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Trouble the Water: New Orleans 3 Years after Hurricane Katrina
by B.J. on 9/10/2008 06:07:00 AM
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3 years ago, I was entering my senior year of college, preparing for the year with my life-changing student organization. In my other ear, I was hearing all about the comments Kanye West made on national television.
A stuttered, nervous utterance of "George Bush doesn't like black people!"
A clip plaid ad nauseum on the news.
With the swiftness of a Usain Bolt millisecond, NBC's cameras cut away from him.
Sure I agreed with Kanye, and yes Hurricane Katrina was a tragedy.
But realistically I could not "feel" Katrina's impact on the city of New Orleans. Emphasis on the word "feel." I could not picture, imagine, grasp its impact on human lives. It was a disaster, and yeah, that's always bad, but disasters happen. "Disasters" are an inescapable part of life.
I didn't really feel the impact of Katrina on New Orleans' residents till I read Mike Davis' piece on the predators of New Orleans. "Predators" signifying those who almost willingly encouraged New Orleans to fall apart.
They wanted New Orleans to fall apart to shoot some more profits into big GOP donors, in the same way they used the war in Iraq to shoot profits to some more GOP donors.
Davis wrote a follow-up article on the lack of progress in New Orleans. The "lack of progress" meaning the dormancy of broken infrastructure, abandoned, un-fixed buildings, and outlying debris from Katrina, even a year after the flood.
In this environment of broken infrastructure and abandoned buildings, there has been an exacerbation of conditions:
Meanwhile...contributing to those problems, ordinary citizens in New Orleans, particularly the black ones without the political connections, the money, seem to be railroaded and shot down at every turn.
Not surprisingly, some advocates of a whiter, safer city see a divine plan in Katrina. “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans,” a leading Louisiana Republican confined to Washington lobbyists. “We couldn’t do it, but God did” (13). Nagin boasted of his empty streets and ruined neighbourhoods: “This city is for the first time free of drugs and violence, and we intend to keep it that way.”
And while the citizens see their opportunities deteriorate...
Republican Campaign Contributors are getting rich off the contracts to "rebuild" New Orleans earning rich contracts.
FEMA, for example, has paid the Shaw Group $175 per square (100 square feet) to install tarps on storm-damaged roofs in New Orleans. Yet the actual installers earn as little as $2 per square, and the tarps are provided by FEMA. Similarly, the Army Corps pays prime contractors about $20 per cubic yard of storm debris removed, yet some bulldozer operators receive only $1. Every level of the contracting food chain, in other words, is grotesquely overfed except the bottom rung, where the actual work is carried out. While the Friends of Bush mine gold from the wreckage of New Orleans, many disappointed recovery workers--often Mexican or Salvadoran immigrants camped out in city parks and derelict shopping centers--can barely make ends meet.
It was on this astonishing, yet not shocking neglect and exploitation of human needs that I hoped the movie/documentary Trouble the Water would further explore. The most poignant line from this preview came from a woman who was reluctant to let her son fight in the army. She wouldn't let her son fight for a country that didn't care for him back.
That line,
...juxtaposed with the presenter's line that Katrina was a disaster turning into a tragedy...
....juxtaposed with the fact that some people who worked on Fahrenheit 9/11 worked on this film
...filled me with lots of expectations.
I came into that 12:00 PM showing on a Friday in Hollywood with the expectation that they would talk about and show the politics of New Orleans and its effect on schools, jobs, and life overall.
With those expectations, I was somewhat let down by the movie.
Turns out that the documentary was a mostly first-person narrative of what happened during and after New Orleans. Seems like they should've waited a bit to glean deeper storylines and interview outside of the main person and the main person's circle. Not bad and very important perspective, but I felt the producers could've done more with a platform affecting an entire city of people.
It's one thing for them to have a Katrina story through the eyes of one individual's experience. I think of Forrest Gump, Blair Witch, as popular examples of these individuals telling their own stories with their eyes.
