After reviewing Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard along with the Faulkners “Golden Land” and Schulberg’s “ A Table at Circo’s,” it is evident that the city of Los Angeles puts on a “Glamour facade” in which everything portrayed through Hollywood is an illusion. This stress of being an actor/ actress combined with fame breeds a society that thrives off being false.
In Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard we learn about an actress “Norma Desmond” set in the 1950s. In Norma’s prime, she was extremely successful but as she aged, her success slowly diminished to nothing. She became couped up in her enormous mansion on Sunset Boulevard along with her butler and ex-husband, Max von Mayerling. Norma is extremely delusional in the sense that she still believes her fame has always been at an all-time high. This is pinnacle to understanding the dynamics of Hollywood’s fake glamour. Stars in Hollywood work remarkably hard to get to the top of their careers in acting, when they finally do, stars want the limelight to never fade. Unfortunately, times shift and people always find the next best thing. This can cause immense mental distress among actors and actresses and breeds a society that’s false, this was the aim of Norma Desmonds roll in Sunset Boulevard. A scene in this movie where this is exemplified is one of those finals scenes where she is walking down the staircase. This is iconic to the movie when she tells the cameras to “come closer.” In Golden Land, Ira Erwing breaks down this theory of false glamour in Los Angeles by bashing its morals and values as a city. He claims that people are willing to go great lengths to achieve success by sacrificing their morals as human beings to rather lie to the public on what their life looks like. He explains the younger generation of L.A. by calling them“young people, young men in trunks, and young girls in little more, with bronzed, unselfconscious bodies.” Lastly, In A Table at Ciro’s, Schulberg uses symbolism to explain that Hollywood falsely advertises to people that it is a place of opportunity to make yourself well know. Ninety-nine percent of the people living in Hollywood know this idea is completely false. The main character Jenny breaks up with her boyfriend in an attempt to make it big in Hollywood, a classic case of one being sucked into Hollywood’s facade.
These three texts accurately depict Hollywood and the loss of morals that the city has acquired over the years it also tells us that fame isn’t longlasting regardless of expectations.
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