Samira Salifou
Professor Elena Siemens
MLCS 210
October 31, 2017
Midterm Project: Languages of Culture
Midterm Project: Part One
The concept of a new town vs an old town can be directly related to the essay Notes on the New Town by Henri Lefebvre. In the text, Lefebvre laments that the old town is vegetating and emptying, and has turned boring. As Lefebvre puts it :"it was always boring, but in times gone by that boredom had something soft and cozy about it", but that disappeared in the age of the new town, now the old town is "the pure essence of boredom" with the loss of it vitality and sense of "being in its being as perhaps Heidegger would have phrased it.He views the "new town" as being a "state organized high rise development aimed at replacing the old slum-dwellings of the working class" (147). In the new town everything in it has, and is reduced to, a function ("every object has its use, and declares it"). When the new town will be successfully completed "everything in it will be functional, and every object within it will have a specific function. This technological innovation is a representation of modernity in the text. In the text, Lefebvre makes a distinction between fragmentation (new town) and functionality (old town). In the old town, functionality was necessary because everything was created with a purpose. He compares the old town and all of its history with that of the new town which he states lacks personality due to the lack of human traces. The more we construct the new town, the less fun were having as technology is making people flavourless and lifeless. Despite his critic of the new town, an interesting point that is made by Lefebvre acknowledges that every old town was once a new town.
According to Lefebvre a way that the new town can transform "everyday life and regain spontaneity and creativity" (154) is through the implementation of festivals and carnivals as it brings people together and creates life as society is being spontaneous.
MLCS 210 Midterm Project: Part Two
In his essay Walking in the City, de Certeau defines voyeurs as those who have a privileged view of the space. Voyeurs have an omniscient perspective, free of visual restrictions, "one's body is no longer clasped by the streets that turn and return it according to an anonymous law" (De Certeau 157). As observers, voyeurs have a God like viewpoint comparable to a panoramic sight, an example used by de Certeau is the view one would experience from the top of a high-rise building such as the World Trade Centre; from the elevated perspectives of the top floors, one can experience the city in its entirety. This privileged point of view allows for the city to be observed and analyzed from a distance which puts the viewer in a position of power. In comparison, walkers, according to de Certeau are defined as individuals with a fragmented view of the space. Unlike voyeurs, walkers are consumers of the city, they live within the walls and have a limited and controlled viewpoint. Despite the invert disadvantages of being a walker rather than a voyeur, de Certeau shows preference to walkers as he believes the pedestrians of a city influence the makeup of a city by walking around and giving meaning to places.
In modern contemporary art, the dichotomy between voyeuristic angles and the walker perspective can be portrayed in various forms such as literature, photography and videography. A model that exemplifies the relationship between the voyeur and the walker would be the popular television show, Gossip Girl. In the show, a third person omniscient perspective is used to represent the mysterious Gossip Girl who interacts with both the viewers and the characters of the show as she is all-knowing and all-seeing. The characters of the show would be the walkers of the city as they have a disintegrated view of the society they live in in comparison to Gossip Girl. The characters (as walkers) according to de Certeau are “bodies[that] follow the thick and thins of an urban 'text' they write without being able to read it” (De Certeau 158).
Works Cited
De Certeau, Michel. “Walking in the City”. The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. London: Routledge, 1993: p156-163.
Lefebvre, Henri. “Notes on the New Town”. The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. London: Routledge, 1993: p147-156.