Last weekend I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, and I watched Elysium.
This weekend I have been reading about the Supreme Court's decision regarding campaign contributions.
The past, the present and the imagined future. The disenfranchised remain held down by the rich who are, by the fact of their richness, powerful.
As I read The Grapes of Wrath, it pained me to think of the families, the Okies, who lived through the 1930s in California. The mothers whose children died of starvation. The complete loss of everything they knew, everything they had, their entire way of life. It was much more profound to me than the visual in Elysium of poverty and disease and rampant degradation. I could imagine in my mind's eye the slow disintegration of the Joad family, of their pride, their dignity. Perhaps Matt Damon's horse-teeth distracted me a bit from feeling more than I did at his plight....although I certainly got the theme.
The novel was despair, and the increasing role of the feminine to fight poverty as best it could under dire circumstances. The film was aggressive, masculine destruction of the rich. Intellectually, I can appreciate the value of both.
And then there is the here and now. The rich continuing to manipulate elections, while the ever-shrinking middle class and the poor are waylaid.
I would like to send a copy of both the novel and the film to Justice Roberts, although I doubt he would understand the significance of either.
This weekend I have been reading about the Supreme Court's decision regarding campaign contributions.
The past, the present and the imagined future. The disenfranchised remain held down by the rich who are, by the fact of their richness, powerful.
As I read The Grapes of Wrath, it pained me to think of the families, the Okies, who lived through the 1930s in California. The mothers whose children died of starvation. The complete loss of everything they knew, everything they had, their entire way of life. It was much more profound to me than the visual in Elysium of poverty and disease and rampant degradation. I could imagine in my mind's eye the slow disintegration of the Joad family, of their pride, their dignity. Perhaps Matt Damon's horse-teeth distracted me a bit from feeling more than I did at his plight....although I certainly got the theme.
The novel was despair, and the increasing role of the feminine to fight poverty as best it could under dire circumstances. The film was aggressive, masculine destruction of the rich. Intellectually, I can appreciate the value of both.
And then there is the here and now. The rich continuing to manipulate elections, while the ever-shrinking middle class and the poor are waylaid.
I would like to send a copy of both the novel and the film to Justice Roberts, although I doubt he would understand the significance of either.
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