本文是一篇英语语言学论文，文本重点分析了城市作为反映现代性不同侧面的奇观和与城市主体的互动模式，援用本雅明关于“城市”、“震惊”、“游荡者”等相关阐述，认为艾米斯在《金钱》中不但细致刻画了现代城市生存的碎片化本质，而且对通过反思和超脱获得救赎的可能性进行了探讨。
Chapter One:The Coexistence of Beauty and Ugliness inTwo Cities’Spectacles
1.1 New York:An Illusory Utopia of American Dreams
In Martin Amis’s Money,New York emerges as an emblematic yet deceptive landscape embodying the contradictions of the American Dream.Traditionally,America symbolises ambition,prosperity,and limitless potential,epitomised by NewYork as the quintessential metropolis for realising dreams of wealth and sensoryfulfilment.However,through the experiences of protagonist John Self,Amis revealsthat beneath the city’s glittering facade lies hypocrisy,chaos,moral degradation,andexploitation.Self’s complex relationship with New York shifts from an enthusiasticembrace of its promise to a gradual,painful realisation of its inherent deception andemptiness.
Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s theories of visual culture and spectacle,thissection explores how Amis illustrates the coexistence of beauty and ugliness throughfour key urban spectacles:the chaotic streets,the vertical city of skyscrapers,and thediseased soundscape of modern life.These spectacles function as sensory distractionsand critical symbols that expose the underlying contradictions of the American Dream.Through the interplay of sensory overload and systemic inequality,New York emergesas a potent emblem of modern capitalism,offering an illusory utopia that ultimatelyentraps individuals like Self in cycles of desire,consumption,and disillusionment.Amis critiques how the very aspects of New York that appear to promise freedom andopportunity simultaneously deprive individuals of their autonomy,trapping themwithin an illusory vision of consumerism embedded in the American dream.
1.2 London:An Existential Abyss of Tumult and Melancholy
As a contrasting facet of the urban experience,London emerges in Martin Amis’swriting not merely as a city of external chaos,but as an existential abyss—a spacewhere social,political,and personal despair converge.The terms“tumult”and“melancholy”encapsulate the duality of the city depicted in Money.“Tumult”refersto the overwhelming noise,chaos,and social agitation that define the externalvibrancy of London,while“melancholy”captures the deep emotional and existentialdespair that lurks beneath the surface,emphasising the disillusionment that pervadesthe lives of the city’s inhabitants.London,as portrayed by Martin Amis,is a city ofcontradictions:outwardly bustling and alive with activity,yet internally fractured anddecaying under the weight of modern capitalist forces.Through the manipulation ofphysical and cultural spectacles,Amis critiques the contradictions of modernity.Thesespectacles,although initially presenting a picture of bustling life,ultimately reveal a melancholic abyss underlying the apparent prosperity.By examining four distinct yetinterconnected spectacles in the city,namely changed street commerce,the royalwedding spectacle,the Thatcherite unemployment protests,and the perpetual grey andhumid skies,Amis uses these scenes as a lens to critique the city’s deeper structuralcrises and the forces of modernity at play.
The presentation of street commercialised spectacles is the erosion of culturalmemory and the homogenisation of space.Amis’s depiction of commerce in Londonstreets represents more than just a passing urban scene;it is a powerful critique ofcapitalism’s effect on cultural memory.
Chapter Two:The Hurried Crowd’s Shock Experience ofCities
2.1 Contingency:Loneliness in the Crowd
Defined by contingency,unpredictability,and fleeting social encounters,modernurban life resists stability and coherence.Benjamin’s description of the shockexperience can be found in Baudelaire’s sonnetÀUne Passante,where the street isincredibly fluid,bringing together a lot of itinerant people as well as personal desires,contradictions,and loneliness.It can be lustful in an instant and hesitant for a briefperi