Once they showed media coverage and footage aside than the subject's own, then the producers could have and should have invested some time outside the family talking to people outside of the narrative story. They could have talked to those people who were out on the Superdome days after Katrina. They could have talked to the people still in the neighborhood post-Katrina. They could have talked to the superintendents of the school systems. They could have talked to the guards who were still lurking Katrina and told a more complete and filling story.
I wanted them to have discussions about the institutional inequalities in New Orleans. I wanted them to go in-depth about the money that was made by these corporations. I wanted them to talk about the effects of the hyper-privatized school system. I wanted to see more of how other people lived after Katrina.
It's still a movie I recommend that people go out and see for both informational and holistic human-empowering reasons.
After 3 years New Orleans is stagnant in improvement, but nonetheless, an explosive environment in which to live.
The re-population numbers remain depressed and could remain that way after these battery of hurricanes and city-wide evacuations.
the Valassis data indicates New Orleans had 146,174 households receiving mail in June 2008, still down 28% from the 203,457 receiving mail in June 2005, two months before the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane and resulting flood.
There have been 10,000 houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina, and 12,000 homeless people in New Orleans, double pre-Katrina. And to top it off, housing law discrimination.
Public services continue to operate at a bare minimum...
City services remain very limited -- for example, only 21 percent of public transit buses are running.
The percentage of residents who say they have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as depression has tripled since 2006.">Fifty-three percent of low- income residents report that their financial situation is worse today than pre-Katrina. The percentage of residents who say they have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as depression has tripled since 2006.
I first thought the phrase "Trouble the Water" meant something dramatic and extreme. Something like "fire up a thunderstorm" and "make some noise." Yeah, trouble the water! Fire up a thunderstorm about New Orleans! Make yourself heard about Katrina! Yeah!
In actuality, the phrase from Afro-American Christian lore symolizes something more more serene and something quite antonymical to what I thought the phrase meant: God's healing. To "trouble the water" is essentially to give something healing properties.
It turns out the movie is about healing whatever's left of New Orleans.
However, one thing I don't understand is how one can "heal" if they keep getting plundered, depleted, whacked and broken.
It could mean the way that some people in the world have "to hustle" in the sense of working, just to fulfill the basic need that is water.
"Hustle" could also connote what big national corporations do to those people in the poker, I'm-going-to-rip-you-the-hell-off sense.
Hustle or no hustle Flow, the Film has been my favorite movie this year. Be Kind Rewind has been officially bumped, and I'm not sure that seeing the Dark Knight could reveal to me anything via fiction and storytelling that would amaze me in the way exposed realities would.
"Flow" took on threads of issues from water privatization to damming to water filtration innovations. They managed to weave those issues together through a rich collection of expertise, knowledge, personal anecdotes, and statistics through countries from India to South Africa to Bolivia to the United States. "You have to realize that these water companies are all started by Bankers," said some French guy. I'm not sure of his name, but I am sure of his statement, or at least on-screen English translation.
The idea of privatization of human needs entered my consciousness through a documentary called "The Corporation." They were talking about privatizing human genes, air, and water. While I'm not sure about what's happened with the privitzation of genes and air, I know that water is going to be one hell of a battle.
At the heart of this documentary is a bomb on captialism. I'm here to take an Omar-like 12-guage snipe at capitalism and the market economy.
Oil and electricity are the two large industries on this planet. It's not bad in itself that they are gargantuan.
But as the old Spiderman saying goes "With great power, comes great responsibility."
These mega-corporations are built to structurally ignore that little detail of "great responsibility" mainly because they are built to do one thing: accumulate.
Accumulate resources. Accumulate enough good press to keep doing what they're doing. Accumulate profits. Accumulate enough political power to sustain...profits. Unless challenged by people, they have no reason whatsoever to grab "just enough" of what they need, lest they want to end the control, the business, the lavish lifestyle they enjoy.
What makes a lot of what they do bad for the rest of the people is that they find ways to monopolize control of resources --- despite being only a peta-fraction of people in the bigger picture that is the world's population. Their game is all politics, pro-actively suppressing ways to stop people from using those resources.
