| abstract | - New York City seems to get all the attention in American fiction. Are aliens landing in UFOs? They'll land in Queens. Is there a neighborhood full of world-class martial artists with superhuman powers? That's Chinatown. Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny? Madison Square Garden's got your front-row seats. A magical gateway between worlds? Look in Queens Midtown Tunnel ... or even Central Park. The rule seems to be that if a series or movie proposal does not require another setting (Kirk's Rock, for instance), it should be set in New York. If an original, successful series is set in Las Vegas, its Spin-Off will be more successful if set in New York. If you can't possibly get the show to happen in New York, have at least one main character (and as many minor ones as possible) be from New York, and continually harp on about how much better New York is than wherever the setting takes place. In other words, everything is better with a side helping of Big Applesauce. At the very least, New York is where a great many writers live, or come from (the rest reside in LA), which makes it more interesting to the writers than anything elsewhere. Not to mention "writing what they know." Picture how these guys tend to portray the South and Midwest... The bias is especially obvious when characters speak about specific parts of New York casually (everybody in the world knows which subway train you have to take to get to 115th street, right?), while the entirety of Middle America usually consists of about ten distinct places, or when any group of people naturally includes a Jewish person, because isn't one eighth of the population everywhere Jewish? There is a reason for this: the skyline is just so darn recognizable. In addition, New York City is the most populous metropolitan area in the United States (and the 4th most populous in the world), possibly justifying the frequency with which events of great significance occur there in fiction. Further justification for this is New York's diversity. Very close to every single ethnic, racial and religious group is is represented to some degree or another on the streets of the five boroughs, and nearly every language spoken on Planet Earth can be heard there. Although most US cities are cosmopolitan to one degree or another, New York is particularly noticeable due to the larger population, thus making the diversity more obvious. Compare Fulton Street Folly, the localized version where everything inexplicably happens in Lower Manhattan because it's relatively easy to film there. See also Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe for Anime and Japanese TV, and Britain Is Only London for UK productions. See also Brooklyn Rage. Contrast with Canada Does Not Exist, where nothing interesting is ever permitted to happen north of the border. Examples of Big Applesauce include:
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