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L.A. In Installments: Forest Lawn
FOREWORD
LA IN INSTALLMENTS inaugurates a series and represents an approach whose time, we believe, has come.
Los Angeles is more than just a West Coast city. And it is more than just a hothouse for all the eccentricities of twentieth century Western civilization. From its arts and architecture to its industries and cultural life, Los Angeles is the product of all the social and economic processes which gave form and direction to late nineteenth and early twentieth century urban America. But Los Angeles is portrayed in the media as an aberration—as home to all the extremities of Western decadence—a culture run amok under the tropical sun at the edge of the world. Careers have been built and reputations made merely from isolating and ridiculing yet another peculiarity believed indigenous to Los Angeles. For “serious scholars” and journalists alike, LA has been a twentieth century goldmine of subjects for satire and parody.
LA is good for a hoot. So are New York and Cincinnati. But it is also good for more than that. This series seeks a new perspective on Los Angeles: to analyze rather than to satirize, and to explain rather than mystify.
Forest Lawn was selected as our inaugural effort for several reasons. It is an institution which has played a major role in perpetuating the cherished image of Los Angeles as the home of the bizarre and land of the depraved. Writers such as Aldous Huxley, Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, among others, have probed with relish the American rituals associated with death, and especially those believed unique to Forest Lawn. The cinema-comedy based upon Waugh’s novel, The Loved One, is a classic of its genre, and its caricature of Los Angeles’ most famous necropolis is unmistakable and scathing.
But because it is so appealing as a target for such treatment, Forest Lawn has never been examined as a significant monument of American popular culture. Satire is a useful lens for social commentary, but it inevitably sacrifices depth of field for creative distortion. Death and burial, in every culture, involve profound rites of passage which encompass many dimensions of behavior and patterns of belief. Like other institutions which have evolved in complex societies to choreograph these mortuary rites, Forest Lawn exhibits distinctive patterns which appear to be unique. Usually they are not, and their antecedents and internal logic can usually be explored through objective and dispassionate scrutiny.
In this series, we will forgo the cheap shot and easy arrogance in favor of concrete information and a deeper level of understanding. We seek to penetrate the multiple layers, to expose the unexpected richness and substance of Los Angeles culture and history. Forest Lawn is a very good place to start.
LA IN INSTALLMENTS inaugurates a series and represents an approach whose time, we believe, has come.
Los Angeles is more than just a West Coast city. And it is more than just a hothouse for all the eccentricities of twentieth century Western civilization. From its arts and architecture to its industries and cultural life, Los Angeles is the product of all the social and economic processes which gave form and direction to late nineteenth and early twentieth century urban America. But Los Angeles is portrayed in the media as an aberration—as home to all the extremities of Western decadence—a culture run amok under the tropical sun at the edge of the world. Careers have been built and reputations made merely from isolating and ridiculing yet another peculiarity believed indigenous to Los Angeles. For “serious scholars” and journalists alike, LA has been a twentieth century goldmine of subjects for satire and parody.
LA is good for a hoot. So are New York and Cincinnati. But it is also good for more than that. This series seeks a new perspective on Los Angeles: to analyze rather than to satirize, and to explain rather than mystify.
Forest Lawn was selected as our inaugural effort for several reasons. It is an institution which has played a major role in perpetuating the cherished image of Los Angeles as the home of the bizarre and land of the depraved. Writers such as Aldous Huxley, Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, among others, have probed with relish the American rituals associated with death, and especially those believed unique to Forest Lawn. The cinema-comedy based upon Waugh’s novel, The Loved One, is a classic of its genre, and its caricature of Los Angeles’ most famous necropolis is unmistakable and scathing.
But because it is so appealing as a target for such treatment, Forest Lawn has never been examined as a significant monument of American popular culture. Satire is a useful lens for social commentary, but it inevitably sacrifices depth of field for creative distortion. Death and burial, in every culture, involve profound rites of passage which encompass many dimensions of behavior and patterns of belief. Like other institutions which have evolved in complex societies to choreograph these mortuary rites, Forest Lawn exhibits distinctive patterns which appear to be unique. Usually they are not, and their antecedents and internal logic can usually be explored through objective and dispassionate scrutiny.
In this series, we will forgo the cheap shot and easy arrogance in favor of concrete information and a deeper level of understanding. We seek to penetrate the multiple layers, to expose the unexpected richness and substance of Los Angeles culture and history. Forest Lawn is a very good place to start.
89 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1979
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