Black, Blanc, Beur
Concrete Forms of Hate (La Haine)
Expression of Hate:
Racism and social divides have hit a boiling point in both public and media consciousness recently. It is an endlessly repeating cycle that hits high peaks of fear and anger, then issues eventually return to the everyday, the forgotten and the accepted. This reminded me of a 1995 film that seems now just as on topic as it was on release, the french film La Haine (Hate). It can be argued that we are products of our environments, this film is one the most visually striking explorations of this. The question from this being whether architecture and the built environments around us are the cause, aggravation, or simply unrelated to the social problems, racism and violence seen throughout the world.
‘Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself…’
“Jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien”
(So far i’m doing fine, so far i’m doing fine)
“…mais l’important n’est pas la chute, c’est l’atterrissage”
(…but it’s not the fall that’s important, it’s the landing)
This dark joke reaches its conclusion as the world is set ablaze, this is the set up of both story and tone of La Haine.
Misguided Ideals:
The film follows a group of three teenage boys in a predestined day, they exist in a broken system on the fringes of Paris, hidden and forgotten. It depicts the aftermath of a riot the day before. La Haine is based on the real lives of those trapped in this same looping system ran by racism and exclusion from the rest of french society. The director, Mathieu Kassovitz, stated the film ‘was about police brutality’. This story in the medium of film delved into the causes of the violence and rioting of the time.
The film was shot in a real housing estate, Chanteloup-les-Vignes, in a North West region of Paris that had been the setting of riots itself. The literal french title for a suburb is ‘Banlieue’ a term that is synonymous mainly outside of France as meaning low-income neighbourhoods with a high percentage of immigrant populations. These Banlieue’s were created in a struggling post-war France, rapid population increases and a poor economy meant housing projects were required on an industrial scale. Cost and completion time needed had to be squeezed past the limits of previous french city planning systems, The Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism was founded to solve these problems, leading to the idea of ‘The Grand Ensemble’. Seen below is Clichy-sous-Bois, one of these suburban schemes a dystopian anti-future to utopian ideals.
A misguided clash of differing housing solutions and ideals from other cities in Europe, attempts to integrate these within french culture mostly failed. Out of their time Utopian ideas previously seen as unsettling social control through architecture resurfaced, to the delight of some, the vision of Ville Radieuse in a way found its way back into the Parisian skyline.
Wojciech Lesnikowski writes on the bleakness of the schemes ‘Architectural gigantism, design rigidity, coldness, and aesthetic monotony… they ended up fostering grave social problems which continue to plague them today’ (The New French Architecture, 1990).
Photographer Laurent Kronental created a photographic series which takes a more sentimental look back to the architecture named ‘Souvenir d’un Futur’ (‘Memory of a Future’). Capturing the solitary nature of these garde monumental structures by focusing on the last remaining elderly population who grew up within these spaces and stubbornly still stay. Though designed as almost arrogant exaggerations of pre-war french architecture, these contrast greatly to the architecture of the socially troubled Banlieue’s more frequented in media and film. (Miller M, The Fading “Grands Ensembles” of Paris, 2015)
Kronental himself acknowledged both sides to these attempts at social control through the built form “In this magnificent and ghostly world, these cities present titanic structures, gobbling humans, producing our fears and our hopes as an organization of the city”.
Exclusion and separation:
The solitary effect of the estate can be seen as almost a character of its own throughout La Haine, themes of disconnect from this reality but also the eventual acceptance of it run deeply through the film. This place is seen as inescapable to them through both the shots and locations depicted. The lines become blurred between reality and fiction due to the nature of the real world location and almost documentary like filming style. It is a film of the extremes within the Banlieue but is it also one of exaggeration.
The imagery and environments depicted tell an unspoken story hinting at the reality of the lives these young second generation citizens throughout France find themselves trapped in. The trio in the film are embodiments of the different perspectives within the unspoken class system biased on ethnicity, “black, blanc, beur” ‘has become an emblem of the young, integrated, streetwise French.’ (A survey of France, economist.com, 1999)
This shot of the characters visiting the centre of Paris is one of the most simple but telling imagery in the film.
The bustling backdrop of Paris blurs into the distance focus moves to the trio showing boredom and uneasiness.
This is the disconnect these youths have to the capital, they exist on the edge of this society but have no connection, purpose or place within it.
‘Entering or leaving the suburbs is often called “crossing the Périphérique,” as if it were a frontier.’ (Packer G, The New Yorker, 2015). The problem exacerbated by economic and social systems existing to keep a separation between the two. One of very few writers openly commenting on this system says of it, ‘… how crucial it is to reside within a reasonable distance from this network, but also how this network is fundamentally oriented toward the center of the city with little connection between cities of the Banlieues themselves.’ (Lambert L, thefunambulist.net, 2014).
Travelling to the nearest station is an undertaking even before even starting the journey towards Paris, making commutable employment opportunities therefore inaccessible for many outside the main hub system. The article goes on to comment that this ‘urban exclusion’ ‘operates at the scale of their town or city’ The setting of La Haine exists within this excluded area.
Intimidation through space
The Banlieue depicted in the film is one run by intimidation, the police depicted in the film are seen to outnumber the civilians greatly following the recent riot. They are a constant presence shown behind crowd control barriers, steel mesh and when deemed necessary, riot shields. It is this transparency that makes them become both a part of the environment and alien objects from it, they uphold and conform to this environment of repetitious forms and forced order.
