Training in writing expository prose. Instruction in expository writing in conjunction with reading literature. Satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement.

What is Hollywood from the point of view of those who live and work there? For Mike Davis, to be in the proximity of Hollywood “is to sever connection with national reality, to lose historical and experiential footing, to surrender critical distance, and to submerge oneself in spectacle and fraud.” In a city built to sustain America’s entertainment industry, one must live alongside the fantasies and spectacles that this country sells itself. However, the flip side of fantasy, as anyone who has ever lived in Los Angeles knows, is a grittier reality: an unglamourous infrastructure behind the scenes. In his 1939 novel, The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West expresses this bizarre point of view through the eyes of an east-coast transplant and set painter who finds himself entangled with an aspiring actress so “artificial” that he cannot look away: “Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. From in front, the stupid lines and grotesque situations would have made him squirm with annoyance, but because he saw the perspiring stagehands and the wires that held up the tawdry summerhouse with its tangle of paper flowers, he accepted everything and was anxious for it to succeed.” In this class, we will think about novels, almost-novels, reportage, films, and TV shows which try to understand the cliché-ridden enigma of Hollywood. We will take its so-called Golden Age as our starting point, proceeding to disparate outposts of cultural self-reflection and expression—from essays and novels about 1970s Hollywood (James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Eve Babitz) to TV shows about character actresses trying to sustain their careers (Kathy Griffin, Valerie Cherish, Tiffany “New York” Pollard). Rather than simply reaffirming the common knowledge that Hollywood is a fake place run by fake people, we will try to understand why someone like West's main character reacts so desperately to his behind-the-scenes look at one of Hollywood's many grotesque spectacles: “he accepted everything and was anxious for it to succeed.” What are the various delusions that keep Hollywood alive, and why do some people root for its success precisely because of its “spectacle and fraud”?

Requisites

• Satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing Requirement

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills