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Myths, cities and cinema: a return voyageReinventing the myth of the city
Authors: María José Flores and Irene Pelayo
Assistant professors
Humanistic Informatics. Faculty of Cultural Studies, University of Lund, Biskopsgatan 7, 223 62, Lund, Sweden. ; , www.kultur.lu.se
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Abstract
Myth, from the Greek mythos: “Marvelous narration situated outside historic time told by divine or heroic characters. Often interprets the world’s origin or great human events”. The dragon, except for in China, has always been a symbol of “evil”, but, at the same time, the fire and power represented by the dragon are essential elements for humankind.
The modern city, symbolically understood as a dragon
(because the individual always finds himself close to the fire, to the urban vortex that represents evolution at the same time as it absorbs us), is based on myths that are already a part of the collective imagination. These myths have left remnants scattered throughout the city in the form of statues or architectural styles.
In the same way that myths come alive through architecture, films convert architecture into myth, a modern myth.
Cinema is capable of indirectly mythologizing a city through storytelling, showing us our reality anew as seen through someone else’s eyes, mirroring a reality that does not exist but that creates the modern myth of the city.
Key words
Architecture, cinema, mythology, city, dragon
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Objectives
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The main objectives of this study are, on one hand, to go in depth into the idea of the embodiment of modern cities, an embodiment acquired due to its mythical quality, a modern myth but a myth nevertheless. On the other hand, we would like to explain how films reinforce and reactivate the cities’ mythical quality.
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Methodology
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We will peruse the contributions of architects, hostorians, film-makers and film students and make a dynamic and multidisciplinary reflection.
1. Myth and the collective imagination
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As we know, myths were oral narrations that gave shape to a common vision of the world within a given culture. In ancient times, myths represented feats by anthropomorphic gods and supernatural powers. From one generation to another, stories were told about the origins of the universe and the Earth, inexplicable supernatural phenomenons, such as lightning flashes, thunderstorms, earthquakes and volcanoes. The explanations offered by different cultures on the origins of the world were passed down and shaped by our ancestors. They left traces throughout history, traces that have shaped our conception of the world as well as our modern culture. Myths, as part of our collective imagination, are the origin of our culture. The collective unconscious, a term introduced by Carl Gustav Jung, explains why we can find similar stories, legends and folklore throughout the world, as there is a language shared by human beings from all times and places, made up of primitive symbols with which we express a content of the psyche that is beyond reason.
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2. Myth and the structure of space
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Common to all myths is that they contain the same structural basis to explain our reality. One of the points of this basic structure is based on the different theories on the creation of the universe, which normally consists of a higher world, that of the gods, an everyday world, that of living beings, and a lower world, that of the dead and the spirits, varying the number of levels of this structure according to each culture with some cultures possessing up to 8 or 9 levels.
In the modern world, there are the four cardinal points and sometimes even a fifth parameter, a “here” defined in time in reference to the “now”. The clear spatial division used by myths to explain the universe show that our perception of spatial units, namely space, is intuitive and invariable.
Rudolph Arnheim defines space as the boundaries between one object and another. For example, the natural landscape of earth and stone encounters its limit where it ends and and the water and air begin. The measurable distances are characteristic of the physcial spaces. What is measurable can be understood in different ways, from the simple measurement with the eye to the more complex, such as the practice of measuring space with light and the time it takes for the light to get from one point to the other; or taking into account the speed with which an object moves within a space.
A good part of our earthly conception is based on physical comprehension, in the limits between objects. Likewise, the structure of our collective spatial comprehension is also based on our physical body, understood as one more physical object in space. This structure is not only collective but also transgenerational, because the scale of our body is roughly the same as it was in the past and therefore functions as a common “measuring tool” for our physical understanding.
Taking this into account, we can assert that our conception of space is not merely physical but, on the contrary, constitutes the bulk of the interpretation of our perceptions, which are largely subjective.
Rudolph Arnheim claims that when we look at two objects, for example, two houses in the distance, one very low and the other very high, it is impossible to say something about one of them without considering the other. How do we know that one is very high without comparing it to the one next to it? This is the type of disjointed processing that we are accustomed to in modern life.
This is how we collect information about our current environment, our subjective perception of reality leads us to see what we need to see, what is useful to us at any given moment. We see objects taken out of context, not as part of a whole, but as solutions to our needs or as explanations for our perceptions/ideas. A person who needs a bicycle might start to see bicycle shops that he might never have seen before, shops that he might have passed many times. Until then he had never noticed that they were there and, until this moment, this information was not important for the subject. Our perception of the city is, therefore, functional.
