2007.dark side of american cities.english

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BETWEEN SCIENCE FICTION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

THE DARK SIDE OF AMERICAN CITIES1

Alain MUSSET

EHESS-GGSEU

Entre la ciencia ficcin y las ciencias sociales : el lado oscuro de las ciudades americanas,EURE, vol. XXXIII, N 99, Agosto 2007, p. 65-78.

http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/eure/v33n99/art06.pdf

Introduction:

Urban imaginary and imaginary cities

SinceMetropolis of Fritz Lang to to the city-planet of Coruscant invented by George Lucas to

control the Star Wars galaxy, the city of the future or of a distant world seems to be intended

to reflect only the "dark side" of the contemporary megalopolis confronted with a collection

of problems and malfunctions presented like insuperable: congestion, pollution, degradation

of natural environment, deficiency of urban services, increase in social divides and spatial

disparities, ethnic conflicts, daily violence...In the 1980s, Mexico City focused on this topic the attention of academics, journalists and

novelists. Since 1986, only one year after the earthquake which had struck the historical

centre of the Mexican capital, the French reviewAutrementprovocatively placed Mexico City

"between hope and damnation". In 1987, Miguel Messmacher published in Mexico a study

which highlighted the malfunctionings of an agglomeration mainly ungovernable.2 The

following year, Claude Bataillon and Louis Panabire insisted on the problems encountered

by "the largest city in the world" to ensure housing, organize working and managedisplacements of its 20 million inhabitants.3 In the same way, the North-American researchers

largely contributed to denounce the imminent disaster which threatened their unhappy

neighbours of the South, sustaining by their writings the imagination of the science fiction

authors. 4

1The translation presented here was made by the author. It is not a a professional work.2

Miguel Messmacher,Mexico,Megalopolis, Mexico, sep, 1987.3 Claude Bataillon et Louis Panabire,Mexico aujourdhui, la plus grande ville du monde, Paris, Publisud, 1988.4 Jonathan Kandell,La capital. The Biography of Mexico City, New York, Random House, 1988.


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To qualify (or disqualify) Mexico City, particularly evocative neologisms have bee created

and should perfectly been applied to the capital of the Star Wars galaxy. Thus, according to

Franois Thomas, the Latin-American megalopolis had become the prototype of

"monsterpolis", a city overpowered by all the evils of modern society: "overpopulation, slums

and shantytowns, under-employment, informal working and poverty, abandoned children,

delinquency and organized crime, ecological pollution and disasters, etc".5 In his remarkable

History of Mexico City, Serge Gruzinski placed the everyday life of old Tenochtitlns

inhabitants under the sign of a "daily Apocalypse".6

It is not by chance if the action of the famous science fiction movie Total Recallbegins in a

futuristic city which is not entirely invented: when Arnold Schwarzenegger leaves the

subway, chased by its enemies, the informed spectator discovers that the scenery chosen by

Paul Verhoeven to illustrate his matter is not other than the Metropolitan Insurgentes station,

located in the centre of the Mexican metropolis. According to the director, it was a question of

presenting a particularly oppressive world, out of the human scale. The underground metro of

Mexico City, whose style is inspired in the "new brutalist" movement born in England in the

1950s under the authority of Margaret Alison and Peter Smithson, corresponded perfectly to

its intentions because: We found an architecture that is called new brutalism. It was a very

dark, very heavy concrete style that gave to the movie a very definite architecture and a

production design.7 It was enough for the team to repaint in metallic grey the whole of the

corridors, walls and coaches to give to the spectator the illusion to discover an imaginary

metropolis whereas it was a real city: from Mexico City to Coruscant while passing by the

planet Mars, the distance was quickly crossed...

In the construction of this imaginary geography of fear and seclusion, Latin-American cities

often inspire the science fiction authors because they seem at the same time strange and

foreign, old and modern, hospitable and dangerous. In its last novel,Mantra, Rodrigo Fresn

remembers that into 1953-1954 inspectors of the FBI had proposed Philip K Dick and hiswife to pay them one year of studies in the UNAM, in exchange of informations about the

most politicized student groups. Fresn stresses that the future author of Blade Runner

(originally: Do androids dream of electric sheep?) had refused this generous offer, but

5 Franois Thomas, Villes dAmrique latine : plus grandes que leurs problmes ? , Revue de gographie deLyon, vol. 74, n 4, 1999, pp. 283-289 (personal translation).6 Serge Gruzinski,Histoire de Mexico, Paris, Fayard, 1996, p. 390.7 Interview of Paul Verhoeven, Total Recall, Studio Canal - Universal, 2003, disc 2. The new brutalism evoked

by Verhoeven is inspired mainly by the work of Le Corbusier and in particular his "Housing unit" of Marseilles.

It knew its hour of glory in the years 1960-1970, with architects like Paul Rudolf (United States) or Kenzo Tange(Japan). In France, one of the best examples of this style marked by massive forms and right angles, would bethe central Office of Workforce of Dunkirk carried out by J.-P. Secq and inaugurated in 1971.


