Songs and Dances of the Underground
It often seems like the subway is treated as a metaphor for urban life in general. When we’re immersed in the optimism of economic expansion, it represents progress and vitality. In more troubled times, it becomes a symbol of crime, danger, aggression and alienation.
Last winter, while browsing the shelves in Stephen Welch’s bookstore on St. Viateur Street, I came across Michael Brooks’ book, Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York, in which he weaves the history of the New York subway’s development with the history of public attitude towards it. His point is that how people feel about the subway has always been as important as the actual operation of the subway itself.
I had this in mind when I saw Songs and Dances of the Inanimate World, a 1985 National Film Board piece by Pierre Hébert, Robert Lepage and René Lussier. Through animation, still photography and drawings, the film serves as a portrait of the Montreal metro, but it’s not a very flattering one, dwelling on the alienation and inhumanity of the underground. It’s fascinating to watch but I find the message a bit tiresome.
By virtue of where I lived, I only rode the metro occasionally in Montreal, getting around mainly by bus, foot or bike. Here in Hong Kong, though, I’m a regular subway commuter. On most days it’s monotonous, and on particularly bad days it’s insufferably hostile, but it always affords me a chance to consider the people I normally pass by on the street without thinking twice about. Last week, as I rode the MTR in the late afternoon, I considered how the teenage schoolkids heading home infused the train with a nervous hormonal energy. Another day, I watched, bemused, as a little white girl climbed up one of the support poles as if she was on the monkey bars. Her dad smiled but the middle-aged Chinese ladies across the aisle shot dagger looks, as if to ask, “How could he possibly allow that?”
Songs and Dances‘s French synopsis describes it as a “metaphorical and expressive representation” of the “rapports d’agressivité” — aggressive relations — in the metro. But are they really aggressive relations — or just the superficial indifference of urban life?
Tags: Metro, Montreal
