ENG 103
Prof. Vasilou
The Giuliani era in New York, marked by moves to reduce the homeless and “clean up the city”, was a response to a fear in the 1980s that the city was becoming an anarchic war zone characterized by homeless, vagrancy, gang violence and a surge of dangerous foreigners (Silverman, 2001). This system of fear, of course, was classist and racist, and according to political correspondent Michael J.W. Stickings (2009), made Giuliani into the “anti-FDR”: “He "cleaned up" New York by turning it into his own police state, he ran for the Republican nomination a year ago as a quasi-fascist authoritarian, and he has milked 9/11 to serve his own right-wing agenda (including a penchant for torture), not to mention his own personal, political, and profiteering ambitions. Instead of ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ it's ‘we have everything to fear, because there is terror everywhere, and so we should all be very afraid and vote Republican.’” Consider that the Giuliani era falls into the era the film Escape From New York takes place, 1997, the preceding quote becomes more interesting. The film shows us a NYC that is all but destroyed because of things I mentioned earlier and will continue talk about through out the paper. And it was those characteristics the made the real NYC of 1997 stranger than fiction. Yes, no bridges were blown up and it did not become a literal prison, but you do not need walls to feel imprisoned.
In addition, in the 1980s, there was still fear of a buildup to a nuclear war, a final apocalyptic conflict, World War III, as very few predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. It was this fear that acted as a dramatic backdrop for Escape from New York: The fear of the city and the fear of the world acted together to give Carpenter a plausible scenario for a potential dystopian future, cementing his protagonist Snake Plissken into the canon of classic badasses and giving his moniker to the perennial Solid Snake of Metal Gear fame.
In the 1990s, New York City experienced an unprecedented drop in crime, according to NYPD statistics (Langan, 2004). While it is possible that this was the NYPD cooking the books or altering the data, there was corroboration with the National Crime Victimation Survey and data from the medical examiner. There were many factors that caused it: Economic growth in the 1990s, the ramping down of the crack epidemic, better policing funding and strategies, demographic settling, the civil rights era advancing to the point where perceived inequality declined enough to reduce reasons for crime, etc (Karmen, 2000; Johnson et al, 2006; Brown, 2003, 153-155). Whether Giuliani actually reduced crime is up for debate, but one thing is clear: Part of the reason that crime fell so much in the 1990s is that it had so far to fall from the 1980s.
“During the mid-1980's, there were increases in murders, assaults, and motor vehicle thefts. Robberies increased in the later 1980s and burglaries declined throughout the 1980s. Arrest rates and total arrests for non-drug crimes did not decline during this period of increased drug arrests. In a multivariate analysis, we found that the three property crimes investigated - robberies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts - increased when there were unexpected increases in drug usage. We did not find such a relationship between drug use and murders or assaults, holding constant arrest rates and police. In addition, we found evidence of police deterrence, either directly, or through arrests, of property-related and assault offenses, but not for murders” (Corman and Mocan, 1986). Though the police deterred some violence, the crack epidemic and the perception of deep racial and economic inequality in the city between black, Hispanic, Puerto Rican, immigrant and white have-nots and some of the richest haves in the world made it so that the police could do only so much.
The huge inequality in the city created a sensation of alienation from institutions and anger that led to disaffected street youth, drug use, violent crime, property crime and gang activity. “[T]he destructive impact of long-term deprivation and economic marginality on the stability and supportive capacity of institutions like families and local communities” combined with the resentment of long-term inequality and lack of opportunity is well-known to produce crime and was largely explanatory of the increase in crime in the 70s and 80s (Brown, 2003, 133-135).
In addition, the specter of nuclear war was omnipresent (Bloomfield, 1985). Other movies like War Games centered on the risk of nuclear war, and the Road Warrior / Mad Max series made the idea of a post-apocalyptic wanderer and tough guy appealing. It was during this time that the comic book Watchmen came out, with the idea that imminent nuclear war between the Soviets and the Americans was such a pressing and immediate concern that anything, even Ozymandias' slaughter of New York itself, could be justified as a necessary evil to protect humanity. The anti-proliferation movement was at its strongest in the 1970s and 1980s as well (Benford, 1984; Price, 1982; Adamson, 1995). While certainly fears of nuclear war are still quite real, and the war in Iraq was largely sold on the basis of the risk of WMDs (as are current fears of Iran and North Korea), the fall of the Soviet Union for many removed the risk of imminent, unpreventable and possibly even inevitable omnicidal conflict from the equation. Escape from New York takes place near the end of World War III, a concept which itself is increasingly departing from the global lexicon.
