Ode to the Generations of 1967/2017

Ode to the Generations of 1967/2017

Yo Logan,

I had read A.O. Scott's review of the movie Detroit in the New York Times a week earlier.  I can quibble with a lot of things he had to say (not enough character development, etc.). But one big concluding point he made was that American film isn't good at dealing with "division and real-world problems that have yet to be solved. It made me wonder if European, or Chinese films are any better at that. I suspect that you've consumed more serious film than I. So I put that question to you?

He also says that in the film, "the white men, the decent ones, as much as the brutes, have answers, agency," ... not the Black folks. I guess Kathryn Bigelow is a big time director ... liberal ... and Scott talks about how she tried to give us some agency back in the end.

But anyway, as I sat there, getting more and more depressed, I realized two things .... Our generation was some bad MFs, cause in ‘67 and ‘68, we literally kicked the walls down and came storming through. The young kids today, as outraged as they seem, haven't done what was done back then. We got everybody's attention!

But as I salved my wounds from the disrespect I've gotten from the kids post-Ferguson, because we didn't change enough, I realized that the kids are right. The shit the went down at the Algiers Hotel ain't that different than Michael Brown or Tamir Rice, etc. The white boys and their institutions are still holding all the cards ... body cameras, indictments against cops ... ain't worked yet! What can I tell the young to do?

Maybe it is time to for them/us to throw themselves in waves at the barricades, until, like Czar Nicholas' security police in Petrograd in 1917, the gendarmerie refused to continue the carnage, and the moment of transformation is at hand.

We took it ask far as we could brother, back in our day. Maybe, especially in the time of Trump, the next more awful surge is now needed.

Wes