FebrFebruary
11 - 17, 2004FebrFebruary
11 - 17, 2004
photo by Chris
Zielin
Kevin Allardice
Mirror contributing writer
What better place to hold a conference on the mythology of Los Angeles, than at Mount St. Mary’s College? The campus is perched above the city like a modern-day Mount Olympus, looking down even on the surrounding mansions of Brentwood.
The C.G. Jung institute of Los Angeles—whose namesake was the Swiss psychologist who developed theories about a collective unconscious and collective archetypes—sponsored a conference on “Myths of L.A.” Saturday and Sunday, January 31 and February 1.
It brought together a diverse group of speakers, from Ph.D.’s to percussionists, natives and transplants, to analyze the collective mythology of our city and discuss how it affects our past, present and future.
Saturday morning, Nancy Furlotti, from the Jung Institute, opened the conference by briefly welcoming the crowd, comprised largely of academics, and noting that, when asked, “Why did you move to L.A.?” people usually said they moved here for the possibilities the city offers, for a new life, for the dream of Los Angeles.
It is in Los Angeles that people find new lives and identities within the collective dream of the city. Indeed, a recurring theme over the weekend was this dichotomy of the personal identity and — this being a Jungian event — the collective identity.
Jungian analyst and speaker Brad Tepaske made a bridge between the two by saying that Jung himself often had his patients draw model cities — because he saw their drawings as symbols of the individual. Surrounded, as we were, by mansions and luxury cars, this sounded pretty apt.
Tepaske quoted a number of relevant poems and songs, one of which was by Jim Morrison, whose life, Tepaske observed, became a symbol, a myth in and of itself. This idea of the individual being mythologized and turned into something larger than him or herself resonated later in the day when Morrison’s former Doors bandmate, drummer John Densmore, took the stage and recounted the early days of The Doors, a band that was both mythic and a myth-maker.
Occasionally abandoning the podium for a music stand and chair, Densmore underscored the theme of the individual identity within, and contributing to, the collective identity. Punctuating his stories with the occasional drum, bell, and tambourine, Densmore, a Santa Monica College alumnus, illustrated how ancient myths continue to affect us by telling the audience about how he embarassed himself by playing The Doors’ epic “The End”—a song with overt Oedipal themes — for his parents.
If this town of ours is, in fact, a symbol of ourselves, then we Angelenos can take pride in the fact that we truly broke the mold. UCLA professor of history Christopher Ganter described how Los Angeles has consistently defied the urban theories laid out by the Chicago school of sociologists in the 1920s. Apparently, no one could have imagined just what would spring up as Americans pushed west until they found the edge of the continent. And it still defies definition. Ganter went on to say that there is another dichotomy in the mythology of Los Angeles that people struggle with: sunshine versus noir. But, he pointed out, they are, in fact, complimentary, not contradictory. “Where the sun shines brightest,” Ganter said in a literally awe-inspiring soundbite, “the shadows are deepest.”
The second day of the conference was kicked off by a woman standing in the back of the theater who ardently criticized Arlene Landau’s lecture “Aphrodite’s Shadow in Beverly Hills and Hollywood,” claiming that the thesis expressed by Landau, who holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies, was invalid.
It is possible that the woman was just aggravated, as we all were, by the disappearance of the coffee (which had been relocated to the front of the theater) and the hot water for tea (which was hidden in the back row of the theater, just under the spotlight). After word-of-mouth spread about where to find the very elusive caffeine, the audience reconvened to listen to the very allusive Michael Ventura.
A noted L.A. columnist, author and high school teacher, Ventura read from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon and Nathaniel West’s oft-referenced The Day of the Locust, and pointed out that “all the world’s a stage” is a far cry from “all the world’s a set.” Touching on the phenomenon of individuals attempting to find their personal identity in the city, he pointed out that in order to find yourself, you must know what you’re looking for.
“We live in a collective dream,” he said. We cannot blame it on consumerism or capitalism, because “collectively, we made this world.”
So what does Los Angeles, our own model city drawn on the grandest scale, say about us? If the city is a symbol for the self, then what can we learn about the individual by looking at the collective?
Well, if nothing else, Los Angeles is a city intent on self-analysis, be it the vanity of a young starlet checking her reflection in a tinted car window or the inquisitiveness of a group of Jungians gathering to check the city’s collective reflection in the tinted car window of its mythology.
Mural of Jim Morrison, by Rip Cronk, 1991. On Speedway at 18th Court in Venice.
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