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imagines that, plunged in the hallucinating universe of the new Tenochtitln, it could have

written three or four science-fiction novels per month.8

It is this close connection between the representations9 of the Latin-American towns and the

reality of imaginary cities that we propose to explore here, in a study of geofiction based on

the decoding of the virtual mirrors which consciously or not are reflecting two parallel urban

worlds and influence the vision that we carry on them. It is a question of wondering about the

reciprocal influence exerted on our perception of the city not only by science fictions tales,

but also by studies of urban sociology or social geography and by the daily experiments of a

space less and less lived and more and more mediatized. In a first step, we will see how

science fiction towns draw part of their virtual existence in Latin-American cities and pre-

Columbian world (Aztec Pyramids and cities of tomorrow), then we will be interested in the

transposition of nowadays international working division to universes which appear very

distant but which are only a deformed image of real situations (galactic maquiladoras). A

final chapter, the city and its dangers, will enable us to see that science fiction denounces the

real or imaginary malfunctions which threaten the existence of our metropolis as a political

object and reduce them to territories dominated by fear.

1. Aztecs pyramids and cities of tomorrow

In the wide universe of science fiction, the city-planet of Coruscant (Wars Star) is most

probably the best and most described urban world because it is used as scenery not only for

the last three movies directed by George Lucas (The Phantom Menace,Attack of the Clones

and Revenge of the Sith) but also for many novels, comic strips, electronic and role games

whose heroes all are resulting from the original saga.10 However, the capital of the Republic,

then of the galactic Empire, is at the same time a model and a foil whose landscapes and

social structures are inspired not only by the giant cities of the Atlantic coast of the UnitedStates but also by the large metropolises of Latin-American space: Mexico City, Lima, So

Paulo... Without forgetting the frontier cities of the north of Mexico or the shantytowns of

Caracas and Rio de Janeiro.

8 Rodrigo Fresn,Mantra, Albi, Les ditions du passage du Nord-Ouest, 2006, p. 198.9 We use here the term of representation within the framework of the "geography of the representations" defined

by Andr Bailly: "the study of the space representations thus questions us on the methods of apprehension of the

world and the statute of reality, i.e. the problem of the adequacy between reality, what we perceive and ourspeeches on reality" (Encyclopdie de gographie, Paris, conomica, 1995, p. 372, personal translation).10 Alain Musset,De New York Coruscant, essai de go-fiction, Paris, PUF, 2005.


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In fact, at a first glance, Coruscant strikes us with its forest of skyscrapers which extends as

far as the eye can see, forming an extraordinary and without limit skyline: "They were on the

top of a coffee-shop, 3 km under the surface of Coruscant - the planet reduced to a city

without end. Below the guardrail of the terrace, one saw skyscrapers extending to the horizon,

an orange sky where the rain threatened, and the sunset behind the stormy clouds."11 If it was

necessary to find an equivalent or a model for this imaginary world marked by the seal of

vertical architecture, it would undoubtedly have to be sought in So Paulo, economic capital

of Brazil, whose skyscrapers extend as far as the eye can see on a panorama from three

hundred and sixty degrees. At the top ofEdificio Italia, one thus contemplates a vast ocean of

buildings which have sometimes several tens of floors. Masking the lower parts of the city

they make disappear the regular layout of streets and avenues, transforming the urban

landscape into a labyrinth like Coruscant.

Regarded as one of the greatest agglomerations in the world, the metropolitan area of So

Paulo has only 18 million residents (census of the year 2000), which is nothing in comparison

of the thousand billion inhabitants of the galactic capital. However, since the middle of the

XXth century, the processes of urban sprawl which characterize the old Jesuit mission

founded into 1554 curiously remember those described and denounced by the Star Wars

authors. Moreover, the comparison doesnt stop there: just after New York, So Paulo is

considered to have the largest park of helicopters in the world, in order to ensure fast and sure

displacement for local elites, not very eager to venture themselves in the perpetually

congested arteries of a town whose rates of criminality beat records. While raising the eyes

towards the sky, one can admire a true air ballet which doesnt have anything to envy the flow

ofairspeeders revolving between the towers of Coruscant. In the downtown area, the most

recent buildings are equipped with private heliports which allow a few privileged people to

live in the city in a completely disconnected way, passing from a gated place to another

(residence, work, leisure) without never using public spaces abandoned to the basic citizens.In 1930, when he evoked the skyscrapers of New York, Paul Morand prophesied that a new

revolution of transport was going soon to transform our ways of life: "Without roofs, crowned

by terraces, they seem to await rigid balloons, helicopters, the winged men of the future." 12

The evolution of post-modern societies which leads to the disappearance of these spaces of

exchange and meeting which are streets, parks and main places pushes the Star Wars authors

11

Aaron Allston,Les chasseurs stellaires dAdumar, Paris, Fleuve noir, Les X-Wings 9 , 2003, p. 13(personal translation).12 Paul Morand,New York, Paris, Flammarion, 1930, p. 36 (personal translation).