For oil and electricity, they do it by mining, drilling, and logging to the fucking up of the way of life for humans, animals, and fauna nearby. In the Amazon, these corporations will use para-military forces and court systems to intimidate people away from the resources.
The United supports homegrown mega-corporations because they throw money to their campaigns. In return, the US gets its oil resources by starting wars in the Middle East wherever the oil is.
A lot of work usually happens in places and spaces where the press isn't seen or heard unless you look for it...kind of like rape. The aptonym "raping the environment" is hereby strengthened.
It's one monumentally fucking large thing for these gargantuan industries to co-opt and manipulate resources that we have all lived without for millennia practically obliterating other ways of life, but the industry trailing behind in profiteering is something right at the heart of all life...
"Millions of people have lived lives without love, but not one of them without water."
Water.
The sustenance of all life. Can't live more than a few hours without it.
Perhaps on the surface logic of economics, it makes sense to sell it.
You sell things to people when they "demand" something, presumably because they "need "it. Unfortunately "demand" is the substitute for "need" in market economies and can be used interchangeably. This interchangeability between these terms then blurs the line in the thought processes of these people invested in the market economy. It's all just a game of non-stop, tunnel-visioned, one-dimensional accumulation. Market dictates not who needs the water, but eventually only those who can "pay" for it.
Water is now a 425 billion dollar industry, in the same planet where 2 billion people suffer from waterborne diseases and have no easy access to potable water. Water is actively being taken, guarded off, and "owned" by the same school of thought that does any and everything to monopolize control of oil and electricity. Whether Nestle's in your backyard at Mount Shasta bottling whatever water they get or the government in India is calling your self-made water harvest "illegal", the issue transcends borders and is bound to affect you sooner or later.
What struck me was how government agencies purporting to solve these water crises, only functioned to serve the Nestles, the Coca-Colas, the Suez.
The World Bank, International Monetary Fund would come on board to these countries not fully integrated within the market economy purporting to give debt relief. In exchange for that aid, the World Bank effectively became the government in those countries. They effectively held Bolivia's water resources as hostage. They included clauses in their loans specifically requesting water privatization.Bolivia would allow foreign corporations to "manage" water. "Managing water" meant water privatization, which trickled into such effects such as the cutting off of water streams, its pollution, and even higher water bills for everyone.
Luckily, the people in Bolivia were able to fight back. But this took a sustained massive series of rallies and protests for something they should've never had to battle for in the first place. However, the poor folk still appear to be paying more money than the rich folk for their water, and there is still no money to build new infrastructure.
In dam projects are another method through which corporations seize upon water for their own use. This is the infrastructure that severely disrupts local folks way of life in every sense of the term. It's terrible for local ecology, it cuts off river streams, and it makes people, who have been dependent on that ecology, to move for lack of choice.
Cutting off that ecological cycle cannot be understated. It would be kind of the equivalent if some guy really into the green movement decided that he would cut out power lines and power plants all over the city just so he could plant more trees. We are people dependent on oil and electricity, to get to and finish our jobs to be able to easily access our resources.
Our sense of ecology is corrupted by only individualist short-term spurts of get it and dump it. Quite reflective of the American relationship in popular tv shows, and other mediums. Get sex and then dump it! Add a "Woo!" for effect!
If someone disrupted our power lines and roads...People have enough trouble giving up their cars for transit, imagine that option being completely gone and useless. Imagine not being able to use computers, television, and other technological mediums all because some jerk decided to put trees instead of power lines.
The thing that struck a nerve about this was the number of people displaced because of those projects. Whether the dams in the Amazon, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, China, Brazil each time one was built, upwards of 100,000s of people into the millions would be displaced. They'd have to move somewhere and adapt.
And it's not as if they couldn't adapt either, there were plenty of brilliant ideas from people.
