Hey Arnold!: The Movie A Tale of The Hillwood Working Class Vs Industrial Gentrification
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of my very own trip down memory lane and I felt old, real old. But while viewing the Nickelodeon classic Hey Arnold!: The Movie (2002). I started to see a world of animated working-class struggle against an old neoliberal foe namely, industrial gentrification. The plot of the movie is plain and simple but also hard-hitting to the bottom of the economic soul when it comes down to class struggle against large Blade-Runner style corporations bulldozing manual-labour and working-class neighbourhoods for a new class of people who represent the sociological consumer or Weberian middle-class that hold a higher income defined by income, assets and cultural capital going back centres such as the main villain of the movie e.g., Alphonse Perrier du von Scheck; who runs a major corporation termed FutureTech Industries (FTI). After leaving a local baseball game the two main protagonists Arnold Shortman and his friend Gerald Johanssen then realise that Von Scheck is out to destroy Hillwood that is when Von Scheck suddenly appears on a large outdoor screen just like something straight out of a Ridley Scott neo-noir dystopia; to then announce his plans to gentrify Hillwood while relocating the residents along with their homes rather forcefully for a new luxurious high-rise shopping mall; that will evidently destroy Hillwood for a new class of people. Moreover, that same day the new property development venture is announced Helga Pataki who happens to be Arnolds’s secret lover while holding a bully-like front around the area of Hillwood discovers her dad Big Bob Pataki the local small-time capitalist working alongside Von Scheck’s hired brutes to make sure the property development scheme goes ahead without any trouble getting in the way. Big Bob Pataki in fact was also let in on the deal with (FTI) to build a new super-sized branch of his beeper store within the new high-rise shopping centre but he has no idea that (FTI) and Von Scheck’s goons will steal most of the profit and ill-gotten gains for themselves; ergo, making the (CEO) Von Scheck even richer down the line. Helga begins to inform Arnold and his friend how to take down Von Scheck’s gentrifying (FTI) venture while disguised as a secret informant named “Deep Throat” as our two main protagonists set out to find a document that declares Hillwood a historic district after a major American Revolutionary war had taken place at the centre of Hillwood called the “Tomato Incident” Von Scheck’s bloodlines had also been traced back to the historic war, therefore, parodying (WASP) ancestry which many ruling-class Americans like the Astor family or the Vanderbilt family still hold today because of their prominence during the Gilded Age (Von Scheck’s bloodline happens to go back to British colonialism during the Thirteen American Colonies (Wkipedia, 2002). At this time many non-Anglo-Americans felt enslaved under an older class system called “colonialism” which led to The American Revolutionary War against the ruling British crown; since native Americans and political republicans were seen as subjects, not freemen or individual agents’ outside under British rule. While relations among the British Empire and native Americans were even worse as land belonging to the native American community was evidently taken into the British hegemony system around the year (1830) such as the land of the great lakes. One can point similarities to Ireland under subjugated under this feudalist economic and modern-day market evangelical system in which the Irish Fenians were then driven off their land by wealthy British colonial landowners. One could even say links between gentrification and class warfare have roots going back to Anglo-colonial rule. For example, many settlers used both their political might and economic influence to build new property development schemes overseas while enslaving natives into a lower-class or social-economic tier system. As a result, self-rule becomes a luxury if you are only a part of a certain social class just like the settlers during the regain of British North America (Walsh, 2021).
This is why gentrification has a deep meaning in Hey Arnold:! The Movie (2002) because it’s about the social struggle against the high and mighty who not only control the world of capital but even the local authority’s which is displayed quite graphically in the Blockapalooza Scene where Arnold and his friends decide to throw a block party for his community against Von Scheck’s neoliberal development project. The Hillwood police then enter the scene after being informed by Von Scheck’s hired enforcers that the block party is illegal while intercepting a permit to hold the party on that day of the demonstration; thus showing a parody relationship between gangster capitalism and the police who protect the class structure to evidently control the poor from protecting their local community’s this is also called a “monopoly on violence” again referencing Weberian economics or even that of Thatcherite political theory based in The United Kingdom while set in super-capitalist direct motion against public sector homes and evidently, the working-class through the “modernisation of social and public housing” as seen during “The Private Finance Initiative for English Council Housing Regeneration” and The 1980 Housing Act which released a large neoliberal tsunami against public housing under former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's privatization extravaganza in which the “discretionary power of local authorities to sell their (discounted) homes into a statutory ‘purchasing right for sitting tenants, subsequently selling off approximately 2.7 million dwellings UK-wide” (See Hodkinson, pp.912-., 2011). While an American SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team parodied as (S.P.A.T); is then seen arriving in an armoured police van dressed in riot gear while holding nightsticks ready to smash up the local community block party; large FutureTech Industries (FTI) helicopters are likewise seen flying into the area thus intimidating local residents working for a Gemeinschaft monopoly. While Von Scheck’s empire-building capitalist plans to control Hillwood are mostly from a neo-feudalist or military dictatorship perspective. This also shows a political epithet for cartoon fascism mirroring real-life and historical events while involving a class struggle between corporate totalitarianism and affordable housing within the inner-city (Movieclips, 2021).
While other movies like Boyz n the Hood (1991) which takes place in South Central, Los Angeles, explains the world of gentrification as when the property value is brought down on purpose by the market. As a result, property development landlords, corporations or real estate agents then capitalise on this by purchasing the land at a lower price; afterwards, they move all the poor people out similar to the plotline of Hey Arnold!: The Movie and evidently the rich and their Petite bourgeoisie high-rise glass tower apartment blocks and state-of-the-art shopping malls start to move in. While those who formally lived in that working-class zone or lower-income district neighbourhood will eventually end up homeless or outpriced by the market. Therefore, “wealth, power, poverty and crime” also remain an extended hierarchical political instrument of top-down social control; especially, by the owner-class or modern-day federal class that operate free-market, neoliberal and socioeconomic modernization models against working-class and inner-city district zones as mentioned in the film Boyz in The Hood (1991); while those who are either seen as fundamentally uneducated, blue-collar, indigent or a part of the wrong demographic will always be exploited by this downright cruel and inhumane market lead neoliberal system called: “Gentrification”(See Boyz In The Hood, Singleton, 1991).
BK Stories. (2017). Taking it to the Streets: Local Residents on Gentrification in Brooklyn. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd4yEI9ypBQ. Last accessed 09/01/2022
Movieclips Classic Trailers. (2021). Hey Arnold! The Movie (2002) — Blockapalooza Scene (1/10) | Movieclips. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OdMSpQvDLI. Last accessed 30/09/2021.
Hodkinson, S.. (2011). The Private Finance Initiative in EnglishCouncil Housing Regeneration: A Privatisation too Far?. Housing Studies. 26 (1), p.912.
Singleton, J. (Director). (1991). Boyz n the Hood. Columbia Pictures.
Tucker, T. (Director). (2002). Hey Arnold! The Movie. Nickelodeon Movies. Snee-Oosh, Inc. Nickelodeon Animation Studio. Paramount Pictures.
Walsh, B. (2021). Case Study 5 Background: Living In The British Empire: North America. Available: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/empire/g2/cs5/background.htm. Last accessed 30/09/2021.
Wkipedia. (2002). Hey Arnold! The Movie. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Arnold!:_The_Movie. Last accessed 30/09/2021.
