Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Film Studies

Reader 1

James (John) Morrison

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Cole B Clark

Abstract

This paper is very important because it offers scholarly insight on how the media portrayed Detroit to push negative narratives versus what was actually happening in the city, further suppressing and neglecting the once booming city. Detroit is one of the most talked-about cities in America, yet much of that talk has long depended on simplification. For decades, the city has been framed through images of fire, abandonment, bankruptcy, and comeback, turning a real place with a dense political and cultural history into a national symbol that people often recognize before they understand. This thesis asks how that happened. More specifically, it traces how Detroit was transformed from a powerful center of Black life, industrial labor, and urban possibility into a city repeatedly narrated as crisis, failure, and eventual recovery. Through a media studies lens grounded in urban history, Black political history, and cultural analysis, I examine Detroit across four major stages: the postwar city and the destruction of Black neighborhoods such as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley; the 1967 uprising and its national media framing; the corporate redevelopment era represented by the Renaissance Center; and the city’s 2013 bankruptcy and uneven post-bankruptcy renaissance. I analyze media imagery, redevelopment discourse, public narratives, and cultural representation alongside historical facts and policy shifts. Key moments in the paper include the 1967 uprising, in which 43 people were killed, more than 7,000 were arrested, and about 1,700 fires burned across the city, as well as the 2013 bankruptcy, which involved roughly $18 billion in debt and became the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in United States history. These moments mattered materially, but they also mattered symbolically. They gave the nation images and language through which Detroit could be consumed as a warning, a spectacle, or later, a comeback story.

What this thesis ultimately argues is that Detroit’s crisis was never only economic. It was also representational. Structural abandonment often appeared natural, Black political power was frequently framed through suspicion, and redevelopment was repeatedly narrated through selective visibility. My aim is to show that Detroit was never just a ruined city waiting to be rediscovered nor a comeback story that began when outside capital returned. It has always been a living place whose meaning has been fought over through race, power, memory, and image. By reading Detroit through that struggle, this project pushes back against the versions of the city that flatten it most and insists on a fuller, more human way of seeing it.

Download

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

Share

COinS