The highlight of the film were the creative ways in which people from other countries retrieved water where there weren't many options. I liked the idea of using UV technology to actually filter water, because of its low-cost-ness. It's essentially about using the UV-light like that in the flourescent lamp to disinfect the water.
There was rainwater harvesting from India led by a guy named Rajendra Singh. The gist was that they would collect rainwater to replace the groundwater. Basic idea which had been done for centuries, but his idea seemed to encapsulate whole regions and entire ecologies --- accounting for both shortage and lack of potability. The effect is that he was able to re-energize rivers and streams in a region notorious for drought in Rajasthan.
The irony is that someone from a mega-water-corporation, the Suez, told him that what he was doing was illegal, and he too had to fight in courts just to do what was apparently free in the "free market."
The documentary ended with my favorite solution: a little quip about play pumps used to retrieve ground water.
My favorite for its integration of communal gathering, play, and utility. That's fuckin' dippin' dots to me.
However, I have to wonder why these solutions haven't caught on more quickly.
The event, in short, a rundown of people-connecting, human condition short films. The website containing these films, I discovered in the archives of the 6998 emails that I haphazardly left unread.
In light of my facebook old picture uploading craze and the fact that I was all over LACC around pretty girls yesterday, I really felt this one by Ted Chung.
The Elevator Music piece reminds me of so many things. I guess I would liken it to a giant choosing not to overpower and inundate. Respectful, humble, do-what-they-do in that context.
About William Kawkamba, the kid from Malawi who built a windmill. Built a windmill for his family out of old bicycle parts, bamboo, and basically lot of scraps. I posted about this before, I called him hip-hop because he made something out of nothing without any formal college education. Inspiring to the infinitieth degree to anyone who ever wants to do anything other than what they've been prescribed to do.
Before making our way to the strip mall city that is called Burbank, we were watching T2. I don't ever remember finishing the film, but the first hour to hour and half where that white cop is chasing Johnny, where the Terminator incites random violence on people, where Johnny's mom plots her escape are classic moments, is forever burnt in my memory, with new proteins synthesized in my brain specifically for those moments and everything.
So with my memory fully emblazoned with classic action film imagery and flow, I was initially really feeling this movie.
The cast of characters seemed to have a deeper story to tell. I thought Angelina would be like this T2-like protector of the overanxious protagonist. I thought Morgan Freeman would be some old wise guy with great stories and lessons to teach.
I thought there was going to be a revelation about how all these assassins came to be associated with each other, which spoke to the working classes or something. Assassins killed who they killed because it was "fate." Fate was a textile machine that determined who these assassings would target. They were assigned the kills and did them without any questioning. One interesting thing Angelina said in justification was "kill one, save one thousand." I definitely don't agree, but I kept thinking that they were going to have a better point that would explain that quote.
One theme I liked was considering their handling of the protagonist's "sickness." Here's an overanious guy in a cubicle who can't speak up at all and is prone to panic attacks. He absolutely needs his pills to stop what is defined in our society as a "panic attack." However, not so anymore, he absolutely needs these "panic attacks" to shoot the wings off a fly, curve a bullet, or grab a pendulum. The protagnoist's "sickness" was effectively harnessed into a "strength." From a blood-pumping bedwetter to an intensely focused, assassin.
The effects department of the movie did quite a job of bringing the viewer into the experience of an anxiety attack...the mounting and increasingly suffocating pressure, the lack of memory. The extra blood pressure ended up being the energy needed to refine his super-human abilities.
Aside from this theme, turns out there wasn't much of a story to tell.
The story broke down when it turns out that this assassin fraternity turns out to be a faux, or at least run by a superficial faux. Its as if we shouldn't have bothered following anything till the end of the film. I just don't like that it appears there's no nuance or any character development.
The culmination of the movie happens when this assassin fraternity ultimately kills itself because of fate. They seem to accept this 'fate' from Morgan Freeman's character with no questions asked. They do not think to question a guy who has been lying all along...and they end up killing themselves...in honor of the fraternity code.
