美国国家公共电台 NPR Marvel Comics Meet Reality On The Not-So-Mean Streets Of Hell's Kitchen（在线收听）

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Hell's Kitchen has for a long time been pop culture shorthand for gritty New York City.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JESSICA JONES")

KRYSTEN RITTER: (As Jessica Jones) Do you know any drug dealers?

MIKE COLTER: (As Luke Cage) I own a bar in Hell's Kitchen. What you think?

MCEVERS: Hell's Kitchen is the backdrop for four popular Netflix series based on Marvel Comics heroes. Those characters - Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist - now team up in "The Defenders." It premieres on Netflix today. NPR's Neda Ulaby hit the streets of New York to see how much the fictionalized Hell's Kitchen reflects the real one.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: I went to Hell's Kitchen with Fred Van Lente, a comic book writer and historian who's lived in New York City for decades. Hell's Kitchen, he says, was once an infamous den of crime. In the 19th century, the story goes, a couple of cops were policing a riot near 10th Avenue. One said, this place is hell.

FRED VAN LENTE: And the other cop, said, no, no, hell is a much milder climate. This is hotter. This is hell's kitchen. And so that's where the name comes from.

ULABY: The scrappy Hell's Kitchen mythologized in the Marvel Universe is filled with bruisers and brawlers who crash in its flophouses and drink in its working-class bars. And it's got the kind of cheap, crummy offices where a superhero might moonlight as a detective or a crusading lawyer.

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DEBORAH ANN WOLL: (As Karen Page) Here you are, a survivor of Hell's Kitchen, the hottest place anyone's ever known, a place where cowards don't last long. So you must be a hero.

VAN LENTE: This stretch of Ninth is some of the best eating in Manhattan.

ULABY: Welcome to the real Hell's Kitchen today. Fred Van Lente points out a fabulous post-modern structure that exceeds anything you'd see in Architectural Digest.

VAN LENTE: It looks like someone put an apartment building inside a large plastic tube.

ULABY: The kind of building between 34th to 59th Street where a studio apartment could sell for close to a million dollars.

VAN LENTE: (Laughter) This is really, really different than what you would've seen here, like, a hundred years ago. This is really different than what you would've seen here in the '80s.

ULABY: That's when the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics moved to New York City in the '80s. Axel Alonso met me on West 54th Street.

Why is Hell's Kitchen so important for Marvel?

AXEL ALONSO: In Marvel comic books, Hell's Kitchen sort of functioned as Mean Street Central, the underbelly of society, the place where there are predators and prey.

ULABY: Yeah, but the predators today seem a lot more like the people charging you 50 bucks for a blowout or 20 for an omelet at brunch.

ALONSO: We're fudging the truth with Hell's Kitchen right now. You know, as you and I walk the streets, we see the development, the cafes.

ULABY: The New York of an earlier time informed so many iconic comics. Alonso says fans would revolt if you moved characters deeply associated with New York to any place authentically grittier like Detroit. And Alonso says the Harlem of Marvel's "Luke Cage" has been updated, much more so than Hell's Kitchen. And the Marvel Universe is making a point of weaving in stories about gentrification.

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TONYA GLANZ: (As Susan Harris) Hell's Kitchen's on the rebound, Mr. Nelson. And in 18 months, you won't be able to rent a broom closet at this price point.

ULABY: In the Netflix show "Daredevil," an evil real estate mogul kills tenement activists who will not move out of their rent-controlled apartments. He's motivated only by greed.

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VINCENT D'ONOFRIO: (As Wilson Fisk) The city and its future - seeing Hell's Kitchen to its fullest potential is very important to me.

ULABY: It's smart for Marvel or any other media company balancing between nostalgia for a rough-edge New York of decades past and the playground for the 1 percent that much of Manhattan is today, says comics writer Fred Van Lente. That said, you have to make Hell's Kitchen something it's not in order for it to work.

VAN LENTE: Superheroes defending Hell's Kitchen as it is now, filled with rich people - that's not a good look for superheroes, you know? Well, no, I only save the rich people. It's not - you know, you're not going to get a lot of good PR out of that.

ULABY: There was a time when TV shows like "Friends" painted a picture of a New York City that was aspirational yet affordable. Funny in a New York that's remarkably safe today but that few can easily afford how pop culture is manufacturing the menace. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.