CoP Task 2 - Cities and Film

From what is written in both James Donalds and Frederick Stouts essay writings I can make a basic assumption about what they have both written about and the context that both of the texts were written in, Stout writes about how the city effects the people and lives of the people who live in it, he talks about how the people lived and worked and tries to get a realistic view of what the lower classes compared to the upper classes live like. Whereas Donald looks at the theory of the city as a more dominating presence, he talks about how the city effects the people living in it and what it does in respect to the human identity.

Cinema is a media topic that gets look at in particular by Donald, he looks and evaluates how it blurs the line between the class divisions and upsets the balance between what is supposed to be socially accepted and what is not. The actual act of going to the cinema is something again the blurs the line between the classes, it bunched everyone and forced them to have to go and sit together to be able to experience that that is the cinema, because of the constant fashion chase during this period of time, it was desirable for the lower classes to constantly strive to be like the upper classes, this involved trying to look like, talk like, act like and do everything that the upper classes seemed to do and since they were  going to the cinema, this is what they were going to do too. This may be part of what the writings are generally talking about as the city can be seen to be this sort of place that makes people want to be better than their neighbours and to try and clamber above each other to be able to stand out in a overpopulated shallow world. In a way, what is assessed and evaluated in these writing can be applied to todays world because nothing has changed, technology has just gotten better and created a cyber space to be able to do this in than the actual physical act of going in to a town centre to try to be better than everyone else.

In conclusion both theorists seem to have a very negative view on the city as a concept, especially Donald who does not view the actual act of photography to be as much of an important form of creating artwork that Stout does. Stout, though seems to think that photography is an art form and does not see the city as as much of a drain on humanity as Donald does, does seem to think that photography is indeed a necessary truth that needs to be told especially to be able to see how the lower and middle classes live and the divide that is so apparent to people that experience it.