they don’t make em’ like they used to

I watched the film Girls Town last night.  I thought it was really good.  It dealt with topics like domestic violence, rape, motherhood, and suicide in a way that was both empowering but not naively triumphant.  I liked that the fact that the group of friends that the movie’s story followed were coming from different ethnic backgrounds and differences in class, even in the worn, urban setting of the film, were definitely eluded to, but weren’t exploded into the cliches that one finds in a lot of films about urban youth.  The film’s soundtrack also reminded me of the song U.N.I.T.Y. by Queen Latifah which is awesome and it made me sad that the standards seem to have been lowered so that it is seen as important when there are women MCs, period, even if people in mainstream music aren’t talking about challenging things in a direct, personal way like Latifah and other artists did in the 90s.

On a side note, I found this review of the film on IMDB really endearing:

I’m a 62-year-old white male in Northern Michigan, and I liked this film. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that I was getting a good inside look at a culture that I have never brushed shoulders with. Lili Taylor, for a 30-year-old gal from Illinois, seems to have captured the spirit of Patti in a very convincing way, and her body language showed that she really had rapport with her friends. Under ordinary circumstances, I would not choose to watch a film about the subject of school kids in Brooklyn or Hackensack or wherever, but I liked these kids. It’s a nice piece for older people to watch, and be entertained by people telling you things you probably didn’t know. Rightly or wrongly. I’m not in a position to judge the authenticity of the cultural overview that the film presents. Warning to old fuddie-duddies: The F-word uccurs 31 times in a 51-second scene (Is this a new record?) so don’t watch if the grand-kids are around!

Media check for the week of November 25, 2007

Last night, I watched a movie called Saving Face. It was your traditional rom-com in the sense that it had both an interrupted wedding and an airport scene. However, the characters were Chinese-American and the primary love stories were between two young women and an older woman and a younger man.

Link

I heard a story on NPR this morning that talked about Dunkin’ Donuts’ rebranding campaign, but I thought there was a nice statement about the cache of products being working class and upper class people aspiring to “lower class” identities.

Dunkin’ Donuts’ advertising campaign “America Runs on Dunkin” is created out of a sentiment among customers that they wanted to buy a good, simple product. Brand guru Leslie Bielby says the campaign expands the retailer’s appeal.

Link