ABSTRACT
Los Angeles is a city of ghettos, wealthy or impoverished islands defined by their occupants and patrolled by the police, who ensure that the diverse economic and ethnic groups are isolated from each other. The freeways are the essential tool for the policing of Los Angeles. They provide routes through the metropolis so that the inhabitants of each ghetto never enter hostile territory. The freeway in Los Angeles is analogous to the road which linked West Berlin to West Germany before the unification of the state. It is an umbilical cord between related bodies. The purpose of the freeway is to prevent unwanted connections and permit desirable ones, to deny and conceal difference, to reinforce the apparent autonomy of each ghetto. The actor Dennis Hopper’s house in Los Angeles is located in Venice. During the day the beach front unconsciously parodies the image of Los Angeles propagated in films. Absurdly sculpted sun-lit bodies lumber along the sea front. If this is the land of opportunity, why does everyone look like a cartoon? At night, the boardwalk is a violent no-go area. Hopper’s house is a high-security container for art with a window-less facade and surveillance cameras patrolling the exterior. Movie stars do not live in Venice. Hopper is in alien, hostile territory. He is in the wrong ghetto.
