hey, locals

[fflo]

Margaret Brown, the director of The Order of Myths, is in town tonight, screening the film & doing Q&A after.

Comments

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

Did you go see it? It looks really interesting. Some of the attitudes of the white people remind me of those in a book I'm reading now by Edward Ball.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I did see it--- see comments back to BFD below.

What's the book?

[bigfinedaddy.livejournal.com]

Dang. Reading this, I thought it was tonight and was going to ask to join you. I didn't go to work yesterday, so I didn't see this when it was still relevant. Was it good?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was. Not heavy-handed at all, but not from shying away from its subject. The director is from a white family whose daughters have long been part of a "heritage" of being in the court of the white Mardi Gras, but she's left. As in bailed, but feels the ties. She spoke (among other things) of it being hard to reconcile having these people who are so racist and yet for whom she has so much love.

She didn't start out to make a documentary, having an idea of a narrative in mind with a central character like a friend of hers who's also sort of "in the middle" (who identifies as "liberal" and but did decide to go ahead and be in the court). Once she got going she thought it had better potential as a documentary, and along the way the filmmakers uncovered stuff they hadn't known about about their city's history and particular (horrifying) connections between people/families. The movie presents a sort of slow accumulation of details that grows more powerful, and---the best part---there are moments in which (out of some 370 hours of footage they shot) the camera's just quietly watching scenes in which people clearly have such different points of view, and the white people seem quite oblivious, in the "innocence" of privilege, to their own entitlement and to the possibility that it's not equally a matter of choice for everyone.

But that's not to say the movie takes a condemning perspective, or an excusing one either. It aims at "here it is" and part of what's there to see is entrenched injustice and willful ignorance.

One striking comment she made afterwards was how everybody's so polite in Mobile that she'll never hear directly how much people hated the film. But when they showed it down there, a number of folks did walk out in the middle. It's as if talking about "it" as if it's a problem is, for many (whites) (and therefore it must pretend-be for everybody, while in "mixed company," at least when it's mixed where whites often still rule, like where they're the employers), worse than anything else about the subject, anything about what it's like for people living in the sh*tty parts of the "traditions" of the area.

Also the fact that they were making the film may have influenced some events in it for the better, a tiny bit. Maybe I'll tell you more later? I just yesterday got a fresh letter from Tommy T that needs opening... 2 envelopes...

[bigfinedaddy.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm totally in the mood for a Tommy letter.