Re: brushing shoulders with Holden Caulfield?

On Wed, Oct 29, 2003, jrovira@drew.edu said:

>I was afraid (after sending, of course) my last response would sound
>like either a direct response to you or to Tim...sorry about that. It
>was really meant to be a general question. Why is the common teenage
>angst expressed by this kid worthy of an HBO special? Do they do middle
>class or poor teenage angst? Or is that just too boring and predictable?

I didn't read it as a direct response; no problem.

Actually, this gets to the kernel of the "Born Rich" documentary, really.
 The rich kids complain/whine/explain that regular people EXPECT them to
be automatically happy simply because they are rich. (Ivanka Trump, who
mostly comes off well, slips a bit when confronted with this point, and
becomes a little haughty and high-handed, labeling a person who asks her
about how it feels to be rich as "ignorant." Clearly she can't put
herself in the shoes of one of the unwashed masses peering in the window
at her and her friends.)

Jamie Johnson, who narrates what he directed, wrestles with the question
of how to be useful and productive and to find meaning in his life when
everything around him seems to be setting him up to do nothing and to
pretty much BE nothing -- since, as nearly everyone appears to assume,
there's no reason for him to be anything but idle and shiftless.

And that is what drives him to query his peers. I think he wants to get
at the matter of what these others can and should (or shouldn't) do with
their own privileged lives.

And Anne, yes, truly there would be something nice about not growing an
ulcer over paying next month's bills; who wouldn't want that worry
removed, especially those of us who live paycheck-to-paycheck? I think
you are very accurate in saying that people on both sides of the fence
tend not to see the issues of people on the other side. It's only that
in this movie, we get to hear almost exclusively from the grass on the
much greener side of the fence.

For everyone who doesn't have HBO, my guess is it'll be out on video in
six months.

Daniel, your portrait of your family history was great. Though I confess
to total ignorance at what a "plebe" is. (I thought it was a term that
referred to a young 'un in military school.) What does it mean in your
context? Also, speaking strictly for me, I less and less -- if I ever
did -- see myself in Holden or identify with him. Rather, he's a
personality, a type, I instantly recognize, and the part that makes him
work so well as a character is that (for me, anyhow) he is not callow, he
is sympathetic, he is confused, he is adrift. Maybe I identify with some
of those characteristics, but the world of boarding schools and Park
Avenue apartments is as alien to me, living a few minutes downtown from
all that, as it may be to you in your family community.

It's good to see there's still some life left in the strange parallel
universe that is this list!

--tim

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Received on Wed Oct 29 21:24:02 2003