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Page 12-Sunday, November 19, 1978-The Michigan Daily
arabs
(Continued from Page 11)
he sells: "That's my new cash register.
There's my new sign," he points out,
strutting pompously past a young,
blonde delivery boy. Hazimi pats him
on the head, "That's my potato chip
man."
The City of Dearborn has been one of
the community's major problems
throughout the past 25 years. In 1953 the
city thought it had found a way to
eliminate problems such as inadequate
housing-tear the community down and
replace it with an industrial park.
Throughout the 60s and early 70s the.
city bought and promptly demolished
200 homes in the area. But in 1973
community activists won a
neighborhood class action suit which
prohibited the city from buying
property without going through
regulatory procedures, including the
condemnation process. Today, signs of
the city's urban renewal plans are
evident, as a lone house here or there
stands in an open field.
Despite the loss of housing, the area's
school population has remained the
same, which indicates the
overcrowding new residents must face.
Since 1973 the city has taken a new
direction in solving the problems of the
South End. There are three community
centers in the area, including the
federally-funded ACCESS center. St.
Bernadette's community center is
housed in rooms which the city leases
from the neighborhood's Catholic
Church. On Saturdays the children
come to play pool on the antique tables
supported by ornate metal legs. They
also play ping-pong and listen to rock
and roll. Across the street is a
gymnasium.
Saleh Hazimi, who is employed by the
city, says the area residents "love" the
community center. "It's free,
everybody like it."
But University professor Jon
Swanson. an eight-year Salina St.
resident, calls Hazimia an "Uncle
Ahmed," a colloquialism meaning an
Arab who has sold out to the American
establishment. Swanson says the city
has assumed a paternalistic attitude
toward residents of the South End.
"The planners tend to be myopic in
their view of the homes and the
neighborhood," says Swanson, who is a
member of the Southeast Dearborn
Community Council (SEDCC). He
complains the city does not seek
community input in developing
programs for the area.
Last summer, the city wanted to
construct a soccer field in the South
End, but was forced to drop the plans
when opposition arose among the
residents.
"They wanted to build' an olympic
stadium-parking for 200 cars!" says
Helen Atwell, a second-generation
Moslem who has lived in the area 40
years.
"We had a meeting and the kids
couldn't understand why we didn't want
it. They started chanting, 'We want
soccer, we want soccer.' The city made
us seem like the bad guys," says
Atwell.,
"I told the kids they would put a big
fence around it and they wouldn't be
able to play there when they wanted to.
Then they said, 'Oh, lady, we didn't
know.' "
Atwell says a field with two goals
would have been enough. Now there is
no soccer field at all.
The baffled city recreation director
Ken Hanson withdrew the plan. Later
over the city and was re-elected again
and again because of his subtle, but
implicit promise to keep blacks from
moving into Dearborn.
Atwell complains, "The only thing
they (Dearborn residents) want is to
keep blacks out, have their garbage
picked up, and the streets kept safe. Not
all of them, but a good deal of them."
The interaction between members of
the South End community and other
Dearborn' residents is nearly non-
existent. City officials, too, see little of
the community except census figures.
"Arabs are gregarious, they like to
meet on the street and visit each other.
The rest of the city doesn't understand
this kind of family organization. It
leads to misunderstandings and
prejudice," says Swanson.
The Dearborn Press and Guide once
printed an excerpt from a letter written
by a Dearborn woman which said the
Arabs are "terrible people who drag
their kitchen chairs out and sit on the
main sidewalk."
Last November, however, Hubbard
left office and a new mayor, along with
several new city council members,
have taken control of the city. Swanson
and Atwell agree that the new
administration has been more
responsive to the needs of South End
residents. There is talk of new housing
projects and the city has been granting
more and more low-interest loans to
area residents for home rehabilitation.
To walk down Dix and smell the spicy
film]
(Continued from Page 3)
heroine's state of mind. Compared to
Scenes From a Marriage, in which Liv
Ullman makes us feel the hopeless
misery of abandonment, the Mazursky
film stands completely outside of its
characters.
Most of what is being produced
nowadays has taken on the cumulative
effect of artistic novocaine. Movies
such as Foul Play, Comes a Horseman,
and F.I.S.T. are worse than tedious;
they are so overdone, shot with a flashy
technical expertise so out of proportion
with their stories or characters, that
one feels the directors are depending
entirely on their technique.
Even the classic films of decades ago
(The Maltese Falcon, or Philadelphia
Story), not to mention the potboilers,
look stagebound next to something like
Foul Play. That movie comes laden
with so much excess baggage that it
collapses under the weight of its fan-
cily-edited car chases and extravagant
telephoto shots.
