Below please find several questions based on the chapter we read from Miriam Greenberg’s Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World, written by your classmate, Emma Karin Eriksson. Respond to at least one of these with a comment of a paragraph or more.
Throughout this class we have seen the repeated attempts by the bigwigs of New York City do everything in their power to push the “less desired” out of Manhattan. Whether it is ignoring their pleas for work and food, calling them mindless animals, or systematically pushing them further and further away from the center. In “Welcome to Fear City” we are given definitive proof of how far some were willing to go to reclaim NYC for those at the top.
- First, in the past unions used walk-offs and strikes to bring awareness to lay-offs or unfair contracts and the like. ‘Fear City’ was a new type of tactic the unions deployed to hit NYC where it hurt. Why was the the campaign so successful in relation to the image City Hall was trying to conjure about NYC? What was the “Holmes doctrine” and how was it used to silence the unions through “legal” means, how is it similar to the violent strike breaking methods once used by city bosses?
- Second, Roger Starr proposed a “planned shrinkage” for the city of New York to help it manage finances and reputation. What were Starr’s justifications for this “planned shrinkage” and what did he say NYC would gain from it? What did this “urban triage” entail? How did the use of rhetoric factor into the cover up of these obviously racist and classist moves made by the city against its own people?
- Third, a good deal of the article focuses on the boom of underground art that occurred in the 1970s. How did movements such as hip-hop act as a form of resistance to the powers that be? Explain the idea behind “lifestyle crimes” and how they were viewed by the public as just-as-bad as the newly coined “misdemeanor homicides.”
- How and why were the “New York Movies” both a boom and a bust for NYC? Explain how their rise to prominence in the box offices backed up the claims made by the “Fear City” campaign. How did the city crumbling under the weight of ignorant government officials set the stage for a new form of moving image exploitation? What were the repercussions of these exploitation films on NYC?
History of New York City 
OMG! “PLANNED SHRINKAGE!” This is what I used to argue about in the bars of New York with neanderthal NY’ers. When Starr’s comments became public I was justified but I still couldn’t believe that he had the audacity to express these antediluvian and anti-social beliefs on paper. It was bad enough to think in this Spencerian, ‘survival of the fittest’ manner but to put it in ink, that was crazy. Or maybe not…Isn’t this what actually transpired? Look at Manhattan now…Jesus, look at Brooklyn Heights, Red Hook, Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint!
Unions saw that real change was not going to happen with their previous methods. They needed to modernize, strategize, and demonstrate their ability to organize in a new way. The idea for Fear City relied on new procedures; it saw the power in a single visual image. The author mentions the power of branding that began in the 1960’s. Fear City preyed on the masses by delivering a memorable, impactful image, and in this case, a message of discontent and anger. They didn’t need to picket, they were sending a powerful sense of uneasiness throughout the city, which was naturally met with great resistance from City Hall. Furthermore, the Beame administration didn’t want this message to continue spreading, and went to great lengths to manage the distribution of the pamphlet. One way in which Beame tried to crack down on the issue was with the Holmes doctrine, which concluded, “the right to free speech could be abridged if the speech presented a ‘clear and present danger.’” (Greenberg, 137) Greenberg gives the example of yelling “Fire” in a crowded place, and how when it comes to the safety of the public, free speech must have guidelines. Fear City was of course categorized as just that—free speech gone awry, something that had to be contained and stopped. It was an interesting use of visual imagery and fear, two things that people generally respond very strongly to. The unions knew they had to get the city’s attention, and they did by creating frenzy around a pamphlet. The facts printed within it had the ability to spread panic and paranoia, and the government knew they had to keep that under control, or New York City would begin to live up to the idea of Fear City.
Second, Roger Starr proposed a “planned shrinkage” for the city of New York to help it manage finances and reputation. What were Starr’s justifications for this “planned shrinkage” and what did he say NYC would gain from it? What did this “urban triage” entail? How did the use of rhetoric factor into the cover up of these obviously racist and classist moves made by the city against its own people?
