Pop Cultural Los Angeles’ Role in Society Term Paper

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Updated: Mar 2nd, 2024

Introduction

Los Angeles City is the second most crowded city in the United States. Located between the beach and the mountains, it is home to nearly 13 million people hailing from different parts of the world, speaking over a hundred different languages, and having diverse cultures. (Wikimedia Foundation Inc.) Here, self-definition and the individual difference is celebrated and legally protected.

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This city is all about entertainment. It is famous for Hollywood, known all over the world to produce popular movies, television shows, and music. It’s a city you either love or hate or love to hate.

For Mike Davis, Los Angeles native and author of City of Quartz, the seemingly prosperous LA is on its way to collapse. His book exposes the ugly side of the city. It carefully analyzes its history, economy, and the relationships in its society.

The objective of this paper is to compare and contrast Davis’s view of Los Angeles to public perception of the city today. This paper should focus on today’s LA as defined by pop-culture media, the public’s fascination with “young Hollywood”, and the influence this generation has on society.

Los Angeles: The Land of Opportunity

Development in Los Angeles started in the late 1880s. A railroad-sponsored promotion caused people from different places to come to Los Angeles County in hopes of finding good fortune. After this sudden swarming of people, the county collapsed. The rich and prominent people, led by Los Angeles Times owner Harrison Gray Otis, needed to find a way to get the region back on its feet. They promoted Los Angeles to be the “land of opportunity.” Again, the county was alive. People from the Midwest and East Coast migrated to LA and put their savings on buying real estate. (Keasbey) Investment in LA estates was the main attraction of the region before.

Today, LA is best known for one thing: Hollywood.

Most people move to LA because of its glitz and glam. Thousands of movie-star wannabes audition for TV shows, commercials, and others, with the hopes of having a successful career in Tinseltown. Its motion picture industry causes its popularity all over the world. Tourists flood Hollywood to visit its famous attractions such as the Walk of Fame and the Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

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Hollywood is also the place to be for aspiring filmmakers, writers, musicians, and models. It has several institutes dedicated to the study of film production. Film festivals and award-giving bodies for both film and music show the city’s great appreciation for movies and the entertainment business in general. Their culture and lifestyle greatly revolve around it. No wonder Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California.

Aside from Hollywood, LA boasts of its nighttime hot spots such as Downtown LA and the famous Sunset Strip. The strip is popular for its clubs, restaurants, boutiques, and Hollywood nightspots where celebrities, as well as celebrity wannabes and people-watchers, hang out.

LA is indeed the land of opportunity for those who dream of being the next big movie star, filmmaker, or pop icon. We live in the MTV generation where young people look up to the people they see on TV. The youth aspire to have a part of the showbiz lifestyle. The sudden proliferation of reality TV shows provides these aspirants a few hours of fame.

It has been noted that hundreds of adolescents run away from home just to follow their dreams of becoming a Hollywood star but only a few of them would succeed due to the tight competition in the industry. The rest would either go back to their homes or remain in LA to wait for other opportunities they know they can not get from where they came from.

Unfortunately, LA provides limited opportunities for them. The desperate ones would resort to pornography. Some turn out to be prostitutes. Others become homeless beggars loitering the city for survival.

Redefinition of Class Relationships

Los Angeles has a well-defined social structure. The rich are separated from the poor, white people are superior, and African-Americans are a target of racism and police brutality.

The Minority

Racism is a major issue in Los Angeles. White men rule LA. African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians are considered to be the minority, although ironically, LA is 46% Hispanic.

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Discrimination is also obvious among the poor and homeless people of LA. The rich people demanded to be separated from the poor and undesirable. According to Davis, in the mid 18th century, homeowners associations were determined to create a “bourgeoisie utopia”, making every neighborhood economically and racially homogeneous.

In the 1990s, the poor were officially and forcefully contained in small areas. Skid Row became an outdoor poorhouse away from the space of the wealthy people. Here, the hungry, desperate and helpless people are put together. The result was chaos. Skid Row became the most dangerous place in the world.

A way of warding off illegal immigrants is the radical decrease of public facilities and services. Libraries and playgrounds are closing, parks are being neglected, and streets are growing ever more deserted and dangerous.

LA also made it impossible for the homeless to wander outside their given space. It was concluded that too many Black and Mexican people wandering downtown would diminish its property value. Minimizing exposure of the poor to the public will give visitors the impression that they are in an attractive and safe place, making them want to be a part of such a wonderful community. (Wight) Hence, public spaces and pedestrians are eliminated. This war against the homeless is pulled off by the militarization of urban space. Parks are paved with nowhere for them to the seat. Sprinklers are widely used to prevent them to sleep in parks at night. Also, LA deliberately has the least number of public toilets in North America. Restaurants put up barricades to prevent the destitute from entering and bugging their costumers. Worst, these people’s health are also put to risk due to lack of water supply for drinking and washing. (Davis)

Gangs

Los Angeles is the ‘Gang Capital of America’. “According to a May 2001 Drug Threat Assessment by the National Drug Intelligence Center, Los Angeles County is home to 152,000 gang members organized into 1,350 gangs”.

