There has always been a need for people to vent frustration. Nowhere is this more true than in city life. Everyone has been angry while in a traffic jam, or been unable to get somewhere because it was too far away. Many artists use the metaphoric destruction of a city as a catharsis when they are stressed by the city. Thus, the "Literary destruction of Los Angeles."
However, I strongly disagree that L.A. is the easy scapegoat for destruction. As a person who studies film as the literature of our time, I have noticed that instead New York is the source for most filmmakers' ire. New York is, in my opinion, the Anti-L.A. While L.A. is more of an easy going place, New York is the quitessential busy town.
In earlier films, L.A. was the nearest big city to nuclear testing sites, and thusly was often destroyed by giant arachnids. Now, our fears lie in crime and a lack of community, and New York is seen as the perfect example of too much of both.
I like to use Escape from New York as a film example of this case. In the film, the city is so crime ridden that it is easier to remove the honest citizens than the criminals, so a big wall is put around the city, and it is made a prison. This shows how great the fear of crime is in our society. It also shows a characteristic of American society. Rather than find a way to stop crime, we try and contain it. We don't look for causes to problems, and are left worse off for that fact.
Hollywood also turns out modern love stories set in New York. They seem to show that no matter how great the people around you are, in the city, you are alone. Two people must go through a trying (and alwys amusing) event before they realize their love for one another. In other settings, the two people are already in love, and must face the trying times together.
The odious nature of the fictional New York may well be part of an L.A.-N.Y. rivalry, since most filmmakers live in the City of Angels. New York is not the "Urine soaked Hellhole" (or should I say Pee-pee soaked Heckhole) that it is made out to be, but so many people think it is that it might as well be. It is easy to create a scapegoat. There must be such a place so that people can say, "It may be bad here, but at least it's not New York."
That being said, both L.A. and New York have a certain mystique that belies the fact that they should not be. Many people in the Midwest were outraged that Fargo lampooned our accent and way of life, but show New York full of crime and corruption, or Los Angelinos having indiscriminate sex all of the time, and we say, 'Oh, but that's how things really are there." People don't want their fantastical view of anything challenged. We all secretly cheer the destruction of big cities, because we see them as everything that is wrong with our society as a whole.
When giant radioactive ants destroy L.A., we will then see the folly of nuclear testing. When New York falls to the criminals and the corrupt cops, the rest of us will open our eyes and take back our own cities. The problem is that when we see New York and Los Angeles, we see our own city in our own way. We see the crime and the traffic, we see the lack of comminity and the lack of green space. Deep down, we are all animals, and we want to be free. We need fields in which to frolic, and people with whom to frolic. So when we see an image of the big bad city, we are saddened a little that we couldn't have evolved in a way that keeps people together and carefree. We are sad that we must live in a big city, and fear the future when the Earth, like Coruscant from Star Wars, is covered in one big city, with nary a park or field in sight. When we see New York and L.A, we see our own city.
And we want to blow the Hell out of it.
I'm Ken Feucht, and I'm headed for a big, snow covered mountain.