MC - Jameson

Jameson was right in his description of the Bonaventural Hotel, a building that looks like a minature city that had sprung up in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. The hotel shape and composition give the appearance of a spacestation or something equally unearthly. Still, I think it's precisely because of its rejection of its surroundings (the reflective glass that Jameson seems to complain about) that rouses curiosity. I want to find out what's hidden in those tall cylinders which are so vastly different from the surrounding buildings.

Jameson's section implies that there's something disjointed or confused about the Bonaventura hotel. Jameson insists that even the movements of the escalators and elevators are contained, moving only to a rotating cocktail lounge that is further removed from the city outside. Although I've never been to the Bonaventura hotel, I can't presume to know the accessibility of the stores or the lobby (both, Jameson says, are hard to navigate through). I feel, however, that Jameson is reaching for conclusions that aren't apparent to me. How can the city be "transformed into its own images by the glass windows through which you view it" when obviously, it's your own perception that's doing the transforming. Again, referring to my last post I feel that it isn't the building which imposes upon the viewer but the viewer projecting on to the building. Jameson seems to personify the building as if it were a definate symbol of postmodernism. Either I'm reading his critique wrong or he's reading the building from an angle that I can't seem to see.