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to establish a close connection between the morphology of the city and the forms of

sociability which it supports or which it prohibits, between the urban landscapes and the

political thought which they represent, reproduce and perpetuate. The reaction of the new

arrived on planet thus expresses the ambivalence of the feelings inspired by a disproportionate

town which escapes to the human scale: "Once out of the turbolift, Bria looked around her in

wonder and growing claustrophobia. Everywhere buildings loomed over her, so high she had

to crane her neck to see their tops."13 The attitude of young Bria at her first arrival on

Coruscant remembers that of Europeans who, in the first half of XXth century, discovered

North-American urban civilization, with all its architectural innovations and its marvellous

and threatening peculiarities. In 1930, George Duhamel declared himself disgusted by the

urban landscape of Chicago ("Chicago! The tumour city! The cancer city! "), with its

disproportionate buildings, its streets similar to trenches cut in a steel and concrete mass, its

floods of stinky cars.14

As one can see it in the movies of the second trilogy, the buildings of Coruscant present a

very large variety of structures, forms and frontages which give to the city a composite and

cosmopolitan character. In order to accentuate this impression of exoticism which allows to

drive the reader towards strange worlds without entirely loosing his roots, the authors of the

saga use a process known for a long time: allusion to architectural models whose name

entered the usual vocabulary but which are rather badly identified to authorize all

interpretations, all urban daydreams. It is the technique used by Michael Reaves in The

Shadow Hunter: Practically all the Coruscants landmass which comprised almost all is

surface areas, its oceans and seas having been drained or rerouted through huge subterranean

caverns caves, more than thousands generations ago was covered with a multitiered

metropolis composed of towers, monads, ziggurats, palazzi, domes and minarets.15 Terms

like palazzi "ziggurats" and "minarets" make it possible to attach the extraterrestrial

architecture of Coruscant to major civilizations which remain very distant, in time and space,from North-American people. If the pallazzi evoke the Italian Renaissance and the minarets

the old and contemporary Moslem world, the ziggurats refer to the dawn of civilization and

remember the most ancient towns in the world. The famous pyramids with degrees of

Mesopotamia are indeed the symbol of the first cities built by the man. They occupy an all the

13 A. C. Crispin, The Paradise Snare, Paris, New York, Bantam Books, 1997, p. 265.14

Georges Duhamel, Scnes de la vie future, Paris, Arthme Fayard, coll. Mille et une nuits , 2003 (1930),p. 72 (personal translation).15 Michael Reaves,Darth Maul : Shadow Hunter, London Arrow Books, 2001, p. 16.


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more important place in our imaginary that they inspired the myth of Babels Tower of which

Coruscant seems to be the ultimate representation.

Drawing his inspiration from the same vein, Paul Morand did not hesitate to also distinguish

pre-Columbian pyramids in the profusion of disparate buildings which characterize the urban

landscape of New York: Skyscrapers! Some are women and others are men; the ones seem

temples of the Sun, the others remember the Aztec pyramid of the Moon.16 In the same way,

in Blade Runner, the future urban landscape of Los Angeles is dominated by a gigantic

construction which is used as refuge by Tyrell, the most powerful man of the city: this

imposing building isnt but an architectural extrapolation of the pyramid of the Sun of

Teotihuacan. The new Jedi temple built on the Ossus planet after the war of Yuzzhan Vong17

is also openly inspired by Maya architecture, as the painter of the comic strip Legacy

recognizes it: "For the Jedi temple, I wanted to evoke an old Maya temple, but with landing

platforms. I also added zones covered with transparensteel reflecting the sky and the

surroundings. I believe that Jedi arranged a garden of meditation down there."18

The stylistic devices used by the authors of science fiction to anchorage in reality their

imaginary cities are not very different from those used in their stories by explorers or

conquerors of XVIth century. With many regards, the discovery of the New World was for

Europeans a shock as violent as would be for us the discovery of a new inhabited planet. The

accounts of conquistadors appeared so extraordinary that they often caused doubts and

mocking remarks of the ones, even if they caused admiration and respect of the others. Bernal

Daz del Castillo acknowledges in its memories that during a long time he couldnt believe

what he was seeing of its own eyes: he thought he was transported in one of these tales of

chivalry where marvellous always wins on reality. 19

By trying to give to the King an intelligible image of the Amerindian cities, Corts used the

same stylistic devices as the authors of the Star Wars saga, converting the Aztec pyramids

into mosques and the towers of the temples in minarets. In its second letter to Charles V, he

thus evoked the town of Churultecal (sic): "I certify to your Highness that, from the top of a

16 Paul Morand,New York,op. cit., p. 36.17 This new galactic war is reported in the cycle of the New Jedi Order. It is held 25 years after year 0 of the StarWars chronology, marked by the destruction of first Death Star (A New Hope, 1977).18 Lucasfilm Magazine, n 62, novembre-dcembre 2006, p. 17 (personal translation). In this respect, one cannote that in the episode IV (A New Hope, 1977), the rebel base of Yavin IV is not other than the Maya city of

Tikal (Guatemala).19 Bernal Daz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva Espaa, Mxico, Porra, SepanCuantos, no 5, 1983, p. 159.