As one final influence for Escape from New York, one has to give the nod to cyberpunk, to the imaginations of people like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson. The bleak dystopian overtones of movies like Blade Runner and books like Neuromancer logically suggest a universe like Escape from New York. Post-apocalyptic stories in general were in vogue in the 1970s and 1980s, from the mystically infused roleplaying post-apocalyptic setting of Rifts to the implied future nuclear war of Terminator.
Oddly enough, one of Carpenter's most specific influences was the Watergate scandal (O'Ehley, 1997). While he could never articulate to any studio's satisfaction the connection, the ideas seem clear. Escape from New York centers on political, military and economic corruption leading to disastrous consequences. The idea that normative institutions might embrace disastrous outcomes seemed even more likely after Nixon, who not only engaged in Watergate but dismantled Bretton Woods and was involved in the secret bombing of Cambodia. While Nixon also went to China, it might make sense that Americans would become fatigued of nuclear gamesmanship after thirty years and worry that someone like Nixon who was incapable of telling the truth regarding a mere burglary would be completely willing to justify nuclear omnicide.
The film doesn't spend very much time depicting the working class, or indeed any class, in New York. It does, however, point to an increasing power in New York: Organized crime. While it is now recognized that La Cosa Nostra was largely ended thanks to RICO, in the 1980s and even into the 1990s not only was there an increase in lower level gang activity but a surge of potential danger from traditional organized crime. “. However, in the 1980s, when organized crime's control of large segments of the construction industry was seen as a threat to the New York City economy, the Crime Commission's then-president, Thomas A. Reppetto, was appointed to chair the Governor's Advisory Committee on construction and several commission board members served on it. The Committee functioned as liaison between the business community and state law enforcement. Many of the racketeers involved in the construction industry at that time were jailed” (Citizens Crime Commission, 2011).
Surowiecki (1998) argues that crack may have been elevated to be too central of a cause, and that the gang epidemic was actually far more complex, but certainly it was a real phenomenon if overblown. Further, now there are fears of Yakuza, Triad and Russian mob activity in New York taking the place of La Cosa Nostra. What Escape from New York did was to show that the city was indeed blacker than many might have thought, but it unfortunately also played (though for its own stylized reasons) to fears of black gangs practically running the city, i.e. “the Duke of New York”.
Escape from New York thus depicts a city that people in the 1980s could have understandably felt was emerging. It is unlike many other crime panic films or post-apocalyptic films because it seamlessly blends so many influences: Fear of attacks on the President, fear of the President's own ineptitude or corruption, fear of collapse of political institutions, fear of nuclear or conventional war, fear of gangs and of violence, fear of crime. It may not be accurate, but it made a compelling tale showing real anxieties while playing with them tongue-in-cheek.
Bibliography
Adamson, Greg. “The rise and undermining of anti-nuclear political action”. Green Left. May 19, 1999.
Benford, Robert. “The Anti-Nuclear Movement (Book Review)”. American Journal of Sociology. Volume 89 Number 6. May 1984.
Bloomfield, Lincoln P. “Nuclear crisis and human frailty”. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. October 1985.
Castro, Charles. NYPD Blue Lies.
Chen, David W. “Stumping With Mayor, Giuliani Stirs Old Fears”. New York Times. October 18, 2009.
Citizens Crime Commission of New York City. “Frequently Asked Questions”. 2011.
Corman, Hope and H. Naci Mocan. “A Time-Series Analysis of Crime and Drug Use in New York City”. NBER Working Papers. 5463.
Johnson, Bruce D.; Golub, Andrew; Eloise Dunlap (2006). "The Rise and Decline of Hard Drugs, Drug Markets, and Violence in Inner-City New York". In Blumstein, Alfred; Wallman, Joel. The Crime Drop in America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521862795.
Karmen, Andrew (2000). New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s. NYU Press. ISBN 0814747175.
Langan; Matthew R. Durose (2003 December 3–5). "The Remarkable Drop in Crime in New York City". 2003 International Conference on Crime. Rome, Italy. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
O'Ehley, James. “Remake Watch: Escape from New York, Part II”. Sci-Fi Movie Page. 1997.
Phantom of the Movies (2003-12-11). "Escape From New York rushes into a DVD world". Washington Weekend (Washington Times): pp. M24.
Price, Jerome. The Antinuclear movement. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1982.
Silverman, BE. “Urban Policing and the Fear of Crime”. Volume 38: 941-957. May 2001.
Stengel, Richard. “10 Questions for Rudy Giuliani”. Time. May 20, 2011.
Stickings, Michael J.W. “Rudy Giuliani, fearmonger”. The Reaction. October 19, 2009.
Surowiecki, James. “Did Crack Cause the '80s Crime Spree?” Slate. December 28, 1998.
No comments:
Post a Comment