Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York Cortland Rankin (Bowling Green State University, USA) 9781032251363

Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York examines the cinematic representation of New York from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, placing the dominant discourse of urban decline in dialogue with marginal perspectives that reimagine the city along alternative paths as a resilient, adaptive, and endlessly inspiring place.

Drawing on mainstream, independent, documentary, and experimental films, the book offers a multifaceted account of the power of film to imagine the city's decline and reimagine its potential. The book analyzes how filmmakers mobilized derelict space and various articulations of "nature" as settings and signifiers that decenter traditional understandings of the city to represent New York alternately as a desolate wasteland, a hostile wilderness, a refuge and playground for outcasts, a home to resilient and resourceful communities, a studio for artistic experimentation, an arcadia conducive to alternative social arrangements, and a complex ecosystem.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of film studies, media studies, urban cinema, urban studies, and eco-cinema.

Cortland Rankin is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University, USA. His research interests include the relationship between film and postindustrial American urbanism as well as war cinema and media, particularly as it concerns film and television of the Korean War.

"Decline and Reimagination is a creative exploration of an impressively long filmography, drawing the kinds of connections between disparate films united only by geography that embody the best of the 'spatial turn' of film studies. Rankin's work would be a welcome read for any scholar interested in post-industrial New York and its intersections with any film form."

Robert Gordon Joseph, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

"Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York is a fine work of scholarship that does a real service to those interested in the relationship between film and urban space. It deals with classic Hollywood movies and rarely seen works of experimental cinema with equal levels of care, attention, and enthusiasm, and conveys a real respect and affection for the city and all its inhabitants. It is a book that has given me a richer understanding of the varying ways one can look at the city and the importance of fighting for more just, empathetic, and inclusive ways of doing so."

Michael D. Dwyer, International Journal of Communication

"Rankin excels at positioning these parallel narratives of decline and reimagination in conversation with each other. Frontier and urban-cowboy narratives are coupled with filmic accounts of resilient communities; tales of urban wilderness as a loss of control over civilization are countered with movies that collapse the wilderness/civilization dialectic to view the city as its own ecological site; and abandoned sites are depicted as both criminogenic loci and places of refuge. This work will surely interest scholars working in cinema and media studies, cultural geography, and urban studies."

Sophia Abbey, The Velvet Light Trap