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mosque, I counted in this city more than 430 towers which all belong to mosques." 20 In the

same way, the first huge town discovered by the Spaniards on the coasts of Yucatn was

renamed "The Great Cairo", in an attempt to give an idea of its size and richness to those who

had never left the Hispanic peninsula. The reference to the civilisation of the other one, that of

the known but remote stranger, makes it possible to give a seal of authenticity to descriptions

which, without these carefully chosen phrases, could appear fanciful.

2) GalacticMaquiladoras

By describing the global city of Coruscant, the authors of the saga Star Wars are not satisfied

to make the portrait of a futuristic megalopolis whose urban landscapes are dominated by

remarkable buildings, symbols of a dominant civilization: they clearly expose the operative

mechanisms of a society which doesnt need anymore to produce tangible properties to affirm

its power, quite to the contrary. Simple extrapolation of an evolution in progress, but pushed

to its extreme, the city-planet of Trantor described by Asimov at the beginning of the 1950s

met already perfectly the standards of the global city described later on by Saskia Sassen 21:

"the planet had only one function, the administration; one goal, the government; it produced

one manufactured good, the law."22 In the same way, Star Wars Coruscant is before all a

political centre which produces continually the legislative arsenal and the legal framework

designed to ensure the management of a global world. In this way, like all global cities, the

imperial capital bases its economic prosperity and its political power on high level services.

Except the plants built to generate energy or to reprocess urban waste, there are few

production poles, such as shipyards to repair stellar vessels23 or some factories which, for

strategic reasons, were not delocalized towards peripheral planets.

In an economic system inspired by our current international working division, some

workshops-planets, with specialized activities, are feeding the principal consumer markets of

20 Hernn Corts, Cartas de Relacin,Segunda Carta (30 octobre 1520), Mexico, Porra, Sepan Cuantos, no 7,1983, p. 45, personal translation. A little further, Corts stresses that Mexico City counts "many mosques" ( ibid.,

p. 64).21 As Saskia Sassen underlines it, the global city is not only a pole of strategic decision: its also a place whereimmaterial properties are produced, in particular services intended for the multinational corporations, in fields asvaried as insurances, law, accountancy, taxation, publicity or public relations. There too are shaped new

political, technical and financial instruments, which will allow the installation of a "good global governance".Together, these two sectors form the heart of the "new urban economy" (Saskia Sassen, The Global City : NewYork London Tokyo, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991).22

Isaac Asimov, Fondation et Empire (1952), Le cycle de Fondation II : vers un nouvel Empire , Paris,Omnibus, 1999, p. 63 (personal translation).23 Aaron Allston,Aux commandes : Yan Solo !, Paris, Fleuve noir, Les X-Wings 7 , 2000, p. 15.


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the galaxy, i.e. worlds unable to provide for their own needs. For the businessmen of Star

Wars, like in any liberal economy, the best way of reducing costs while increasing profit is to

delocalize the production facilities towards zones with good comparative advantages:

qualified and cheap labour force, favourable local legislation, excellent transport conditions...

As James Luceno indicates it to explain the disappearance of the industrial sector of

Coruscant: The Works had been a booming manufacturing area until escalating costs had

driven the production of spacecraft parts, labor droids, and construction material offworld.24

The Kuat planet belongs to the systems which beneficiated with this process of globalisation

of the exchanges all over the galaxy. Under the Old Republic and at the instigation of the

reigning families, it became a gigantic production pole of interstellar vehicles. Gathering

together several million workmen in factories located in the planet orbit, the Shipyards Kuat

specialized themselves in manufacturing units of very big size, in particular for the military

sector (stellar destroyers of imperial class). In the same way, Bilbringi became the most

important centre of production of hunters and destroyers of the Empire, thanks to industrial

top facilities gathered within well defended production units ("X-7 Factory Stations").

In order to limit nuisances related to the manufacturing production (noise, congestion,

pollution...), the most significant activities were installed on planets whose ecosystems

suffered the consequences of a devastator industrial development. The Fondors system, for

instance, was entirely upset by workshops of shipbuilding which benefited from the

abundance of minerals extracted from its subsoil, moons and asteroids: Whereas the great

companies which dominated Bilbringi, Kuat, Sluis Van and the other shipyards centres made

a minimal effort to preserve the environment, nothing had been envisaged in this direction

with Fondor.25 In the same way, an uncontrolled industrial exploitation converted Duro

planet into a vast desert whose inhabitants fled to live in orbital cities. Experiments were

undertaken to clean marshes, purify grounds and to make the air breathable, but the results

were limited by the lack of technical and financial means. This is why the princess Leia, sentto orchestrate the regeneration of the planet, was transformed into the spokesman of North-

American ecologist lobbies. On this died planet, she must fight permanently against the

central administration of the Republic which refuses to grant the means necessary to execute

this vital program.