Roger Starr, the head of the New York City Housing and Development Administration (HDA), noted in 1976 that “the central fact of New York’s financial crisis is that the city government does not have enough wealth to sustain the city at the level to which its citizens have been accustomed.” He argued that the burden of reduced services should be borne, not by the wealthiest, but by the poorest districts: that poor, troubled areas with heavy concentrations of minorities should be left to wither and die, and that their resources should be transferred to the central business districts, popular tourist destinations, and white, upper-middle-class areas of the city. Starr openly admitted that one of his aims was to “stop the Puerto Ricans and rural blacks from living in the city … Our urban system is based on the theory of taking the peasant and turning him into an industrial worker. Now there are no industrial jobs. Why not keep him a peasant?” One of the main components of the “planned shrinkage” drive was the “Blighted Areas Plan,” by which neighborhoods displaying “visual signs of decay” could be tagged with the zoning category of “blight” and thus be taken over by developers. The legal stigmatization of these neighborhoods meant that they would could be “redlined” – treated as financial lepers, their credit rating lowered, their loans stopped, and their properties made impossible to maintain. If their residents would not or could not leave, Starr advocated city sponsorship of “population transfers” that would relocate them. By driving poor minorities from the city (“shrinking” the population needing services), and by reconverting their properties to lucrative business enterprises, the city could focus on developing its wealthier areas and thus protecting its reputation from the Fear City campaign and its general image crisis. Starr used the rhetoric of classism, elitism, Social Darwinism, and racism to justify this vicious policy. He argued that, just as corporations eliminated unprofitable plants, the city would gain by eliminating its “problem children,” jettisoning the poorest and weakest to “lighten its load.” He argued that the city’s “entitlement spending,” its efforts to care for the least successful of its members, had led to the financial crisis, and that the continued existence and visibility of poor minority neighborhoods “blighted” the city’s image in the eyes of the nation and the world. The city’s “image,” its “brand,” was already considered to be as important a factor in its wealth and well-being as its reality. Starr presented this destruction of neighborhoods as an economic necessity, as “euthanasia” for the areas that were more trouble than they were worth. Of course, the effects of planned shrinkage in the real world were anything but benign. When the HDA stopped building new public housing, weakened its support for existing housing, and sold off much public land that it could not keep up, and blocked the flow of investment money into these areas, and when all of these actions were combined with continuing job loss and inflation, landlords and renters alike could no longer manage their upkeep. Many buildings were simply deserted, but others were burnt down so that landlords could collect insurance. Fire blazed through the Bronx unchecked by firemen, and crime blazed through the Bronx and the city as a whole unchecked by policemen. The journalist Michael Daly later recalled, “It was the era of what the police called ‘misdemeanor homicides.’ And if you weren’t killed in Manhattan below 125th Street, it really didn’t count.” Eventually, “planned shrinkage” resulted in working-and middle-class whites, not minorities, leaving the city en masse.
Why was ‘Fear City’ such a successful campaign?
Ask any Madison avenue executive or sociologist about the power of an image and its use in ‘branding’. One picture in the NY Times showing a Vietnamese woman holding a dead baby was worth 1 million words in stopping a war- and 1 drawing of a black and white skull with a simple alliterative title sent a chill down the spine of the collective world. 40 years later and the image is still chilling.
In addition to the power of the image, the campaign was so effective because of its source. It wasn’t a disgruntled unemployed dockworker complaining-it was the NYPD- the group that foreigners looked to for protection and information.The message didn’t seem to be about the city -rather-from the city.
In addition- let’s not overlook that the campaign was largely stopped- there were not millions of leaflets distributed -thanks to the perversion of the justice system- and the abuse of the Holmes doctrine- allowing a possible loss of tourism to be seen as an imminent threat to life and limb so-how did Europeans hear about this campaign-not in an advertisement-but on the nightly news! and that undoubtedly lent an air of legitimacy to the claims of the pamphlet -even if on an subconscious level.
Strike breaking, union busting or abuse of the legal system- these are all tools that are available to the powers that be -and are not available to the common man. There seems to be a persistent belief throughout time that men in power have that they are above the law- not just the written law but the higher moral ones as well. There is a sense whether from the Tweeds or the Robber Barons or the NYC Mayors office that their wishes are for the greater good and if a few eggs are broken-well that’s the cost of an omelet- and that if future masses will eat the omelet -eventually-so it’s all alright. In the wording of ‘planned shrinkage’ it’s hard to distinguish if Starr is speaking of the death of a neighborhood or of its’ occupants. One is sad the other is hellish. I don’t think that it’s hard to distinguish because of the wording-I think it’s hard to distinguish because the authors of planned shrinkage didn’t care- let the neighborhood die, or let the people die-either way the city gets good real estate to build on
To our modern world of political correctness and instant news from every corner of the globe- there is currently a level of aloofness that is treated as culpability- and that’s all for the good. Enlightenment forces us to be more responsible guardians of society. Today, if you don’t care about third world hunger- you’re a villain. If you don’t care about the rights of women-you’re a misogynist. If you don’t care about the rights of minorities- you’re a racist. In earlier times – it was easier to insulate yourself from the horrors of the world-especially if you lived in a wealthy neighborhood, worked in a fancy office and breakfasted at the country club. Even in the modern world- The Bronx’s burning -wasn’t urgent to President Carter- until he visited it. Perhaps if Starr had a few hungry kids at his breakfast table and Robert Moses had a family that was made homeless by the Cross Bronx Expressway sharing his bathroom history would read a little more humanely.
How and why were the “New York Movies” both a boom and a bust for NYC? …?
Because of the “Abandoned Movie Set” feel of the city at the time Hollywood returned to shoot on location in New York City. But of course the only movies they were inspired to make on location just further perpetuated the apocalyptic image of NYC. It’s actually kind of funny that Lindsay created the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting to encourage the industry to come to the city. They were basically producing “Fear City” pamphlets on steroids, and showing them to audiences in theaters all over the country. I don’t understand why the leaders of the city didn’t see that. In the reading it states, “the city bent over backwards to entice Hollywood filmmakers to make apocalyptic blockbusters…while reacting with such vehemence to low budget, home grown movements like Fear City.” Hindsight really is 20/20, I know, but these movies must have done terrible things for tourism!