Photos
Please Give trailer, you guys:
There was a Talk of the Town article in last week’s New Yorker (that’s right, ladies, the New Yorker!) about a family that sold their house and gave half of the money to Ghana. It was an interesting article, not so much what the article was about, although that was kind of interesting, but in how wishy-washy the article (and the family) got about what they had done. Like, the family seems really unsure of their decision, or at least unsure of how to explain/present their decision to the world, and the article shares this confusion. Should the family be proud of this extreme act of generosity and selflessness? Probably! And they are. Kind of! But at the same time, their house was worth 1.6 million dollars, so even with half of that, they still probably live in a pretty nice house. I am not saying that what they did wasn’t still totally unexpected and totally generous. See? See how this suddenly gets sort of complicated? And then there was the whole guilt issue, which both the family and the article danced around. Like, should other people feel guilty for not selling their house and giving half the money to Ghana? Probably not. Guilt isn’t a very useful emotion. It’s very easily buried, and it’s mostly just an energy drain that doesn’t really lead to much positive activity. But does the family’s behavior actually inspire other people to work harder to make the world a better place, or does it just make them feel unhelpful shame, and mild resentment?
Oh, also there was this paragraph:
A girl with a ponytail raised her hand. “Have you ever regretted selling your house?” she asked.
“There are some things that I miss,” Hannah said. “We had an elevator that led up to my room, and it was really cool, because nobody else had an elevator in their room. My friends would say, ‘Let’s ride in the elevator!’ But it really doesn’t matter.”
Uhhhh. (Also, the article points out that the father and daughter wrote a book about their experiences, but doesn’t say whether they kept or donated the proceeds, which to me kind of suggests that they kept the proceeds, and obviously FAIR ENOUGH, but I am just saying that this article does a really good job of putting you in the head of someone whose head is spinning.) It’s just weird how messy the act of charity can become, and how up your own butt it is easy to get when you are a middle-to-upper-middle-class-white-person-with-too-much-education. “Maybe my neuroses and existential panic will help feed someone!” Doubt it.
Oh, and hey, this movie looks pretty funny. I just hope that it doesn’t end the way that Nicole Holofcener’s last movie, Friends with Money ended, because I had been enjoying Friends with Money up until the ending kind of kicked the movie’s own legs out from under itself. Whoops!
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You’ll never truly understand the plight of the upper-middle class white person until you see the documentary ‘Bloomingdale’s Grew Tired of Us’
oh, god. as a white person who is doing social justice work in a majority black city, and as someone who is about to go through a big undoing racism workshop, and as someone surrounded by other white people doing this type of stuff with varying degrees of clarity and understanding, as well as a fair number of people who are just doing it in a way that enforces classist and racist ways of thinking…. i would love for a comedy that would take the whole white guilt thing on. this movie? not really looking like it to me.
Let’s debate affirmative action and hate crimes… uncomfortablegum.
I liked Friends With Money, but as long as it doesn’t have Jen in it, I’ll be happy.
(It’s very hard to find a gif of Aniston where she’s not semi-nud or in a sex scene! Interent’s scary).
Still, she’s sitting in a chair covered in plastic! Even this gif might have some unknown sexual connotations for some fetish group…
Unless the plastic is for those unexpected leaks caused by laughing and coughing. Poor Jen, tell her there’s an alternative to plastic Whoopi!
OCD is a fetish as well as a mental disorder.
“How many times have you washed your hands today?”
“44, it has to be an even number.”
“I’m so hot for you right now.”
Hey, how was your audition, Pepper Ann?
Oh Jen, I really want you to be happy. Stay away from John Mayer.
He’s bad news.
Ehhh, can anyone really say for sure that he’s as man-whorish as publications like Star and USWeekly say he is? I really have to say that the fact they claim him to be might even point to the opposite conclusion. I think he’s a guy who gets all this focus because he’s an attractive (is he? I don’t know really considering I’m a heterosexual male, but I assume so) singer who had a hit called “Your Body is a Wonderland.” IMO he seems like a fairly eccentric, intelligent person who happens to date Jennifer Aniston or Jessica Simpson. And as a heterosexual male, I really can’t bring myself to condemn him for that.
(I kinda just realized that lengthwise that was probably not a very proportional response to your comments. And maybe a serious discourse about racial inequalities and white guilt isn’t the forum for defending John Mayer. I stand by my point, but sorry for the circumstances! Oops.)
No he is horrible.
