LAND OF SCROOGE AND CRATCHIT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

AMERICA HAS NO MONOPOLY on the stark contrast between the haves and have-nots, but we certainly stage that ongoing drama in our own uniquely dramatic fashion. The worlds of comfort and privation in America are often separated by physical walls of membership and exclusion, but the eye of the photographer can often see the two realms parked uneasily side-by-side. Nowhere is this more demonstrable than in our major cities, where one man’s the sky’s the limit life is another’s pretty much everything’s a limit existence. And one of the cities where this existential play is staged to greatest effect is Los Angeles.

Hollywood, specifically, is a Petri dish for the collision between aspiration and desperation, being the world’s foremost fantasy factory. As long as nightmares are the reverse side of the dream coin, the yin and yang of want it and need it will be displayed in Tinseltown, and, to a lesser degree, across all of L.A. The image seen here advertises the up and down sides of daily life, or. if you like, the Scrooges versus the Cratchits. One camps has it and wants to keep it. The other peers over the golden fence and wonders what it’s like to walk in the sun.

Around the world, the chasm between privilege and privation fuels discontent, envy, revolution. It also sparks art, adventurism, enterprise, exploration. And always, in Hollywood and beyond, the symbolism, the visual way of keeping score, the belief that, with a little extra hustle, any Cratchit can put on the golden raiment of a Scrooge. Maybe that’s the pull-push that’s needed to make a society. Whichever way the contest shakes out, there are stories to tell, and pictures to help sell those narratives.