Monday, February 18, 2008

Thus spoke Walker Percy

I was rereading "The Moviegoer" this weekend and stumbled across this thought. It seems as true today for Shreveport as it was in 1962 for New Orleans, where the book is set.

Author Walker Percy was explaining his idea of "certification," whereby a Hollywood movie "certifies," or makes special, the places it films.

Percy wrote: "Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere" (63).

Have you felt similarly in seeing signs of Shreveport, Minden or your town on the big screen?

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