24

James Luceno,Labyrinth of Evil, New York, Ballantines Books, 2005, p. 174.25 James Luceno, Lclipse des Jedi, Paris, Fleuve noir, Le Nouvel Ordre Jedi , 2001, p. 268 (personaltrnslation).


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In the imaginary of North-American readers, the situation of Fondor or Duro is based on

certain reality (mainly fantasmatic however). Indeed, to describe the economic system which

reigns in the Star Wars galaxy, the authors of the saga largely drew their inspiration in the

international working division which reigns on both sides of the US/Mexico border since the

middle of 1960s, thanks to the installation of the industry called maquiladora. In the north,

an establishment gathers the functions of framing and management (it is the role reserved for

Coruscant). In the south (the geopolitical and economic equivalent of Fondor), the assembly

factories are playing a role limited to productive functions focused on manual work, while

taking advantage of a favourable legislation much less constraining than in the United States.

It is not a chance if, during an investigation carried out by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte at

the beginning of the 1990s, 10 % of the companies installed in the frontier zone recognized

that they had been attracted there by the more flexible character of the Mexican environment

legislation. More than a quarter of the maquiladoras regarded this chapter as essential to

justify their delocalization at the south of the international border. 26

As a matter of fact, the same arguments are advanced in the Star Wars novels to explain the

installation of the most polluting industries on planets distant from Coruscant: removal and

distance are then presented as a good solution in a society marked by the NIMBY (Not In My

Backyard) syndrome. In Rebirth, novel of the New Jedi Order cycle, the pilots of the New

republic gather together on the Eriadu planet and are immediately confronted with a stinky

atmosphere, plenty of ammonia, ozone, sulphur, and hydrocarbon vapours. The urban

landscapes are stressed by immense industrial skyscrapers which cut out on a pale yellow sky,

darkened by the factory smokes. The explanation of this ecological disaster is given by

Corran Horn, chief of the group charged to fight the invader Yuuzhan Vong. According to

him, international companies are producing manufactured goods at lower cost without taking

account of the environment. So the odour isnt but a by-product of Industry.27 One thus

understands easily why the environmental question occupies such an important place in a"remote galaxy" which reflects all the concerns of the North-American society. For an

inhabitant of Austin (Texas) or Phoenix (Arizona), the planets Fondor and Duro are not

located at many light years from their residence: they are close at hand and have as a name

Matamoros (Tamaulipas) or Nogales (Sonora). Kathy Tyers, author of the Duro planets

apocalyptic descriptions, is originating Long Beach, California, State frontier with Mexico,

26Even if the capital ofmaquiladora industry is Ciudad Jurez (217 000 employees and 291 establishments in

2005), Baja California occupies in this system an essential role, since Tijuana, Mexicali and Tecate count amongthe best equipped Mexican cities with respectively 574, 135 and 115 factories installed on their territory.27 Greg Keyes,Renaissance, Paris, Fleuve noir, Le Nouvel Ordre Jedi , 2002, p. 101.


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and Michael Reaves was born in San Bernardino, 40 km west of Los Angeles. Even James

Luceno, a former carpenter, admits he often goes on the other side of the border to draw its

inspiration there. 28

More serious still in the spirit of the Star Wars authors, the presence of million workers

looking for distractions after a long and hard working day, involved the installation of many

pleasure stores which corrupted the entire planet, transformed into a kind of poor Las Vegas.

The destruction of natural environment is coupled then with a true moral problem a

particularly important theme for North-American authors often worried by ethical and

religious questions. Thus, Kathy Tyers, author ofBalance Point, is a member of the Christian

Writers Guild and regularly give public conferences on religious topics. In the same way, the

Mexican side of the border offers many establishments devoted to more or less licit leisure

activities: bars, casinos, hotels used by prostitutes, nourishing the representation of a country

populated with whores and gangsters. It is a tradition which dates back to the time of

prohibition, when gringos deprived of alcohol by the puritan leagues had used to go to

Ciudad-Jurez or Tijuana to take at safe a glass of whisky. This turbid episode of the

American history was often used as framework for science fiction tales, and one can consider

that the evil-looking night clubs of Fondor arent but a disguised transposition of the cantinas

accommodated in Mexicali or Nuevo Laredo.

