Since its creation for the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, the Unisphere has surfaced time and time again in the background of commercial film and television. The gigantic steel armillary located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens is used for establishing shots in works ranging from music videos (Cyndi Lauper’s Hey Now ) to sitcoms ( The King of Queens ), Hollywood features ( Men in Black ), and advertisements for the U.S. Open. While the Unisphere has become synonymous with the borough, the way it has been depicted in popular culture habitually ignores its origins and symbolic identity. In filmmaker and audiovisual historian Seth Fein’s award-winning experimental documentary, Between Neighborhoods (2017), the Unisphere takes center stage, not simply as an aesthetic object to be admired for its impressive design and scale, but as a prism to explore the transnational history and contemporary social geography of Queens.
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