Last night my husband and I watched the last part of an old movie on Turner Classics with Bette Davis and Olivia de Haviland. Afterward, my husband suggested we watch a movie we owned, "Heartbreak Ridge" by and starring Clint Eastwood. Usually I think these ancient films of his are campy, but this time, after a few minutes of abusive language (Clint is an army sargent and nasty with everyone including his recruits) we stopped the film. Not only did we stop it, we put it in our trash. We'd only watched the film once before, but after all the hullabaloo with Trump, we were newly sensitized. My husband said people in that situation didn't talk that way, and I felt that maybe really they did, but I didn't need to hear it even if it was accurate. In that sense, the Trump mess has brought to everyone's consciousness a new awareness of the abuse of some speech and what the ramifications of such speech are.
I thought of "Straight Outta Compton" and the two episodes of the Wire I watched with my son and daughter-in-law, which have offensive language, but seem to be a window into a culture of drugs and hopelessness in which certain young black boys are trapped. The language is painful to hear, but speaks of the claustrophobia and suffering underneath that must be covered up with bravado in order to survive. Maybe the same argument could be made for Heartbreak, but it isn't a good movie, and so the intentions are unclear and the message garbled. I don't listen to most rap music, but I understand that it's not meant for me anyway, it is a means of expressing anger and frustration.
But Trump is not making a movie or music, he is spewing. And that I need not witness. But maybe his presence has gotten people to think twice about what they say and what they listen to.
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