he pop-culture pastime of predicting the future through science
fiction goes back at least as far as Jules Verne, the 19th-century novelist
who foresaw space travel and cities beneath the sea. His view of the future is
a picnic compared with the apocalyptic scenarios that dominate science fiction
today. Civilization lies in ruins and what remains of the human race is
enslaved by the murderous computer from the "Matrix" series or stalked by
bone-crushing cyborgs like the one made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the
next California governor, in the first "Terminator" film.
Los Angeles in the movies is regularly blown up, burned down or pillaged by
aliens. (Life in Southern California recently must have been very much like a
fiery disaster film.) But when Californians talk seriously about the future,
they inevitably focus on "Blade Runner," the 1982 cult movie that made a star
of its director Ridley Scott. It depicts the future of the Golden State as a
civil liberties catastrophe where "replicants" (synthetic people) are mass
produced as slaves, assassins and prostitutes. The replicants have disappeared
from the discussion in real-world California, which tends to focus on the
overall civic disaster depicted in the film.
The pollution is horrendous. The rich have withdrawn into fortress-style
towers. The avenues teem with unruly, eccentrically dressed immigrants who
speak a rough street language instead of English. References to these scenes
show up everywhere, from books about politics to civic-planning documents like
"L.A. 2000," a look at the future commissioned by Tom Bradley, when he was
mayor of the city in the 1980's. The report warned that the region might
deteriorate into a scene from "Blade Runner": a featureless sprawl seething
with class and ethnic hostilities. In "A California State of Mind," the
public-opinion analyst Mark Baldassare writes that Californians who were asked
about the future "presented an image more like a nightmare than a utopia" —
descriptions that recalled a certain science-fiction movie.
"Blade Runner" exploits two primordial California fears. It depicts the
state becoming part of an undifferentiated sprawl. It also plays into the
fears of those Californians who think that the state will someday be dominated
by immigrants who usurp the national language. Disquiet about the rising
immigrant tide has been an undercurrent in California politics for at least 30
years. It was this sentiment that energized the ballot initiatives that
outlawed affirmative action in public universities and bilingual education in
public schools.
Fear of Blade Runnerization and the belief that the affluent should spend
their tax dollars only on themselves have generated a pattern of civic
secession. Wealthy and middle-class Californians have increasingly withdrawn
into gated communities that thrive while the older, poorer counties they have
fled struggle along on a diminished tax base. The people in the new,
homogenous communities tend to be extreme localists who drop out of the
broader civic life. When they do engage statewide politics, they tend to do it
with ballot initiatives that slash tax revenues, hamstring the Legislature and
generally cut the civic ties that bind citizens in one place to those at the
far end of the state.
This secessionist impulse is as old as California. Proposals for breaking
up the state have surfaced and resurfaced like clockwork but have mainly gone
nowhere. The secessionists discovered a powerful tool with the passage of
Proposition 13, which fueled the tax revolt when it capped property taxes in
1978. Proposition 13 was a secessionary act by homeowners and corporate
landowners who were essentially saying that they wished to withdraw from the
traditional system in which affluent citizens underwrite schools, social
services and infrastructure used by the poor and working class.
Proposition-style campaigns proved the perfect tool for affluent
communities to break off from older, poorer counties — taking with them
revenue-producing malls and businesses. The breakaway communities further
impoverished the counties they left behind by expanding into land the counties
had set aside for revenue-generating development that was all the more crucial
after Proposition 13 made it nearly impossible to raise taxes. As the
California writer Peter Schrag noted in "Paradise Lost," the new cities used
planning and zoning authority to "keep poor and low-income housing out."
More than 60 communities have broken away since the 1970's. Many more
attempted to do so. The Legislature slowed the defections by requiring that
incorporations be revenue neutral, but the urge to secede continues, most
notably in the San Fernando Valley, which is seeking to leave Los Angeles,
taking with it a huge chunk of the city's population.
California's response to the pessimistic future in "Blade Runner" is a
clear indication of what Californians fear and what might be in store for the
rest of us if the appetite for secession spreads across the country. Bear in
mind, however, that the breakaway communities in California have deepened the
civic problems they hoped to flee. The barriers they erect destroy the ebb and
flow through which newcomers have historically become part of the mainstream
and moved into the middle class. The fortress-style villages — with affluent
whites shut up inside and immigrants outside the gates — are hastening the
development of the science-fiction scenario that terrified Californians in the
first place.