Street gangs have been related to Los Angeles since history. They have been first formed in the 1930s by young African Americans in Eastside LA. These gangs were mostly involved in robbery and prostitution. As time went on, gangs were formed as protection from white violence. They became aware of racism and police brutality.

Today, these gangs are widely involved in drug trafficking and homicides. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) considered these gangs as a threat to national security.

Most famous gangs in LA are Crips and Bloods.

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The “Chosen People”

The “chosen people” are the ones that the city protects and secures. This includes the rich and the powerful. Politicians, celebrities, businessmen, and tourists- they are given the entire city’s privileges and pleasures. FYI: Los Angeles City has the second largest number of billionaires in the world.

The city made a huge effort in recreating Downtown into an attractive environment for these “chosen people”. They spent millions of dollars in creating town squares, beautiful fountains, decorative bushes, and public art, creating an image of a beautiful and peaceful neighborhood. This, of course, is located away from the specified poorhouses.

Authority

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has been known for brutal police oppression, especially among African-Americans. Their main objective is to put an all-out war against drugs and gangs. They aim to clear the streets off drug-dealers, illegal immigrants, and to lessen the number of homicides, all for the safety of the Los Angeles County.

The LAPD is also in charge of keeping the homeless people off the streets and public spaces. The police become a part of the lives of the LA people, that sometimes, domestic life or even individual freedom and privacy are disturbed. Security in drug traffic hotspots is too tight that the residents in the area often loose their freedom in exchange for their protection. Safety measures like restricted entry, obligatory identity passes, and LAPD substations are strictly implemented in areas that are perceived to be dangerous.

In LA, the police are friend of the rich and enemy of the poor.

Los Angeles’s Primary Export

“Eversince the 20th century began, Los Angeles has been considered as a real-estate capitalist. That is, LA’s primary export is empty space. There was even a time when the city can sustain itself just with its real estates”. (Wikimedia Foundation Inc.)

“Today, the Los Angeles city leads the world in creating popular entertainment. Motion pictures, television shows, and recorded music gives the city international fame and global status”. Besides real estate and entertainment, LA’s economy is determined by international trade, aerospace, technology, petroleum, fashion, apparel, and tourism. Los Angeles is also the biggest manufacturing center in the United States. The adjoining ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together cover the major port in North America and one of the most important ports in the world. These ports are essential to trading within the Pacific perimiter. Other significant industries in LA include media production, finance, telecommunications, law, health and medicine, and transportation.

Dispersion of Power

Mike Davis discussed in his book the economic and political power sources and structures in Los Angeles. According to Davis, “capitalism’s power lies primarily in land ownership, and that any real challenge to the existing social order must have land as a central concern. The power structure is directly tied to property, and the actions of the people in power and who they are follow the day’s popular mode of land speculation.” (Wight) Resources may also come from housing or property rentals and management of land.

Los Angeles started to become an urban center in the 1900’s. The building of railroads, opening of ports for trading and shipping, and developments in agriculture and oil mining paved the way for LA’s industrialization. By 1950, the elites had complete control of the power, and therefore, the city.

The opening of Los Angeles to the world caused a stream of immigrants entering the city. Here, different cultures infused and the minority shared power with the white people. By 1970, the African-Americans and Latinos started to grow in numbers, giving them stronger influences, resulting to the election public officials from the minority group. Tom Bradley and Antonio Villaraigosa are two of these leaders. “With political power now in the hands of historical minorities, and economic power shared with Asian capital, LA is a city unique in that it is moving forward into an age characterized by shared and dispersed power”.

Los Angeles as a Global City

Los Angeles is a ‘global city’ which has a direct and substantial effect on communities worldwide, be it socio-economic, cultural, or political. It is one of the 10 alpha world cities, which are considered to be the most popular and influential cities in the world.

Among all the global cities, Los Angeles has the third largest percentage of foreign-born residents, and second highest Gross Metropolitan Product. These criteria rankings fairly indicate the cities global significance.

The city is notable for its strong cultural influences. It is home of world-renowned cultural institutions and museums like the Kodak theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hollywood Boulevard. It also boasts a lively cultural scene which includes film festivals and hectic nightlifes. The city also produces several influential media publications like the LA Times and some entertainment and lifestyle magazines like the buzz and LA Weekly. It is the second largest media market in North America, next only to New York.