‘The police has a strong sense of space. Like the army, it deploys itself in it, it controls, it appropriates it.’ (Lambert, L)
The open courtyard outside the police station is a highly controlled space, grid patterns on the tarmac give a sense of unwelcomeness to people and vehicles. There are no benches and other possible uses of the space for social meeting or occupancy are discouraged. The presence of police is evident, however, the more subtle barriers become so everyday to these inhabitants that they blend into an accepted reality. The different levels of acceptance the young citizens have are shown through their depiction within this built environment.
The overriding theme throughout the film is that street level has an overwhelming feeling of paranoia. Tightly packed high density buildings create narrow alleys that are patrolled by police, funnelling the inhabitants in a specified way and discouraging movement of large groups.
Alleyways and back entrances in neighbourhoods are usually the most interesting undefined social spaces, with freedom to inhabit the confined space it allows social relationships between neighbours and passerby’s. However, within these tight spaces, there are no doorways to the blocks, balconies or cover from the elements which usually encourage areas of social contact.
Slow and winding pathways cause the approaches to open areas a subtle control in the same way as the narrow spaces between the blocks. Characters are seen spending an unusually long time to cross areas because of the way the estate is designed, pedestrian flows are based upon decisions by the planners forcing inhabitants to move through spaces in one way.
Power of verticality:
The trio are constantly looking up and responding to supposed authority figures who use the verticality of the Banlieue to watch over those on street level. Within many scenes there is constant surveillance by others trapped in the same life appearing to view the youths in disapproval, this in itself is aiding antisocial behaviour, forcing them to hide out of sight.
This constant threat of being watched leads to a social hierarchy based solely on verticality, the higher you are the more power you have on the estate. One of the few non ordered and controlled spaces is a rooftop, this area, designed solely for building services is the set to one of very few community spaces. Its height above all other buildings makes it a hidden vantage point of power over the patrolled streets, it is the only space they gain control of and can therefore experience some freedom. It is here that the block disappears from view and thought.
Privacy and play:
Sam Lubell wrote of the spatial relationship in such areas “towering blank walls framing empty courtyards.” and that these inhabitations are “tinderboxes for trouble” (Lubell S, Architectural Record, 2007). It is true that these stagnant spaces require another kind of occupancy or program to be important social spaces, they simply exist as either an after thought or a naivety that any open space will be filled with activity.
In this place, the young people now follow the rules set by the Brutalist style concrete playgrounds that are unwelcome to groups and are extensions to the patrolled spaces of the street. Freedom of expression is aggressively discouraged to the point where a group of dancers group in the ruins of their school, destroyed by rioters. Performing within a hidden caged area they cordon themselves off with police tape, segregating themselves for safety in the same process as the police use upon them.
The cramped interior lives are the last remaining area of privacy and escape from the reality of the suburb. The apartments seen are too small for a large family. There is an relationship of inward looking attempts at separation from the street but still the sound of patrolling helicopters and neighbourhood is inescapable. The personal space of safety therefore becomes just a personal scale version of the outside.
In a film focussed on young boys with lack of father figures replaced by the male police force, the female lives are almost forgotten. The novel ‘Kiffer sa race’ is mentioned as an important narrative translated in ‘State Power, Stigmatization, and Youth Resistance Culture in the French Banlieues’. It tells the story of a young second generation immigrant girl growing up in a North West Banlieue of Paris, ‘…in this vertical tower, we grew up on top of each other’, ‘…while growing up, I realised that this belief in the unworthy immigrant family was widespread. People create images, then they become reality.’ (Hervé Tchumkam, 2015).
The lowest point to the film is an extended scene of the true aggression and nature of the police brutality towards these youths guilty of simply existing. The imagery is a conclusion to the build up of racial resentment, it mirrors the bombardment from every side caused by the environments they live in everyday.
Film or reality
An article from The Funambulist, only briefly hinted at previously, gives a final unsettling thought to the Banlieue and the true extent to attitudes towards them. The french journalist Hacène Belmessous for his writing of ‘Opération Banlieues’, preludes to a possibility that one of, or many of the Banlieues are designed and interfered with at some points of planning or possibly throughout. This may be conducted by police to bring a level of intervention and control. ‘Their ambition consists in using architecture’s capacity to control visibility and filter bodies, in order to police collective housing spaces in addition of the establishment of local rules’.
He goes on to question the scheme of ‘La Grande Borne’ ‘…it makes no doubt that the streets that have been built in the green ‘plain’ of La Grande Borne have more to do with the possibility for the police to move its vehicles than for the firemen to access the buildings…’ (Lambert L, 2015).
This study of observations of control through space and lack of it, using La Haine and the Banlieues have explored this without this possible reality in mind. If this were true, it would be the catalyst to a next level in the endless repeating cycle of violence in these areas. The final note on this is to simple acknowledge the obvious similarities within La Grande Borne, and the location of La Haine, Chanteloup les-Vignes. The blur of reality versus fiction becomes clearer.
Though I have used Paris and La Haine to explore this theme, similar examples can be found worldwide. I hope exploring these themes will aid others to look differently at the environments they live within.