I don’t understand the race aspect of this guilt thing. Do middle-to-upper-middle- class-black- people-with-too-much-eduation feel this same guilt? Why does if have to be white guilt?
i feel like this thread has the potential to go down a lot of uncomfortable roads, due to the inherent nature of the subject, and i’m going to assume that your question was an earnest one, because i believe in the goodness of the videogum readership! those individuals and communities can have guilt (and it’s wrong to assume that everyone who is succesful has guilt, ovbs) but it’s a different kind of guilt, due to the fact that it’s informed by dynamics that are the product of the black experience in a white society, and how those dynamics can impact success and a person’s emotions about their success. white guilt is sort of informed by the opposite dynamics, or, the lack of having to truly examine how race informs their success. sort of. it’s complicated! so very complicated and confusing and a lot of times i leave my job feeling very conflicted and sad that there is no answer to these questions, no matter how much you dig, because ultimately it’s all so personal and never seems valid enough. gah.
Hey, southernbitch! I just wanted to thank you, both for the work that you do, and for your presence in this thread as someone who has directly engaged with these issues maybe more than the rest of us.
aw, shucks. i don’t think i need any thanks for any of this. half the time i don’t even feel like i’m doing good things, since i work in communities that i am not part of and i worry that i’m just meddling. (side note joke: why is it that anytime a white middle class person tries to engage with racism and classism they get thanked? i think that’s part of the problem: that engaging with these issues means you deserve credit and accolade- it makes people feel alienated on both sides in a way.) really all this is is an excuse for me to indulge in my neurotic over analysis in regards to every goddamned thing i do. just like a lady. (now i’m just trying to see how many stereotypes i can bring up. gender! woo!)
I thought all this time I was guilty because of my mom. Although I am left with more questions, your explanation did help to clarify this.
Guys, no matter what your race, creed, or gender, it just ain’t easy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kekb_f5NWg&feature=related
Oh, so this is pretty much a white-person version of Roots?
Hey, remember when films used to have genres? I mean, what is this, a comedy? A morality tale? Romance?
Yes, god forbid someone makes a movie that can’t be pigeonholed.
I think it’s a sequel to that movie where she owns that ebay store.
I recently caught myself reading The New Yorker while listening to NPR and drinking wine and thought “I am the whitest person ever.” I’m glad I stand corrected.
Haha to this! It’s like that one time I found myself listening to Belle and Sebastian on my ipod while carrying a messenger bag that contained a collection of John Updike stories. Now, if only I could have worked pilates into that equation somehow….
Looks like this movie has the potential to spark the kind of great racial debates that ‘Crash’ did!
If these parents were dumb enough to give into the whims of their 14 year old child, who knows what else they’ll let her do! At least when I was a 14 year old, if I ever asked to do something so dumb as to sell our already dilapidated house and give the half to charity, my parents would have smacked me on the head and told me to eat my vegetables. Oh spoiled rich kids America.
I’m not so KEEN on Cathrine KEENer’s new movie. (hah)
Sorry, I saw Sarah Vowell in the trailer and forgot what we were talking about.
So what we’re saying here is Y’all don’t know what it’s like, being male middle-class and white.
Oliver Platt always is good for Lots of Love, and it looks like he’s going to be doing all the heavy lifting in this film. Remember Catherine Keener in her underwear in “40 Year Old Virgin”? To me, she looked great, but she sure seems to love taking roles where she can be frumpy and unkempt.
As for the white guilt, generosity and giving should be embraced regardless of motivation. Attachment to material things leads to unhappiness and leads to suffering, says Buddha. If you want to give a man waiting for a table $20, give it to him. If it turns out he’s really a Harvard professor, it does not denigrate the fact that you were motivated to give in the first place. If you want to sell your house, sell it. The world will be a better place.
Now I must drive my Mercedes Benz to Starbucks and get a refresher latte. Good day.
I dunno…I guess it’s like: giving because you want to = good and giving because you feel guilty/and or inherently bad and want to maybe use this giving as a benchmark for how you are a good person always always = bad, I think?
I actually met this guy last week and the answer is yes, he is giving away all the proceeds from the book as well.
I bet Ghana feels pretty guilty. They should have just sent them 26,000 Hug E Grams to share amongst themselves. That way they wouldn’t have to bicker over how to spend the money.
I took an elevator up to the 4′th floor at school today. When i got off, I saw an elderly woman limping up the stairs. I felt very guilty.
Also, as an Indo-Canadian, non-white male, I give all white people (rich or poor) a guilt pass (because this is well within my powers). It’s okay you guys.
I don’t get why it gets complicated because they only donated half of the money and are still well off. Is charity only valid if you yourself are left a charitable case afterward? That’s silly.
I don’t think their head is at all spinning, they decided they wanted to help substantially, they helped substantially, and now they’re continuing their regular life where they don’t help substantially. It’s a pretty clear cut and normal way of helping.
If the book was about how to write a book, and then donate the proceeds of that book to charity, while not donating the proceeds of your book to charity that would be a headspin. But the book is about how you do a one time, substantial charitable act and then go on with your life, and that life includes maybe writing a book about it.