One outstanding influence of the LA culture to other societies is its fondness for pop culture. Pop culture greatly involves the television, and is generally cultivated from mass media and the entertainment industry and then spread through television or the internet. Most of what we see or hear from these sources is the product of Hollywood.

Celebrities all over the world are idolized, especially by the youth. The lives of these celebrities are exposed and people eagerly follow the latest news on their favorite stars. This is evident with the popularity of entertainment shows like E! News, or some reality TV shows like American Idol or The Simple Life, which hooks viewers not just in America, but also in all parts of the world. Trends in fashion are also greatly influenced by Hollywood. What is ‘in’ is dictated by fashionistas like Paris Hilton, Gwen Stefani, or some Hollywood fashion critics. Also. choice of music will be based on what is played on MTV.

The youth are particularly the ones who are mostly influenced by pop culture, causing changes in their lifestyle, morals, and values. An example would be the increasing consciousness on physical appearance brought about by Hollywood’s beauty standards. People would want to look more like the people they see on TV in order for them to feel good about themselves. This causes the proliferation of different kinds of diets and workouts that will cater to the public’s need to be thin.

Young people also tend to follow the lives of their favorite celebrities, and sometimes, they follow what they do too. Teenagers would drink and party like the celebrities. They would dress and speak like them. Young celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are setting the example for the youth, that is why they have to clean up their acts.

Also, nothing seems to be taboo nowadays. Sex, plastic surgery, divorce and homosexuality are beginning to be accepted also with the help of Hollywood and mass media.

Past, Present, & Future

Los Angeles has definitely changed over the years. This change is brought about by the endless immigration of people from different parts of the world, causing an infusion in different cultures, beliefs, and ideas. People are still widely diversified.

Real estate is still one of LA’s top sources of income. Manufacturing jobs are gone. Railroads cover the city. Shopping centers and night clubs are increasing in numbers, and are always flooded with people.

But nowadays, LA is considered to be the entertainment center of the world. It is famous mainly for Hollywood and the opportunities that this Tinseltown has to offer.

Los Angeles still remains as the foundation of Pop culture. The world’s culture is still vastly influenced by LA’s movies, television shows, music, fashion, visual arts, literature and of course, lifestyle.

And yes, the ugly side of Los Angeles is still there. Skid Row remains to be one of the scariest places on earth, home to the poor and the homeless, robbers, drug pushers, and murderers. Racism, police brutality, gang life, social class warfare—they remain to make the city infamous.

Summary and Conclusion

The City of quartz contains Los Angeles’s history and evolution as portrayed by its author, California native Mike Davis. It is reflection of the side of LA that is hidden behind its glitz and glamour. It analyzes the city’s economy and discusses the relationships of the different classes of people in the city.

Mike Davis pointed out what it is to be the minority in the city they say to be the land of opportunity. He described the unfair treatment for the rich and the poor, and the discrimination between the white people and the non-whites. The city seems to always act in favor of the rich, giving them security, and a picturesque place to exist in. On the other hand, the poor are confined in a small place, without any privileges or help for their survival.

The LAPD demonstrates this bias by being the protector of the rich, and the basher of the poor black Angelenos. This warfare between the social classes caused the militarization of public spaces, favoring the rich, of course.

This expose on the ugly side of the city should not convince people to believe anything for the book in itself is a little biased. Los Angles is a proud city. Its entertainment industry has made it an alpha world city. It is the major contributor to popular culture that is greatly influencing the people all over the world.

The city is indeed very large and diversified. And yes, it is hard to understand, what more explain. For some, this city is a hint of an impending apocalypse. While for others, Los Angeles remains to be the land of opportunities where dreams do come true.

Works Cited

Alonso, A. “Los Angeles Gangs.” 2007. Streetgangs.com.

2005. Blog-burbia, Pictures and Places.Web.

“City of Quartz, Excavating the future in Los Angeles.” 2007. Streetgangs.com Book Club.

Davis, Mike. “Fortress Los Angeles: The militarization of urban space.” LCC Georgia Institute of Technology.

Haefele, Marc B. “Explaining Los angeles.” September 1994. Boston Review.

Keasbey, Deke. “A Short History of Los Angeles Real Estate.” 2007. Tierra Properties.

Powers, John. “Listen to the Locust, ‘It ain’t what it used to be’ and otehr myths of L.A.” 2007. LA Magazine.

Wight, Adam. “City of Quartz.” ludd.net. 2007.

Wikimedia Foundation Inc. . 2007. Web.

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IvyPanda. 2024. "Pop Cultural Los Angeles' Role in Society." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/pop-cultural-los-angeles-role-in-society/.

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