Glimpses of Phoenix: The Desert Metropolis in Written and Visual Media

Part of the self-image of Phoenix is that the city has no history and that anything of importance happened yesterday. Also that Phoenix is a
clean
city, though there is considerable evidence of a past of police corruption and social oppression. The
real
present-day Phoenix, easygoing and sun-drenched, a place of ever-expanding development and economic growth, guarantees, it is said, an enviable lifestyle, low taxes, and unfettered personal freedom and opportunity.

Little of this is true. Phoenix has been described as one of the least sustainable cities in the country. The sixth largest urban area of the United States, there is an alarming superficiality in the tourism-oriented discourse of the leaders and citizens of the capital of Arizona. This study examines a series of narrative works (novels, theatre, chronicles, investigative reporting, personal accounts, editorial cartooning, even a children’s television program) that question this discourse in a frequently stinging fashion. The works examined are anchored in a critical understanding of the dominant urban myths of Greater Phoenix, and an awareness of how all the newness, modernity, and fun-in-the-sun mentality mask a uniquely dystopian human experience.