Tuesday, August 29, 2006

I Like Spike

We disked the Spike Lee, When the Levees Broke and watched it.

You know, I had an interesting reaction to Katrina. I have such a deep loathing of George the Chimp and it became immediately clear that this was his Waterloo, so Katrina brought me an odd mirth.

And though there was so much suffering, I was happy. I like when the truth becomes hard and undeniable. I love when people are rendered mute by what is real.

With that being said, it was definitely time to revisit this disaster from the comfort of my dry living room to catch the human element. And Spike Lee really brings it on home. Completely worth the four hours. Actually, I’ve only watched about two and a half hours so far. We’ll hit the rest of it tomorrow.

It’s mostly talking heads interspersed with footage, like lots of documentaries. But of course, these people are so colorful and articulate and pained and forthright, it makes for the case that humanity should actually be loved and appreciated.

Listening to that witch, Babs Bush, in the Astrodome was enough to make me think, “Who needs the generational heft of the 1960’s? People of all ages should rise up and storm the castle.”

I’ve been to New Orleans about five or six times. I never liked it. I only ever saw it as a few blocks of extreme wealth and tourism (mixed with alcoholic puking) surrounded by complete poverty that was accepted as the norm. It always seemed like a heartless, awful place to me. It seemed cynical in its ossified class system. And there are many cities, especially in the Southeast, that have this feeling. It is truly pathetic that we have this extreme division of experience.

What is so difficult about our nation is if you are not ambitious and acquisitive, you suffer mightily. If you are sick or poor or disabled in any way, there is not much there to soften your path. This is Bush country. Conservative Compassion.

I can’t wait to watch the rest.

1 comment:

Rebecca Waring said...

I really love your movie reviews, Don. Have you ever thought of sending a few to the City Paper? I saw the snake movie and you were dead-on. We gleefully counted the cliches as they rolled past. Then we got ice cream. I'll have to see Spike's film although I usually consider him too heavy-handed and one-sided. I still can't even think about the footage of those people in the Convention Center. And yet, sometimes I feel like poor black people bring a lot of their problems on themselves. Not in the case of the hurricane but in general in terms of their life choices. But of course, I sit here with my middle-class caucasian viewpoint, having never experience life in their shoes. I had a dream the other night where I was sitting in a room with people, one of whom was my old (and favorite) boss - a black man named Terrence. I was watching some news about black youths behaving badly and I made a very disparaging and probably racist remark. Terrence looked at me with such pain and sadness. And shame. I could hear his thoughts. He was saying, "Don't you think we know that? And don't you realize we are so upset and embarrassed by it? And when you say things like that it makes us feel terrible". I felt so bad. He was so kind and supportive to me.