The subway embodies its quotidian qualities it is associated with work, daily routine, and the average citizen. In general, different subterranean spaces carry associations with different aspects of the complex attributes of the underground. This paper argues that the symbolic meaning of the London Underground, more than those of other metropolitan subway systems, perfectly matches the primary meaning that subways possess as a cultural, and, especially, a cinematic space. When seen within the framework of alien invasion, the attacks remain as incomprehensible as their “alien” perpetrators. Against this background, it is striking that one of the first high-budget Hollywood productions that was explicitly marketed as a 9/11-related film chose the alien invasion genre to reflect the anxieties of present-day America: Steven Spielberg’s "War of the Worlds" (2005) uses the figure of the sub-human invader as an allegorical substitute for real-life threats and foes, thereby shifting the focus away from both the actual perpetrators and the complex political prehistory of the attacks. The cinematic analogy soon extended to the domain of real politics: traces of science fiction may be detected in the very concept of the “alien terrorist” itself. The perceived analogy between the incidents of 9/11 and the alien invasion genre not only concerned the affected targets – American landmark buildings – but also the perpetrators, whose radical alterity was strongly emphasized in official discourse. When witnesses on the scene of the 11 September 2001 attacks in Manhattan stated that the event had seemed “like a movie,” Roland Emmerich’s 1996 blockbuster "Independence Day" was among the most frequently mentioned films. The Apollonian 5, special issue on “The City Plays Itself” (2018): 51-69. The slum occupies an urban borderland, no longer physically central but instead figuring the fraught and permeable periphery of fortified urbanity. The second section treats science fictional slums after 9/11, where the slum remains associated with various undergrounds, but this time migratory, environmental, and digital in form. Here, the dominant tropes of urban representation include: the underground and underground space in both their physical and their cultural senses new forms of sociality available to (or forced upon) the first generation to grow up within the nuclear condition and the transformative effects of corrupt authority within urban space. The first section treats science fictional slums from the late ’60s through the end of the Cold War. ![]() This article studies the emergence of the slum as a setting within a specific film genre-science fiction-where it plays a significant if not frequently remarked function, from the late 1960s until the present day. Slums are where cinema and urban imaginaries more generally have long located and visualized whatever does not fit within social norms and middle-class society. ![]() The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance of such analysis to our understanding of globalizing cities.įilmmakers have long used the slum setting to frame visually struggles over urban space. The case of Satwa perfectly captures what can be termed the Dubai paradox, containing as it does both utopic and dystopic conditions, and as such, it evokes a poignant sense of realness and humanity, a recurring theme within the utopian discourse of science fiction. Satwa is revealing because of its outsider status, its proximity to glamorous new developments, and the currently stalled effort to replace it according to a utopian urban renewal plan. Following a discussion of the role of dystopia in urban studies and science fiction, the article shifts to an investigation of Dubai, focusing on its marginalized district of Satwa. The movie is pertinent since it relies on existing locales in Shanghai, Dubai and Seattle, rather than stage sets, and thus evokes a future that is thoroughly grounded in the present. Using the premise of Code 46 - a science fiction film whose setting blends existing cities and locales to envision a global metropolis - the article argues that the city of Dubai is emblematic of its imagined dystopian future.
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