Part One
Film Production and the Postindustrial Turn
1
Daniel Bell, Post-Industrial Society, and Los Angeles Cinema circa 1967â72
Mark Shiel
Varieties of the âpost-industrialâ
Since the 1960s, the adjective âpost-industrialâ has been widely used as a broad category to describe the economy and society of various countries, primarily in North America, Western Europe, and Asia. For a long time its use in film and media studies was sporadic, but it has gained currency in the early twenty-first century and is now widespread: for example, Liam Kennedy has examined âthe postindustrial ghettoâ as âa highly visible signifier of urban declineâ in American independent films about race, such as Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton, 1991) and Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993); Laura Rascaroli and Ewa Mazierska have explored âpostindustrial economy and landscapeâ in European city films such as Kika (Pedro AlmodĂłvar, 1993) and Teatro di guerra (Mario Martone, 1998), set in Madrid and Naples, respectively; and Michael Witt has argued for the perceptiveness of Jean-Luc Godardâs âradically new post-industrial kaleidoscopic form of vision.â1 These books use the term profitably, but they deploy it briefly, and mostly without considering its critical history or etymology, although a few others have used it at greater length. For example, Hamid Naficy valorizes the âartisanalâ qualities of âexilic and diasporic filmmakingâ in contemporary Iran and Turkey over and against âAmerican post-industrial cinemaââthat is, the New Hollywood, which Naficy associates with âglobalization, privatization, diversification, deregulation, digitization, convergence, and consolidationâ as well as âcentralization of the global economic and media powers in fewer and fewer hands.â2
Two important books of sociologyâby Margaret Rose and Krishan Kumarâhave analyzed the âpostindustrialâ at great length and in relation to the âpostmodernâ, which is often considered the cultural expression of the postindustrial.3 Both provide valuable investigations of the term and some commentary on media, with reference to Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard, but almost exclusively in relation to television and with no attempt at textual analysis.4 Perhaps the most well-known use of the âpostindustrialâ category in film analysis, therefore, remains Giuliana Brunoâs examination of the futuristic and dystopian sci-fi film Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). In that essay, published in 1987, Bruno influentially argued that the filmâs postmodern style was an expression of the âpostindustrialâ configuration of the economy and society of Los Angeles as the film imagined it would be in 2019.5 The city was âpostindustrialâ in its âpolyvalentâ and âhybridâ architecture, its rampant consumerism, its âsociety of the spectacle,â and juxtaposition of high technology and garbage: âIt is not an orderly layout of skyscrapers and ultra-comfortable, hyper-mechanized interiors. Rather, it creates an aesthetic of decay, exposing the dark side of technology, the process of disintegration.â6
It is notable, however, that the most important source on the âpostindustrialâ cited by Bruno is Paolo Portoghesiâs Postmodern: The Architecture of the Postindustrial Society (1983) in which Portoghesi proposes postmodern architecture as a promising response to the challenges posed by the contemporary âcrisis of the cityââthat is, economic bankruptcy, organizational breakdown, traffic, waste, the âblind alleyâ of the Modern Movement and âthe myth of infinite development [âŠ] hypothesized in the sixties.â7 Portoghesi proposes optimistically that the âpostindustrial cityâ will be able to correct for these ills by incremental change, including careful decentralization, mixed-use and medium density development, allowing for the citizenâs âright to the city,â respect for urban history, creativity and the arts, and a âculture of complexityâ in architectural design.8 So Bruno is indebted to Portoghesi, but there is a difference between his relatively hopeful use of the term âpostindustrialâ to point to a better future and her use of it to describe an urban dystopia in which the idea of a better future has come to nothing.
This leads us to the important observation that there have been optimistic and pessimistic uses of the term and that it is important not only to have a precise sense of the economic and social characteristics typically enumerated under the âpostindustrialâ heading but also to understand the temporal and geographical context, as well as the tone in which the term is being used. For example, perceptive recent analyses by Stanley Corkin and Lawrence Webb have used the term extensively to highlight representation of the seemingly perpetual and deeply stubborn inequality and injustice of the âpostindustrialâ city in crime films, melodramas, and comedies. In his book Starring New York (2010), Corkin highlights films of the 1970s, such as Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977) and Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979), which were centered on a ânew classâ of well-to-do people working in âinformation industries,â such as entertainment, media, and finance, who express themselves through cosmopolitan lifestyles and consumer choice but struggle emotionally in their intimate relationships with family and lovers.9 The latter are associated with the romance and sentimentality of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architecture (the 59th St Bridge, Upper East Side lofts, the Museum of Modern Art), which provides a nostalgic counterpoint to the traumatic âpostindustrialâ restructuring of New York from its legendary bankruptcy in 1975 to its reconfiguration as a leading center in global capitalism in the Reagan era.
Lawrence Webb, in The Cinema of Urban Crisis (2014), extends this theme in relation to an international variety of cities, including San Francisco in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) and Paris in Peur sur la ville (Henri Verneuil, 1975), which he interprets as âdeeply divided cities, with images of poverty and urban blight thrown into relief by a more characteristically postindustrial, commodified cityscape, ⊠the corporate architecture of the central business district and the omnipresence of advertising, television and the media.â10 Like Corkin, Webb is careful to see the postindustrial city as a function of âemerging neoliberal approaches to urban governanceâ and to insist that, although widespread, its emergence is highly uneven.11 Corkin makes this especially clear in his most recent book, a close study of the acclaimed television crime series The Wire (HBO, 2002â8), which he characterizes as âa highly articulate vision of life among the underclassâpoor African Americans, struggling working-class whites, the homelessâin a city, Baltimore, that is pictured as having seen better days.â12 He then traces into the twenty-first century the expansion of the American ârust beltâ as a function of deindustrialization and globalization and the aggressive shrinking of government expenditures, especially on public housing, in favor of private sector speculation and greed.
