re:
I’m going to write about Frederick Wiseman’s City Hall elsewhere, but — partly spurred on by news of a potential 29 story tower appearing in the middle of Sullivan Square, because this kind of thing just doesn’t seem to stop — I wanted to take a second to walk through a review of the film as it appeared in The Dig.
I don’t know if the right frame of the film is to say that it’s saying that “the work is more in the telling than in the working.” Work is happening — we keep getting interstitial shots of buildings appearing again and again; we see countless people at work (building inspectors, housing inspectors, veterinarians, and more) — which means that it’s important to understand the context in which these instances of style over substance are happening.
For instance: why on earth does Walsh tell the head of Boston’s NAACP that — and he doesn’t name her explicitly, he could have said ‘city council’ instead of the ‘school board,’ but it doesn’t make historical sense to name check the city council — if Louise Day Hicks had simply ‘done the right thing,’ then the city wouldn’t have had any of its trouble with bussing? (To wish that Louise Day Hicks had ‘done the right thing’ isn’t too far from saying, ‘If only Trump wasn’t Trump.’) Why does he brag about $9 billion worth of development at the Greater Boston Food Bank and then express wonder that 1 in 6 Bostonians are experiencing food insecurity? (As if things aren’t holistic? As if things aren’t interconnected?)
Each are scenes that the reviewer would characterize as ‘substance over style,’ but they are also scenes that give you pause. There’s nothing wrong with wish fulfillment thinking, per se, but why would Walsh spend his time on camera with the head of Boston’s NAACP and not talk about — for instance — racial health inequality in Boston? How the city could help at the level of transportation to make sure folks in Roxbury not only aren’t late for their appointments, but have a reliable way to get to their appointments, too? Does Walsh recognize how intellectually out of his depth he is in saying this?
I’d also take issue with this paragraph from the reviewer —
An official who the Globe helpfully identifies as city housing inspector Israel Timberlake visits the home of a 70-year-old man who’s battling a rat infestation that’s being exacerbated by a feud with his landlord who’s also his brother. Presuming he’s got to give the hard sell to Timberlake, and very cognizant of the camera in the room, the mustachioed gentleman tells his tale with an undeniable theatricality … suggesting that if modern American life has turned even our elected officials into glorified p.r.-department hacks, then it stands to reason that it’s also done the same to everybody living under them.
The man in question isn’t telling his tale with theatricality because he thinks the best way to engage with the world is through ‘PR hack speak.’ The man in question is overwhelmed, lonely, in crisis, and trying to find something — anything — that will stick. So he talks about the rats in his place, his divorce, his brother trying to evict him, his medical conditions, and more.
He is a man in crisis, not a man to be dismissed because we’re suspicious of all things PR. I hope more of us are better (or become better) at recognizing this.