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2016 | Book

Introduction: Cinema and Urban Society Read chapter Read first chapter

Urbanization and the Migrant in British Cinema

Spectres of the City

Author: Gareth Millington

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book examines a cycle of films about migration made in the late 1990s and 2000s. It argues that these films present a novel (and radical) aesthetic of planetary urbanization based upon the mobility of the migrant and the dissolution of the city. A stimulating cinematic analysis of our expanding urban fabric, it offers an alternative to the ‘cultural cityism’ of many other films about migration. The author demonstrates that this particular film cycle offers a rare, sustained consideration of the travails and struggles for urban life by migrants beyond and without the city. Yet the city haunts these films like a spectre: the city that has been lost, the ‘present’ city that excludes and the possible ‘cities of refuge’ of the future. Offering new insights into the cinematic portrayal of the figure of the migrant and how this is constructed in relation to urbanization processes, this book will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, film and media studies, human geography, and urban studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction: Cinema and Urban Society
Abstract
This chapter begins by considering the importance of cultural questions in the critical study of planetary urbanization. After introducing the aims of this study, the chapter provides a brief sketch of each of the seven films analysed here. This is followed by a discussion of realism and a short summary of the key arguments made in this book. The chapter then introduces the notion of spectrality, focusing in particular on how the ‘spectre of the city’ haunts the films analysed here. The chapter closes by providing an outline of the structure of the book.
Gareth Millington
Chapter 2. Cinema, Cities and Urbanization
Abstract
This chapter critically examines the relationship between cinema and cities. It establishes a sociological position whereby cinema is integrated into Lefebvre’s (1991) theory of the production of space. The conceptual and theoretical work in this chapter is an attempt to develop an understanding of the relationship between the ‘real’ and the ‘reel’ that is grounded within a dialectical materialism that gives due credence to the creative, artistic and poetic aspects of production. First, the chapter introduces recent scholarship on cinematic cities. Second, it outlines how the relationship between cinema and cities has been theorized. Third, the chapter considers the potential political implications of urban cinema. Finally, the role that the image of the city plays in organizing urban space and our experience of it is considered.
Gareth Millington
Chapter 3. Urbanization and Migration: From City to Camp?
Abstract
This chapter examines the notion of planetary urbanization, from its roots in the work of Henri Lefebvre through to more recent scholarship. It aims to consider how migration is connected with urbanization; to pick through different ways of conceptualizing this relationship. By examining the urbanization–migration nexus closely it becomes possible to scrutinize the role that the migrant, both as figure of the imagination and actualized individual, plays in contemporary urbanization and to contemplate the degree whether they are victims of urbanization, active producers of the urban or both. This chapter also introduces what Mikhail Bakhtin would call the ‘real world’ ‘chronotopes of threshold’ that are increasingly characteristic of the contemporary urban experience for migrants. T chronotopes  of expansive urbanization , it is suggested here, are expressions of breaks or crises in urban experience.
Gareth Millington
Chapter 4. Dissolving City
Abstract
The chapter begins by examining how this cycle of films produces images of the city that both capture and anticipate social, spatial and economic transformations in London. Some images reveal a transition in terms of the cinematic register of the city, while others are of the dissolution of the city. The depiction of arcane sites on the periphery of the city as contemporary ‘entry points’ to the city offers a critique of the exclusions and privations of capitalist urbanization and the global city. The chapter then discusses how the cycle of films maintains dwelling and mobility in a state of tension. Finally, the chapter finally examines how the ‘the death of the social’ is intertwined with cinematic depictions of the implosion or dissolution of the city.
Gareth Millington
Chapter 5. Horizontal Distributions
Abstract
This chapter continues the analytical discussion of seven British films. It begins by examining the cinematic construction of the migrant across the cycle before considering the challenge to the distribution of the urban ‘sensible’ posed by the images of urbanization created by these films. In the first discussion, it is emphasized how the migrant appears as a contradictory figure. Some contradictions relate to issues of citizenship or difference/homogeneity but others relate to the perceived deficiencies or qualities of the migrant. The second discussion, drawing upon Rancière’s notion of ‘horizontal distributions’, is concerned with how images of urbanization, via their cinematic circulation, encourage a hermeneutic fusion of urban horizons.
Gareth Millington
Chapter 6. Conclusion: Contra Brooklyn: Dissensus and the Limits of Realism
Abstract
The final chapter of the book offers a conclusion based around three related discussions. The first discussion concerns points of critical comparison between the seven British films studied thus far and a more recent, historically oriented film that is not part of the cycle: Brooklyn (John Crowley, 2015). The second discussion revisits how the cycle of films examined here posit dissensus into the distribution of the urban sensible. The cycle of films does not actually re-distribute the sensible since cinema does not have the capacity to do this. Rather, through the aesthetic of urbanization they contribute to creating, the films enable ways of seeing the urban differently. The third discussion is focused upon the limits and possibilities of social realism as a cinematic aesthetic.
Gareth Millington
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Urbanization and the Migrant in British Cinema
Author
Gareth Millington
Copyright Year
2016
Electronic ISBN
978-1-137-47399-8
Print ISBN
978-1-137-47398-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47399-8