The message this movie ultimately ended up saying is something I take issue with.
With a great cast of celebrities whom I consider somewhat respectable people, I thought there was going to be deeper themes than the ones of revenge and "taking control."
The big take-home message was about taking control of your life. However, the huge irony the size of the elephant in the back of the room, is that Morgan Freeman's character is similar to the protagonist's in that he too is tring to take control of his fate. The only difference is that he gets killed because he's defined as "bad", or "not the protagonist" a very slippery slope.
Seemed like the movie that the mid-20s, recent college grad, office cubicle bro-ski demographic would enjoy. Plenty of unwarranted violence with a hip Office-Dr. Phil/psuedo-scientologist type of fatalistic view on life. New clothes, same bullshit.
Despite my linguistic justifications earlier, there was NO reason to see Lords of Dogtown and all its Eurocentricity. I guess I was more hyped up on the documentary than that idiotic movie.
I don't think it's a good thing to be falling asleep just thinking about what you're going to write for your 10-page term paper worth 45% of your grade due on Tuesday that you have not started on.
I've already written more in this entry than that paper.
The dog days of studenthood. I hate this paper. I this class.
Once I get over with this and hopefully pass, I will probably completely forget how much it sucks to be put in this position the next time I am in a predicament like this.
by B.J. on 8/21/2004 04:55:00 AM
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The first paragraph is my review of the movie, and from there on, I use talking points from the movie to generate this entire post.
On a scale of 1-10, it would be a 7.8, despite its lengthiness (2 1/2 hours), it's crappy editing (too much talking and the narrator sounds like the woman who does tells us about the Philip Morris programs to quit smoking), it's utter lack of creativity (again, too much talking done, I could listen to talk radio), it's crappy beginning (if you're expecting a Michael Moore Bowling for Columbine infotainment documentary, you'll definitely fall asleep within the first 30 minutes cause it's a bunch of talking trying to introduce this topic of the corporation). By the way did I mention that they talk a lot ? However, if you get past all those minor irks, you'll see a movie packed with a major dose of content outlining every angle on the societal staple that is the corporation.
The institution that is the corporation is what is running things right now and no one really cares. Ever hear of the saying, with great power, comes great responsibility ? Well, they have the great power down pat, but the responsibility, not so much. If it continues its dominance unchecked by government and law, we are headed for some bad things.
The corporation’s dominance starts in that the corporation establishes itself as a person: it is legally a person and it has a personality that hooks people into buying their products distracting the fact that it is legally a person.
As a person, the corporation is entitled to do whatever the hell it wants without respect to anyone's welfare. For example it can sue, and thus win monetary damages. Remember that it's a group of people, and usually a group of people is more powerful than some white middle-aged middle-class stiff from the suburbs. As a group of people however, it can afford the best lawyers there are, while some unlucky Joe Schmo has nothing to compete with that. Corporation stomps the Joe again ! And in the event that a corporation makes changes in its practices, they do so only when people come together against it, by protesting them, and more importantly, simply not buying anything from them.
But let's remember that the corporation's ills are neglected because they present themselves they inject personality and subsequently invoke a feeling of family into their advertisements, masking the negative aspects of the corporation. . The corporation's personality is derived from the commercials --- Nike = Quick, to the point, Coke = strong, classic. Never mind that people in sweatshops work long and hard for peanuts to string together those needlessly expensive $150 Air Divacs or Coke helped support Nazi Germany, and that once World War II came and the company in Germany couldn't get Coke syrup from the United States, they mixed a few ingredients, called themselves Fanta, and propelled themselves back into business. They focus on what they can do for you, You, YOU !
But as almost every adult human being knows, people have many different sides to them. The movie makes the point that if were going to attach personalities to them besides what they present in their commercials, psychotic would be one of them.
If you were to diagnose it's personality in terms of what it actually does rather than what it seems like it does when it tries to gain your attention, a corporation has a drive for power and profit unrivalled by any human. It's nuckin futs.
