How to tell a story

How to tell a story

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Spike Lee's Document

Rewatching the long film Lee made about Katrina, first shown on HBO. A heart-breaking, devastating story of institutional failure and corruption, moral bankruptcy, racism, classism, fear, greed, horror - but also of pockets of empathy, love, human resiliency, spiritual survival. Watching it now, I feel like it's not history so much as preview, prologue, an unheeded warning.

"This was America, this was today, and this was a Third World scene." Sean Penn

We are so far from our mythology about ourselves ... the small good news is that more and more people realize this, and eventually, if it's not too late, a critical mass might be reached ... and then ... same o same o, endless repetition going nowhere (Brown).