Reading Mick Broderick and Robert Jacobs’ Nuke York, New York essay, I found myself both surprised and having moments of, “Oh, that makes so much sense!” Why New York has always been depicted as a city that gets destroyed was something I think I had noticed, but never been consciously aware of – and now I understand why, at least historically.
I find the idea of this fascination, in culture, with discussing/seeing images of NYC’s destruction so bizarre. Why New York was chosen as the main point to transfer On one hand, there is the idea that I can totally understand – Hiroshima/Nagasaki was a horrible, destructive event. Max Page refers to New York as, “regarded as a national and international site for both awe and envy” (Broderick, Conclusion). This made some sense to me. (And the irony of the Manhattan project and then a fascination with Manhattan’s destruction isn’t lost on me either.) I found myself trying to interpret why people may have become so willing to, and interested in, the image of New York City as it is being rendered apocalyptically.
On one hand, if a citizen views the destruction of cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one that, I feel, many Americans weren’t too culturally familiar with, picking a city like New York to use in the 1945 example “Here’s What Could Happen to New York in an Atomic Bombing,” chooses a city that everyone “knows,” with both foreign and familiar elements. It is als pretty tightly populated, so perhaps it makes sense to use it as an example to show things like mileage. However, it’s still curious to me. If I were a New Yorker, I don’t know how kindly I’d take to such populating images of a city’s destruction – watching movies where cities get destroyed, when I’ve been or have lived there, always feel different to me.
Post-9/11 I think that there is more of a direct link between the idea of New York’s destruction and the public or social consciousness. Also, I think that (commercial) filmmakers often set films in New York, and want to pick a place that an audience will have some identity in mind with. “Oh, a famous banker – Wall Street, let’s put it on Wall Street!” And with so many other films choosing New York, as a city where people move to “make their dreams come true,” I am not surprised that setting films where dreams come true is the first choice among lots of people. Also, New York has so many micro-cultures of its own – the line in Broderick’s essay about the destruction of east coast elites and minorities, I think, has a lot of validity for certain people. How true this kind of NYC-hate is in Hollywood, I’m less sure of, and more think that they are just keeping up an already popular kind of image.
