Hollywood Utopia

This acceptance of ‘risk’ is narratively linked with notions of ‘space’. Harvey
contends that
within each capitalist epoch, space is organised in such a way as best to facilitate the
growth of production, the reproduction of labour, power and the maximisation of
profit . . . It is through the reorganisation of time/space that capitalism is able to
overcome its periods of crisis and lay the foundations for a new period of accumulation
(cited in Urry 1995: 22).
One critic goes further to argue that the whole settlement pattern of America
should be understood as one vast venture in real estate speculation. ‘Old places
have to be devalued, destroyed and redeveloped while new places are created’
(Veblen cited in Harvey 1992: 6). Architecturally-designed model flat complexes
become ghettos as real estate prices control the life cycles of whole populations.
American city development can, according to Mike Davis (1992), be crudely traced
through the continuous movement of middle-class whites out of the inner cities
and into the suburbs as blacks and Hispanic under-classes take their places. In
some areas this is followed by the gentrification and re-appropriation of inner-city
space.
White Humanist Anomie
The human needs addressed in Grand Canyon include the urge to exercise control
over the environment and behaviour in the light of a breakdown in perceived social
norms of humanity. Anthony Giddens affirms that human agents have a basic
desire for some degree of predictability in social life. They have a need for what he
calls ‘ontological security’ or confidence and trust that the natural and social
worlds are as they appear to be (cited in Haralambos et al. 1990: 817). Grand
Canyon clearly dramatises this predominantly white ontological (in)security
dilemma through the narrative trajectory of its protagonists. Giddens, and other
theorists who seek ‘optimistic’ answers for societal problems, are often criticised
for putting too much emphasis on the ability of agents to transform structures
simply by changing their behaviour, recalling the ‘voluntarist versus determinist’
debate cited in Chapter 1. Structuralist features of society cannot just be changed
at will, at least not on a time scale that actors involved might wish (Haralambos et
al. 1990: 818). Nonetheless, filmic time/space compression can complete this
wish-fulfilling fantasy.
Space has become the new metaphor for the same old historical processes and
ideological struggles, with ‘the local apparently equated with place and the global
with space’ (Grossberg in Chambers et al. 1996: 174). 26 Henri Lefebvre (1991)
3 Westerns, Landscapes and Road Movies 117