This is not Adam's rant about racism in America or anti-semitism. I was never interested in making a didactic film and Fifth Form isn't that. If anything Fifth Form is about how we avoid conversation and culpability by any means necessary. And that is what Attorney General Holder was referring to. He wasn't talking about whites only. He was referring to us all.
I've been lucky. I've had a world of privileges. I've lived in cities where Jewish culture was mainstream. New York is where Jews don't even need to think about who's Jewish and who isn't because everyone is Jewish. Then I moved to San Francsico where liberal ideology was so mainstream that culture was secondary. San Francisco might be where you go if you don't want to be anything, if you're tired of being defined.
Making Fifth Form and moving to Texas, out of my liberal Jewish comfort zone, changes what I take for granted. The film is about the casual racism and homophobia that slowly tears apart a community. I don't want to give away the end but the institutional authority makes the compromise that neither diffuses nor boils the tension. They pass up a major teaching opportunity to maintain the status quo. And that makes me angrier than any of the teenager's hateful acts.
So, how can we prove the Attorney General wrong? In the twenty years since 1990 when Fifth Form is set, a lot has changed but more has stayed the same from the LA riots to Katrina. How do we get ahead of the curve instead of waiting for another Hurricane?
I want to start small and I want to start with the film. What do you remember about racism in your high school? From these stories, I want to move up the ladder to where we can talk about how race and class permeate every major political decision. I believe that's how we start.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Nation of Cowards I
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3 comments:
I would love to see some change in social acceptance of all peoples, and I think we already have seen great change.
The recent events surrounding prop 8 in California were an upset, but it also shows us we might not completely understand our population as a whole and who the largest contributors to our society can be. What so many people thought was going to be a clear vote no turned out to be very close and actually a vote yes. Who knew that so many people felt that way? Who decides how a society is run, the majority, or people that "know" they are right?
I think education is absolutely key because it helps exercise the mind in a way which makes it prone to finding facts and accepting change. This way we can remove an element of WHO is right or wrong, but allow a society to improve on its own. A community/society/culture can evolve and adapt for the better, when it knows all the facts!
John, you might be leaving out religion, which is a huge reason California voted against gay marriage. That and the outspoken leaders on the right, like Newt Gingrich (who put out a TV commercial condemning gay marriage). If someone like Obama or Howard Dean or even Nancy Pelosi had the guts to put out a TV commercial in favor of gay marriage, it could've gone a long way to show average Californians that those of us who support equal rights for *every* citizen who wants to get married are not all "swinging from chandeliers" and wearing assless chaps in the Castro. Although I might actually like it if my girlfriend decided to wear assless chaps. :-)
Racism is pretty similar to homophobia, in that most people fear what they don't know. It seems like Adam Orman has a lot to say and had the guts to leave his "comfort zone" to do the necessary research not only to make a great film but to understand people who might not have the same views as him.
I grew up in Connecticut, which is a pretty homogenously whitebread sort of place. In my high school class of 230, there were maybe 5-10 people of color. I was one of 3.5 jews. But beyond the inherent lack of ethnic diversity, there was a cultivated lack of, well, cultural diversity. Everyone was waspy, regardless of race, color or creed. At least they were in school, anyway.
Students picked on other kids for their differences in a casually racist way (throwing pennies at me) but only because that’s what stood out; not because they were particularly anti-[race-in-question], but in the same way in which they had called me a Communist because I had red hair back when Red Dawn was big (WOLVERINES!). Kids who were on the outs would have anything used against them, and an attack might be racial only for lack of imagination (just as kids were branded and harassed for being gay regardless of actual sexual orientation). The casual harassment portrayed in Fifth Form does a good job of capturing the uncertainty of high school life. On one hand you’re developing an understanding of what’s out of bounds while on the other hand you’ve got a hard fought hierarchy to climb, and if you’re not pissing on someone, they’re pissing on you. Which is why in the other other hand is your penis.
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