3. The city and its dangers

In the North-American science fiction, the hyperconcentration of industrial and commercial

activities, excessive densities of population and the disappearance of the privileged link

established since the origins between man and nature are opposed to a dominant ideology

whose roots date back to the XIXth century in the naturalist novels of H. J Thoreau29 or in the

poems and essays of Ralph W Emerson.30 However, this negative vision of the urban worldisnt peculiar of the North-American world, like Joelle Solomon Cavin showed it in her book

La ville, mal aime, where it is seen that Occidental Societies a long time scorned the great

agglomerations, preferring to idealize the rural ways of life and to honour the robust

28 http://www.starwarschicks.com/books/Books/authors/luceno.html29 Henry David Thoreau, Walden, d. de J. Lyndon Shanley, introd. byJohn Updike, Princeton University Press,

2004 (1854).30 The Essential Writtings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, introduction by Mary Oliver, New York, The ModernLibrary Classics, 2000 (1836-1844)


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inhabitants of the countryside.31 By insisting on the extent and diversity of the problems

encountered to manage the galactic capital, the Wars Star authors do nothing but relay

pessimistic speeches on the future of our own cities: from megalopolis to "monsterpolis", its

a quite easy step to cross, especially when reality reaches science fiction.

Thus, in Coruscant like in the real cities used as a model, the saturation of the traffic causes a

vertiginous increase in the air pollution: Traffic clogged the Coruscant sky, flowing slowly

about the meandering smoggy haze.32 By reporting an identical situation, Claude Bataillon

and Louis Panabire had chosen to rename "Smogopolis" the Mexican capital, perpetually

wrapped of a yellowish cloud which masked the close mountains. According to the studies

carried out at the beginning of the 1980s, air contamination had reached a point of no return,

factories smokes disturbing physical and mental health of the most exposed and most fragile

inhabitants: "The soap and dog food factories, everyday at 7 a.m., 12 and 24, release pollutant

gases which affect the head and the stomach, cause the fall of the hair".33 For William

Sandell, in charge of the production ofTotall Recal(realized in the studios of Churubusco in

1989), to live in this city saturated with escape gazes and factory smokes was like living in the

world capital of pollution. According to him, to breathe the air of Mexico City was like

smoking forty cigarettes per day.34

Since the original environment of Coruscant almost entirely disappeared, only in museums or

"holo-zoos" children can admire terrestrial animals, fish or plants they really dont know

because their parents chose to live in the galactic capital. To try to give them an outline of

what they could have known elsewhere or in another time, great botanical gardens were

arranged on the roof of a skyscraper. In addition to imported vegetable species from all the

known universe, here are cultivated plants and flowers which disappeared from the surface of

planet since hundreds of generations. Intentionally Kevin J Anderson gave to this gigantic

terrarium the name of "Skydome". Its a direct allusion to the "Biodome" of Montreal which,

under a gigantic cupola of glass and steel, 35 gathers four great "natural" ecosystems put at the

range of all the inhabitants: the tropical rain forest (even when it is snowing outside); a

laurentian forest whose aspect changes according to the seasons'; marine ecosystem of the

estuary and gulf of the St. Laurent river; polar worlds of the Arctic and the Antarctic. Opened

in June 1992 (i.e. two years before the publication ofJedi Search in the United States), the

31 Jolle Salomon Cavin, La ville, mal aime. Reprsentations ainti-urbaines et amnagement du territoire enSuisse : analyse, comparaisons, volution, Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, 2005.32 R. A. Salvatore,Attack of the Clones, London, Arrows Books, 2003, p. 53.33

Claude Bataillon et Louis Panabire,Mexico aujourdhui, la plus grande ville du monde,op. cit., p. 37.34Total Recall,Making of, Studio Canal - Universal, 2003, disc 2.35 It's the old cycle-racing stadium built for the 1976 Olympic Games.


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Since Star Wars reflects as far as it announces the problems posed by an out of control

development of modern metropolises, delinquency, in all its forms, is logically presented like

a component of the everyday life. In United States and in Latin America, the TV viewers

follow with a growing interest programs allowing to witness on line or into a light differed

brutality and crime scenes, under cover to denounce the deficiencies of the central

administration and the guilty lightness of the courts. These programs are specialized in the

sensationalist presentation of vile news stories (attacks of bank or grocery, kidnappings,

assassinations, car pursuits...). At prime time, they gather million TV viewers fascinated by an

institutionalized violence which profits from the seal of "journalistic report".

The characters of the Star Wars novels thus test the same anguish as their readers just by

thinking in passing by the streets of a city transformed into a trap for the walkers: Mahwi

Lihnn trekked through the back streets and alleys, searching for the Dewback inn. She was

certainly not overimpressed with this area of Coruscant. The surface streets in this sector were

all twistedturnings and narrow byways, teeming with gutter scum looking for an easy

mark.38 The recurring evocation of the slums and dregs of the galactic capital, presented like

a dangerous place where the fear of aggression replaced the desire of meeting each other,

takes part in the construction of a collective imaginary based on the fear of the other one and

on the logic of daily violence. In Mexico City, this is the role of Tepito district which

synthesizes all the fears of the ordinary citizen, as remembered by Rodrigo Fresn in an ironic

way: "Tepito is the Mexican capital of fast smuggling and even more expeditious death.39

