The following was sent to me as part of a larger email composed by a Brother living and teaching in Tottori-ken (鳥取県). It appears here with permission.
After soccer Brian and I discussed this film Hustle and flow. It won an award, I thought it was rubbish where as he loved it. He kept saying I didn't understand the South and the poverty there asking me if I had been there. Some Americans I know believe they invented everything or have a cultural claim on everything including poverty, or hard life. Frankly, I haven't been to the South but go to Bangladesh, Sudan where people haven't got enough food to eat to see poverty. You talk to me of American ghettos, check out people's lives in France and the ghettos there. Although hip-hop has popularized ghetto life and shown poverty, it does not give America a cultural claim to it.
Brian couldn't believe that I disliked the film. It's about a pimp who has many women and rents them for sexual favours and gets money. He because a rapper to break out of the cycle. There was no redeeming quality about the man, ok you were not supposed to like him, etc but he didn't seem that poor to me. Brian said it was implied because he was from the South. He had food on the table, clothes on his back and a place 2 stay. He had money in his pocket from abusing women; yeah I don't identify with him or feel sorry for him. Why should I? His life was crap as are many other lives, I don't claim to have had better or worse experiences than him but it also wasn't a well-made film in my opinion. Brian's reasoning is that I didn't understand the South, which is why I didn't like the film. I said I don't give monkeys about the South, which although to be fair I do, his assumption I don't know would have a bearing on my appreciation of the film is laughable. I didn't like the film as I didn't like the characters etc and it wasn't that interesting for me. That's all there is to it.
Compare it to a film like City of God, I know less about the shantytowns in Brazil but it did not stop my appreciating the film. Just as there isn't much to like about some of the characters, I can sympathise with and respect them. Poverty is a fact of life, its blights England as well an it really bugs me when sanctimonious people crow about how hard the ghetto in America is when all they know of a poor area is what they see on their TV as they have never been there but tell me I would get killed there if I wore this or that colour or said this or that or looked at someone funny or blah bah blah.
In my humble opinion, go to Iraq, Palestine, Darfur, Jolo, Thailand's south, to see real poverty, then you can really talk with some knowledge, until then Americas bling poverty is something I am interested in but it doesn't represent to me the woes of the world. Certainly [it's] something that is sad and I want to learn about but there is as much poverty in my own country, which I'm more concerned about. Hip-hop does not have a copyright on hard times, and it's a medium through which people can communicate with about life. Simply because Hip Hop has highlighted the problems in America, it doesn't mean that there are no other examples of poverty in the world as there are. Ok, laterz peoples,
please pray for me.
-R. Tarafder
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