{"id":791232,"date":"2026-05-12T14:21:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T14:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791232\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T14:21:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T14:21:22","slug":"hollywood-invented-post-apocalypse-l-a-can-spencer-pratt-ride-it-to-become-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791232\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood invented post-apocalypse L.A. Can Spencer Pratt ride it to become mayor?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s been called \u201cthe best political ad of the year,\u201d<\/a> a plea to save the city, and an act of narcissism.<\/p>\n

The AI-generated social video showing Spencer Pratt in a Batman suit overthrowing the dystopian rule of bourgeoisie Joker Karen Bass is racking up millions of views and becoming the one thing non-Angelenos know about the mayor\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

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But for all of the attention lavished on the video, there is also something highly familiar about it. When it comes to portraying Los Angeles as a wasteland ruined by wimps, Hollywood got there long before Spencer Pratt.<\/p>\n

\"Ryan <\/p>\n

Ryan Gosling walks through L.A. in Blade Runner 2049.<\/p>\n

(Warner Bros. Pictures)<\/p>\n

Is L.A. in its postapocalyptic era?<\/p>\n

There is perhaps no other city on earth that has been vaporized, invaded, flattened, overrun (by criminals, aliens, drugs, frogs, chemicals) more on film than Los Angeles. The culprit is extraterrestrial or geologic or religious. But often, the destruction comes with a message: This decadent, over-tolerant city fueled its own demise.<\/p>\n

One iconic depiction<\/a> came in the 1996 blockbuster \u201cIndependence Day,\u201d when a group of L.A. hippie dippies gather atop the U.S. Bank Tower to greet an alien spaceship. They expect intergalactic love only to be burned to a crisp.<\/p>\n

The genre has been around since the 1950s. But it really went into overdrive in the 1990s, when the postwar ideal of Southern California paradise devolved into economic and social decline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decay of the city\u2019s old glamour has been inverted by the entertainment industry into a new glamour of decay,\u201d L.A. historian and \u201cCity of Quartz\u201d author Mike Davis wrote in The Times in 1999.<\/a> <\/p>\n

The \u2018L.A. is a real wasteland!\u2019 defense<\/p>\n

To me, Pratt\u2019s disaster video hearkens most to a movie about L.A.\u2019s moral and political decline: 1993\u2019s \u201cFalling Down.\u201d Michael Douglas plays a laid-off defense worker who, triggered by a traffic jam, cuts a path of destruction across L.A., taking on gang thugs, a white supremacist, an officious fast-food employee and a surly Korean liquor store owner.<\/p>\n

The screenwriter, Ebbe Roe Smith, said when the movie <\/a>came out that it was clear to him L.A. was in serious trouble. \u201cThe main character represents the old power structure of the U.S. that has now become archaic, and hopelessly lost,\u201d he said, a sentiment some use decades later to described American politics in the era of Trump.<\/p>\n

The reaction to \u201cFalling Down\u201d might sound familiar. The New York Times noted at the time that it got good reviews<\/a> on the East Coast but, in Southern California, faced a storm of controversy<\/a> so dramatic that Kirk Douglas felt the need to pen an op-ed in defense of his son<\/a>. The backlash was fierce enough that \u201cFalling Down\u201d actually brought much-needed valentines celebrating L.A.\u2019s ethnic diversity, beauty and urban charms that many residents seemed to have forgotten. Peter H. King retraced Michael Douglas\u2019<\/a> route and found much to love. \u201cLos Angeles still has plenty of this kind of life left,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

\u201cFalling Down\u201d did not spark a political movement. But it helped develop a way for the city to defend and deflect against critics. You see it on social media all the time. Grim videos of Skid Row and crime scenes juxtaposed with glorious ocean sunsets, often with captions like \u201cL.A. is a real wasteland!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tommy <\/p>\n

Tommy Lee Jones flees the deadly destruction of lava on Wilshire Boulevard in \u201cVolcano.\u201d <\/p>\n

(20th Century Fox)<\/p>\n

The train to somewhere<\/p>\n

A few days after the Pratt video landed, our feeds were taken over by a decidedly happier event: the opening of the Metro D Line<\/a>, the subway connecting Beverly Hills to downtown L.A. It was a real party,<\/a> and a retort to how Hollywood predicted a Wilshire subway would end up.<\/p>\n

In the 1997 movie \u201cVolcano,\u201d<\/a> construction of the subway brings to the surface a sea of red-hot lava that <\/a>burns through the city. The film\u2019s tagline was \u201cThe Coast is Toast\u201d and its message seemed to be, \u201cDon\u2019t even try to get us out of our cars.\u201d The movie\u2019s climax has Tommy Lee Jones and a diverse cast of L.A. characters trying to stop the lava where the Fairfax-Wilshire station now sits.<\/p>\n

Score one for L.A., but we still have a long way to go.<\/p>\n

So which view of L.A. will voters embrace, the failed-state wasteland in need of a superhero or a charmed but highly imperfect place slowly making progress? We will find out in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s top stories \"Eileen <\/a> <\/p>\n

Eileen Wang, then a city councilmember, at Arcadia City Hall in November 2024.<\/p>\n

(Robert Gauthier\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Arcadia\u2019s mayor accused of being a Chinese foreign agent<\/p>\n