Scott Wooledge of the Daily Kos just wrote a concise review of the newest nationally acclaimed urban, cautionary tale since the “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.” “Detropia” is a slice-o-life meditation on a city blinking on the edge, and, as Wooledge points out, there is no mention of the stark race stratification between those who live within the city limits of Detroit and those who live in the suburbs or NAFTA: this film contains more pans of industrial ruins than hard statistics. The only point of contention I have with Wooledge is his observation that college educated folks under 35 (he doesn’t mention that they are mostly white folks) are the film’s only “tantalizing glimmer of hope.” I would think that the glimmer of hope was the announcement that 2,500 jobs were to be added because of the Obama bailout?
But, the casting in this documentary is wonderfully fantastic – I recommend this movie on the portraits and conversations of these individuals alone. It is through these portraits that the directors were able to do a tidy job of showing how a whole ecosystem of nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, and even an opera, were blooming off of the monoculture of the car industry.
====AND NOW FOR A RAIL BREAK===
Now that the car industry has abandoned their native soil, perhaps it’s time to look again at the train – the original native son.
