Dr. Zandria Robinson, professor of
sociology at the University of Memphis, came to Rhodes a few weeks ago to give
a lecture on her book “This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity
in the Post-Soul South”. This thought-provoking lecture led me to Dr.
Robinson’s website, newsouthnegress.com. Among her other writings shown on this
site (which you should all check out because she is a fantastic writer and
thinker) there is a review of the documentary “Orange Mound Tennessee:
America’s Community”. This movie was made by Emmanuel Amido and screened at the
2013 Indie Memphis Festival and looks at Memphis’ Orange Mound community,
concentrating on oral histories from older residents and current efforts to
improve the community.
Dr. Robinson’s review criticizes
the documentary for straying away from structural analysis of the neighborhood
and using tired arguments for why the neighborhood is in its current state. She
attacks in particular the notion, presented by the film, that the decline of
this and other neighborhoods is due to “permissive parents
and the absence of (middle class) ‘vallllllews.’” As Dr. Robinson points out,
this explanation would be much less likely to be the default reason for
neighborhood decline when looking at a “white midwestern or southern town
overcome by methamphetamine.”
One of Dr. Robinson’s main
critiques is one that I feel is particularly relevant to this class. She points
out in her review that there is a distinct lack of interviews from the young
people in the neighborhood who receive a large portion of blame in the
documentary for the current state of the neighborhood. She explains that “the
film suffers deeply from the absence of their voices” because without them “the
documentary implicitly invites us–folks who aren’t their peers–to try them in
absentia in Respectability Court.” This is something to keep in mind when any
of us are looking at documentaries or writings that do not allow some portion
of their subjects to actually have their own voice and tell their own story. Did
the creator try to fully represent the people whose stories were being told
(Amido claimed in a Q&A at the screening that he interviewed people from
the demographic that Dr. Robinson notes is missing, but they were unwilling to
be included in the film), or were some people ignored? If the people themselves
were unable or unwilling to personally tell their stories, could there have
been another way to show their perspective? Dr. Robinson mentions that the
music used in this documentary is one way that other perspectives could be
brought in.
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