When I saw ads for Capricorn One,
the story - that a Mars landing is faked
by NASA - seemed to offer decent
potential for satire and social com-
ment. Writer-director Peter Hyams,
however, obviously didn't feel the need
to bother with any of that, when he
could pad the movieout-with some car
chases and helicopter fights (the
James Bond movies, admittedly, have
always been designed around their set
pieces - but who wants to see nothing
but Bond flicks?).- Coma featured a
similar lack of will. Director Michael
Crichton concocted an unexciting grid-
sheet thriller, but the picture was so
smoothly edited and photographed that
the realistic atmosphere was supposed
to transform the derivative story.
Technology, of course, does not
automatically doom a film to wallowing
in a swamp of superficially glossy
production values. 2001: A Space
Odyssey is an obvious example of a film
that integrated its grandiose technical
achievements into a larger emotional
and intellectual context. But not every.
filmmaker has the creativity and per-
severence of Stanley Kubrick, and even
talented directors may stumble into the
pitfalls of vacuous technique. Martin
Scdsese's Mean Streets ignites with
unparalleled energy and flamboyance,
but Taxi Driver has more cinematic
shenanigans than it can afford. Travis'
furious rampage at the end is certainly
climactic, but it's an empty catharsis,
because the thematic resolution -is
hollow. Scorsese and screenwriter Paul
Schraeder were relying on the almighty
bloodpack to carry a "statement"
neither one of them had genuinely
thought out. People argued about the
moral implications of the violence in
Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, but can
all that slow-motion, blood-spurting
death be justified even aesthetically?
Brian De Palma fell into a similarly
empty use of violence in his overblown
The Fury. In Carrie, one of the most
unique and brilliant films of the 70s, De
Palma used every bit of cinematic daz-
zle he could muster to create a
glamorous, dream-like vision of
American high school society. The
enactment of the satanically vile
scheme against Carrie at the prom
echoed the rest of the film, and the
themes of sexuality and evil merged
with a revelatory and concretely
powerful effect. In The Fury, De
Palma's Grand Guignol deaths were
supported by a thematic famine, and
the picture stagnated. The pseudo-Arab
invasion, slow-motion death sequence,
and exploding villain were too much -
the film was more effective the less it
indulged in grand theatrics.
When Steven Spielberg came out with
Jaws, the film's critical reception
proved a harbinger of the movies to
come. Although film students and other
aspiring highbrows relish the
dichotomy between art and entertain-
ment, Spielberg's technical virtuosity
was so overwhelming that, Jaws
became a respectable example of
cinematic art. The characters weren't
much, funny variations on types,
really, but the camera angles and
pacing were called "Hitchcockian,"
and even those cynical about the undue
influence of moneymen in American
movies could throw in words of praise
for Spielberg.
This would be fine, if every director
was as talented. But where Spielberg
has the vision to make beauty out of
technology (surely, Close Encounters is
the ultimate example of that), most of
the new directors - Jeremy Paul
Kagan (The Big Fix), Randall Kleiser
(Grease), Alan Parker (Midnight Ex-
press) - rely on their styles as a crut-
ch.
A friend told me recently that
although he didn't like Exorcist II: The
Heretic, the picture "looked great".
True, I thought, the cinematography
was impressive, but only in the sense
that Muzak is well-orchestrated. Both
are still pretty unpalatable. Unless the
trend changes, science is going to drug
movies into submission.
'To walk down Dix and smell the spicy
Arabic foods
and to hear the chants
from
outside
the mosque,
you
would
think the community has remained en-
trenched in
the old ways of Lebanon,
Syria, or Yemen. Yet,
in many ways the
Arabs have been initiated more quickly
than most into the American way.
he remarked, 'We were all ready to
start building and thought we had the
support of the community. At this point
we're just trying to find out what they
do want."
Swanson says tahe city should
channel funds toward housing or
medical facilities instead of community
centers and soccer fields. But more
importantly, he stresses that the city
should ask the area residents what they
want.
Even though Arabic immigrants
make up 13 per cent of Dearborn's
110,000 population, the rest of the city is
solidly white and middle-class. For 30
years Mayor Orville Hubbard reigned
Arabic foods and to hear the chants
from outside the mosque, you would
think the community has remained
entrenched in the old ways of Lebanon,
Syria, or'Yemen. Yet, in many ways
the Arabs have been initiated more
quickly than most into the American
way of immigration forms, social
security checks, and HUD grants.
And although she blames the
bureaucracy of the city for much of
what is wrong in the South End, Atwell
is convinced the community will retain
its identity.
"The community will go on. It'll be a
hell of a lot slower, but we'll build it
back up
sunda C-diazine
Co-editors
inside:t
Elizabeth Slowik
Sue Warner
Books Editor
Brian Blanchard
Cover Photo by Andy Freeberg
Ann Arbor's
small town
neighbors
Books:
Elementary
Sherlock Holmes
Film:
Artistic
Technoc
Supplement to The Michigan Daily
Ann Arbor, Michigan-Sunday, November 19, 1978