Night Hawks

All characters in Edward Hopper's 1942 painting Nighthawks have a distance between them and a kind of isolation. In this illuminated placid island of a diner (almost in the face of harm from not participating in a blackout drill or worse yet; a seemingly real airstrike) against a dark, empty, and soulless world/outside; the inside isn't much more hospitable.

Maybe this disconnection between the characters in the diner is a parallel to the disconnection (or failure) of the artist's marriage. Or maybe it's simply (and more likely) the continuation of his previous themes of alienation in the city; the loss of species being, of humanity. It's doubtful that Hopper was influenced/cognizant of such critical milieu, but in such a similar societal mood he would have to come to the same ballpark conclusion as theorists studying the new modern man; that we're disconnected from our labor, which serves as a connection to nature (the real world and humanity) and differentiates us from the animals. When the products we create are taken away from us, that are used to fool us, to threaten us, and to inebriate us. Every cigar ad, ring of a cash register, and empty coffee urn for us also alienates us. These forces have a larger impact on us than we could ever have ourselves. The City impacts every aspect of our lives (individually), but we have no hope to impact the City the same way the City impacts us. And yet in this particular moment (in the painting and history), the city is in a liminal state and is an empty space.

Space is not something that exists by itself or is inherent, rather all people and a culture work to create space, the container for their needs. Space is both a reflection of social action and activity. Space is perceived, conceptualized, and represented; but what happens to a space when the abstract, homogenous, and quantifiable space for efficient functioning is hallowed out (such as during war). The control, surveillance, and the reproduction of social order is transformed. It happens at home when the roving warmachine is out abroad, it happens in the gutted city rubble. The production of space cannot be separated from the sensory and physical experiences of the people who inhabit it, and yet there is no one in view except the characters in the diner.

In this anxious shade of New York after Pearl Harbour, the not so distant fear of the war in Eurasia is realized as men go overseas and women assume a more industrially productive role (in the factories, the mills, and the warehouses). The space of the city changes. Most important to this is the young waiter. Whether it be intentional or not, Hopper painted the waiter to have a face of almost anguish and horror. Why would he feel such away? Is it simply the state of affairs he is in or is he trapped in a home conflict struggling to become real.

He is the 1940 origin or kernel of evil of the post-WW2 American Empire that struggles to become real/fully realized. At the start with the industrial ascension of the 40s and 50s and Modern America, space and the alienated body will be transformed into a machine that could convert the entire world into the disunited diner in Greenwich Village that did not exist.