The composition of a city is based on different underlying systems that are infinite, amorphous, unstable and in constant movement. Like domino pieces that fall first in one direction only to then fall in another. One such system is, for example, the social, through which we shape explanations regarding the city’s architecture, be they individual or collective explanations. Other underlying structural systems are the economic, political, religious etc. all of them connected to each other and, at the same time, connected in a biunivocal way to each individual, who gives them shape and modifies them, thus constructing her “own city”. This “own city” is defined as an individual system that is formed simultaneously within a certain social group, an economic code or in something as simple as traffic rules.
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3. The city and the dragon
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In myths, all things have a soul. This soul is normally in motion: sometimes it dies, sometimes it is resuscitated, sometimes it travels to another world... The soul of myths is intangible, it cannot be seen, it cannot be touched, but our subconscience tells us that this soul is present nevertheless. If, for example, someone asks us to describe a person, we use abstract and intangible adjectives such as: good, charismatic, gracious, brave.
Today, over 50% of the world’s population lives in cities. The planning of these cities is based on relatively new spatial ideas, ideas that were imposed after industrialism. Before that, there was not much differentiation between the idea of city and countryside and the urban landscape seemed not to have an established order, but was conceived rather as a fragment within a larger pattern. Little by little, the industrialised cities gradually began to lose their local tradition of construction, roads and houses. Instead, cities began to be formed based on the needs of this new modern society that grew in step with the new technologies.
The city rapidly began to be populated by people arriving in search of employment, a growth so rapid they soon felt alienated by the new environment. The new citizens could not identify what is known as urban structure, the organisation or the design itself. Thus, cities lost their most familiar facet, in some way, their soul.
When politicians realised that people were unhappy in the city and wanted to return to the rural areas, they began to make political decisions to control urban development. They provided the citizens with more parks and green paths in order to create a space that they could associate with that which they had previously known. Roads and houses were built to adapt to man rather than to the machine and one began to talk about the city using adjectives such as peaceful, spacious, warm, soft and light. This way of thinking and planning made the city go from being a space to being a soul: from one fragment within a larger system to an organism with its own body.
Within the bases of mythology, that is to say, the bases common to all cultures, there exists the concept of “supernatural beings”. It was thought that these were the beings responsible for the origin of the world. In mythology, supernatural beings were connected to, for example, water, understood as the origin of life or destruction. The unicorn and the dragon are among these beings as well. For centuries, the dragon has been conceived in Western culture as a malignant element that punishes and produces fire. In China, however, the dragon was associated with water and is also a symbol of power, wisdom, peace and harmony.
The portrait of cities throughout the 19th century has been based on similar concepts: the accumulation of urban power, wisdom, peace, harmony, violence and punishment, all combined in a single body, inaccessible and mysterious. The city is, in essence, lethal and seductive, sinful and essential for human survival.
Detail of a dragon in an architectural work
Analysing the evolution of cities through the ages, several historical vestiges can be seen, like rings of time around the buildings of the city. The walls defined the boundaries that may have been erased or overwritten as the city grew and needed more space and gradually devoured its surroundings. However, the vestiges are not erased but become a part of the “city’s body”, like old scars in the dragon’s body. Like scars, which are a reminder of what has happened to us, old buildings and streets tell us about our past. Some scars might disappear from our bodies with the passing of time, but we know that they once existed, like a scar on the soul; just as the soul of the city has its wounds that, though unseen, give shape to our understanding of our past.
Aldo Rossi has said that the city is the only thing that connects us to our past. Because in order to understand what today’s city is, one must understand what the city used to be and this is told to us by the architecture of the houses, the details and decorations and, finally, like a blanket that envelops everything, the very structure of the city, the conscious or unconscious planning that makes us understand the city as a body: the city as a dragon.
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4. Cinema and the city
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Planning during the industrial period formed an image of what the city was and the emerging image was an identity that all of the citizens could understand and that connected them to each other. The image of the city as a body or an organism has become more and more iconised. Today, in order to understand the essence of a city, one must know how to read the image of the city. The dragon is magical and dangerous, divine and mysterious all at once. In its own way and scale, the city is as well. We interpret the image of the city instinctively because, for a long time now, the city is no longer a place but an entity.
“Cities are experienced in terms of images.
Visitors bathe in images before going anywhere – scrutinizing guidebooks, websites, business brochures, videos, airline magazines, friends' snapshots, and so on – then project these images onto the place, trying to match what they see to what they expected to see.
And what is seen is completely shaped by what is expected. Physical form is at best a prop for launching or modulating streams of images.”
Brouwer, Brookman & Mulder (2001)
New York- image of the city or a real space?
The city is the space of collective life and of the everyday. We live in her and, unconsciously, we are a basic and indispensible element within her structure. Thus, the city as an urban space becomes a mass: a force that fuses reality and fiction.