Wednesday, February 04, 2009

When the Clouds Eventually Part

I read two articles recently from a past Sunday Washington Post (yes, I’m reading it some ten days later, and yes, I saved it that long—such is the life of a single mom who loves her Sunday Post) that got me thinking about the “what next?” in our society and economy. It’s easy right now to get down about it all, with talks of liquidations and layoffs, rising unemployment rates and foreclosures. Believe me, I know, as I’m in that hunt for gainful employment along with so many. And then I read these two articles, and as I unnervingly tend to do (unnerving, that is, at least to myself, and doubtless other would-be cynics), I had an idealistic thought, and a tingle of excitement crept in.

These two articles had seemingly little to do with each other, but then, you could see how they could touch something in all of us.
The first was a feature on director Kelly Reichardt, whose film Wendy and Lucy is now in theaters (though, more likely, the smaller arthouse ones—but it should be more widely released, because we really need to open our eyes). The movie is not getting rave reviews, but rather comments about it not going anywhere or giving the viewer “enough” to go on about the central character, Wendy. Now, I will say, I have not seen the film. So I cannot judge it on that. But the filmmaker’s intentions are definitely laudable.

She made the film well before the economic recession. The idea came to her and co-writer Jon Raymond, actually, after Hurricane Katrina. "I called Jon Raymond after hearing an interview where someone used the proverbial 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' image,” said Reichardt in the Post, “and we were musing over what happens if, like Wendy, you have no safety net, you have a nothing education, you don't have family support, and certainly there's no trust fund. How do you pull yourself up by your bootstraps?” Good question, and relevant today particularly.

I have the feeling some reviewers, even if they realized that knowing next to nothing about Wendy is Reichardt’s point, are still missing the film’s beauty. (Again, I realize I need to see it to determine whether the film meets the director’s intentions. Anyone want to babysit for me??) Writes the Post’s John Anderson, “But are the economically distressed defined strictly by their circumstances? Is poverty really just a condition? Such an approach deprives Wendy, already deprived of almost everything else, a narrative, something that would make her singular and incontrovertibly human. We get the whole point. We just don't get the whole woman . . . ” I’m not so sure, though, that Anderson and others do get the point.

I don’t think the film is about Wendy and her dog. I think the film is about the audience—about us. From the Post: “ 'Wendy and Lucy' asks the question of what we owe each other, and what's our responsibility to each other?" says Reichardt. “Wendy is a stranger: We don't know where she came from, and people have to decide in the moment where they meet her what their obligation to her is. Or maybe there is no obligation. Is it every man for himself now?” To repeat, we, our, we again. I think this film, in its intent anyway, is more about a look in the mirror.

How are we going to see those around us? Yes, Wendy is a “whole woman,” a person with more depth than we apparently are allowed to see in the film. But does that mean the film failed to develop her? Or that we failed to see ourselves? Maybe I’m getting too obscure. But maybe not.

We look at people’s circumstances only and define them by that alone, regardless of how they got there or how they view their own actions. And in so doing, we keep them down—if those circumstances are low—or falsely on a pedestal, if they’re high, equally limiting people in their situation (think Bono, trying not to look ridiculous as a rich rock star while helping the world’s poor).

Ok, enough on Wendy. The second article was by a Slate columnist on the liquidation of so many well-known chain stores: Circuit City, Linens’n’Things, Sharper Image, to name a few. You’ve heard about the rest. It’s as if the strip-mall landscape as we know it has changed forever. But what next?

We could see ourselves in a place of hunkering down, saving up—what did they hoard during the Depression? Aluminum? Or, we could (I hope someone is) see this as a chance for a fresh start, a chance to do business—and community—differently. Perhaps whole new ventures with completely innovative ways of operating will crop up to fill the void after all the going-out-of-business sales.

Another part of Wendy and Lucy (yes, I realize I said above I was finished with it—tough) was the road trip aspect and the sense of looking for the American Dream, in caps. Again from the Post: "For 'Wendy and Lucy,' I spent six months looking at the parking lots of supermarkets," Reichardt says. She depicts an America where corporate branding is banishing local color. "When I was a kid we used to do a road trip every summer from Miami to Montana," she says. "You really knew what state you were in by the radio and all these things that made each state particular. Now, between New Jersey and Laramie, Wyoming, it doesn't matter where you are, it's all the same: Taco Bell, Days Inn."


Maybe now is the time to move beyond the ubiquitous chains that alienate us by making us all the same, mired in materialism, and toward “some sense of community [that] can bring people back together,” as Reichardt puts it. To start, we would see the Wendy’s and their dogs not as circumstances, but as people. And then, when the “gathering clouds and raging storms” that Obama described pass, when the clouds finally part, a more appealing and realizable American Dream will shine through.

So I guess that’s a call to entrepreneurs to churn the wheels in their minds, and neighbors to open their eyes and hearts to each other. Wow, that was really sappy, but who cares?

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