8 Miles

Sojeong Lee

Professor: Lorena Munoz

GEOG 3371W

7 March 2013

Writing Assignment One: Writing about Place and the City

8 Mile

Detroit - Michigan

Detroit, Manhattan, Seattle, Minneapolis, and San Francisco… These city names are well known and possess distinct characteristics. Each one of these cities has their own culture, which generates their own unique features. Simply put, cities’ cultural differences are just smaller versions of countries’ cultural differences throughout the world.(Agnew, Mercer and Sopher 1) In other words, every city has a characteristic built environment which is a reflection of its social structure, and even more there are reciprocal interactions between the structure of cities and the human.

To understand and analyze the multiple dimensions of a particular place where we have never been to, it could be through films and documentaries. In films and documentaries, filmmakers try to show the most significant and clear features of cities. Therefore, it could be even better to experience cities through lens of filmmakers rather than actually visit one part of those cities. The film 8 Mile, directed by Curtis Hanson, is one example of a film that thoroughly shows diverse images of the place. This film is not just showing the visual image of Detroit of 20th century, but also invisible images of places with social and economic issues.

As mentioned above, the film 8 Mile is based in the city Detroit, an industrial city.

Detroit was becoming devastated and what was once a flourishing dream and beam of hope, paling into insignificance. The central city of automobile industry, Detroit,...