Along that drive, it also constantly harms actual individual people, namely usurping their rights. Be it underpaying the workers at the bottom of the "corporate ladder", disrupting environmental ecology to the point where natural resources are getting depleted. Of course there are a lot of corporations that try to be conscious of the individuals around them, but those societal concerns are almost always secondary to power and profit and those concerns are half-assedly addressed.
But what happens to other people is immaterial right ? Just as long as it doesn't affect you ! One of the things the movie failed to address was that point of view that sees corporations as practical.
Most older, wiser Americans probably know about corporations constantly screwing people but ignore them regularly so that they could get their desired service and/or product. They already know that these corporations aren't nice cuddly individuals.
In their mindset, they most likely think: people always get screwed and that it's just a fact of life and/or them simply not buying something won't really do much to damage to the corporation. To them the idea of fighting a corporation, any corporation, seems like yet another abstract fight against ideals that will go in vain as opposed to a concrete fight against actual corporations. And even if you bring up repercussions to these people’s inaction, you’ll most likely get a response that things won’t change all that dramatically in their time.
But you gotta remind them, if you thought government had an agenda, what more with corporations who make no secret of their agenda and thrive on both hypnotizing you into getting their product/service ?
Biotech companies already own species of life. How can you own species of life ? The folks who uncovered the human genome also want to "own" the chemicals that make up the human body. What's more is that they're thinking of owning air space sometime too. Hey they already got bottled water. So look to be charged for breathing sometime in the future. Dominated by a bunch of nuts.
"This is for. . .not letting me (momentum escalates) blowbubblesinmyCHOCOLATEMILK (instantaneously smashes valuable golden pocket watch given to him by his father with hammer)!" Jack, son of Peter Pan in Hook (1992)
Hahahahahah, I just saw the movie for the first time in probably 6-7 years.
So many new things like: a mentally ill Tootles, sexual innuendo between a geriatric Wendy and a middle-aged Peter Pan, a few gay references between Hook and Smee and Peter and the black fat lost boy when they were talking about the mentally ill Tootles' lost marbles (this sensing of the gay references and boys in Neverland is especially enhanced with the Michael Jackson (of course of the infamous Neverland Ranch) case constantly looming the TVs), an instance that sort of encourages cheating (when Peter kisses Tink despite being happily married). I've picked up on so much more and laughed even more despite knowing almost every line in the movie. That line above was one of them that I knew but laughed harder because it was obviously something sarcastic thrown in by the director to emphasize how stupid and assanine kids can be.
So the scene is: Jack, son of Peter Pan, smashed his dad's watch because Peter Pan did not allow him to blow bubbles in his chocolate milk. Now that I'm older and I can understand exaggeration, wow that was a source of much hilariousness. I didn't think much of it at the time because I thought at one point in time that smashing an irreplaceable family valuable given to you by your parents because they didn't let you blow bubbles in your chcolate was perfectly reasonable.
The one thing I didn't expect was to laugh that much. There was plenty of jokes for every demographic from urban witty to mid-American college frat boy (and also a lot of very touchy ones) to keep you laughing. But it should also make some think, hopefully.
Ultimately, I probably liked it because it was empowering to see this 2nd generation kids of non-white immigrants who don't quite fit in with white Americans actually head all the action (as opposed to being an exoticized other The Quiet American style) in a movie.
Haunted House was about to play, but of course 30 minutes worth of the movie is sitting down, listening to how movies cost money, watching previews, some dumb animated popcorn and Pepsi enjoy a movie, and the THX sound make its grand appearance.
The previews showed one movie in particular I cringed to: Love Don't Cost A Thing (But It Always Pays to be Yourself) <--- That crap in parenthesis is part of the movie title !
OUCH ! (Madden 96 style like Deion Sanders tackling Alfred Pupunu.)
Love Don't Cost a Thing stars Nick Cannon, Christina Milian, Steve Harvey, all of whom I have held in a positive light. Nick Cannon was the slick guy in drumline, Christina Milian was the hottest thing on the Disney Channel (6th grade, fella) and something of a pop star before the invasion of that 30-year old turned teenager Hilary Duff.