Just arrived in the depths of city-planet, the young Han Solo must face a group of teenagers

who seek to strip him: Down again. He was five hundred stories down, by now. The streets

grew ever seedier. One time, a gang of kids approached him as he hurried along." 40 In a way

some distorted but which reveals the stereotypes conveyed by the streetgangs, the leader is a

huge dark-skinned kid with a black fall of greasy hair, prototype of the young chicanos

whose parents clandestinely crossed the border between Mexico and the United States. Heexpresses the strength and ubiquity of those ethnic gangs (gathering together Blacks or

Latinos) which frighten the good North-American middle class made up of classical WASPS

(White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). In December 2005, according to the Police statistics,

municipality of Los Angeles counted 463 gangs (including 246 Hispanic) and 38 974

38

Michael Reaves,Darth Maul : Shadow Hunter,op. cit., p. 85.39 Rodrigo Fresn,Mantra, Albi, op. cit., p. 434.40 A. C. Crispin, The Paradise Snare, New York, Bantam Books, 1997, p. 273.


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affiliated (21 790 Latinos). In 2002, from other official census,41 the County of Los Angeles

counted more than 1 300 streetgangs gathering more than 150 000 members, number largely

sufficient to maintain a true psychosis among the inhabitants of the Californian metropolis.

Only the 18th Streetgang (Mara 18), would gather almost 20 000 young people scattered in

several tens of sub-groups present in the downtown area and in the majority of the districts of

the megalopolis.

The relation Hispanic young/member of a gang is all the more strong as the links woven by

the young delinquents installed on both sides of the international border ended up imposing

the North-American model of the streetgangs in the great Mexican cities. Since the middle of

the 1980s, the bandas of the periphery of Mexico City, or the cholos of the border cities,

largely benefited from the industrial destructuring, unemployment increase and school failure

to expand and multiply. They replaced the old structures (gavillas, palomillas, pandillas)

which traditionally brought together young boys of the popular districts, by importing fashion

and values from "the other side": clothing, graffiti, use of various drugs, ritual violence but

also coded languages and hybrid music. In Central America, the violence of the maras (local

streetgangs) had become uncontrollable. According to the Guatemalan police, Mara 18 and

Mara Salvatrucha (both originating in Los Angeles) would gather more than 160 000 young

people from 12 to 25 years. Confrontations between the two families use to conclude by true

slaughters with tens of dead. 42

In fact, it doesnt matter the place nor the time: it is the modern city in itself, its architecture,

its space organization, its landscapes which are booming the delinquency. Thus, all the

authors of the Star Wars universe agree to consider that the urbanism of Coruscant encourage

crime: With its countless dark canyons, precipitous ledges, hiden recesses, and jutting

parapets its surfeit of places to hide in plain sight Coruscant invited corruption. Its very

geography inspired secrecy.43 With all its recesses and its shady zones, the large city seems a

secure refuge for deviating and delinquents who want to dissimulate their criminal activities.This is why contemporary town planning insists in opening urban territories and keeping

watch on public spaces, to make it possible for everybody to look all around him, in order to

ensure in all places a community monitoring.44 The goal of these installations is to upset the

potential delinquent, whereas the modern city, considered to be deaf and blind, is supposed to

threaten honest citizens.

41 Alejandro A Alonso, Staff Writer, Streetgangs.Com Newsletter, updated December 22, 2002.42

http://www.libertaddigital.com:83/php3/noticia.php3?fecha_edi_on=2005-09-20 43 James Luceno, Cloack of Deception, London, Random House, 2001, p. 123.44 Jean-Pierre Garnier,Le Nouvel Ordre local. Gouverner la violence, Paris, LHarmattan, 1999.


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The solution can pass by re-ordering the society, i.e. by a more effective police control.

Nostalgia of good old time when State knew how to subdue rebellious groups or delinquent

gangs can seduce part of the population, frightened to see the excesses perpetrated in a

democratic system considered to be too permissive. The gate is then opened to populist,

reactionary or security-conscious speeches, as do Brakiss to attract young Zekk towards the

Shadow Academy: "The empire had very little political chaos. Every person had

opportunities. There were no gangs running wild through the streets of Coruscant."45 We

nowadays use to hear the same speeches in the election campaigns in order to gain the voices

of the voters terrified by the rise of daily violence. Even Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador,

candidate of the PRD to the last presidential election (2006) in Mexico had not hesitated to

require the assistance of the former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giulani to set up a program

of "law and order" towards the delinquency in the federal district of Mexico City. 46

Conclusion: return to the ghetto and death of the city

For those who dont believe in the political or police solution of the problem, even at the price

of a Draconian restriction of personal freedoms, it remains a solution: the escape and locking

up in protected areas. It is the urban model chosen by the inhabitants of Coruscant who, to

escape from the real or imaginary dangers which await them in the street, preferred to

withdraw themselves in closed on buildings like castle encircled by barbarians. The model of

the gated community consequently seems to be the result of a long urban history marked by

the impossibility of making cohabit on the same territory social classes with divergent

interests and ethnic groups whose ways of life are incompatible.

