Ed Simon at Hyperallergic:
When the Hollywood sign was first unveiled in 1923, it read “Hollywoodland.” Surrounded by coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and invasive and highly flammable eucalyptus trees, that kitschy, iconic, and slightly absurd marker consisting of 50-foot-tall letters spread across nearly 500 feet atop Mount Lee has signified Los Angeles and its attendant associations for more than a century. But in some ways, that missing syllable gestures toward an even deeper truth about this region. The word “Hollywoodland” is slightly fantastical, evoking a southern California that’s as mythic as it is actual — a fitting moniker for the forge of American dreams, a place configured to generate spectacle and narrative, the maker of cellulose nitrate chimeras in the form of physical film often as combustible as the illusions it conveyed. A kingdom of imagery for an art form that, if not invented by Americans, was at least stoked to its potential here, at the western terminus of the continent. In 1923, Los Angeles was a dry, desert city of Art Deco skyscrapers and Modernist homes clinging to the hillsides of her craggy neighborhoods, an urban landscape of coyotes and bobcats. Today, the city of Los Angeles is home to nearly four million people, and the county a stunning 10 million. And it’s on fire.
more here.
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