Author Marshall Berman has spent much of his life in or around Times Square. His mother would encourage the family to take a ‘bath of light’ in the Square, and, inspired by James Dean, it was there that he would practice the art of ‘hanging out’. Filled with personal histories, the book leads the reader from the neon-saturated hubbub that we recognise from songs, films and literature, through Berman’s arcane alleys of research.
This book celebrates unlikely heroes: sign-makers of the fantastic ‘fire signs’, who made neon waterfalls and smoke rings emanate from the tops of buildings; promotional characters like Miss Subways, and entertainers who turned Broadway blackface from racial parody to a filial embrace between Jewish and Black cultures. These figures embodied the dazzling commercial optimism of Times Square.
It is a deeply personal communion that Berman invites; Mike Davis’ Los Angeles is just as fierce, and Venturi Scott Brown’s Las Vegas just as ecstatic as Berman’s Times Square, but lacing his cultural anthropology with anecdotes and references to popular culture, the interplay between intellect and experience is easily accessible to laymen and academics alike.
Berman is a professor of political science in New York and, as in his previous book on modernism, All That is Solid Melts into Air, his Marxist- Humanist leanings freewheel between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture: here, Al Jolson jostles with Hegel, while Bob Dylan‘s lyrics counter Baudelaire. His belief that Times Square is the ultimate democratic space often lapses into the unifying potential of mass culture in general. The forays into music, theatre and film are so deep that at times the locale itself is scarcely mentioned. Instead, Berman reveals the cultural significance of its overlapping component layers: commercialism, entertainment and sex.
Much of Berman’s analysis plays off the female perspective; once an arena which legitimised desire both of and for women (included is his invocation to the Times Girl Calliope with her carefree, early-20th century mixture of innocence and growing sexual confidence) by the grimy, bankrupt Seventies, Times Square was seedy with child prostitution and midnight cowboys. Berman illuminates the scene with pop references, such as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Lou Reed’s Dirty Boulevard.
The most poignant image, and a returning refrain of the book, is the famous VJ Day photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt – a passionate embrace between an anonymous sailor and a nurse. The antithesis of the Unknown Soldier, the image speaks of an American optimism and triumph, which has never returned to the square.
The decay of the post-war years gave way to deals between politicians and developers in the Nineties. Thanks to the sanitising efforts of Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, there is little to fear; the city is undoubtedly much safer (and more developer-friendly). But at what cost? Today, as elsewhere in Manhattan, there is a contradictory mix of indifferent buildings, among lurid computer graphics, which have in part replaced the old neon. In the square itself, entertainment corporations like Condé Nast, Disney and MTV have replaced older counterparts; and the realized promise of a ‘street for everyone’ has created an antiseptic atmosphere.
Berman remains buoyant, though, believing that the immersive spectacle of Times Square is just as powerful today. This summer, following the Square’s pedestrianisation, 376 deckchairs were installed for passers-by to sit and absorb it all; as Berman recognises, the square remains a powerful, neon cathedral.
