I should clarify another point. Just because one particular city is popular, it does not mean there are other cities that are not popular. It just means that one place seems to the place where everything is happening. It also means that just because one city has dropped out of popularity - it is on no longer the “IT” city - there are still things happening there. I also need to point out that I am specifically referring to US pop culture - not England, Canada, or Europe, or anything like that. I need to exclude two cities because they are always in the pop culture consciousness, but I will talk about them first.
The first city I need to exclude is New York. New York is an international city, an American city, and one of the most talked about cities in the western world. It does have it’s own multiple personalities. There is the rich powerful Manahattan New York of Sex and the City, Wall Street, and City Hall; there is the gritty New York of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Do the Right Thing; there is the Gangster New York of Godfather, Goodfellas, New Jack City. These are only some of the personalities - there is the Friends personality, the Sinatra / Jay-z New York; the Law and Order criminal New York, and so on. The point is that New York has entered the lexicon andthe public’s imagination. It ranks with London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Shanghai, Tokyo, Rio. It is also a model of the US melting pot, better or worse.
The Second City I need to exclude is Los Angeles. First, because it is where a large part of the entertainment media is centered there, it is inevitable that it would be very aware of itself. There are a few different aspects of LA as well - the NWA, Colors, gritty LA; the Rich and Powerful LA, and so on. LA is whatever people want it to be. Real, fake, both, LA is everything.
The first city that became the It city was in the 80’s. This is completely arbitrary on my part, and is no doubt due to the fact that I did some growing up in the 80’s. But I really can’t think of any particular place that was the place to be in the 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, and so on- excluding the aforementioned excluded cities.
That first It city was Chicago in the 80’s. John Hughes deserves recognition for helping make it an It city, but he was not the only factor. Another large influence in the development of Chicago was the existence of Second City, and the actors that developed there.
The first movie that had Chicago in a starring role was made in 1980: the Blues Brothers. This was Chicago’s It childhood, it hadn’t developed a personality yet. But the Blues Brothers introduced a few key Chicago locations as well as some actors who were to use Chicago often in the future. The next movie that was more in keeping with the development of Chicago’s dominant personality was National Lampoon’s Vacation. This was the movie that started to show Chicago as a city of suburbs. From there, all the John Hughes teen movies were set in Chicago, or the suburbs of; as was Home Alone. The next two National Lampoon’s Vacation movies were set partly in Chicago. Adventures in Babysitting was set in the suburbs. Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Ordinary People. Risky Business. She’s Having a Baby. Streets of Fire. Uncle Buck. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Lucas. About Last Night.
Chicago was not defined exclusively by movies, of course. Don’t forget about TV. Family Matters was set in Chicago. Married...with Children, a satire of the suburbia was there; Punky Brewster; Webster; Life Goes on. There was some music there: Styx; Chicago; REO Speedwagon; and Cheap trick hail Chicago suburbs. And Chicago’s triumph in the 1986 Superbowl is a good illustration of Chicago’s ascendency to It status.
Chicago did not end at the 80’s, but the 80’s were the prime It time for Chicago. Wayne’s World, Never Been Kissed, The Fugitive, were all movies that continued the theme of Suburbia in Chicago. But by the 90’s, there was a new city that was becoming the It city. The transition to the new city can be represented by a movie set in both cities - effectively passing the torch from Chicago to the new city. The movie was....
That will be the next post.
