Monthly Archive for October, 2003

An open letter to the author of an oth­er­wise good review of Mystic River in Salon:

Hello Ms. Zacharek,

I did enjoy your review of Mystic River, and am look­ing for­ward to seeing it this week­end. I espe­cially enjoyed your obser­va­tions on con­cep­tions of neigh­bor­hood, and on the film’s sense of place.

While it’s true that Boston’s many neigh­bor­hoods are more self-​contained than most cities’, I think it’s a leap to assume that this clan­nish­ness is total. It’s equally true to argue that all of Boston is insu­lated from other parts of the coun­try. There is a dis­tinct common Boston cul­ture, which includes things like lan­guage, values, and tra­di­tions (red sox).

And while there may be an evi­dent us vs. them dynamic between cer­tain groups in the city, there is always a cir­cling of the wagons when Boston is facing out­ward to the rest of the coun­try. So there must be more to this place than the sum of its parts.

Which leads me to ask you about this:

His part­ner is played by Lau­rence Fish­burne, who wasn’t told, unfor­tu­nately, that black people in Boston don’t speak with a Boston accent.

I know it’s a minor bone to pick, but what expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge did you use as basis for that com­ment? An assump­tion that only Irish-​Bostonians drop their Rs and As? Michael Dukakis cer­tainly would debunk that statement.

Visit an ele­men­tary school in Chi­na­town, and you’ll see the chil­dren of Chi­nese immi­grants saying cah and pahk, just like many of their teach­ers. Maybe not to the exag­ger­ated degree that you’d find on the South Shore or in the Kennedy family, but it’s there.

Would you sim­i­larly argue that blacks born and edu­cated in Chicago don’t speak with a Great Lakes Mid-​West accent?

The Boston accent orig­i­nated in East Anglia, when the first Eng­lish colonists came from. It’s been refined and extended by a immi­grant groups of all kinds (not to men­tion a few of us trans­plants from other parts of the coun­try). I think there is a mis­taken assump­tion here, and I’d hate for non-​Bostonians to get the wrong idea when watch­ing this film.

Respect­fully,
Ned ned.suckahs.org

Now, I’m not a native Boston­ian, but I have been here for nearly a decade — and I know many people that grew up in this town, and share the local accent – be they from his­panic, black, or other back­grounds. Does anyone dis­agree? Am I over­re­act­ing to a small bit in an oth­er­wise good review?

UPDATE: Ms. Zacharek kindly responded to my letter:

Hi Ned — Thanks for your letter. I actu­ally took great pains to make it clear that the clan­nish­ness shown in the movie isn’t total — the neigh­bor­hood of the movie seems to me very much like South Boston (though plenty of people are writ­ing in saying, “No, it’s Charlestown!” or “No, it’s Dorchester!”) I think the point is, there ARE pock­ets of Boston that are par­tic­u­larly clan­nish, and Lehane’s story is pred­i­cated on that.

And the L. Fish­burne line…I just went in and cut that from the piece, because it seemed to be a bone of con­tention with sev­eral people. I lived in Boston for 15 years (it was only four years ago that I left), and I never heard a person of color speak the way Fish­burne does. Then again, all of Boston is set up so that a white person (like me) never needs to come into con­tact with a person of color unless he or she makes a great effort to do so. So it’s entirely pos­si­ble that there are African Amer­i­cans in Boston who speak like Mark Wahlberg and I just never heard them. In any event, it did seem like a mis­guided acting choice to me.

Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to write in with your thought­ful com­ments, and best wishes – 

Stephanie Zacharek

I’m hum­bled that she responded so gen­er­ously, but now that I think about it, I’m feel­ing a bit like the PC Police. I didn’t want her to self-​censor her­self, but I thought that I should say something.