All I know about the movie Bobby is that it’s set in the USA at the time of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. But I just heard writer-director Emilio Estevez say the most amazing things to Margaret Pomeranz.
This movie is about the death of decency and the death of formality and the death of manners in a country that the whole world used to look up to… We had grace, we had elegance, and we were bright. George Bush says that we’re binging on oil. We’re also binging on gossip, and that has become a great distraction.
I think that we have disengaged and disenfranchised not only minority voting but also with the youth. I mean, what young person, what 20-year-old wants to stand in a line in Ohio for four hours to vote? That’s disenfranchisement.
So I think that we need to re-engage people in the political process, especially young people, and we need to stop dividing us, and stop forcing [on] the public this ridiculous notion that we’re “red states” and “blue states”. We’re not. We’re Americans. We all drink from the same watering hole and that hole is drying up.
I think I want to see this movie when it opens next week.
Yeah, I saw this too and was blown away by it. Sing it Emilio! Some of that applies here too I think, maybe it’s a change in perspective on my behalf but I’ve been noticing so much rudeness and lack of basic civility lately.
I can’t remember where I read it but I read an interesting point of view about manners and civility recently. That they function to keep the wheels of societies oiled by giving us a level of comfort in what to expect. With manners you have some sense of what strangers are likely to do. Without it things become unpredictable. Interesting point of view I thought.
Ta for the comment, Andrew.
I’ve also read that the ongoing War on Things to Be Afraid Of has, as a side-effect of ramping up fear generally, caused people to be more suspicious of strangers — and therefore less likely to be polite or helpful.
I’ll post a link if I ever stumble across it again…
Emilio’s statement reflects the view of many people I have met since moving to San Francisco. The sooner that Australia stops trying to be the inbred cousin of the US the better. The watering hole is drying up and fast. When people are more aware of the latest sexually explicit photographs of a compromised American Idol contestant than they are about things that matter, require thought and then action … we need to question ourselves.
Well said, Raven. And I’ll spend a little while reading your blog during the week — it looks fascinating!