City of Angels 2018-19

This semester, we are discussing health in Los Angeles. Although we have not had too many classes yet, we have been introduced to the topic of disease and illnesses along with an idea as to how they spread. With the activity that Dr. Kim led us through, many of us commented on how we felt throughout each stage of the activity. We also discussed the messages that were being shared through the images. Some of the images seemed positive and some seemed negative. This activity had me thinking about stereotypes and stigmas surrounding many illnesses and diseases. What are some stigmas and/or stereotypes you have had or society has towards certain illnesses and diseases?

When I saw Mayor Eric Garcetti speak last Saturday, he discussed the city government’s efforts to improve economic and social equality and mobility in Los Angeles, and listed a variety of initiatives and programs to encourage or mandate socially responsible business practices. He mentioned that Los Angeles is the center of the entertainment industry, which is more than an economic machine; through movies, shows, and even video games, it shapes American and global culture and influences how we interact, develop, and set goals. Most Americans interact with media daily; CNBC reported that around 57% of Americans have streaming services like Netflix, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 80% of Americans watch television on a given day. For many, the shows and movies they love either complement or comprise part of their identity; people rally around fan communities; actors develop huge social media followings and constant news attention; and controversial or groundbreaking movi...

Los Angeles was largely built after the invention of the car, and that history impacts the setup of LA; the car gave rise to, in the words of 20th-century writer Dorothy Parker, “72 suburbs in search of a city.” The sprawl of LA changes the culture and impacts interactions between areas of the city and their respective inhabitants. Talking about freeways and driving as small talk is a common stereotype of Angelenos, even to the point of inspiring much of an SNL sketch series . During the walk to the beach that many of us did over Winter Break, we were able to see how un-walkable LA can feel–– in other words, how built-for-driving LA is. We’ve discussed transportation throughout our roundups for this year, but with this post and roundup, I wanted to focus on Los Angeles as a city made for cars, and I wonder how the culture of driving impacts our relationships with the city and the layout of the city itself. Despite the prevalence that cars have in many Angelenos’ lives, th...

In this class we’ve talked a lot about boosterism in LA, and how LA was this shiny new toy that was to be sold to the rest of the country.   We have also talked about the danger of a single story.   For a long time, the only story of Los Angeles was the one told of blooming orange groves and eternal blue skies, of housing that was easy to acquire, of abundant jobs, and financial prosperity.   In 1886, Charles Willard arrived in Los Angeles with tuberculosis and a dream to begin a new life.   He got a job with the LA Chamber of Commerce where he started "The Land of Sunshine," a magazine filled with citizens’ testimonials to LA’s healing powers.   W.C. Patterson, the president of "The Land of Sunshine" publishing wrote about why he chose to come to LA: “Because in all my   long experience and observation I have as yet failed to discover any other spot which combines so many of the elements which go to make men happy, healthy, useful, and wise; no pl...

“I’d be safe and warm if I was in LA” - The Mamas and Papas, “California Dreamin” “A teenage bride with the baby inside getting high on information, And buy me a star on the boulevard, it's Californication. Space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement” -The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, “Californiacation” “It’s the City of Angels and constant danger” - 2PAC, “To Live and Die in L.A.” Joni Mitchell’s “California,” Les Savy Fav’s “Sleepless in Silverlake,” Death Cab for a Cutie’s “Why You’d Want to Live Here,” “Hotel California” by the Eagles— The list of songs about life in Los Angeles goes on and on, but what are they lyrics really saying? It seems that music is a medium through which the image of Los Angeles is both romanticized and revealed. On the one hand you have Michelle Phillips singing about being safe and warm, and on the other hand you have 2PAC expressing his own interpretation of a dangerous and unsafe L.A. . In c...

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian communications and media theorist and philosopher, famously declared “the medium is the message” in his pioneering 1964 work Understanding Media .  Recently, we’ve been experimenting with and exposing ourselves to various methods of conveying a message, whether through our zine-making and all the collage-esque work we did in creating it, reading primary and secondary sources, or watching a documentary that gave us a glimpse into a family story through home footage.  Each has the potential to affect us in different ways, and we should reflect on not only why the story is being told, but how it's being told. Storytelling predates the use of written language. Thousands of years ago, humans painted pictures to communicate their ideas and experiences. And now, with the dawn of a technology-driven era, there exist more possibilities than ever for innovation and new ways to engage and inform an audience. Humans have always been resourceful in fi...

After reading the excerpt from City of Inmates about the 1965 Watts riots and listening to Ms. Goldin’s depiction of events while she was in Los Angeles during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, I was reminded again of the level at which civil disobedience, protesting, and rioting/rebelling has taken place in Los Angeles over time. The big ones have always been talked about more in the public sphere because of sheer size, but others such as the Chicano Moratorium that we read about from Always Running and the Immigration Rights Protests of 2006 in which 500,000 Latino immigrants took to the streets to protest a bill that would have made illegal immigration a felony have also been important to Angelenos in recent past. Furthermore, recent protests such as the Women’s March and March For Our Lives have also grasped LA's attention, even if they weren't limited to our city. As we learned from City of Inmates, riots such as the 1965 Watts ones often stem from decades of oppression in ...