“I think they built Hollywood on the West Coast because they were always dreaming of a New World. When they arrived here, the only way to keep dreaming was to make movies. Film was the fourth dimension.”
– Denis Villeneuve
In the introduction to his work Nomos of the Earth Carl Schmitt wrote that the discovery of the New World was a fairy tale-like and unexpected discovery, an unprecedented historical event. He believes that a similar contemporary event would be imaginable only in the realm of fantasy, for example, if the people travelling to the Moon discovered a completely unknown cosmic body they could freely exploit and use to mitigate their earthly conflicts. This fairy tale-like imagery of discovery of the New World can be seen in almost every frame of Terrence Malick’s 2005 film The New World. Its dreamy and almost unreal atmosphere shows us the nature of the discovery of a new continent. In his Nomos of the Earth Schmitt writes that every legal order (Ordnung) is based on the taking of land, its measurement and distribution. In this sense we can speak of Hollywood being founded on the West Coast as a byproduct of the end of this taking of land in the New World, which lasted, as Schmitt writes, until the 1890s.
In the 1890s, as Schmitt says, United States began to extend its dominion and the acquisition of other territories, and this coincides with the end of free land appropriation. The settlement of the free land was finished. Until then, there was a border line which divided the settled and the free land, i.e. the unsettled land, free for the taking. With the disappearance of free land, the freedom which existed until then was no more. The type of a border resident which was associated with this frontier, who could go from the settled land to the unoccupied land, also ceased to exist. The founding order of the United States was changed. The American philosopher John Dewey noticed this change, that the end of the frontier changed the social structure of America, and saw Emerson’s and William James’s gaiety as a byproduct of the open border.
It is highly significant that Hollywood was founded in 1887, rougly around the time when the free appropriation of land in the United States was at an end. As Villeneuve says, the only way to keep the dream alive was by founding a new settlement which operates beyond the borders of America, in this sense, film is the fourth dimension which gave the Americans the opportunity to keep the dream of the free land alive by making movies. As Red Hot Chilli Peppers say in their song Californication: “It’s the edge of the world and all the Western civilization/ The sun may rise in the East, at least it settled in a final location/ It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication”. They call Hollywood the “final location” and the “edge of the world and all the Western civilization”, and it the terms of the appropriation of land it is. But that’s not the end, since Hollywood goes beyond the geographical limits and those of the Western civilization to “sell Californication”.
The dream of the free land is still alive, as well as the freedom of expansion. Red Hot Chilli Peppers also sing: “Space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in the Hollywood basement/ And Cobain can you hear the spheres singing song of Station to Station?/ And Alderaan’s not far away, it’s Californication”. Thus the endless nature of space is associated with movies, which can show us even this final frontier, space is re-imagined and showed to us on the movie screens. Thus a planet like Alderaan from Star Wars, and a moon like Pandora from Avatar, are not really that far away, they live in our minds. The band also sings “Well everybody’s been there and I don’t mean on vacation”, connecting the idea that Hollywood is a place founded on the edge of the Western civilization, but that it is not only a place in geographical terms, it is beyond that. Everybody’s been there, by watching the movies made there. The final location is at the same time not a location at all, but an idea, Californication is sold in every part of the Earth. In many ways, Hollywood is a place where the dream of the free land continued to exist, and thus as a source of optimism and the sense of endless possibilities.
Vigour of Film Lines 