Expanded Horizons: Memory, Memorials, and Manhattan's Living Skyline

Abstract:     
This Times Literary Supplement (London) review essay from 2002 considers the question of memorials and memory in the wake of 9-11, the debate over what to do with Ground Zero, in the context of a review of the book Celluloid Skyline, a book of documentary photographs and commentary on Manhattan as seen through the eyes of Hollywood cinema. The book draws upon archives of photographs of Manhattan made for purposes of reproducing the Manhattan skyline and city scenes in Hollywood movies, but constitute today one of the finest photographic collections of architectural Manhattan of the thirties and forties. The review essay focuses in particular on why the film King Kong is so much more impressive in the first film, using the Empire State Building, with its tiered mountain-like shape, than in the second, using the World Trade Center, an undifferentiated block-skyscraper, a featureless rectangular prism.

Keywords: City, Architecture, Monument, New York, September 11, Ground Zero, Memorials, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, Image, Hollywood, Empire State Building, Twin Towers, World Trade Center, Skyscraper, Commerce, Planner, Urban Planning, Commercial Use, Space, Terrorist Hijacker

JEL Classification: O11, O12, O21, O22, O31, R10, R14, Z10

Accepted Paper Series