boredom is always counter-revolutionary

I really wish that cinema had been some integral part of my youth, but it wasn’t. The films I watched were the same films any kid did in the 1990s, mostly blockbuster American films with accompanying action figures. Nonetheless, there is a certain aesthetic that fills me with nostalgia and still really appeals to my imagination. It lies in the cityscapes of films like Batman and The Crow. I’m not really sure what genre these films come under, they were normally adapted from comic books, and took cues from film noir, the gothic, crime films, dystopian fantasies: the product of Metropolis and Marvel/DC comics.

I was never too fussed about what happens in the films as such - especially not with the psychoanalytic vulnerability of superheroism - but the cities get me every time. They’re prototype cyberpunk environments, but it seems that they root themselves too firmly to the past and to material humanity to really embrace the digitalised dystopia suggested by that label. The ingredients for this type of city are simple: lots of smog and shadows; alleys and rooftops; ‘trashcans’ replete with ‘hobos’; old billboards and external staircases; lots of big sweeping shots between buildings; baddies who live underground; lots of pedestrians, especially tarted up prostitutes or gangsters with trilby hats. It seemed to me that any of the passing characters or faceless ‘Noo Yoik’ background chatterers held a story just like Bruce Wayne’s (I guess Jarmusch’s Night on Earth would be the result of this). Anyway, all this has certainly affected how I imagine (particularly American) cities to look.

And so today, for no reason other than revisiting my pre-to-mid teenage nerdism, i present to you a collection of my favourite science fiction cities from the 1980s and 1990s.

Gotham City (the classic)

New York from ghostbusters (in a way, all these cities are new york)

The Crow

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Dark City (this one actually came a little later, but gives the actual city more attention. It shape shifts. Sweet.)

Lost boys has the same aesthetic, but without the city. The Warriors too, but its a bit early and too definitely associated with New York City for this list. Gremlins goes a little suburban. Blade Runner is definitely an influence, but not really part of the same lineage.

I love how all of these films seem to converge and occur within an imaginary city. The city of late Twentieth Century mainstream science-fiction. I guess these places can’t exist after 9/11. But what psychogeographical sites they would offer! What lawlessness and intrigue!