From Los Angeles to 'La La Land': Mapping Whiteness in the Wake of Cinema

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At a key moment in Damien Chazelle's La La Land, Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling), an aspiring jazz pianist, takes Mia Dolan (Emma Stone), an aspiring film actress, to a repertory screening of Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955). Astonished that Mia could live in Los Angeles without ever having seen Ray's masterpiece, Sebastian guides her through the most important scenes before driving her up to Griffith Park for a re-enactment of the iconic observatory sequence. In this version, however, all the homosocial angst between James Dean and Sal Mineo is smoothed away and, in its place, we're presented with the moment in Chazelle's film at which Sebastian and Mia finally acknowledge their love for each other. In the process, the pessimism of Ray's vision is replaced with a considerably cosier cosmos, as Sebastian and Mia dance around the telescope and gradually ascend into the air, where they commune with the galaxies before settling down to Earth once more. Although it is intended as a tribute, the sequence ends up robbing Rebel Without a Cause of much of what made it so provocative and edgy in the first place, canonising and sterilising it in the same breath.

About Senses of Cinema:

Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. We believe cinema is an art that can take many forms, from the industrially-produced blockbuster to the hand-crafted experimental work; we also aim to encourage awareness of the histories of such diverse forms. As an Australian-based journal, we have a special commitment to the regular, wide-ranging analysis and critique of Australian cinema, past and present. Senses of Cinema is primarily concerned with ideas about particular films or bodies of work, but also with the regimes (ideological, economic and so forth) under which films are produced and viewed, and with the more abstract theoretical and philosophical issues raised by film study.