Representations and imaginaries of cities in the opening sequences of three U.S. TV series: The Sopranos, Weeds and House of Cards
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The opening sequence of a series or film acts as a preamble that encapsulates various key elements of the plot or presents aesthetic and iconographic features that appear in the story. In this research, we analyze the representation of the modern-day American city in the opening sequences of three recent series that were very well received: The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007), Weeds (Showtime, 2005-2012) and House of Cards (Netflix, 2013-2018). To this end, we characterize the urban spaces presented in these intros, analyzing how their different elements are represented and used, the differences (or not) between “reality” and fiction, as regards their spatial and urban layout, together with the projection in the media of the different urban contexts. The Sopranos and House of Cards offer a brief, but highly detailed, picture of two world-famous metropolises (New York and Washington DC) and their different functional aspects. Weeds, and to some extent The Sopranos, offer the viewer an insight into suburban areas, as an example of urban sprawl in idealized family residential areas. These images are in sharp contrast with the cultural, historical Washington portrayed in House of Cards. In this way, the three opening sequences present and help create many of the stereotype images that make up our collective imaginary of the urban landscape of the East and West coast of the United States.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
References
Abbott, P. (2013). The First Bad “Hidden-Hand” President: Ulysses S. Grant. In P. Abbot, Bad Presidents. Failure in the White House (pp. 115-131). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306593_7
Aertsen, V., Gámir, A., & Manuel, C. (2018). La imagen cinematográfica de la Plaza Mayor de Madrid. Ciudad y Territorio: Estudios Territoriales, 50(197), 539-566. https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/CyTET/article/view/76681/46997
Anacker, K.B. (2021). U.S. suburbs and the global COVID-19 pandemic: from cleanscapes to safescapes 2.0? The case of the New York metropolitan area. Urban Geography, 43(8). https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.2003608
Anderson, M.B. (2010). The discursive regime of the “American Dream” and the new suburban frontier: The case of Kendall County, Illinois. Urban Geography, 31(8), 1080-1099. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.31.8.1080
Antoniazzi, S. (2019). La ciudad filmada: cine, espacio e historia urbana. Biblio3W, XXIV(1260). https://doi.org/10.1344/b3w.0.2019.27278
Augé, M. (2000). Los no lugares. Espacios del anonimato. Una antropología de la sobremodernidad. Gedisa Editorial.
Barranha, H. (2008). Views from above: cinema and urban iconography after Google Earth. In Cities in Film: Architecture, urban space and the moving image (pp. 44-48). Conference proceedings. Liverpool, March 26-28. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/architecture/images-research/cityinfilm/downloads/Cities_in_Film_2008_Proceedings.pdf
Baudrillard, J. (1987). América. Anagrama.
Bednarek, M. (2014). ‘And they all look just the same’? A quantitative survey of television title sequences. Visual Communication, 13(2): 125-145. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357213507509
Bickford-Smith, V. (2013). Cinematic Cities: A ‘Film and History’ Overview for South Africa's Major Metropolises from the 1890s to the 1950s. Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(3), 681-699. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2013.823064
Blancas Álvarez, S. (2016). Animando los títulos cinematográficos: de los pioneros a Saul Bass. Con A de Animación, 6, 118-134. https://doi.org/10.4995/caa.2016.4800
Bourdon, J. (2008) Imperialism, self-inflicted? On the Americanization of television in Europe. In W. Uricchio (Ed.), We Europeans?: media, representations, identities (pp. 93-108). Intellect Books Ldt.
Bradshaw, L. (2013). Showtime’s ‘female problem’: cancer, quality and motherhood. Journal of Consumer Culture, 13(2), 160-177. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540513480169
Clapp, J.A. (2009). Streets of Gold: Immigrants in the City and the Cinema. Visual Anthropology, 22(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/08949460802525694
Coate, B., Verhoeven, D., & Davidson, A. (2017) The Cinema Cities Index: comparing urban cinema cultures around the world. Media International Australia, 163, 163-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X17693931
Dobbs, M. (1989). House of Cards. HarperCollins.
Fichera, F. (2018). Racconti delle periferia d’Italia. Il ritorno al cinema della Suburra. H-ermes. Journal of Communication, 13, 121-130. https://doi.org/10.1285/i22840753n13p121
Flückiger, B., & Fahlenbrach, K. (2014). Immersive entryways into televisual worlds. Affective and aesthetic functions of title sequences in quality series. Projections, 8(1), 83-104 https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-102252
Gallardo, M., & García-Reyes, D. (2018). Exploring Chile: Identities and their relation with the environment through the Film Football Stories. Journal of Geography, 117(5), 205-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221341.2018.1430163
Gámir Orueta, A. (2012). La consideración del espacio geográfico y el paisaje en el cine. Scripta Nova, XVI(403). http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-403.htm
Giardina, M.D. (2005) The popular racial order of urban America: Sport, identity, and the politics of culture. Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 5(2), 145-173. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708604274300
Goh, C. (2018). The cyborgian limit? Opening sequences as cultural analyses. KOME, International Journal of Pure Communication Inquiry, 6(1), 75-93. https://doi.org/10.17646/KOME.2018.15
Hallam, J. (2010) Film, space and place: researching a city in film. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 8(3), 277-296. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2010.499768
Harris, A., Xanthos, S.J., Galiotos, J.K., & Douvris, C. (2018). Investigation of the metal content of sediments around the historically polluted Potomac River basin in Washington D.C., United States, by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Microchemical Journal, 142, 140-143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microc.2018.06.033
Harvey, D. (2013). Ciudades rebeldes: Del derecho a la ciudad a la revolución urbana. Akal.
