7. Experiencing a city through its Underground

“...The lethargic movements of the flâneur would be lost in the constant movement within the tunnels that funnel people from one platform to another in their search for an escape to street level. The sense of immediacy in the desire to surface from the underground allows little time for observation....”

Paris is the quintessential capital to which David B. Clarke’s notion of the 'Cinematic City' can be applied. In his article, “Previewing the Cinematic City,” Clarke suggests that the 'cityscape' can be seen as a 'screenscape' (Clarke 1) wherein the flâneur’s experiences of a city are analogous to a cinematic experience. As a result, the city’s environment dictates the viewer’s cinematic experience, and thus acts as a curator to the flâneur’s perception of the city. Many factors can be explored in the analysis of ways in which Paris curates experiences for the many tourists who explore its streets. People such as Georges Haussmann, with his boulevard-widening project and Francois Mitterrand with his inclusion of Egyptian decorations across Paris are among the first figures who come to mind when envisioning urban curators of the Parisian streets. However, there is another, more subterranean element which can influence a person’s perception of the city streets: the Parisian metro, a section of the Parisian public transportation commission known as the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP). The enclosed environment of the RATP mediates a commuter’s experience by denying him or her the ability to discover new areas of the underground and it influences one’s perception of the neighbourhoods overhead by providing a microcosm of the city proper. Most Parisians use the metro regularly, and therefore effuse it with aspects of their various cultures. It is the people who frequent the metro lines as well as the stations themselves, who most strongly influence an observer’s notions of Paris.

The tunnels of the metro provide a prime example of the city’s authority over a commuter’s experience. Its linear manner completely strips the commuter of the ability to generate new navigation pattern in the underground. Since the tunnels have already been created, the commuter is unable to explore areas that have not already been sanctioned by the city. Furthermore, the seemingly constant state of rush hour forces commuters to follow the speed of traffic. The lethargic movements of the flâneur would be lost in the constant movement within the tunnels that funnel people from one platform to another in their search for an escape to street level. The sense of immediacy in the desire to surface from the underground allows little time for observation. However, there are instances where the occasional performer or vendor gathers a crowd around them that punctuates the traffic of the tunnels.

Performers of the RATP underground can range between musicians, singers, actors, poetry readers, and the occasional magician. The performers may be homeless, impoverished, members of a band selling albums, or professional orchestra groups using the public space as an opportunity to practice. These people have the ability to change the dynamics of the tunnels. They garner crowds and elicit applause from the on lookers such as at the metro station at Châtelet, one of the busiest and central stations of Paris where larger groups and more talented artists perform. Otherwise observers can pass the performers with the same indifference as the advertisement posters that surround them. Nonetheless, the music and audiences of such artists influences each commuter differently. The presence of the impoverished performer could create a sudden sense of remorse or contempt, depending on the commuter’s experiences and his or her views of social welfare. The music of the performers resonating off the ceramic walls might present a welcomed auditory break from the rustling of the commuters, or it could create a sense of anxiety about of the congested junction ahead. Yet, the usual immobility of the tunnel performers gives the commuter the choice to stay and watch or to continue on his or her route. This choice is taken away, however, when the performer becomes mobile, performing to a crowd who is stationary. Occasionally, a performer will enter the metro trains and perform to a crowd who does not have the choice but to listen thus reversing the performer-observer relationship and forcing the performer’s the reception. But the commuter’s experience of the metro is not limited to the transformation of a public space into a performance space. Commuters gain a sense of the neighbourhood at the surface by the appearance of the station below.

The RATP, depending on the location of the station, uses stations as a sort of preface to the city by reflecting what can to be expected above ground. Certain stations, especially along Lines 1 and 14 are designed to advertise more prestigious areas of Paris. Line 1’s terminals are located at the Château de Vincennes and in the business district, La Défence. It traces primary boulevards such as the Rue Rivoli and Les Champs-Élysées, stopping at locations such as the Bastille, Hôtel de Ville, Musée du Louvre, and Arc de Triomphe. These stations are decorated in order to give the commuter a brief history of the location and a cursory experience of the location without leaving the underground. For instance, the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre metro station is dimly lit, darkly painted, and displays facsimiles of items found in the Louvre, which creates a sense of the museum in the metro. The entire line is fairly well maintained and the trains primarily represent up-to-date models that reflect the importance of the route traced by the line above ground. Line 14 constitutes the most recent addition of the metro lines and stops only at significantly important centres such as the Mitterrand Library and the Bercy Performance centre. The line is therefore unlike all other metro lines in Paris and its trains are all fully automatic. In contrast, other metro lines such as Line 12 have crumbling ceramic walls and a far less welcoming atmosphere created by the fact that it does not stop at any culturally important locations. Commuters using these lines do not experience any extraordinary displays created by the city. At the same time, while the city designs certain metro stations to impart a conventional experience of the city, sometimes the results are unexpected.

The metro station, Cluny-La Sorbonne, located in the heart of the Latin Quarter, uses mosaics on the ceiling of the train platforms to reflect the creative medieval minds that were cultivated at the Sorbonne. This artistic presentation prepares the commuter for the beautifully rich and cultured neighbourhood above. However, the metro station Opéra, located in a fairly wealthy area of Paris, fails to do justice to the luxuriant opera house above ground. The stench of the metro station is so potent here that commuters rush to leave the underground as quickly as possible. The metro station Basilique de St-Denis comments on the famous medieval basilica above with fantastic imagery and facsimiles of the portico statuettes. But to a reserved commuter, this experience can be lost by the strong presence of the immigrant population living in this area. The large presence of ethnic groups is very evident and has resulted in the grouping of different cultures into various pockets of Paris and the surrounding suburbs.  This phenomenon is reflected in the metro as well.

A commuter can experience Parisian economic stratification and culture diversification by simply travelling the metro lines across various sections of the city. Travelling in the north close to and past the périférique, one can experience the strong African immigrant population while to the southeast; one can experience the 'China Town' above. On Line 9, at the Croix de Cheveaux station, many homeless Parisians have made the platform their home. They sleep in sleeping bags on public benches while the businesspeople of Paris wearing trench coats and carrying briefcases waiting for their train at the Esplanade de la Défance station, at the end of Line 1. For the commuter, observing the passengers in the metro serves as a stereotype-reliant but sometimes accurate, indicator of one’s position underneath the Parisian streets.             

Works Cited

Clarke, David B.  Previewing the Cinematic City. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Return to Table of Contents