Los Angeles is famous for its sunny weather, for the Hollywood film studios and for being the residence of the rich and beautiful. And although - or, precisely because - all this is more illusion than reality, the city frequently serves as setting for various pieces of fiction. However, Los Angeles does not only play a huge role in the media, but since lately also in the realm of urban studies. Having long been a kind of ‘outsider’ in the field, it is now regarded as a prototypical example for urban development by the L.A. School. In this context, its image is less sunny and positive, but reveals a deep-rooted racism against Latin-American immigrants in combination with a fortress mentality on the part of its white population as well as a unique urban ecology, in which natural catastrophes seem to be regular occurrences. This paper intends to outline the significance of Los Angeles in urban studies and trace the thereby acquired findings in a fictional representation of the city: T.C. Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain. In the process, it is shown how urban conditions, racism and nature, especially in the form of ecological disasters, intersect and influence each other.

Textprobe: Kapitel 4, T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain: 4.1,Arroyo Blanco: The Fortress Community: T.C. Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain seizes the urban reality of white flight, of segregationist settlement patterns and suburbanization penetrating deeper and deeper into the mountains within the Los Angeles region. In this respect, the novel’s white protagonists, the Mossbachers, live in the private community ‘Arroyo Blanco Estates’ (Boyle 30) in ‘Topanga Canyon’ (ibid. 32), ‘which extends northwards from the Pacific coast into […] the Santa Monica Mountains […] between Santa Monica and Malibu’ (Freese 222 f.). The houses within the community are all built in ‘the Spanish Mission style” (Boyle 30), the orange roof optional with a ‘Navajo trim’ (ibid.). However, not only the built environment, but moreover nature is here marked by Spanish designations, such as ‘arroyo’, ‘canyon’, or ‘chaparral’ (cf. Schäfer-Wünsche 406). And also ‘some Native American place-names survive in Spanish spellings of the original sounds: ‘Topanga, […] Malibu’’ (Cruz 74), and so on. The predominance and mixing of Spanish and Native American words thus reflects L.A.’s complex history of migrations and conquests. So because the name of the community already ‘betrays that it is erected on land that was once Spanish and then Mexican’ (Freese 223), the use of the Spanish language is highly ironic in this context. After all, Arroyo Blanco is indeed blanco, that is, all-white. No Spanish is spoken here, except by maids and construction workers, and the latter get to build the gate and the wall that are supposed to keep them out (Schäfer-Wünsche 407). That the fictional homogeneous, suburban community seeks to construct also additional, namely material, barriers in the form of a gate and wall as a response to the emerging ‘postsuburbia’ and the re-Latinization of Los Angeles, again perfectly mirrors urban reality. And, as in real life, the wealthy homeowners nevertheless rely on their immigrant servants. Thus, also the Mossbachers have a housemaid, ‘Orbalina, whose English [is] limited to a response to the six or seven most common scullery commands” (Boyle 271). Of course, a certain irony lies furthermore in the fact that the wall and gate are built by illegal Mexicans - exactly those people the Arroyo Blanco residents want to exclude by enclosing their community. However, these are not the only measures by which the community exercises control. In this sense, the powerful homeowner association lays down specific rules and restrictions, for example concerning the design of the houses: If you wanted to paint your house sky-blue or Provençal-pink with lime-green shutters, you were perfectly welcome to move into the San Fernando Valley or to Santa Monica or anywhere else you chose, but if you bought into Arroyo Blanco Estates, your house would be white and your roof orange (ibid. 30). Thus, the principal of democratic freedom is here significantly constrained by the community’s ‘private government’. Accordingly, the latter is also very anti-communal and does not feel any responsibility for others. This is especially expressed by Jack Jardine, ‘the president of the Arroyo Blanco Estates Property Owners’ Association’ (ibid. 15) and Delaney Mossbacher’s ‘right wing alter ego’ (Meyerson 71), who refuses to pay taxes for anyone else: ‘Do you have any idea what these people are costing us, and not just in terms of crime, but in real tax dollars for social services?’ (Boyle 102). Thereby, the fact that ‘the wealthy are […] sucking the ordinary tax payers dry is turned into [the image of] the vampiristic immigrant sucking dry the homeowner” (Meyerson 75) in the narrative. On one of the ‘bimonthly meeting[s] of the property owner’s association’ (Boyle 39), also the gate issue is discussed. While self-appointed ‘liberal humanist’ (ibid. 3) Delaney at first opposes the idea of a gate, which he thinks of as ‘an absurdity, intimidating and exclusionary, antidemocratic even’ (ibid. 41), his neighbors are principally in favor of it: [All] Delaney’s neighbors could talk about […] was gates. A gate, more specifically. To be erected at the main entrance and manned by a twenty-four-hour guard to keep out those very gangbangers, taggers and carjackers they’d come here to escape (ibid. 39). And in the course of the novel, also Delaney will more and more approve of the gate, adapting all the racist attitudes of his neighbors. But in the beginning of the narrative, his main reason for his flight into suburbia seems to be his desire to live near nature, ‘separated from the city and wedded to the mountains’ (ibid. 63). In contrast to this ‘rural feel’ (ibid.), he perceives the city as a ‘single endless plane of parallel boulevards, houses, mini-malls and streetlights’ (ibid.) spreading ‘ad infinitum’ (ibid.) into the wild. This view perfectly matches L.A.’s polynucleated outline and agglomeration of suburbs. However, belying Delaney’s intention for living in suburbia, Davis notes: The real impetus for this movement to the hills is no longer love of the great outdoors or frontier rusticity, but […] the search for absolute ‘thickets of privacy’ outside the dense fabric of common citizenship and urban life (Davis, ‘Ecology’ 141). Congruously, while Delaney sees himself as a ‘pilgrim’ (Boyle 76) and pioneer, most white people in the novel have other reasons for moving to privatopia: ‘They all wanted something […] rural, safe - something removed from […] the hordes of immigrants pouring in from Mexico and Central America” (ibid. 107). Thus, as in real life, urban fear and the search for safety and social homogeneity are the main causes for white flight in The Tortilla Curtain. How suburbanization pushes ever forward into the wilderness, privatizes nature and thus destroys public space, is also reflected by Delaney’s wife, real estate agent Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher: ‘Everything was new out here, a burgeoning, bustling, mini-mall-building testimonial to white flight, the megalopolis encroaching on the countryside’ (ibid. 336). However, as long as immigration and thus white flight is good for business, Kyra fully appreciates it. Of course, as soon as the immigrants become ubiquitous even near Arroyo Blanco – and hence bad for business – she feels that ‘[t]here had to be a limit, a boundary’ (ibid. 159). Thereby, she is more concerned about property values than about security against criminal immigrants or predators: ‘And what do you think’s going to happen to property values if your filthy coyotes start attacking children […]?’ (ibid. 221). Consequently, she not only supports the wall, but moreover fights the street corner labor market (cf. Meyerson 73), which has been offering employment to illegal immigrants, and succeeds in shutting it down. Although being, as Delaney, a member in the Democratic Party, Kyra is therefore obviously ‘’berufsbedingt’ rassistisch’ (Schröder 62). Furthermore, with her being a working woman, the general development of private communities from suburbia (as the female space of the housewife) to modern edge cities, is outlined. Meanwhile, Delaney’s ‘descent into racism’ (Gleason 94) starts with a car crash that is simultaneously a cultural clash, a ‘collision of opposing forces’ (Boyle 3). Delaney runs illegal Mexican immigrant Cándido Rincón over with his ‘freshly waxed Japanese car’ (ibid.). The contrast between the two men is thereby not only that of ‘unwitting perpetrator and unwitting victim’ (ibid. 8), but moreover that of Anglo and Mexican, of rich and poor. Thus, that his first concern is for his car, clearly reveals Delaney’s materialism and opposes it to his progressive political beliefs (cf. Gleason 94). In addition, he buys Cándido off with his ‘blood money” (Boyle 13). The collision furthermore corresponds to the notions that there occur more car accidents due to suburbanization and that the wealthy only use public streets by car, whereas the poor travel them on foot. The street as one of the last public spaces besides nature is thus also one of the last places where the two are even able to meet, albeit (in the true sense of the word) accidentally. The different status of Delaney and Cándido is thus best expressed in Boyle’s image of a (car) crash: ‘[T]he forces colliding are truly unequal. In the first, symbolic contact, it is bumper against body, and the body is almost destroyed’ (Schäfer-Wünsche 405). After the incident, Delaney is relieved, but feels also guilty for buying Cándido off, posing himself the question: ‘And how did that square with his liberal-humanist ideals?’ (Boyle 13). Whereas now, at the beginning of the novel, he is at least able to recognize his racist behavior and feel ashamed of it, he loses this ability in the course of the story (cf. Gleason 96). Accordingly, the ‘ambivalence’ (Boyle 227) he feels towards the wall (‘The wall was there, a physical presence, undeniable, and it worked two ways, both for and against him’ (ibid. 247)), he also feels towards the Mexican(s): Thus he is still torn between what he thinks of as his obligation to treat all immigrants with unprejudiced civic openness and his growing emotional need for the exclusion of all threatening ‘others,’ and it is to his credit that in his clearer moments he is quite aware of how ‘poisonous’ (225) the ubiquitous xenophobia is and how detrimental it will be not only to those who are ‘kept out‘ but also to those who are ‘kept in,‘ and especially to ‘the children’ of Arroyo Blanco who will perforce grow ‘into bigots’ (225) (Freese234). This especially applies to Jack Jardine’s criminal son, who is a convinced racist already. Thus, his figure embodies the ‘characteristic alienation and occasional antisocial behavior of suburban youth’ (Williamson, Imbroscio, and Alperovitz 304). After all, with the erection of walls, the alienation from the other is even further enforced, which leads to mutual misunderstanding and a lack of empathy (cf. ibid. 318 f.). Hence, Boyle confirms in his novel that suburban residence creates more conservative social attitudes. This is not only true for Jack Jardine’s son, but also for Delaney, who has only moved from New York to Los Angeles two years ago. In this regard, ‘Mossbacher’ is a telling name: According to Boyle, a ‘’mossback’ in American language is someone who is sort of a stick-in-the-mud conservative who doesn't think for himself much’ (Schröder 212). Consequently, when Delaney realizes that Cándido is an illegal immigrant camping in the canyon, he feels ‘his guilt turn to anger, to outrage’ (Boyle 11), a shift that subtly foreshadows his further development (cf. Freese 231). At their second confrontation in a parking lot, Delaney once more feels ‘anger and shame at the same time’ (Boyle 105). But here, as well, his rage takes over and ‘in some perverse way he want[s] to see this dark alien little man crushed and obliterated, out of his life forever’ (ibid.). In the following, when Delaney’s car is stolen, probably by Mexicans, his wife has an unpleasant encounter with Mexicans and he views a Mexican intruder ‘in his own community, right there on his own street’ (ibid. 229), he will express ‘no hesitation anymore, no reluctance to identify people by their ethnicity, no overlay of liberal-humanist guilt’ (ibid. 184). Thus, he soon uses the terms ‘a trespasser, a polluter, a Mexican’ (ibid. 229) as synonyms. Although Delaney notices his change (‘[W]hat was happening to him, what was he becoming?’ (ibid.) ‘[H]e felt a deep shameful stab of racist resentment’ (ibid. 149)), he is unable to stop it and is drawn deeper and deeper into the spiral of racism. Furthermore, Delaney becomes increasingly ‘paranoiac’ (ibid. 155) and obsessed with Cándido: ‘[H]e saw only the Mexican. His Mexican’ (ibid. 109) ‘[A]ll he cared about was this Mexican’ (ibid. 333). Thus, when a wildfire threatens the Arroyo Blanco community and Delaney (rightly) suspects Cándido to have caused it, he goes after ‘the match-happy Mexican’ (ibid. 345) with a gun. In addition, before that, he almost causes ‘a mob’ (ibid. 289) by blaming two innocent Mexicans for the fire. So Delaney must eventually accept that ‘he was the hater, he was the redneck, the racist, the abuser’ (ibid. 290). His change ‘from the open-minded citizen of a multiethnic society to the xenophobic member of a gated community’ (Freese 233) and even to a ‘gun-toting killer’ (ibid. 238) is thereby completed. Delaney’s development therefore goes along with that of Arroyo Blanco, which one opponent of the gate adequately compares to a medieval fortress (cf. Meyerson 71). Hence, in The Tortilla Curtain, Boyle perfectly captures the fortress mentality that Davis recognizes in Los Angeles.

• Urban Study

• Fortress City

• Gated Community

• L.A. School

• Environmental Racism

Laura Schomaker wurde 1987 in Ratingen geboren. Ihr Studium der Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf schloss die Autorin im Jahre 2010 mit dem akademischen Grad Bachelor of Arts erfolgreich ab. Ihr weiterführendes Studium der Literatur und Medienpraxis sowie American Studies an der Universität Duisburg-Essen beendete sie 2013 erfolgreich mit dem akademischen Grad Master of Arts.