Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Social Space and the Suburb in Mike Cahill’s King of California: Mapping Race, Neoliberalism, and Narratives of the Past in the Southern California Landscape

Social Space and the Suburb in Mike Cahill’s King of California: Mapping Race, Neoliberalism,... Social Space and the Suburb in Mike Cahill’s King of California Mapping Race, Neoliberalism, and Narratives of the Past in the Southern California Landscape Emily Cheng Introduction Mike Cahill’s 2007 comedy- drama fi lm, King of California, tells the story of a father and daughter’s quest for a previously unknown treasure trove of gold doubloons lost by the fi ctional Father Juan Florismarte Torres in the seventeenth- century Spanish exploration of California. Th e main characters, Charlie (Michael Douglas) and sixteen- year- old Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood), undertake this ad- venture inspired by the Spanish explorers, and in doing so navigate a constantly shifting landscape of suburban sprawl. From their po- sition as modern- day “explorers,” Charlie and Miranda off er a criti- cal perspective on their Southern California suburban space of San- ta Clarita, located outside Los Angeles. Th eir use of historic maps and descriptions of the seventeenth- century physical geography to navigate the present space of strip malls, freeways, and mass hous- ing developments highlights the environmental loss wrought by suburban sprawl. Th e fi lm associates this physical devastation with the social, political, and economic terrains organized by capitalist development. At stake in this quest http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Western American Literature University of Nebraska Press

Social Space and the Suburb in Mike Cahill’s King of California: Mapping Race, Neoliberalism, and Narratives of the Past in the Southern California Landscape

Cheng, Emily
Western American Literature , Volume 50 (1) – Jun 21, 2015
Download PDF
25 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-nebraska-press/social-space-and-the-suburb-in-mike-cahill-s-king-of-california-idaPc6CJrO

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
ISSN
0043-3462

Abstract

Social Space and the Suburb in Mike Cahill’s King of California Mapping Race, Neoliberalism, and Narratives of the Past in the Southern California Landscape Emily Cheng Introduction Mike Cahill’s 2007 comedy- drama fi lm, King of California, tells the story of a father and daughter’s quest for a previously unknown treasure trove of gold doubloons lost by the fi ctional Father Juan Florismarte Torres in the seventeenth- century Spanish exploration of California. Th e main characters, Charlie (Michael Douglas) and sixteen- year- old Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood), undertake this ad- venture inspired by the Spanish explorers, and in doing so navigate a constantly shifting landscape of suburban sprawl. From their po- sition as modern- day “explorers,” Charlie and Miranda off er a criti- cal perspective on their Southern California suburban space of San- ta Clarita, located outside Los Angeles. Th eir use of historic maps and descriptions of the seventeenth- century physical geography to navigate the present space of strip malls, freeways, and mass hous- ing developments highlights the environmental loss wrought by suburban sprawl. Th e fi lm associates this physical devastation with the social, political, and economic terrains organized by capitalist development. At stake in this quest

Journal

Western American Literature – University of Nebraska Press

Published: Jun 21, 2015

There are no references for this article.