Requiem for Detroit
Shadow27
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Anyone else watching this? So sadly compelling to see a great city fall like this and a rare example of intelligent tv for a Saturday night.
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Shadow27
Posts: 4,181 Shadow27
Posts: 4,181
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There was an article in The Gruaniad about this show which looked at positive things which were also happening in a city where half the population have left due to the downturn in the car industry.
Fascinating stuff, even if a little depressing
Love the community gardens and farm ideas - good luck to them.
If the world was a better place people like her would be the politicians and not a bunch of privileged children who get elected on their parent's money and connections.
After the Ant and Dec show, Zig and Zag would be hi-brow!
But yes, an interesting programme that shows how even the mighty can fall.
And yet summed up optimistically at the end by the women basically saying it is like any place, it is what you make it.
Think of the once great coal mining towns and steel and shipyards we once had here.
Now it's made in China and if you want to complain about it, call the call centre in India!
P.S. had to watch bloody casualty but will catch on Iplayer!
I must have seen the footage of Martha and the Vandellas on the car production line many times, as I have the riots, but all in all a good documentary.
The "artist" with the "totem pole" got a lot of footage, I thought his art was rubbish.
Would rather watch it on the television than the computer.
Word! Derrick May changed everything about dance music :cool:
Watching the docu about the music of Detriot now and hope he gets a mention but it looks doubtful.
MC5 :eek::cool:
It's not being repeated on tv(not this week anyway).I guess it'll be on the i player on the telly though.
I thought it was a great documentary.Loads of characters.
Loved the old guy who was asked 'have you lived in Detroit all your life?'.'Yeah'.'So what's happening here now?'.'I dunno,i just woke up'.Classic
Al the beautiful old buildings,burned out and overgrown reminded me of The Omega Man with Charlton Heston.
Detroit looks like the bomb has hit it.
A case for;
- better forward planning by national and local governments?
- and / or more involvement with local big companies as they make their decisions??
- and / or scaling back of globalisation into more national markets with local tariffs???
- better efforts at regeneration????
Regardless of whether you like his art or not, that artist guy made a very telling point about not trying to export democracy elsewhere when it's no working here at home.
Urban decay of this proportion is really a disgrace for the US in the 21st century.
Mind you, I now live on Oldham, a place I love. But what has replaced the cotton industry and the way of life that evolved round it here for over 150 years? I'm still looking.
No core industry. Pubs shutting at a fast rate. Not even one cinema in the borough. The sky-line no longer dominated by cotton mills but our current day mills, the supermarkets; a Sainsburies, an Asda and 2 Tesco superstores all within 1 mile of each other.
Some people think that a place like Oldham is rough. Detroit makes Oldham look like Shangri-La.
BTW i'm NOT a socialist.
I agree a brilliant docementary though
Remember "There's never a stinking cop around when you need one":D
We have no industry left in Britain anymore: As you say the dark satanic mills are no more along with tin mines, coal mines, shipyards, steel producers and the towns and communities that went with them...
...a civilisation, Gone with the wind...
What is it that we do do now in this country?
I liked the old films projected onto the derelict buildings and the sudden banging noises added to the interviews for effect.
One of the best BBC documentaries for a long time.8 out of 10.:cool:
Also thought (coming from the welsh valleys where we've lost our main employers) that it could have been us in the UK if it wasn't for the welfare system keeping people's heads above water, and the tills ringing. Without that safety net - Detroit's experience could be a lot more familiar.
I grew up inside Detroit and I'm proud to be from there. It sounds like the first documentary claimed the downturn was because of the decline of the auto industry? I would say some of it was also because of the predominance of the auto industry. My mother tells me that back in the 70s they had a really nice trolley system in the downtown area, but got rid of it (although there are some touristy trolleys, or were the last time I was home) to try to make people buy cars.
Also, even into the 80s if you were driving a car from a foreign country you were risking getting your car keyed or your tires punctured. I don't think that happens these days, although in the early 2000s a cashier at a suburban grocery store gave us grief when he saw my mother had a Volkswagen key on her keychain, so she pointed out that she stopped buying American-made cars after a new Chrysler had to be taken to the shop 11 times the first year they owned it (I think she was exaggerating).
There were some really nice neighborhoods (and probably still are!), but times are very tough. I am astounded and yet not by the way Kwame Kilpatrick was reelected after he had already shown how corrupt he was. He's now begging people to give him money to help pay back the millions he owes.
I like the community garden and farm idea, but I hope they don't force people out of their homes. There really are so many areas that could be bulldozed without inconveniencing any remaining residents....
A year or so ago some French photographers did a presentation (in Time magazine online?) of some of the abandoned buildings in downtown Detroit. It was heartwrenching to see some gorgeous buildings just abandoned to decay.
Sorry for the long post.:o
No need to apologize, i found your thread interesting.
Whats scary though is this is like the third documentary in the space of a year I have seen on Decline and poverty in the USA (others being Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, and one about a medical aid charity set up to offer free healthcare to third world countries, now spending most of its time treating the poorest Americans)....And i've seen this popular youtube clips which whilst humorous is of a similar bleak tone (Note: strong language in the first vid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM
It's capitalism run rampant. Henry Ford had a great quote and mantra that was
''There is one rule for industrialists and that is: make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.''
he saw his responsibility in spreading the wealth, and creating welfare. Sadly his quote seems laughable to economists now.....it's all about overworking people and underpaying them to make even more money for a narrow band of insanely wealthy shareholders.
I found it very engaging - though, as telepest notes, stylistically it was very reminisant of Adam Curtis' "The power of nightmares".
My only small criticism is that, for me, they didn't really portray the sheer scale of decline - the Guardian article says "The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature." Whereas I got the impression we we only looking at a much smaller area - though the fault could be mine I suppose:).
The history and development of Detroit was fascinating and that the early racial segregation ultimately led to the city's decline was very telling.
There was a white guy with a trace of an Irish accent, who was that guy?