History and the Arts: Chicago Rising
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The Elevator in Literature and Art
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Charlie and the Great Glass
Elevator, by
Roald Dahl, as
displayed in the Elevator and the City exhibit (New York:
Knopf, 1972). |
The idea of being airborne has always played on the imagination. In literature, art, theatre, movies and music, rising and descending have been used as metaphors, as comic devices, as visual and linguistic turns of phrase. People are eager to take flight, to rise up and see things higher than they ever dreamed possible. The elevator, an obvious and perfect symbol for ascent and descent, is also an enclosure, a representation of a larger world space in which humankind is confined then liberated.
One good example of this symbolism as it was used in the literature that appeared in the exhibit comes from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (left). In this children's novel, the titular elevator can take young Charlie Bucket and his relatives not only up and down, but in any imaginable direction -- even into outer space.
In the Elevator and the City exhibit, a very few examples of the uses of the elevator in art were presented, including a short farce, written in 1889 by William Dean Howells, in which several guests are stuck in an elevator on their way to an elegant dinner; a poem which uses the device of the elevator shaft metaphorically; and a photographic portrait of General George Owen Squier, said to be the inventor of Muzak™ (popularly known as elevator music).
Also included were stills and a facsimile of the script of Billy Wilder’s comic masterpiece, Some Like It Hot. These materials, along with the films included in the video show that accompanied the exhibit (among them, Some Like It Hot), suggest some of the ways in which elevators can be used as cinematic devices.
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Billy
Wilder’s
Some Like it Hot: the Funniest Film Ever Made: the Complete
Book, by Alison Castle (Köln, New York: Taschen,
2001). |
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