30 Days
Last night DH and I watched the premiere of Morgan Spurlock's new TV show, 30 Days.
Wow. I am so bothered I don't know how to describe it. Which is to say, this show is great.
The premise of the show is that Spurlock gets himself or other people to agree to live in someone else's (radically different) world for 30 days, to experience life in a totally new environment. So this season he'll have an ex-military youth minister go and live for 30 days with a gay roommate in the heart of San Francisco to immerse himself in gay culture. Or a 43-year-old mom go on a 30 day college drinking binge, to experience her daughter's party worldview.
But in the premiere, it's Spurlock himself who leaves his comfortable home and goes out there - to the world of minimum wage. And it ain't pretty.
Spurlock isn't the first to do this, of course. Several years ago I read a book called "Nickel and Dimed" in which the author lived the same way, taking on minimum wage jobs in different parts of the country to see how the working poor live. But 30 Days had a more powerful emotional pull on me.
For one thing, it is different to read about someone's experiences than to see them... the pictures of Spurlock cutting sod and his fiance' washing dishes had a more visceral effect. For another, you could see the cruddy apartment they had to live in... the ants... the void of furniture... their red, runny noses because they didn't have heat.
I remember being a college graduate and having absolutely no money and no food except a box of mac and cheese in the pantry. I remember taking a twenty to the grocery store and having to put stuff back because the total went over. And those memories suck. But back then, I still had hope. I believed that things had to improve (and they did). I still had a mom who cleaned out her freezer to stock mine and a dad who slipped me twenties when he took me out to lunch. What do people do if they don't have moms with freezers or dads with spare twenties? If they don't have a college education or a whole network of family and friends who want to see them succeed?
It made me want to go and volunteer at the homeless shelter.
Wow. I am so bothered I don't know how to describe it. Which is to say, this show is great.
The premise of the show is that Spurlock gets himself or other people to agree to live in someone else's (radically different) world for 30 days, to experience life in a totally new environment. So this season he'll have an ex-military youth minister go and live for 30 days with a gay roommate in the heart of San Francisco to immerse himself in gay culture. Or a 43-year-old mom go on a 30 day college drinking binge, to experience her daughter's party worldview.
But in the premiere, it's Spurlock himself who leaves his comfortable home and goes out there - to the world of minimum wage. And it ain't pretty.
Spurlock isn't the first to do this, of course. Several years ago I read a book called "Nickel and Dimed" in which the author lived the same way, taking on minimum wage jobs in different parts of the country to see how the working poor live. But 30 Days had a more powerful emotional pull on me.
For one thing, it is different to read about someone's experiences than to see them... the pictures of Spurlock cutting sod and his fiance' washing dishes had a more visceral effect. For another, you could see the cruddy apartment they had to live in... the ants... the void of furniture... their red, runny noses because they didn't have heat.
I remember being a college graduate and having absolutely no money and no food except a box of mac and cheese in the pantry. I remember taking a twenty to the grocery store and having to put stuff back because the total went over. And those memories suck. But back then, I still had hope. I believed that things had to improve (and they did). I still had a mom who cleaned out her freezer to stock mine and a dad who slipped me twenties when he took me out to lunch. What do people do if they don't have moms with freezers or dads with spare twenties? If they don't have a college education or a whole network of family and friends who want to see them succeed?
It made me want to go and volunteer at the homeless shelter.
posted by Mamabird @ 4:43 AM
1 Comments:
At 11:12 AM,
Buckyteacher said…
I just read Nickel and Dimed and also just saw that episode. It makes you wonder how anyone can get by, and why we can't do better.
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