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epitome of incomprehensibility
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Mom was in the living room, watching the movie Brooklyn that was playing on TV. I was in a corner, nominally writing, but mostly watching it too.
My brother came in, hands on hips, announcing that it was "American propaganda" in the mixed serious/playful way he has. "It's just promoting capitalism and American supremacy," he said, or something like it.
"But it's a romance," Mom said.
"It's a coming-of-age story, I guess, or at least it's about someone moving to a new place," I said.
The story's about a young Irish woman who moves to Brooklyn for a job (in the 40s or 50s) and eventually has to choose between her new and old lives (jobs, partners).
I'm avoiding spoilers, but there's a part where a personal tragedy happens and the main character Aelish has to go back to Ireland; my brother said, "Aha! So it's saying that all the bad things happen in Ireland."
Up until then I'd dismissed his argument, but he got me thinking: it's true, the film presents the bad things mainly happening in Ireland, and the good things happening in the States. Although it's not a blob of cliche, being vivid and slice-of-life, it's a little glissed up (as in glissando, smooth sailing) in America, land of dreams. And it's an interpersonal story, close up, but called Brooklyn. The intent seems to be metonymy: this part represents the whole, this is the Brooklyn experience.
So, yeah, I'd say it's a bit propagandist. Does that make it terrible? No. The head-shaking brother stayed to watch the rest of the movie. Another scene where the character's love interest talks about his plans to build houses and factories on empty land made him interrupt again (America! Capitalism!), but he became invested in the characters. Not in a financial way.
More personally, sometimes it does seem like the bad things happen in the native land. A neighbour's parents die in Ghana. They go to visit. They come back and life is better for them in Montreal.
Why don't I think of this as "the" native land? This is uncharacteristically un-self-centred of me - I was born here. But it still seems like the new world. "Some people want to live in the same place and some people want to move," I said to my brother (profoundly). I don't want to move. And why move when I am already in the new place?
This is the paradox, and it's a pat one. Pat it on the back: cute little paradox. Not cute enough to justify the cultural genocide of a range of peoples who've been here longer, but the epitome prefers to talk vaguely about places and being there or being here, doesn't she.
My propaganda here is to say that we need to make the world fairer. Again vague, but there you go.
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