Escapes
Why did Harold Anchel create City Playgound; or rather, what can we infer from his 1935 lithograph? At first, we notice a familiar swingset and think that the children must be playing, until the seriousness of their actions sinks in. The children are living through the Great Depression, but they haven’t known anything else, so it’s more accurate to say they’re experiencing a world that has been created by others along with themselves. Anchel shows objects and implied forces more powerful than the children: large buildings, elevated train tracks, fences surrounding their small playground. Here is where they go to escape into their own world--presumably a happier one.
Many children’s stories have a similar plot: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Lewis Carroll; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), by C.S. Lewis; and of course The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), by L. Frank Baum. All of them show understandable reasons why the children would want to leave their surroundings for something better. Henry Selick’s 2009 film Coraline helps us to attach that to visual representation. The dilapidated old house to which Coraline and her parents move is faded and gloomy, so when she discovers a secret passage to the “Other World,” its warm-hued kitchen is inviting. Even the tunnel she travels in is vibrant with blues and violets. We eventually learn that their appearances are an illusion; however, they reveal how many other escapist worlds exist in the film, like the snow globe shown here or even how games function in the story.
A popular fan theory holds that the Other World is just a construction of Coraline’s imagination, her way to envision the truth of unhappy relationships that she can’t otherwise articulate. The 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz follows a similar logic. If unhappy environments make diversions attractive—an immersive, visualized place to escape—then returning to reality feels like a letdown. Coraline and Dorthy return wiser but not necessarily happier. Is it possible that the supposedly happier world in Anchel’s print has a similar effect upon its adult viewers?