More a version of here than home
S.J. CAHN
It was talked about this summer. It was lambasted. Criticized.
But for producers of the Fox TV show “The O.C.,” what mattered was
that it was watched.
That show started back up last week, and it seems sure to enrage
Newport Beach residents anew with its take on life in Orange County.
During the summer, as people -- including quite a few in the Pilot
newsroom -- watched “The O.C.,” I wrestled with a similar
fictionalizing of my hometown: Manhattan Beach.
A high school friend of mine, Michael Scott Moore, published his
first novel, set in the early 1980s in a fictional beach town called
Calaveras Beach. More than a few of the characters in “Too Much of
Nothing” are familiar, as is the locale and the feel of place.
Where I grew up in the ‘80s reminds me much of Newport Beach today
(as I’ve written about a few times in these pages). While Manhattan
Beach has become “Beverly Hills by the Beach” (my title for it),
Newport -- with the exception of the gated communities in Newport
Coast -- seems to have maintained something akin to the down- home
feel you encounter throughout the city. I attribute that to the
harbor and boating lifestyle, which I think is the unifying character
of the town, more than to, say, the beach -- which might seem the
usual suspect.
For that reason, while I was reading the book, I thought it might
paint a more picture familiar to Newport Beach residents than to
those in Manhattan Beach. And it may say a little something about
where Newport Beach has been and what is has become, especially for
those of us who grew up during the 1980s. (At the least, our former
high school teacher who lives on Balboa Island should be interested.)
It tells the story of a hesitant high school boy -- by any account
one who would be thought of as a “good” kid -- who goes slightly off
in the wrong direction, largely drawn by a friend. This friend, and
this gives away nothing, ends up murdering him (the wages of even a
little sin, and all). The story of how this boy falls is played
against a background of false idealism, false impressions and
misguided adolescent hopes set in a pastiche of sorts of a bygone
Southern California.
At least, that’s certainly how Mike sees the past versus the
present.
“It’s a totally different place,” he told me when comparing the
area of 20 years ago to today. “Developers have managed to make it
even denser and more artificial than it was in the ‘80s. Out of
laziness, I never got around to changing a few place names in the
book, and when I was in L.A. for a reading two weeks ago I realized
it didn’t matter, because those places were gone. I had no idea I was
writing a historical novel.”
Why the difference?
“It looks to me like pure bloat,” he said. “Everything that’s
happened to Southern California in the last 20 years is the result of
uninterrupted prosperity. But that also makes the area fascinating to
write about. Prosperity and its drawbacks are the national trend.”
Without prompting, Mike also mentioned Newport Beach’s own
fictional self when I asked what he’d want readers to take away from
the novel.
“A sense of how the shallowness of Southern California is not
restricted to rich people -- it infects the opposition, too,” he
said. “I think Rage Against the Machine is hopelessly shallow, for
example. The fact that their so-called rebellion sounds eloquent to
the producers of ‘The O.C.’ speaks volumes.”
Maybe if I’d grown up in Newport, I’d be more a fan -- grudgingly
or not -- of “The O.C.” After spending some days reading someone’s
vision of my own world, I only can imagine what it might be like
seeing it rendered in bright Fox color.
Not that I’m advocating that frightening thought.
* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He can be reached at (949)
574-4233 or by e-mail at s.j.cahn@latimes.com.
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