Let’s Kill Los Angeles Again--and Again

Some cities invite loathing, and our hometown seems to do it better than most. There’s a theory, in fact, that the rest of the country finds nothing more satisfying than the notion of Los Angeles burning, drowning or otherwise collapsing into ruin.

Now comes Mike Davis, the gloom-driven historian and author of “City of Quartz,” with evidence that the theory may be true.

In a new book scheduled for publication this summer, Davis argues that Los Angeles provokes the most powerful psychic grudge of any city on earth. And, he says, this animus can be documented.

The book, titled “Ecology of Fear,” contends that you need only count the gleeful holocausts visited on our corner of the universe by movie makers and novelists. The fictional punishments range from the mob violence of “The Day of the Locust” in 1939 to the purifying lava of “Volcano” in 1997.

“No other city seems to excite such dark rapture,” he writes. “The obliteration of Los Angeles is often depicted as, or at least secretly experienced as, a victory for civilization.”

Sparing us the labor, Davis himself has taken a count of our fictional and cinematic undoing. In this century, he found, destruction has been wreaked on Los Angeles 136 times in novels and movies.

H-bombs alone have fried us 49 times.

Earthquakes have swallowed us 28 times.

Aliens and other invaders have ray-gunned us 10 times.

We’ve also been punished by plagues (six times), monsters (10 times) and mutant Bermuda grass (once).

What’s worse, the trend is accelerating. In the 1950s, Los Angeles was destroyed only 16 times, but in the 1980s we got pummeled 31 times.

Any Los Angeles citizen who has revealed his hometown to airplane seatmates will hardly be surprised by these numbers. As former New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote in a review of the 1974 movie “Earthquake”:

“Who needs a reason to destroy L.A.? The city stands convicted in everyone’s eyes. You go to ‘Earthquake’ to see L.A. get it, and it really does.”

Except, of course, there is a reason. We always hate for a reason. But what? What is the foundation of this deep, worldwide need to see L.A.--in Kael’s words--”get it”?

I mean, the world now contains cities with greater apocalyptic appeal. Take Mexico City. Or Tokyo. And there are cities with more palpable evil. Like Moscow. Or Miami.

So why L.A.? Ray Bradbury believes it’s jealousy. Bradbury is the famous science fiction novelist and has lived here, in the heart of the beast, for most of his life.

“Whenever I go to France,” he says, “I notice this phenomenon. The French people want to know what’s happening in Los Angeles. They don’t ask about New York. They don’t ask about Washington. They see Los Angeles as the place that creates the world’s culture, and they want to know what’s going on here.

“That also makes them jealous. They see us as having this power over film and TV and, by extension, over their lives. So they’re fascinated by us and want to destroy us, all at the same time.”

Maybe. If the jealous theory is right, you’d think that the novelists and movie makers would play out that theme in their destruction derbies. But they rarely do.

Take “Blade Runner,” for example. It presents Los Angeles as a city that has dived deep into primal sin and deserves its fate of eternal, corrosive rain and environmental ruin. Only the rich escape the misery as they suck wealth from the masses.

Actually, that description sounds a little like present-day L.A. It also sounds like the Los Angeles described half a century ago by Nathanael West in “Day of the Locust.”

John Sanford, a novelist and friend of West, contends that L.A.’s primal sin stems from a betrayal of dreams. “L.A. is a city where many have come with aspirations and almost all have been defeated,” he says.

“It creates an atmosphere of rage because the defeated ones can see, every day, the few whose dreams came true. A sense of desperation seems to rule Los Angeles.”

At the conclusion of West’s novel, of course, a huge gathering of the defeated, attending a movie premiere, begins to tear apart the city and each other. They rape and pillage to wreak revenge on the place that so betrayed them.

So we hate L.A. because it destroys our dreams. David Freeman, author of “A Hollywood Education,” agrees with that but says another, simpler explanation may be at work.

“Screenwriters destroy L.A. because they’re unhappy, as everyone knows,” he says. “They spend their lives being told no, so you might say that writers are simply having their revenge on the city. They’re saying, ‘Hey, let’s blow up the place. Let’s just tear it apart.’

“Actually, I think it’s a healthy response.”

Freeman adds that the destruction often has a fond, mocking quality.

“Los Angeles has become this symbol of everything about our culture that you hate but also need,” he says. “There’s really a double message to the destruction.”

Or perhaps no message at all. To some of the jaded veterans of Hollywood, the real explanation of Los Angeles’ mega-deaths--in the movies at least--stems from a single, practical reality: Los Angeles is where movies are made.

“Look,” says Tom Pollack, who spent 10 years as head of Universal Pictures. “If I had a producer come to me with a picture where big, hairy monsters were eating up a city, and the producer wanted to shoot this movie in Chicago, I would say, ‘Why Chicago?’

“You see, it costs millions of dollars more to destroy Chicago. If we destroy L.A., it’s cheaper. Much cheaper. So the monsters end up eating L.A.”

Every great city contains mysteries that will never be solved. And maybe that’s the case with the fictional plagues, firestorms and H-bombs directed toward Los Angeles. Do the holocausts come from hate or fondness? Fear or ambition? Respect or spite? We don’t really know.

We only know that somehow the destruction has taken on a satisfying, eternal quality and is not likely to stop. As the last line of the movie “Earthquake” intones:

“Distant sirens wail, and National Guard gunfire crackles, as Los Angeles burns on.”

You can settle back and savor that line. It’s enough to make you proud.