Disney, Dodgers, and the Urban Design of Los Angeles

Abstract

In fascinating study of the confluence of popular culture and urban policy and politics, Eric Avila illuminates the complex and often subtle interplay of conflict and consensus that helped shape the Los Angeles landscape and mindset of the twentieth century. Tracing the evolution of the spatial and racial divides of the city back to the Progressive Era, he argues that the period from 1940 to 1970 marked watershed in Los Angeles history in which the heterosocial vision of New Deal liberalism was replaced by the homogeneous and privatized perspective of New Right conservatism. Such popular culture institutions as film noir, Disneyland, Dodger Stadium, and freeways-all of which came of age after the proliferation of the automobile-reflected and reinforced racial and spatial order of chocolate cities and vanilla suburbs in which privatized, consumer-oriented subjectivity premised upon patriarchy, whiteness, and suburban home ownership dominated urban policy making (pp. 4, 7). In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila adds the insight of cultural studies to our understanding of the history of the American city. He defines cultural history in its most simplistic manner-it is the amalgamation of the stories that people tell about themselves and their world (p. xiii). This broad definition allows historians to explore all levels of culture from art, literature and theater, to film, amusement parks, and baseball parks. Yet because twentieth century Americans were predominantly urban people, culture, especially popular culture, studied outside of its urban context is limited in what it can tell us about ourselves. By exploring cultural forms in the context of space and time, Avila argues that culture encompasses a struggle over the very identity of the city and its constituent social groups (p. xiii). In the context of postwar suburbanization, popular culture in Los Angeles both reflected and enhanced particular way of seeing the city that legitimized the political and economic domination of white, middle-class America.