G R I T
Batman (1989)
Tim Burton's Gotham City is less a representation of the future as it is an alternate reality. The city is distinctly 20th century Manhattan, pre-Guiliani era, enhanced and distorted to a great degree of fantasy. All the defining elements of the city are exaggerated, with a much greater concentration of density, infrastructure, crime and grit.
New York is heavily referenced in the architecture of Gotham, which ranges from art-deco and Gothic-revival for public buildings and urban artifacts, to brownstone apartments. There are no visibly new buildings - the most modern element of the urban landscape being the cars - which illustrate the poverty characteristic of the general population. Urbanity is perceived to be dirty and unsafe; as such the few that are wealthy either live away from the city in mansions such as Wayne Manor, or high above it in ornate penthouses.
Everyone else essentially lives in the shadows of the city's infrastructure, where streetscapes and homes alike are punctuated by heavy steel plates, rivets and trusses supporting many layers of bridges and elevated trains, as well as scaffolding to support the haphazard stacking of buildings above. The urban form is a product of a city run by the free market and mob bosses in the absence of any kind of planning commission, resulting in ill-placed smokestacks and claustrophobic spaces and buildings that cantilever over the street, shrouding the lower levels of the city in a perpetual dusk. Even the city hall is overshadowed by industrial towers, and a structure resembling the Brooklyn Bridge.
Production designer Anton Furst deliberately mixed clashing architectural styles to create what he called “an essay in ugliness... as if hell erupted through the pavement and kept on going.” Vicki Vale's relatively clean loft contains a mix of modern 1980's torchiere floor lamps and furniture juxtaposed with steel arches and views of rooftop water towers, illustrating an attempt at refinement as well as the effort of the middle classes towards making the best of an otherwise unattractive environment.
Despite the poverty and ugliness within Gotham, its inhabitants are able to revel in the moment, even if it meant flocking after a parade float billowing with cash. The chaos and darkness of the unregulated city is offset by a silver lining in a sense of freedom for the people, such that they can look beyond the grit with a hope that sustains them from day to day.