I was so sheltered. (But I didn’t live my life in a box…not completely…)
I used to peek out from behind my mother to try to catch a glimpse of the world. It was always so scary…and my mom taught us to be afraid. To be aware and to be afraid. Of everything. “The world is a cruel place,” she’d tell my siblings and me. The worst is that we only lived on Long Island. We never even went into the city, except that one time to get our ears pierced.
Neither of these movies was a familiar setting to me. I felt almost out of place watching them. But the interactions and relationships portrayed in the movies were different. At least here I could make some connections.
In Mad Hot Ballroom, the children spoke in ways that completely astonished me. At ten years old they were talking about the dangers of strange men with pretty young girls, which was one of the main things my mom always told us to watch out for. But these kids…they were so young… Instead of being at home playing house and watching silly “kid shows” like Barney or Dragon Tales, they were out learning about and talking about adult things. But after the movie…after dwelling on the premature growth of these children, I realized that it’s not so crazy. My brother’s 9. He’s already making “That’s what she said” jokes. It made me sad that this is what today’s youth is becoming.When I was younger, I wasn’t even allowed to leave my block without an adult, but now kids are out running wild, wherever they want. It makes me wonder, where are their parents? Why aren’t parents protecting their children from the cruelty of the world anymore?
Mad Hot Ballroom took place in the middle of the city, spanning from Queens to Manhattan to Brooklyn to the Bronx. It covered everywhere. Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing however, was concentrated in one area and focused on one community of people. There was something else between the two movies-the types of communication. In Mad Hot Ballroom, it was all positive energy, the children were dancing, the teachers were encouraging and praising them. But in Do the Right Thing, WOW. There was nearly no “nice” communication in the whole movie. The interaction between people, even family members, was harsh and loud and nasty. It was always F*** this and F*** that. There were no loving words except the few from the Mayor to Mother Sister.
When I first started watching Do the Right Thing, I automatically thought of my childhood in Baldwin and the riots between Baldwin and Oceanside. They weren’t really race riots, but they were two conflicting communities that would destroy each other’s members and property, the way the blacks and Italians destroyed each other in the movie. The more I thought about having to write this blog though, the more I thought about after I moved to Wantagh and went to a Levittown school. The first thing I did when I moved here was notice the color difference. There were no black people. Anywhere. And the whites hated the few that there were. Just the way the blacks in the movie hated the Italians on their grounds. My Levittown school wasn’t diverse the way Baldwin was. But in Baldwin, everyone was integrated and got along together. In Levittown, like in the movie, if you were different, you were an outcast.
Surprisingly, I was able to relate both movies, in some small way to my life, and to the places I’ve lived in. When I first heard the movies were about NYC and that part of the blog was to relate it to our lives, I freaked out a little, thinking, “…but I live on Long Island.” Well, after watching these two films, I realized that societies don’t have to necessarily take place in the same time period or the same area. All areas experience the same things, just at different times.
