This is my umpteenth attempt at starting this blog, I was really trying to find an edgy way to start. You know, like, a way to signify that this was our last blog (*tear*) and to really get it going with a big ol’ POW! But, then I realized that I had no idea how to go about doing that. So, rather, I am just going to dive headfirst into what I want to say, and try not to get too gushy over this.
New York City is the greatest place in the world to be, or at least, that has always been my view of it. I mean honestly, what other place could possibly get people to travel hundreds of thousands of miles and spend unfound numbers of dollars on airfare just to stand next to a concrete building? Let’s get real here, eh?
That being said, this semester I saw New York City through a lot of different viewpoints. Viewpoints of an immigrant, prostitute, cab driver, drug addicts, (New Yorks Finest Ladies and Gentlemen!) underprivileged minorities, political activists, modern artists, weird dancers and also that of the wealthy, cocktail swilling, tuxedo wearing monkeys who like to stand around and complain about their first-world problems. Needless to say no rock was left unturned in our evaluation of New York City.
A lot of these views led to negative portrayals of New York City, a city of urban trash, deadbeats, racists, or even worse, overly-pretentious yuppies. And guess what? That’s what New York is. No place is perfect, at least, no places that human beings inhabit; New York City is no exception to this rule. In Taxi Driver we saw Robert DeNiro chauffer the scum of the red light districts in NYC, in Manhattan we saw Woody Allen don his penguin suit and hobnob, in “Arabia We’d All be Kings” we saw the worst of the worst. These indeed all depict someone’s New York, these artists and directors and dancers and performers, they all saw different New Yorks because they were all different people coming from different places. Diversity of perception reflects diversity of the residents.
This is where my personal opinion comes into play, I think the most honest evaluation of New York City can be found in the movie In America Ariel’s view that is. It’s easy to overlook all of the good things in New York City, but Ariel saw everything with this open-ness and innocence that I think every single person should be envious of. She saw the lights, the people, and she saw how truly beautiful and magical NYC is. That’s New York. Yeah, there are bad things in New York, as a matter of fact there are terrible things in New York. But should we harp on them? Ariel was surrounded by filth and deprivation, yet she loved everything and everyone. Should we see New York only as this wasteland? Or should we stare at the lights in Times Square and never lose sight of the wonder hidden in those neon pipes?
That being said, In America wasn’t the best piece overall. For me, what I enjoyed the most this entire semester was definitely The Mercy Seat. This may seem a complete contradiction to how I view NYC, being that The Mercy Seat is dark, cynical, and very serious. I just think that what Neil Labute did in that play took a lot of courage. He said, what if we viewed this differently? He completely turned around the perception of 9/11. It was very daring, but I think it really paid off. The book took the tragedy to a different level, and I loved every second of it.
That seems a fitting way to end this blog, and so you will have to excuse me while I repeat myself. I experienced a lot of new things in the NYC this year-having hailed from boring-town, Suffolk County- and it’s safe to say that I loved every second of it.
