WRITING CULTURE 2012: Film, Food & Beyond

One of the many young men from Detroit who make money out of retrieving old ore and copper from deteriorating buildings throughout the city.

The situation that is going on in Detroit in the last few years is frightening to say the least. With jobs and businesses going down the toilet left and right, the eye-opening documentary “Detropia“, by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, goes deeper into everything that has happened and is still happening in the once great city of Detroit, Michigan. The film is narrated by Detroitians who struggle in the crumbling motor city and talk about about the turning of Detroit from “fastest growing city in the world” to “fastest shrinking city in the world”, which is where the title “Detropia” comes from: the word “Detroit”, of course, mixed in with the suffix “tropia” which means “turning”.

The film follows three die-hard Detrotians who give their perspective on how the state of the city is affecting their everyday lives and the lives of Detroitians collectively: a video blogger, Crystal Starr, a local bar owner, Tommy Stevens and the president of a workers’ union, George McGregor. On a good note, a concerned history-enthusiast Starr, is enjoying the learning experience from the crisis. However, both Stevens and McGregor are finding it difficult to stay afloat amidst the disaster. McGregor pains through keeping his workers happy despite the various pay cuts and job losses, while Stevens is having to deal with a declining business.

With three different perspectives used to describe the overall mood of the people of Detroit, Ewing and Grady effectively tie them all together and make it look like a domino effect. Because of the state of businesses in Detroit, McGregor has to tirelessly negotiate to keep his workers happy. Through the painful negotiation process, jobs are lost in order to reduce pay cuts and because of this, Stevens’ business slowly goes downhill as well because what once was a booming locale for exhausted workers to go to after work, is now slowly vanishing without them. Eventually painting a bigger picture for the viewer that it is effecting every single one of us.

What makes “Detropia”, which was  only the sixth film to be directed by these two very young and talented directors Ewing and Grady, compete with other great devastating documentaries such as the popular “Super Size Me” by Morgan Spurlock and “Home” by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, is that it ingeniously takes one thing people overlook and ignore because they think it won’t happen to them and sequentially creates a visual for them, powerfully summarized by the line towards the end by Stevens: “it’s coming for you.”

Two young, artists of Detroit doing what they do

Regardless of the many downsides that come from the receding motor city, the film does try to display some upsides to the entire situation. As gloomy as things maybe in Detroit, a young couple of artists are able to afford a home and live comfortably. It also included a very interesting stat that although population is decreasing rapidly, the population of youth in central Detroit has increased by 59%. Even with all the pessimistic visions of the future in Detroit, Ewing and Grady attempt to integrate some assurance to it that Detroit is not just a run-down, has-been city whose reputation will remain down in the dumps but there is some optimism.

With Detroit turning into what is is now, “Detropia” serves as a forceful wake-up call for the rest of us. Using The United States as a larger scale to Detroit in the 50’s and 60’s, Ewing and Grady subtly integrate their message that we, as a whole, are heading in the same direction and it’s time to wake up.