A few weeks ago the United States failed to bear witness to the largest prison strike in our history. Several prisons across Georgia managed to organize a non-violent protest demanding better working conditions. The New York Times ran a little article, NPR had some blurbs, and Atlanta’s local news outlets reported. Otherwise the large news organizations were not very interested.
Usually loathe to talk blog with my drinking buddies, I asked if they were aware of the strike. Of course they were not. How did this happen? I refuse to believe that my people don’t care about civil and human rights. I know they care, at least sentimentally. I can’t believe that they wouldn’t be moved by this kind of non-violent Gandhi shit.
In Ill Fares the Land Tony Judt says:
If young people today are at a loss, it is not for want of targets. Any conversation with students or schoolchildren will produce a startling checklist of anxieties. Indeed, the rising generation is acutely worried about the world it is to inherit. But accompanying these fears there is a general sentiment of frustration: “we” know something is wrong and there are many things we don’t like. But what can we believe in? What should we do?
60 years ago, a whole bunch of 16-30 year old people would know with dogmatic certainty that the Georgia prison strike was awesome. Why not now?
Maybe it’s simply a failure of imagination.
Most of my white middle class friends have no reason to know or think about people in prison. The only ones who do have either been in jail for a DUI, or been involved in the criminal justice system in some capacity. We have no reason to bother imagining what it’s like for the millions of people in the system. We don’t know them, and we wouldn’t want to. I think that’s why old school prison movies seem so foreign and irrelevant.
Aesthetic differences aside, I don’t think a movie like Cool Hand Luke could exist today. We’re trained to take pleasure in Luke’s self destructive public transgression. Watching Luke lopping the heads off of parking meters is fun for anybody who’s ever gotten a ticket.
lopping the heads off parking meters, like the tops of mountains...
revel in transgression for a moment
Luke’s antics are what we know how to enjoy. Thousands of people turned out to watch Jackass 3-d. (I know one 40 year old woman who watched it). Jackass is essentially a feature length montage of self destruction and spectacle. It’s a super duper fun. But it’s inherently passive. Very few people actually go out and experience the liberating thrill of crashing a shopping carts into a wall.
what one does when he is free
We’re trained to distance ourselves from transgression. We can mindlessly observe it for 90 minutes. But when push comes to shove it’s “the man with no eyes” who our popular culture most glorifies.
peace officer, enforcer
Watching a movie about a jack ass who refuses to bend to the will of his authorities is unnatural. We’re not accustomed to thinking about a prisoner as anything besides a threat and a problem. The notion that he or she could be a freedom loving Johnny Knoxville is antithetical to most of what’s on tv. Rebel heroes are only possible in alternate universes where the line between good and evil is overly explicit.
a bright line
So when thousands of Georgia inmates overcome daunting logistical challenges (800$ contraband cell phones, solitary confinement, racially defined gangs) and stage a massive non-violent protest. eh, that’s not heroic, in fact, it doesn’t even compute.
Really interesting and insightful commentary. I am a self professed news junkie and I didn’t hear anything about the prison protest either. Thank you for this posting.