Bees

"It didn't suck" said film critic Paul Goldsmith. No, not really, but I held my breath when Paul and I watched chick flick "Secret Life of Bees" tonight. He usually makes such decrees after we watch (I insist he watch a chick flick every now and again to get in touch with his feminine side)this type of movie.

My hip book group read the book by the same name a couple years ago and we all really liked it. And everybody knows books are nearly always better than movies, because they provide so much more depth and information - stuff like plot development. In this case though, I thought the movie was well cast. Dakota Fanning played Lilly. That kid is a natural!

I always like Queen Latifa who plays Ms. August Boatwright - the matriarch of the film, and Alisha Keys as sister June. There was another sister I didn't recognize and a few no name guys in this film. The story is mainly about a young girl, Lilly, escaping her abusive father but it occurs during the age of civil rights and Martin Luther King. It is set in the south. Lilly's black housekeeper, ends up accompanying her on her trek to a town Lilly believes her dead mother once lived in.

The movie doesn't move quickly, but is never boring. Most of the white people in it are not friendly to blacks. In fact they are down right violent in two cases. It made me ponder...what would I have been like if I were in that situation?

When I was growing up, I only knew one black person, our cleaning lady, Velma Grey. I'm not sure how mom ended up with one of the only black people in Atlantic, Iowa as our cleaning lady. But we were expected to treat her the same as anyone else. I was only a child of 8 or so, but I do remember Velma eating lunch with us. I was fascinated to see that the palms of her hands were white. She was quiet and nice.

So that was how I was raised. I don't remember my parents making racist statements during the news or in discussions. They didn't tell racial jokes. Though my dad was known to embarrass me in later years by exclaiming loudly at a restaurant, "That's the daughter of the new colored family in town." Paul's father, George, who was ten years older than my dad, had never met an African-American until Paul introduced him to his boss at UPS (Paul worked there as a pre-loader in college), Herb. George was quite taken with Herb and it did open his eyes a bit. Nevertheless, he continued his derogatory racial comments regarding athletes when watching sports on TV.

It's hard to know just what I would have acted like if I had grown up in the south in the 1950's and 60's. I believe the "group-think" mentality would have been hard to shrug off. It's much like wondering what it would have been like to be a German Catholic in the Hitler era. Would I have been bold enough to help the Jews or stand up to the regime? I honestly don't know. I would like to think I would have had the guts. In today's world, I am supporting the right of homosexuals to live and love who ever they want to. And I'm not afraid to say it. To anyone.