I Love New York

I have a love-hate relationship with New York City. On the one hand, I was born there, although my family quickly moved West by the time I was four, so my memories of NYC are contained to eating silly putty on a fire escape, sledding down what seemed to be a gigantic hill with my father right after Christmas (the mountain was actually a small hill at a nearby park), and learning to count to ten in Mandarin with my grandfather (regrettably, I retained none of those lessons). I hate New York because I find it to be a congested, dirty, loud, expensive space. But the truth is, I don't really hate it--I just find that the energy of this particular city is one that leaves me feeling slightly manic. I can blend in all-too-well as a rude New Yorker, not making eye contact, weaving through crowded sidewalks, and pushing my way with the best of them into and off of a subway.


[Look at the teeming masses; these people do not look like happy campers as they weave in and out of the city's traffic]

But I recently saw a film that made me fall in love with New York again. Or at least it made me miss New York, specifically, and all cities in general.


Definitely, Maybe falls into the category of romantic comedy, and if you look at this movie poster, you will note that your usual cast of Hollywood stars are in this one--and it's not a very diverse cast (except in terms of hair color--they did manage to find a blond, a brunette, and a red-head for this film).

But while the central cast is not too diverse, the way that New Yorkers are represented are. Now, I'm not putting a plug for this film--unless you are the kind of person who will watch most romantic comedies. I'm in that category (although I drew a line at P.S. I Love You)--it's my not-so-private vice, if you will. Anyway, what impressed me about this film was that it didn't have a typical *happy* ending, Ryan Reynolds character is both human and incredibly caring towards his 10-year old daughter (played by Abigail Breslin) but most of all, when I got to the scenes of him working on Clinton's NY campaign (the film is told in flashbacks and what brings young William (Reynolds character) to the big city are his idealistic dreams of electing Bill Clinton into office in 1992--so he is in NYC working on the NY primary), and when they showed scenes of Clinton's campaign staffers, it looked to be 50/50 in terms of people of color and white people.

[Aside: Interestingly enough, this mirrors the current campaign staff of Hillary Clinton. You all know that I am an Obama supporter, but one of the things that made me feel I could vote for Hillary is that when they did a report over the summer of the racial demographics among the various staffs of the Republican and Democratic contenders, only Clinton had a white staffer minority--40%; the rest of her staff was comprised of people-of-color, including a fairly high percentage of American Indian staffers--something you DO NOT see a lot of in national campaigns]

Where was I?

Oh Yes. The cynic in me, of course, wants to note that these were background extras--meant to give a sense of the diversity of NYC and that none of the lead or even supporting cast (with the exception of Derek Luke) was a person of color.

But what made me miss New York was that the film actually DID try to present the real diversity of the city in terms of race. And it made me realize that I miss that--I miss seeing, in an everyday sort've way, a mix of different people. Unlike with other televsion series and films, like Sex in the City or Friends or films like Thirteen Going on Thirty (a terrible romantic comedy I caught on tv the other day), Definitely, Maybe really tried to give a real flavor to the city as it is--in its messy diversity. And I appreciated that they made an effort to cast a wide range of people and to show the racial diversity of NYC--because if you watch these other shows, they make it seem as if NYC is populated by beautiful and glamorous white people. And, again, I'm not holding up this particular film as a reality check to Hollywoods'image making of itself, but I've gotten so accustomed to seeing cities mis-represented that it made me smile to realize that someone thought about the casting decisions, in terms of race, for the background scenes and tried to populate the film with a cast of extras that you'd actually find in NYC.


But more than just the diversity of the background cast, watching this film made me realize that I really do miss the energy of living in NYC or maybe just any city (San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC). I miss the vibrancy of walking down a crowded sidewalk and the stimulation of sights and sounds and smells that the city brings. I miss the skyscrapers and the throng of traffic and the ability to take mass transportation nearly 24 hours a day. And, yes, I miss the diversity--the thrill of realizing that I get to blend into a crowd and that I'm no longer "the only one."