Times Square (1980) directed by Allan Moyle
“The question is: How long will it take to convince investors to swallow the uselessness of the project [the renovation of Times Square]?
Far more important than whether the buildings can be rented out is whether investors think the buildings can be rented out. In the seventies, three of those towers were tabled for ten years. The ostensible purpose for that ten-year delay was to give economic forces a chance to shift and business a chance to rally to the area. The real reason, however was simply the hope that people would forget the arguments against the project, so clear. (Delany, 152)
"... But what I see lurking behind the positive foregrounding of “family values” (along with, in the name of such values, the violent suppression of urban social structures, economic, social, and sexual) is a wholly provincial and absolutely small-town terror of cross-class contact.
...7.12 A salient stabilizing factor that has helped create the psychological smoke screen behind which developers of Times Square and of every other underpopulated urban center in the country have been able to pursue their machinations in spite of public good and private desire is the small-town fear of urban violence. Since the tourist to the big city is seen as someone from a small town, the promotion of tourism is a matter of promoting the image of the world —and of the city— that the small town holds.” -Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
This is a film in which the heart of Delaney's main argument takes the form of a narrative, punk, feminist 'buddy film.' The story follows Pamela Pearl, the 14 or 15 year old, private school educated daughter of the head of the fictional Times Square renovation project. When Pamela rebells against her father's attempt to exploit her as example of the type of family values he wishes to make Times Square safe for... she ends up in a mental hospital, sharing a room with the 'troubled,' orphaned, homeless tomboy Nikki, who dreams of becoming a famous musician. The two escape the hospital and shack up together in an abandoned pier along the Hudson River and creating their own punk girl gang, the Sleez Sisters, menacing and inspiring the city with their punk rock performance antics and befriending a radio DJ who champions their cause of fighting against the forces of repression and corporatizing of the city that Pamela's father represents. Delaney's notion of cross class contact is at the heart of this tale of feminist rebellion and punk aesthetics and nascent queer, sexual liberation. And its exuberant finale, where the punk sensation finally plays in Times Square, precipitating the kind of cross-class contact, acceptance and sense of temporary community which would make Delaney proud.
The young girl who can see the lie her father makes, his manipulation of “morality” and “family values,” her ability to see is what gets her committed, like all forward seeing females, driven crazy or driven to the crazy house where they can do no more harm to the patriarchal needs and abuse of power.In the words of Nikki in her final, triumphant performance on top of a 42nd St. marquee, "they say I'm crazy, but the truth is, I just know bullshit when I see it."
-S.T.
