Urban Space And Body Representation In Martin Scorsese's Early Films

This thesis discusses the relations between urban space and body representation in the American director Martin Scorsese's three early films: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and After Hours. As a cultural sociologist in American cinema, Martin Scorsese has all along dedicated to making his films on the marginalized or unprivileged groups living in the urban space of New York City. Drawing upon the illuminating insights of Henri Lefebvre on urban space and the production of space, the thesis presents a textual and cultural analysis of the cinematic urban space and body representation in these three films, arguing that in Martin Scorsese's early films urban space of New York City is mostly constructed as a site of alienated everyday life, a field of social division and a realm of politics and social power. The people in urban space are often represented as lonely bodies with obsessive but unsolved desires and thus taking reckless actions. It further argues that there is a common life pattern of “struggle – escape – return” embedded in the three films. To be specific, unprivileged bodies in the urban space of New York City from the 1970 s to 1990 s, live a struggling daily life and cannot escape from their lived space, though the attempts have been made, showing a kind of destined repression of urban space over the unprivileged bodies.