David and I went to see Zootopia this afternoon. We're on spring break, and tickets are cheap 4-6 every afternoon, so we went to a 4:10 showing. Partway through the previews, a reminder not to illegally record movies came up on the screen. It featured two white men, mid-twenties, one in a hoodie, leaning together with these evil looks on their faces. I leaned over to David and said, "Because only really sketchy looking people do illegal things." "Do we look sketchy because we're here without a kid?" he asked back. "Please," I said. "I'm a girl, and I'm wearing a floral dress. And then you're with me, so you probably get points for that."
Zootopia was a great movie. It was cute and funny, but more than that, it was social commentary in a poignant and inspirational sort of way. At a time when Donald Trump and hate seem to be winning the day, this movie shows the brilliance of fantasy - telling the truth people won't eat up as readily any other way (there's some famous quote about this that I can't recall).
(And yes, I have read reviews where flaws - including that wolves do historically eat bunnies - are noted, and if you take it that far, I see the problematic implications. We could have a whole other discussion about that. No, I do not believe black people historically killed white people. Other way around, really. Maybe we could decide that makes our society even more ridiculous?)
I haven't blogged in a while. Mostly, because lately when I have strong feelings and something to say, that something is negative, and I don't want to share around more negativity in this world. But Zootopia took some of those thoughts and gave them somewhere to go. Yes, a children's movie seems to have restored my hope in humanity, at least for an afternoon.
I started off spring break by reading All American Boys on Saturday. It's the story of a white police officer beating a black teenage boy. It's a story we've all heard too often as not just a story. The particularly interesting part of All American Boys (which, by the way, is a Coretta Scott King honor book) is that it's told from two alternating perspectives - that of the boy who was beat and that of a white teenage classmate whose perspective changes. The novel depressed me at the beginning, because it's true, and then it made me embarrassed to be a white person, because although the white kid's perspective changes, he's so blindly racist at the beginning. I'm embarrassed to be associated with that. I'm embarrassed that it's so true. I want to protest that all white people aren't like that. And yet, before this recent wave of police brutality publicity and Black Lives Matter, was I any different?
(Note: an interesting twist in All American Boys is that the father of the boy who was beat up used to be a cop. He quit after shooting and paralyzing a black teenager who he mistook to be getting out a gun when he was actually reaching for his inhaler.)
Then this morning I started How It Went Down (another Coretta Scott King honor book), which follows the neighborhood shooting of a black teenage boy by a white man. You are thrown into the midst of confused perspectives over what happened, and while I haven't finished it yet, it's clear that people are stereotyping and assuming like crazy, and that's resulting in the white man getting off on the excuse of self defense (sound familiar?). People assume the teenager was in a gang, or he had a gun, and while none of that seems to be true, none of it also excuses fatally shooting someone.
At the end of Zootopia, Judy gives a classic inspirational speech about how she came to the city expecting everyone to get along perfectly, and when she arrived, she saw it wasn't so, but we still need to do our best to make the world a better place. Yes, it's trite, but it's still true. I didn't realize how many problems America had until I moved here. Maybe I'm a bit like the bunny. (People do look at me and assume similar things. "You? Moving to Memphis? To teach in an urban school?!")
As we left the theater for our car, that conversation about the sketchy movie recorders came back to me. Sometimes it's hard to stay out of the system. I had done the same thing. I struggle with this sometimes - if people are going to treat me like a harmless female, is it so bad to try to play that card sometimes?
A couple of weeks ago in class, the opening journal prompt asked where your name was from, why you got it, what it meant, etc. A girl named Tyler raised her hand and said, "When I was little, I didn't like my name, because it sounds like a boy, but my mom gave me this name instead of a name like Shaniqua because she wanted me to be able to get job interviews."
Right before spring break we finished Cry the Beloved Country in sophomore English. My final reading question asked students to apply what we've talked about fixing broken things to some current situation. One girl told me that this novel shows that the way to fix a society is to come together, whereas Trump is trying to fix America by breaking us apart.
I could go on and on. The whole debate about how you present yourself vs. social capital is on the tip of my tongue, but I think I'll restrain that for now. Sorry for the long ramble. Hopefully you could make some sense from it. Or at least you thought a little bit.
Shalom,
Anneke