The preview starts off with Nick being a lowly nerdy pool boy and the shittiest assortment of Nelly's hip-hop hits that overshadows these selected moments in the movie. Just like in real life Nick comes across this super hotentot (actually Latina) potato Christina, and of course he can't get her and falls into a pool. However, out of a crowd of other guys, like magic one night, she looks straight at that nerdy lowly pool boy for help after crashing her car because he conveniently has connections to a mechanic (or he is rich and pays her tab or he is the mechanic, he cleans pools as the side job). Poor rich Christina does not want to pay $3000 to repair her $1 million dollar navigator, and Nick tells her that he can fix it for free if she becomes his girlfriend for a week. Then comes a cunning line where she says "don't be starin' at my booty."
Just when I was about to sink my head into both of my hands, then comes the turning point of this preview.
Nick, the lowly pool boy, who looked nothing like a "nerd" to begin with, becomes a high school hit just with the change of his clothes. He starts wearing loose velvet sweatpants which black girls obviously can't resist and suddenly can't keep the girls off him. He becomes something a chauvanist telling Christina to back off, and an echoing line while he's lying in his bed alone with the hip-hop suddenly stopped in favor of non-lyricked R&B, Christina asks, "are these the victories you want ?" The movie then becomes a springboard to a musical of life-changing proverbs to live by. Aww, look they're really just like the yuppies from Full House, Growing Pains, and Family Ties inside, but with b.a.b. (bounce, aZZ, and bling.)
At that point did I sink my head into my hands to shield myself from this horror.
Sandwiching this horrible preview and horrible looking movie are a bunch of white middle-class cunningly marketed movies (MTV-produced SAT and some other movie) which will probably tank up hardcore like Marcus Fizer building his muscles up by ritually ripping wild grizzly bears' arms off and beating them with it.
Where to begin, where to begin ?
The proposed plot and its glaring ironies (to use some verbose high-falutin English literature words) ? Sure, why not. Could not get anymore typical than this. I don't even want to type out that plot because I think my head would broil like an In-N-Out bun. The proverbs, mesage of the movie were way too obvious, and it's just a bunch of dead weight when you can't demonstrate (that line is pure hip-hop). The story and entertainment value would depend on how much 't' and 'a' Christina Milian shows.
The only effect this movie creates is reinforce stereotypes.
Who the hell did they have in mind when making this movie ? White kids ? Were the producers trying to shock those kids with the differences of hip-hop culture, but ultimately connect with them under 'universal' principles ? Cause I did not find any "connection" to that movie at all. It was horrid (and just a preview), and I hope it won't cost a thing to download it off somewhere and write a blog about what it really means someday. CD it, and then delete it.
See the Pianist at your local small theatre near you.
It brings the plight of Jews in Poland prior and during World War II to life.
It's historical undertones brought me in right away, but if you're just looking for a movie it's sort of like Castaway, except you feel more fear and sadness for the main character because of the random, MERCILESS, KILLINGS, BRANDINGS the Nazis laid on the Jews.
I also got into it because I was waiting for the defining moments when he'd play piano to save his life or something. . .boy was I pleasantly sur-frise.
America is a very fast-paced, intense, individualized society. We don't have to time to care about the impoverished, therefore we are IGNORANT of our surroundings. When we're ignorant, we FEAR what we DON'T KNOW because it disrupts our SECURITY. And the INSTANT panacea to feed our insecurities materializes to something like BUYING GUNS. We're very IMPULSIVE, and so as a result we DON'T THINK THINGS out like we should be. For example, we DIDN'T EVEN really KNOW the culprits to the 9/11 mess, but the moment the Twin Towers fell, we kept hearing "Muslim Extremists", "Osama" being associated with "evil." For the sake of the public's SECURITY, we painted Osama as the ENEMY WITHOUT knowing anything.
