors, this movie portrays what happens when people’s patience runs out. Director Spike Lee did a great job in blending the right amount of theatrics with reality. In addition, he does a good job in making the point he wanted to make in this movie. Throughout the movie, the camera takes us through scenes that show the chaos of the block: children running around, the noise of the neighborhood. This makes the movie seem realistic, however, the lack of cars in this movie also constantly reminded the audience that this was a movie. In other words, this movie was made to make the audience feel as though they are there, looking at the characters. The close ups and the camera angles place the audience directly in front of the characters. For example, when Radio was explaining the story of his rings that say “love” and “hate”, the camera was moved from giving the audience a side view of the characters to right inbetween Mookie and him. Thus the audience was viewing Radio from Mookie’s point of view. (I feel that Spike should have cut in between the takes, i.e. we would receive a side view of them talking and then he would cut to when the Radio was speaking in front of the camera and back.) Also, another example of how other characters view others is when Radio was buying batteries. Because he is taller than the Korean store owners, the camera shot him from below, making him appear frightening (which was what he probably looked like from the owners.) I also like the fact that Spike Lee did not add any drug dealers or any business deals that might distract us from the main purpose of the movie. This movie has a very simple plot line, but is very effective in showing the point of views of many different people and in showing how one tiny argument can escalate to people doing something they regret.

In this movie, there wasn’t much character development thus forcing the audience to just focus on the interactions between the characters. Spike Lee wrote this movie with characters that are very stereotypical, with characters in which their personality is shown through the first encounter the audience has with them. Also Spike Lee, to some extent, “blended” the ethnicities together. There was no real distinction of hate between the groups. For example, when Buggin’ Out told his neighbors who were African American that he wanted to start a boycott against Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, they laughed at him and turned down his offer to join him. (This is what made me think of E. B. White’s paper, the ability for people of different ethnicities, traditions, culture, to survive in a community together.) They had no reason to boycott Sal because he has done no one any harm; in fact a girl even stated that she “was born and raised in Sal’s”. These little incidents of Sal not having African American leaders on his wall of fame escalated (which is the main reason for Buggin’ Out’s boycott) and of Radio being forced to turn his music down led to a racial war.  Once Sal was unable to deal with these two characters calmly, he said the n word. That conversation during the closing time when these three characters (Radio, Buggin’ Out, and Smiley) put enough gasoline in the fire to cause an explosion, which is exactly what happened.

The part of the scene after they burned down the pizzeria is the one that stuck out the most to me. When the people of the block (both the African Americans and Latin Americans) turned around to start to take out their anger on the store, I liked the dialogue that occurred. The lines that the Korean store owner said “I am black….we are the same” could not have been a clearer indication of what Spike Lee was trying to tell America. Through these lines, peace was restored again (for they laughed and said he is alright.) However this does raise the question, why were they blamed for something the police did?

           In all the movies that we’ve seen, I’ve admired the way the director sets the scene and mood at the beginning of each one. To do a quick comparison, I’ve noticed that the mood of most of the films we’ve watched have been light and casual, and I think I realize why. Since each movie has taken place in New York, the director wants to start the film with a very real feeling, like we are just walking down the streets on an average day.  Now that I’ve made a point that covers many of the films, I’ll start with what was unnecessary in Do the Right Thing.

            The neighborhood in Brooklyn, where the movie is set, gets a lot of KUDOS from me, because of the “real” sense that I was writing about in the first paragraph. I want to point out a couple of specific moments where it felt so real, so I can explain what I mean when I say “real.” The first moment is in the convenience store of the Asian man. The black man inside can’t find what type of beer he wants, and he’s taking it out on the owner. This fits the setting of Do the Right Thing perfectly, because it shows the mixture of cultures in this small area, and even though the area is majority black, they don’t necessarily have any influence on the businesses surrounding them.

A second example to support this lack of business-influence is in the Famous Pizzeria. My point was made clearly when it’s pointed out in the scene that there are no blacks on the Wall of Fame. It’s even pointed out that majority of the customers are black. The moment where the camera pans across the wall doesn’t exactly make it obvious what it’s trying to prove. I didn’t know what I was supposed to notice until he points out that none of them are black.

The scene to focus on, however, is one of the last scenes where not only the trashcan is thrown, but also the black man is killed.  When the black man was strangling the Italian owner, there was a clear reason for the cops to intervene and take him off. However, once he was off, they continued to choke this black man.  After the cops were told that he was in pain, they continued. Finally, it was too late, and dies. It was entirely unnecessary for the cops to take it THAT far. Therefore, I think this is the reason Spike takes it THAT far. He throws the trashcan to show that they can take it THAT far as well. The cops took an unnecessary, cruel measure, and the black community took an unnecessary, cruel measure in burning down the pizzeria. No one is innocent.

In Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee makes obvious distinctions between the different races and cultures throughout the film. I feel like these characters were really caricatures, or amplified versions of actual stereotypes. The big distinctions and personalities of the characters gave a greater affect on the rifts and friction that developed throughout the movie. Though the movie was set in Bed-Stuy, a predominantly black neighborhood, the film also showed “whites/Italians,” with Sal and his sons (Danny Aiello, John Turturro and Richard Edson), and Asians, with the Korean grocery store owner (Steve Park). These two races,I felt were stereotypical portrayals. On the side of the blacks, there were different kinds of people. There was Mookie (Spike Lee), the lazy pizza guy, Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), the big, anti-authority, stereo carrier and Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), who probably sparked the movie’s main conflict. These younger characters seemed very willing to spark a change, or “fight the power,” I guess. Other older characters such as Da Mayor, Mother Sister, and Love Daddy were portrayed in the movie as well, but not as radical as the younger people. These black characters I felt were also very stereotypical from the way they dressed (shoutouts to the Air Jordan 4!), to the way they spoke and acted. Like Pouzulet mentioned in the article, the characters in Bed-Stuy were almost in an idealized ghetto, with defined stereotypes, and seemingly no seedy/sketchy activity.

I felt that most of the film’s conflict and ending were results of seemingly small confrontations that escalated. The relationships between characters got weaker and weaker, with some getting increasingly angry and frustrated. Buggin’ Out questioning Sal not putting “brothers” on the wall and Radio Raheem (of course) blasting his radio definitely showed the discord between the black and white in Bed-Stuy. What seemed like a curious, non-threatening question, ended up as a spark to the literal fire at the end of the film.

As Do The Right Thing continued, the temperatures rose, as well as the friction between the different people in Bed-Stuy. Visually, the use of different camera angles and lighting was definitely noticeable. For example, the shots of Radio Raheem were always shot from below him, making him look big and intimidating. When he was interacting with the Korean store owners, they were shown in a yellowish/orange light, with a tilted camera angle. Also, the framing of the film on one hot summer day was used to compliment the film’s ongoing conflict. From the heating of temperatures, to the riot at night, these definitely caught my eye as they went along with the action. Sonically, there was always a mix of music that went along with the film. The use of music in the film was accurately described by Johnson in her “Polyphony” article. Radio Raheem and blasting “Fight The Power” definitely stood out. The bold voices of Chuck D and Flavor Flav gave a clear background to the conflict that was happening throughout the film. However, it was pointed out by Johnson that there was no use of music for the final scenes of the film, the destruction of Sal’s pizzeria and the killing of Raheem.

I felt that Mookie throwing the garbage can through the window was an act of mercy. While the pizzeria was a neighborhood staple, Buggin’ Out criticizing Sal and his Wall of Fame definitely caused a rift, which escalated at the end of the movie. It was like they had lost their place in the community, which had already grown overwhelmingly black. The movie talked about how Sal and his sons were from Bensonhurst, not Bed-Stuy, and how one son was contemplating about changing the business. I think that this is important in understanding the white vs black rift in the movie. The act of throwing the garbage can through the window might have destroyed the pizzeria, but it saved Sal and his sons from being victims of a riot. Do I feel it was the right thing to dO? I guess so, somebody or something was going to get damaged looking at the anger the people had at the end of the film.

The hate and bias among different races, at the beginning of the movie, are not powerful enough to reach the threshold to cause violence against each other, but as the narrative continuing, the verbally fights and hate finally rise to a level that stimulates the aggression.

At such a hot summer, everyone’s temper seems like going crazy. At the beginning, there are several squabbles between family, friends, and neighbors, such as Sal and his sons Pino and Vito (the Italian American family), Da Mayor and Mother Sister, Da Mayor and Korean couple, Tina and her mom. However, none of these seems to cause big problem; there is soft, lively orchestra music comes along when Da Mayor and Mother Sister bicker, which shows only petty daily episodes among people in the same neighborhood. Whereas, I believe that these trivial squabbles and extremely hot weather that is intensified by the heavily use of red color foreshadow the chaos in the end.

I also believe that Buggin Out is the heat that makes Sal and the neighborhood react against each other more and more aggressively. Buggin Out is neither satisfied with paying extra money to get more cheese for his pizza nor happy with a group of pictures of white celebrity on the wall of Sal’s pizzeria. He is kicked out by Sal for his mischievous complains.  Later he instigates his brothers to boycott pizza from Sal’s. He is heating up the devolution of the relationship between Sal and Spike’s neighborhood and stirs up the hate between them and when the catalyst, death of Radio Raheem, join the reaction, it explodes.

At the climax, the fight scene is set at night. I guess the transition of color from red to dark imply the surge of anger. When red that represents anger become darker, it looks like black color which represents chaos and disaster. The dark background also makes the flame stands out, which also represent the eruption of fury. The score is muted and replaced by the noise, which also intensifies the turbulent scene.

As for Mookie’s final reaction, I guess he is identifying himself with his brothers because he is furious too when he witnesses Radio Raheem being killed by the policeman. We know Mookie’s personality well; he will hurt nobody. Therefore, instead of beating Sal up, he chooses to break down the pizzeria. On the other hand, I also think that he is trying to protect Sal from being killed and he also knows that there must be something done for his brothers to release their anger so he direct them to dismantle the pizzeria.

After reading the reading materials and watching the movie, I find that people’s bias against other races is derived from their ethnocentrism—— people tend to evaluate other people and culture according to the standard of their own culture. I believe that there is no categorically true standard of what is good and what is bad and there is neither the best nor the worst culture.