Even if each building of the galactic capital can be considered as a gated community, it is the

small community of Dometown, built by Lando Calrissian in the basements of the

megalopolis, which best corresponds to this type of district. To reach the entrance of thisunderground paradise, the visitor must cross a maze of tunnels and passages for a long time

abandoned which lead him to almost two hundred meters under the level of the ground. The

only access to the area is protected by an enormous armoured gate commanded by a complex

and foolproof electronic code. Once crossed this barrier, one finds oneself in front of a urban

landscape whose composition remember the gated communities scattering the suburbs of the

45

Kevin J. Anderson et Rebecca Moesta, The lost Ones, New York, Boulevard Books, 1995, p. 109.46 Giulinani received for its consultings the tidy sum of money of 4,3 million dollars, mainly paid by Mexicanbusinessmen.


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great American cities: They stepped onto a terrace overlooking a huge subterranean cavern, a

hollow dome, easily a kilometre across. Luke, quite astonished, found himself on a platform

that looked down into a complete pocket city of low stone buildings and cool green parks.

The dome was brightly lit, the air sweet and pure, the walkways and byways clean and tidy.

The buildings were widely spaced, their stone walls brightly painted. Pathways snaked

through neatly kept lawns, and the roof of the dome was painted a royal blue.47

According to the same model, Latin America largely adopted the principle of auto-seclusion

to ensure the wellbeing of the social categories which feel themselves threatened by the rise

of violence and insecurity: condominios cerrados (in Spanish) or condominos fechados (in

Portuguese) are presented like an urban panacea to solve the immediate problems of a huge

social crisis. The gated communities multiply in the suburbs of the great Latin-American

cities, as around Toluca where large billboards praise the merits of protected allotments built

to shelter members of the middle class frightened by the awful spectacle of the city they

discover every evening at the TV: "The home your family merits" proclaims one of the

advertisers, while another company doesnt hesitate to be baptized "City Builders".

In the imaginary of the townsmen, these protected spaces seem oases in the middle of a

violent and insecure world. The French comic strip Mora, whose action takes place in 2082,

exploits the same registers by specifying that the Cubans of the high society seldom, if ever,

leave the protected perimeter of the downtown area and like to find themselves in enclaves

like "Cubana County Club" (similar to the Country clubs of Buenos Aires), where they

enjoy playing golf and polo. This auto-seclusion enables them to escape from the sad truth of

external world: "Among poor people, the unpleasant things occur in the street, one calls that

insecurity [... ] Among the rich ones, there are lawns, thick gates and pretty things fixed on

the wall".48

From this point of view, science fiction announces and denounces one of the strongest threats

which, in our collective representations, weighs on American cities: the progressivedisappearance of public spaces and the end of the city like a political body. In Coruscant, the

streets disappeared from surface: one finds them only in the lower city, where the outlaws

reign and where the poor hide themselves in their slums. In the upper city, the crossing points

are limited to footbridges tended between skyscrapers, which limits considerably the

possibilities of circulation but ensures a maximum of peace and security to the inhabitants.

47

Roger MacBride Allen,Ambush at Corellia, New York, Bantam Books, 1995, p. 96.48 Arleston, Latil, Labrosse, Un parfum dternit, Mora T. 4, Toulon, Soleil Production, p. 35, personaltranslation.


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However, as already pointed out it Jane Jacobs in 1961: "Streets and their sidewalks, the main

public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its

streets. If a citys streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city

looks dull."49 Her warnings launched to denounce technocratic and inhuman town planning,

destructor of the urban forms that encourage and promote the meeting of inhabitants

(traditional districts, considered by the developers and urban architects as obstacles to

modernity), undoubtedly influenced the pessimistic vision of the Star Wars authors.

Coruscant appears consequently as the barely deformed image of a reality which one finds

everywhere in our world: too large cities had become simple living machines where new

ways of life and social practices amplify the divorce between inhabitants and citizens. In this

way, the galactic capital is only one exacerbated representation of the post-modern Los

Angeles described by Mike Davis in his famous book, City of Quartz.50 Even most worrying

is to note that solutions suggested to make bearable megalopolises like Coruscant, Mexico

City or So Paulo are not interested with the causes of the crisis (poverty, racism, social and

spatial injustice) but only with its consequences (loss of social link, insecurity, violence).

Since the Virgilian dream which inspired Thoreau failed and the megalopolis reached its point

of no return, it seems necessary from now to adapt the practices of social groups to the

architecture imposed by modernity: the city died, long live the ghettos!

49 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York, Random House, 1993 (1961), p. 37.50 Mike Davis, City of Quartz : Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Londres, Verso, 1990.

2007.dark side of american cities.english

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