MovieChat Forums > Dark Days (2001) Discussion > Different kinds of homeless people theor...

Different kinds of homeless people theory?


We all know how important and poignant this film was to show us that homeless people are not what we think.

But I recall several of the homeless people speaking very poorly of the shelters (I won't go there, they'll steal my stuff, crack).

So maybe these homeless people are different? They built their own homes and obviously showed that they wanted a better way.

What about all the other homeless people that they spoke against?

I think as in any society your gonna have your different characters of people. Some nice some not.

That's not to say people don't need help. They do of course. But maybe these people were special.

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Theory? Yeah, of course not all homeless people are the same.

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What's the problem, "by"? Dark Days challenged the perception of homeless people as somebody you guard your kids from, so now you've got a problem, and are trying through this thread to put the homeless back into their socially designated place? Your post reeks of discrimination and is the most disgusting post on this board.

No, by, even though all people have their own different characters, there are not two groups of homeless, the mean ones in the shelter, and the nice ones in the tunnels. It's the surrounding set of circumstances that causes people to behave in a certain way. If this docu on "the tunel variety" made you realize that these guys are morally not all that worse than not-homeless, are you that ignorant that you have to be shown the docu on "the shelters variety" as well, before you make your realization that those are not bad either, and that it's just their surrounding sitution that makes them act ruthlessly? How many documentaries do you have to be shown before you've covered all the "varietie" of the homeless?

Get it into your head - this movies successfully challenges the stereotypes on all homeless people. Your perceptions, i.e. your stereotypes, were just effing wrong. The homeless are not homeless because they're mean, coniving, lazy bastards. That's just what the yuppies tell them on the street in order to excuse their choice of not giving them a buck or two.

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...speaking very poorly of the shelters (I won't go there, they'll steal my stuff, crack)...
Roberto Rossellini's "Paisan" is still fresh in my mind (also check out "Umberto D" and other Italian neorealist films). It shows several cases where "normal" people's rational behavior becomes quite different when they're hungry enough or desperate enough. And concentrating similar people in one spot just makes it worse - they prey on each other because in that crazy environment that's the way to survive.

Take a whole bunch of hungry desperate people and put them all in one spot (i.e. a "shelter") and weird things will happen. A typical "shelter" has few walls or locks, and almost everybody is in the same boat. And usually it's inadequately funded. All together, those things are a recipe for social disaster. "Shelters" being yucky places shouldn't be a surprise.

It doesn't "mean" anything ...those people would behave entirely differently if most of the crowd around them weren't also homeless, or if they weren't hungry or desperate.

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Well said, Chuck.


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for the last year, I've been working in San Pedro, CA. At times I travel the 710 freeway and have noticed some camps along the road that remind me of this film. Just recently these camps were cleared out by....not sure, probably CalTrans. What I found interesting is that while some people were solitary, living under a bush (literally), others had created little communities like in the film. Some were under bridges along the Los Angeles river, and there was a fairly large on in a small grove of trees between the freeway and the river. There were 4-6 structures, a couple rather large. It's all gone now, they even placed small boulders all around to discourage re-population.




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