"The Burning of Los Angeles"

"The Burning of Los Angeles" is Tod Hackett's masterpiece—his Ilmatic. What's more, this painting says a lot about the lives of Tod and his merry band of weirdos.

Or, rather, it would be his masterpiece, and it would say a lot about how awful Hollywood is—if Tod could ever get around to painting it.

So what is this thing? Let's look at the painting itself. You're getting truth in advertising with this one: it is indeed a depiction of Los Angeles being burned to the ground. This pyromaniacal rampage is perpetrated by "the people who come to California to die [...] all those poor devils who can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence" (27.81). In other words, these are the people who bought into the American Dream—Hollywood's creepy version of it, anyway—only to find out that they've been sold a bill of goods.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Now that the city's burning, however, the "people who come to California to die" have got a new target—Todd and his friends. In the foreground of the painting, we see Tod, Claude, Homer, Harry, and Faye running away from the mob, each reacting to their plight in a different way:

• Tod is turning and throwing a rock, which represents his disdain for these people and the society that produced them.
• Claude is turning and making an obscene gesture. Like Tod, he's showing his contempt, but he does it far less severely because he benefits from this system as a successful filmmaker.
• Homer is "falling out of the canvas, his face half-asleep," which we think is an amazingly accurate depiction of the way that Homer goes through life (27.82).
• Faye is running "proudly, throwing her knees high," almost like she's leading a parade rather than escaping a mob (27.82). As usual, any attention is good attention for Faye, and she's completely oblivious to reality.
• Harry is stumbling behind Faye. This one's pretty self-explanatory.

As you can see, each character's personality is reflected here, some of them in ways you probably didn't expect. But it's important to note that these perceptions are filtered through the eyes of Tod Hackett, who isn't always the most levelheaded guy in the world. Regardless, "The Burning of Los Angeles" is Tod's way of expressing his fear of "the people who come to California to die," those poor fools who chased the American Dream, only to have it pulled away from them at the last second like a purse on a string.