And so since we don't have the time to spare on THINKING, we rely on the MEDIA. The American media, in their own INTEREST and INDIVIDUALISM, in turn, reports the "JUICY" stories which happen to be the CAR CHASES, the MURDERS, the BURGLARIES. RISKS are blown way out of proportion as people are still more likely to die from Maryjane than from something as abstract and unknown as cell phone radiation. Unlike the Canadian media, they don't really report POSITIVE, REASSURING things because it won't get them their RATINGS. They FEAR they won't get RATINGS because our AMERICAN brains take in information only PERTAINING to US. To keep us watching the media has STRICKEN this FEAR into us by telling us that we are INADEQUATE without the piece of information. That is true, but the information is NOT put in proper PERSPECTIVE. That is, for something POSITIVE to be the center of any AMERICAN NEWS, it needs to be a super important DISCOVERY or ACCOMPLISHMENT, whereas the most mundane of HIGH-SPEED CHASES will crash the 6 o clock news. In DEFENSE to this overflow of NEGATIVITY, we somehow FILTER out the NEGATIVES and focus on the GOOD stuff.
As INDIVIDUALS in AMERICAN SOCIETY, we don't TOLERATE NEGATIVE THINGS because we don't have HINDSIGHT to guide us. Like Matt Stone, South Park dude, said in the movie about the Columbine killers and their general feelings toward school, 'the kids are labeled fags, and they're fags for life.' Its as if the Columbine kids couldn't do a thing about their PERCEIVED INADEQUACY. They didn't have the HINDSIGHT to get thru it and thus went on a killing spree WITH GUNS, the INSTANT, IMPULSIVE answer. They didn't THINK.
IRONICALLY, on the other hand, we READILY ACCEPT BAD THINGS from a SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE because we feel it doesn't have an impact on our INDIVIDUAL SELF. As Americans, we've been taught to look out for ourselves in this DOG-EAT-DOG world. So basically, we're IGNORING society. And by IGNORING we don't know things. Then, we get scared of things we DON'T really know about. Most of us automatically get scared of BIG BLACK GUYS because we only see them on TV playing basketball, telling jokes, singing, or getting arrested. We WON'T get scared of WHITE GUYS because there's a variety of them being portrayed on TV, doing various things, and we FEEL that we've gotten to know them. The thing is that if you PERSONALLY knew a BIG BLACK GUY you wouldn't see him/her in the same light as you would see any other black guy.
So basically OUR IGNORANCE of SOCIAL ISSUES has bit us back in the ASS and we're all killing each other in RECORD numbers. According to the movie, we've got 11,000+ deaths related to handguns compared to other industrialized nations who when combined average about 100 handgun-related deaths per year. We're still NOT a DANGEROUS, VIOLENT nation, just an extremely CARELESS and IGNORANT one. We're LOCKED into FEAR of some POOR guy stealing our stuff and killing us. So LOST are we in FINDING the BIG STORIES and in FEARING the UNKNOWN that we can't SEE HOW DANGEROUS GUNS ARE. Kids can lock into them. People can lose control. A cock of the gun and you just might be drinking your food out of a straw, son. Granted, there are a lot of responsible gunowners, but the risks outweight the good as the only purpose for GUNS is to kill or maim.
The best solution to the GUN PROBLEM comes from CHRIS ROCK who says to TAKE AWAY the AMMUNITION. People will still hold onto their guns with every last part of their body, but WITHOUT AMMUNITION guns are useless. Think about it. . .guns can be passed down from generation to generation. We can never really wipe out all the GUNS in the world, BUT we can stop AMMUNITION because people will be hardpressed to find. Or at least make BULLETS cost $5000. : )
But the problem with AMERICA lies DEEPER into the trenches of the "GHETTO". Poor kids are everywhere, but kids HERE are pressured to take more DRASTIC measures because they are told to live in rundown places in the RICHEST country, they NEVER ARE and NEVER WILL BE, pay the bills, and finally, do math homework. . .If only the Suburban kids THOUGHT of the poor kids.
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