VanBuren: Pondering Pittsburgh

After premiering at Sundance over one year ago, ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh’ is finally… After premiering at Sundance over one year ago, ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh’ is finally seeing the light of day. It spent some time on the shelf, to be sure, but the movie — based on Michael Chabon’s breakthrough coming-of-age novel — is finally being released in theaters this Friday, and the timing couldn’t be better.

Because in the coming weeks, as many of us graduate, celebrate, move out or move on, we’ll face our own mystery of Pittsburgh: What has this city meant to us?

For four or however many years, what role, if any, has this landscape played in our lives? This place has been a lover to some and a cruel mistress to others, this jungle of ancient mills and empty warehouses.

Whatever any of us decide we think about this city, it’s clear that we might not be thinking about it for long. The youth population has been declining for years, and spring is the time for another batch of 20-somethings to head out the door.

The irony is that Pittsburgh is ideal for finding yourself, even if you don’t want to find yourself here for too long. At least, that’s what the movies would have us believe. Perhaps, considering the amount of cinematic attention paid to Pittsburgh in movies like ‘Mysteries,’ we can turn to the world of film to help us consider our own Steel City reality and unravel what it means to come of age in a place that has yet to discover its own contemporary cultural role.

Still moving on from its industrial origins, the city is in a state of flux, the ubiquitous sense of transition reflecting in the lives of the characters — both real and fictitious — who live here. Many Pittsburghers in film experience crises of self-discovery.

They grapple with sexuality and affection in movies like ‘Mysteries’ and ‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno.’ They struggle with personal and professional stagnation, like the despondent professors of ‘Wonder Boys’ and ‘Smart People.’ Most famously, they defend themselves from zombies in horror films like ‘Dawn of the Dead’ — well-documented allegories for modern cultural anxieties.

The common theme in all of these is transience, growing up and moving on, be it from youthful naivete, figurative demons or the literal walking dead. If the setting of these movies is as rife with metaphor as the flesh-craving undead roaming their streets, then we might surmise that Pittsburgh is a place for transients, for the misguided and maladjusted, for us twisted youths that have yet to discover how we ourselves fit into the big picture that is the world outside our college years.

Naturally one might argue that college itself is a catalyst for self-discovery, whether or not your campus is nestled in the valleys of Western Pennsylvania. In a way, that’s true — coming of age isn’t something you can avoid, not for long, and it certainly isn’t exclusive to Pittsburghers. Yet for reasons other than the lucrative tax breaks, filmmakers continue to use this city as the backdrop for stories of personal growth and self-realization.

If we believe what we see in the movies, New York City is a circus of taxis and bright lights. Miami is for the beautiful, Los Angeles for the damned. Pittsburgh’s identity, it seems, is its propensity for transformation — the apparent likelihood that living in the shadow of the Cathedral of Learning, the Cloud Factory or the defunct smokestacks of a long-abandoned foundry might somehow demystify the persistent questions we have about ourselves.

So then, as another academic year draws to a close, the question you might ask yourself remains: Did it?