Britta Wheeler
Times Square
I have recently moved to a neighborhood in Manhattan called “Hell’s Kitchen”
Some people prefer to call it “Times Square West.”
On my way to and from my apartment I travel through Times Square because the closest subway lines run along Broadway. Otherwise, I try to avoid going to Times Square as much as I can. I find it overwhelming, and somewhat appalling. As a cultural theorist, however, I also find it interesting and have begun to develop an analysis of this place.
I am working on two related themes that may explain Times Square as an urban psycho-social geography and the effect it evokes in the individuals who participate in its street life.
1) The fact of advertising as architecture
and 2) how the “attention of distraction” manifests as a predominant way of engaging with media-infused urban environments.
They are related.
When architecture overwhelms the individual, such as in Haussman’s Paris, theorists claim that the individual is subsumed to the State.
In the case of Times Square, the architecture is overwhelming, but not in the traditional sense of grand scale buildings and large avenues that dwarf the individual.
Rather, Times Square architecture is really advertising.
The advertising is architectural.
The old signage still exists: Planter’s Peanuts, Maxwell House coffee, suggesting sentiments of a simpler time.
The new signage is really television: moving images, video, digital displays, words and numbers in constant pace, Dow reports, News reports.
This is the New Times Square.
The old Times Square used to be the seedy prime location for sex shops and prostitutes. Money exchanged for sex was sinful then.
The New Times Square is about a different kind of commercialism. A different seediness, where sex is packaged in clean form for families and tourists.
When advertising becomes architecture, the urban participant is overwhelmed by the shape and content of the building surfaces and rapid pace of the movement of their messages.
Times Square has always been a place of a lot of lights and night life activities: Broadway theater, burlesque shows, etc.
Distraction is the type of attention needed, demanded, to go to Times Square.
People look for distractions.
To live in a place like this, one becomes accustomed to its absurdity and the crowds. One also becomes accustomed to the level of focused attention required to stay attentive to one’s goal to get through this space to get to work and to get home.
To move through this neighborhood on a daily basis can be frustrating.
Tourists knowingly, or unknowingly, embrace the attention of distraction: moving slowly, blocking sidewalks, looking up at the moving images and lights that vie for their attention.
There is also a sense of excitement in being a part of the center of the entertainment world. I get to walk by the theaters that are in the news. See the signs that are piece of the hype around major film releases and Broadway openings.
I get to walk down “Good Morning America Way” past the window where the morning news show happens.
I get to see the kids outside of MTV voting for their top bands on the show, TRL.
It makes you feel like you are, in some small way, part of something larger, massive, something popular that people are interested in, something that gives them meaning.
My interests, however, have always tended toward underground culture: punk rock and performance art, or things that were more refined like museum culture and art films. Therefore, this neighborhood is a challenge for me.
To embrace the popular on this everyday street level is for me, not to join in, but to try to understand the meaning of it as an objective phenomenon.
I live in a carnival. Everyday, the carnival changes, and everyday the carnival becomes mundane.
