Wednesday, December 10, 2008
I am a fan of the History Channel...
but it is not a fan of ME (well, the city where I live: Los Angeles).
This week I sat down to watch the latest in the Cities of the Underworld TV series on the History Channel with a few good friends who also happen to be fellow longtime "Angelinos"... and aside from the fact that I liked the other host better (Eric something) and that this season is not as well done (written or produced)... I have tried to stick with it... because if there is one thing I love it is CREEPY history shows. Love em. Not gonna lie! Can't get enough!
But this week's episode was on the city of LOS ANGELES.
I have several initial problems with this... not the least of which that there is no true "underground" in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles... I will detail the rest of my complaints below...
Because what we did conclude is that the History Channel does not like Los Angeles very much. Or at least the producers/writers/creators of this show. They spoke of Los Angeles in an almost entirely negative tone. We have the worst air quality, traffic, history, etc. We have the worst past of corruption... we are the worst environmentally, etc. I didn't hear ONE nice thing come out of his mouth about "Angelinos"
Now... don't get me wrong: I am far from a Pollyanna. I will admit some of what he said was TRUE... L.A. does have a rather poor record of PAST police corruption (read any of James Ellroy's novels, which are set in the seedy underbelly of LA power, politics and police - Or see the movie, "The Changeling" -true story!). And I also don't dispute that Los Angeles was STUPID when it went to CARS (thereby kicking the public transportations feet out from under it - see the documentary 'The End of Suburbia" as a vastly better explanation of how this all came about HISTORICALLY, and honestly where I think he ripped off some of his ideas) and NOW we are paying a high price to get some semblance of public transportation back, again. And while LA has many notorious murders... I am still not certain I would term the outlying "desert" area where the Manson Family farm still resides is as "the underground of LA" (literally digging up graves). And so the fact that he titled this episode "the Land of Manson" seemed well, quite honestly, a little outlandish. I also don't think Manson lived "underground" and besides for many of us the Tate murders, while undeniably tragic, happened before we were born... so we don't experience Los Angeles through some warped Manson murder lens (the way Wildman suggests)... Furthermore... I don't think LA is a haven for UFO sightings (isn't that distinction given to less populous areas in say rural Colorado?)... and so that whole "battle of LA" sequence was just oddly out of left field. The host (Don Wildman) went around making mountains of out mole hills... and "ooh-ing and ahh-ing" over NOTHING... and so it made the premise of the show seem silly and strange to anyone who has EVER lived for even a week in Los Angeles. I didn't recognize Don Wildman's Los Angeles Underworld... and I have lived in Los Angeles nearly all of my life (almost 40 years). I don't think I recognized it because this version of Los Angeles lives only in the fertile imagination of the producers/writers/host of this show. I think this episode should have been on the Sci Fi Channel, not the History Channel. What I mean is that in past shows (on Budapest or Berlin or London or New York) it always made me want to VISIT those places and envy the host for getting to go to some really cool underground locations (particularly in Rome) but for this LA focused episode the opposite seemed true for the host. I realize Los Angeles is not for everyone. But it is for some. And it is a pretty cool place to live, actually. And while as with most larger cities we have a dubious past and a complex narrative - it doesn't qualify Los Angeles as the pit of despair. OK?
This week I sat down to watch the latest in the Cities of the Underworld TV series on the History Channel with a few good friends who also happen to be fellow longtime "Angelinos"... and aside from the fact that I liked the other host better (Eric something) and that this season is not as well done (written or produced)... I have tried to stick with it... because if there is one thing I love it is CREEPY history shows. Love em. Not gonna lie! Can't get enough!
But this week's episode was on the city of LOS ANGELES.
I have several initial problems with this... not the least of which that there is no true "underground" in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles... I will detail the rest of my complaints below...
Because what we did conclude is that the History Channel does not like Los Angeles very much. Or at least the producers/writers/creators of this show. They spoke of Los Angeles in an almost entirely negative tone. We have the worst air quality, traffic, history, etc. We have the worst past of corruption... we are the worst environmentally, etc. I didn't hear ONE nice thing come out of his mouth about "Angelinos"
Now... don't get me wrong: I am far from a Pollyanna. I will admit some of what he said was TRUE... L.A. does have a rather poor record of PAST police corruption (read any of James Ellroy's novels, which are set in the seedy underbelly of LA power, politics and police - Or see the movie, "The Changeling" -true story!). And I also don't dispute that Los Angeles was STUPID when it went to CARS (thereby kicking the public transportations feet out from under it - see the documentary 'The End of Suburbia" as a vastly better explanation of how this all came about HISTORICALLY, and honestly where I think he ripped off some of his ideas) and NOW we are paying a high price to get some semblance of public transportation back, again. And while LA has many notorious murders... I am still not certain I would term the outlying "desert" area where the Manson Family farm still resides is as "the underground of LA" (literally digging up graves). And so the fact that he titled this episode "the Land of Manson" seemed well, quite honestly, a little outlandish. I also don't think Manson lived "underground" and besides for many of us the Tate murders, while undeniably tragic, happened before we were born... so we don't experience Los Angeles through some warped Manson murder lens (the way Wildman suggests)... Furthermore... I don't think LA is a haven for UFO sightings (isn't that distinction given to less populous areas in say rural Colorado?)... and so that whole "battle of LA" sequence was just oddly out of left field. The host (Don Wildman) went around making mountains of out mole hills... and "ooh-ing and ahh-ing" over NOTHING... and so it made the premise of the show seem silly and strange to anyone who has EVER lived for even a week in Los Angeles. I didn't recognize Don Wildman's Los Angeles Underworld... and I have lived in Los Angeles nearly all of my life (almost 40 years). I don't think I recognized it because this version of Los Angeles lives only in the fertile imagination of the producers/writers/host of this show. I think this episode should have been on the Sci Fi Channel, not the History Channel. What I mean is that in past shows (on Budapest or Berlin or London or New York) it always made me want to VISIT those places and envy the host for getting to go to some really cool underground locations (particularly in Rome) but for this LA focused episode the opposite seemed true for the host. I realize Los Angeles is not for everyone. But it is for some. And it is a pretty cool place to live, actually. And while as with most larger cities we have a dubious past and a complex narrative - it doesn't qualify Los Angeles as the pit of despair. OK?
# posted by ErinW @ 2:02 PM 
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