SPOILERS BELOW.
I agree that they loved their lives the way they were. I think the challenge to the audience is to suspend their belief that the only acceptable society or culture is their own.
We could look at the Bathtub culture as tribal. A tribal community can be analogous to a nation of native Americans, who although ghettoized on reservations at least have their sovereignty. Despite the poverty and poor health care, many native Americans prefer the rez to white society because their values are more compatible with a tribal lifestyle. After the storm, the modern people who forced the Bathtub survivors to a modern shelter were in a sense invading another country, forcing foreign laws onto its people, and taking them into illegal custody. Is it any surprise that they busted out the moment they could?
I see the Bathtub values as cherishing independence, self-sufficiency, resilience in the face of disaster, clear-eyed unsentimental realism, non-judgmentalism, an appreciation for the interdependence of all life forms (not just human) with their environment, and working together for the common good. In another context you might call this kind of courage the right stuff. In the context of the movie it's called not being a pussy. In our context it seems to be called being poor and ignorant.
People in the Bathtub remind me of my German great-grandfather, who was a subsistence farmer. That means he farmed for what he and his family and working animals ate, with a little extra that could be sold for cash. For lack of cash, bartering goods and services was normal in his community. So a farmer never threw anything away because it could be fixed, used to make something else, or traded for something you needed more. So there was always a lot of broken-down stuff behind the barn, much like the stuff in Wink's house and Hushpuppy's house. Farmers also helped their neighbors during harvest, hard times, and barn-raisings.
A white-collar person who visited my great-grandfather's farm would have thought of him and his family as poor and ignorant because it was a hardscrabble existence compared to theirs. But it was the life my great-grandfather built for himself and his family after moving west from working in a shoe factory in Philadelphia. It may be hard for a modern person to believe, but he didn't want a different life. So how would he have reacted if someone had forced him into a "modern" lifestyle off his farm? Two of his sons wanted the same thing. One son, my grandfather, did not; he moved off the farm after WWI, having learned auto mechanics. But my great-uncles, one of whom was also a WWI veteran, stayed on the farm and continued to run it the way their father had done. They both literally died with their boots on.
Prior to westward expansion in the 1800s, tribal culture was normal in the US. Prior to WWII, subsistence farming was normal in the US outside of urban areas. Today's US urban/suburban culture is not much more than 50 years old, and we already know it's not sustainable. Who are we to call those who can live off the land and sea ignorant? How well would any of us survive on their island...before, during, or after the storm? Within his community, Wink was a very good daddy because Boss Lady Hushpuppy knew she was loved, knew she was capable, understood her place in the universe, could face down her fears, could act on a personal code of ethics, and could survive on her own within her community at the age of six. How long would a six-year-old child last alone on the streets in the modern suburbs and cities where we live?
Don't mistake me...I'm not recommending that we should all become subsistence farmers, adopt a tribal culture, or fail to help people in our society who need help. But I am suggesting that we think about this movie for what it is and not for what we are.
reply
share