Notably, both Corkin and Webb take inspiration from the Marxist geographer David Harvey, who uses the term frequently but cautiouslyâfor example, in The Condition of Postmodernity, when reviewing what he sees as the ânew round of âtime-space compressionâ in the organization of capitalismâ which began in the 1970s, but which he sees more as âshifts in [the] surface appearanceâ of capitalism rather than âsome entirely new ⊠postindustrial society.â13 Indeed, it is important to note that several geographers and urban planners have consciously refrained from using the term âpostindustrial.â For example, many of those who work on Los Angeles argue that while the city experienced a profound and highly influential restructuring of its economy and culture in the 1970sââ90s, it remained essentially industrial.14 Michael Storper has overtly declared his dislike of the term âpost-industrial,â arguing that in the âflexible specializationâ of its economy since the 1960s, Los Angeles has not been driven by âa post-industrial economy, but a different kind of industrialism from that which had propelled the development of such cities as Detroit or Chicago.â15 Allen J. Scott has questioned the value of the âpost-industrialâ as âa meaningful category of analysisâ too, preferring the term âpost-Fordistâ because it entails much of what is usually meant by âpost-industrialâ but implies that the economy continues to be industrial despite mutations in industryâs forms and distribution.16 Edward Soja detected influential new trends in the society and built environment of Orange County, which he described as an âexopolisâ in which the city is turned âinside-out and outside-in at the same time,â but he also resisted calling it âpost-industrial,â just as he resisted calling it âsuburban,â because he saw it as industrial and urban in new waysâthat is, characterized by rapid economic and physical growth, deep social and economic segmentation, resurgent political conservatism, technocracy, and high-tech, defense, and media industries manifest in a series of âbreathtaking industrial-cum-commercial-cum-cultural landscapes.â17 Indeed, Soja directly referred to the âpost-industrialâ as a âmyth.â18
Notably, one of the earliest uses of the term âpost-industrialâ in close film analysis was Fredric Jamesonâs essay on âClass and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Filmâ (1977), in which Jameson also dismissed âpost-industrialismâ as a myth:
One of the most persistent leitmotivs in liberalismâs ideological arsenal, one of the most effective anti-Marxist arguments developed by the rhetoric of liberalism and anticommunism, is the notion of the disappearance of class. The argument is generally conveyed in the form of an empirical observation, but can take a number of different forms, the most important ones for us being either the appeal to the unique development of social life in the United States, or the notion of a qualitative break, a quantum leap, between the older industrial systems and what now gets to be called post-industrial society.19
Indeed, in his later famous essay on âPostmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalismâ (1984), Jameson was even more direct, arguing that what should really be called âmultinational capitalismâ is often âwrongly called post-industrial.â20
A book chapter like this one cannot possibly hope to resolve all of the complexities, nor the tensions, that inevitably accompany such a variety of uses, but it is important to note the variation, and sometimes the crankiness, of the term âpostindustrial,â rather than to restrict its use, and to balance the need to understand it in general terms with an attentiveness to the discrete contexts in time and place in which the term has come to prominence. In the rest of this essay, learning from Raymond Williamsâs example in Keywordsâhis compendium of historically important ideas in literary criticismâI want to propose that it is useful to return to first principles by examining the concept and the articulation of âpost-industrial societyâ as it was originally set out in the 1960s.21 Especially in the work of the sociologist Daniel Bell, who was then based at Columbia University, that era was the point of origin of the term and of its normalization and widespread use. Reflecting on it suggests that there have been two waves of usage of the term âpost-industrialââthe first, from the late 1950s through the early 1970s having been primarily optimistic and futuristic in tone, and the second, since the late 1970s, using the term primarily as a sign of dejection, if not apocalypse (as Bruno, Corkin, Webb, and Harvey have done).22 The first wave was formative but a lot shorter because hyperbole was quickly overtaken by reality.
Daniel Bellâs The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973)
In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Bell sets out his thesis largely without reference to geographical variation, as a description of the United States as âa singular unit of illustration.â23 Where the Industrial Revolution had entailed a shift from the âprimarily extractiveâ labor of agrarian times to âprimarily fabricatingâ activities, the late twentieth century witnessed a further shift in emphasis in the economy from the manufacture of goods to the provision of services, or from fabrication to âprocessing,â from âmachine technologyâ to âintellectual technology,â and from âcapital and laborâ to âinformation and knowledge.â24 These shifts entailed a displacement of previous concerns with scarcities of raw materials by new âscarcities of information and of time,â and a shift from physical transportation and utilities to âdigital information technologiesâ as the most important means of communication.25 These economic and technological changes brought with them social change too, especially âa change in the character of work,â which was no longer âa game against natureâ or a game against machines but was now primarily a series of transactions between persons in a relatively flexible meritocracy. In this meritocracy, age-old class antagonisms were replaced by four âstatusesâ (the professional class, technicians, clerical and sales workers, craftsmen, and semi-skilled workers) and four more or less equal âestatesâ (scientific, technological, administrative, and cultural), among which the most important feature was the âspread of a knowledge class.â26 These developments entailed some limited risk of greater bureaucracy and militarization, of âcommunications overloadâ by âthe greatest bombardment...