Herberz, M, Hahnel, U.J.J., & Brosch, T. (2020). The importance of consumer motives for green mobility: a multi-modal perspective. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 139, 102-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2020.06.021
Klecker, C. (2015) The other kind of film frames: a research report on paratexts in film. Word & Image, 31(4), 402-413. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2015.1053035
Koob, N. (2019). You don’t have to call us home, but please stay here: the city film commission. In J. Andersson & L. Weeb (Eds.). The city in the American cinema. Film and postindustrial culture (pp. 125-152). Bloomsbury.
Lefebvre, H. (2003). The urban revolution. University of Minnessota Press.
Li, D., Zhou, X., & Wang, M. (2018). Analyzing and visualizing the spatial interactions between tourists and locals: a Flickr study in ten US cities. Cities, 74, 249-258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.12.012
Lima, C. (2008). Filmic Narratives of the City. In Cities in Film: Architecture, urban space and the moving image (pp. 135-141). Conference proceedings. Liverpool, March 26-28. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/architecture/images-research/cityinfilm/downloads/Cities_in_Film_2008_Proceedings.pdf
Lukinbeal, C. (2004). The map the precedes the territory: An introduction to essays in cinematic geography. Geojournal, 59, 247-251. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:GEJO.0000026698.99658.53
Marshall, S. (2004). The Meadowlands Before the Commission: Three Centuries of Human Use and Alteration of the Newark and Hackensack Meadows. Urban Habitats, 2(1), 4-27. https://www.urbanhabitats.org/v02n01/3centuries_full.html
Martens, E. (2020) From The Harder They Come to Yardie. The Reggae-Ghetto Aesthetics of the Jamaican Urban Crime Film. Interventions, 22(1), 71-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2019.1659160
Mathews, V. (2010) Set appeal: film space and urban redevelopment. Social & Cultural Geography, 11(2), 171-190. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360903514400
Meissner, M. (2012). Portraying the Global Financial Crisis: Myth, Aesthetics, and the City. NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies, 1, 98-125. https://necsus-ejms.org/portraying-the-global-financial-crisis-myth-aesthetics-and-the-city/
Moylan, K. (2019). Mediating the real: Treme’s activated aesthetic. Critical Studies in Television, 14(3), 307-321. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749602019854366
Nichols, B. (2022). In the beginning. Studies in Documentary Film, 16(1), 83-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2021.1877525
Njambi, W.N, & O’Brien, W.E. (2021) Hollywood imagines urban Africa, and it’s as bad as you think. Social Dynamics, 47(1), 83-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2021.1899736
Picarelli, E. (2013). Aspirational paratexts: the case of “quality openers” in TV promotion. Frames Cinema Journal. http://framescinemajournal.com/article/aspirational-paratexts-the-case-of-quality-openers-in-tv-promotion-2/
Pötzsch, H. (2012). Framing narratives: Opening sequences in contemporary American and British war films. Media, War & Conflict, 5(2), 155-173. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635212440918
Pozueta Echavarri, J., Lamíquiz Daudén, F.J., & Porto Schettino, M. (2009). La ciudad paseable.
Recomendaciones para la consideración de los peatones en el planeamiento, el diseño urbano y la arquitectura. CEDEX, Ministerio de Fomento.
Roe, J.H. (2019). The Headwaters of a River of Failure: Detroit as an Icon of American Decline. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 21(7). https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3661
Rosati, C. (2007). Media Geographies: uncovering the spatial politics of images. Geography Compass, 1(5), 995-1014. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00053.x
Sadler, W.J., & Haskins, E.V. (2005). Metonymy and the Metropolis: Television show settings and the image of New York city. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29, 195-216. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0196859905275971
Scheel, E. (2004, April 8). Indians left their mark in naming landmarks. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2004/04/08/indians-left-their-mark-in-naming-landmarks/3e0537e8-6ed9-45cc-958d-d8ab8e83349b/
Scolari, C.A. (2013). Narrativas transmedia: Cuando todos los medios cuentan. Deusto.
Sigler, T., & Albandoz, R.I. (2014) Beyond Representation: Film as a Pedagogical Tool in Urban Geography. Journal of Geography, 113(2), 58-67. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221341.2013.764918
Toffler, A. (1980). The Third Wave. William Morrow.
United States Census Bureau (2020). New Jersey. https://data.census.gov/cedsci/profile?g=0400000US34
Wenzell, T. (2017). Ecocriticism, The Sopranos, and the wasteland of North Jersey. Ecopsychology, 9(3), 154-160. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2016.0032
Zimmermann, S. (2007). Media Geographies: Always part of the Game. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, 1, 59-62.