“Seattle Is Dying” Is the Sequel to Escape from New York

The year is 1997. And all of the inveterate criminals of America are spending life in Manhattan, which has been transformed into a gigantic maximum-security prison. This is how the US dealt with a 400 percent increase in crime. Give the poor what is now a gated community for the world’s super-rich. But it was almost impossible for the bulk of white Americans in the late ’70s-early ’80s—the period Escape from New York‘s director, John Carpenter, conceived and completed the film—to be nothing but pessimistic about the future of urban America. Indeed, urban back then actually meant black (urban music, urban fashion, urban English). This is certainly why the