This isn't the main subject of this post, but awhile ago I watched a documentary on Netflix that I thought was really good and I don't think I've mentioned it here before. Although maybe I did when I reviewed The Thin Blue Line. If I didn't, I'm going to mention it now. It's called The Seven Five and it's about a corrupt police officer in the NYPD and I thought it was absolutely fascinating.
Anyways, onto the main subject. This again has to do with the process of watching the things that Peter Sarsgaard has been in. This time, it was part of a documentary series done fairly recently, in 2016. The series is called America Divided and it's about issues facing the United States in this day and age. There are a series of different issues covered, each by a different actor/entertainment figure over the course of 5 episodes. Each episode contains parts about multiple issues, rather than one issue per episode. So I watched the episodes that Peter was in although they also had other people as well. Among the issues featured in the episodes I saw were: the struggle of undocumented immigrants, drug addiction in the midwest, inequality/racism in North Carolina. These are all topics that aren't completely new to me; they were things that I'm more or less aware of, so that made me feel kind of superior and informed/unignorant compared to your stereotypical American redneck.. to live where I do, I think it's quite nice, in a number of ways; I would kind of say that we don't see the issues presented in the documentary series as prevalently as in other places around the country. Not to say they're completely nonexistent, but I don't think they're as much of a problem here as they are in other places. Those are just my thoughts on the matter, and if you'd like to correct me, feel free. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but as far as I'm aware, that's my take on it.
The issue that Peter's segment of the documentary covered was... drug addiction (imagine that!) in the midwest. So that was particularly interesting because it involves two things that I'm particularly interested in: drug addicts and Peter Sarsgaard. I have strange interests, I know. The issues were of particular significance to the people who covered them, so in Peter's case it was that apparently he has a cousin (presumably not on his in-laws' side) who is a drug addict and he said that he had been an alcoholic in the past. So yeah, drug addicts and Peter Sarsgaard. In the documentary, he talked to some drug addicts/users who ere in jail (a side note: I saw a news the other day about how the newest version of the AP Stylebook, a manual for how journalists are supposed to write, now says that drug addicts should be referred to as "he was addicted, people with heroin addiction or he used drugs." [from a Slate article about this which is the one that I read and learned about it from] Since this is just my blog, I think I'll eschew those guidelines.), and some police officers in Ohio, among others. It was interesting, I suppose. When each new issue is introduced, they have shots of the person covering it doing some kind of activity. In Peter's case, this was running and I had a little laugh about his exercise attire: short running shorts (I'm telling you, they were short, especially for a man) and crew socks. For one of the other people, they had him canoeing as he talked about inequality in North Carolina, where he's from. I don't really see the relation between canoeing and inequality in North Carolina, but whatever. I'm not the one who made the documentary series.
The documentary series covers subject matters that I'd consider to be under the realm of sociology, at least in some ways, so that was interesting. I wouldn't mind becoming a sociologist in addition to a linguist. Again, it wasn't about things that are totally new subject matters to me, but it was still interesting and compelling and I thought it was well done. It seemed like it was kind of similar to the CNN series United Shades of America, which I've seen a little bit of. I think it would've been interesting if they had gone a little more in depth with this documentary, but it was perfectly decent as it is.
I wonder if there are any other particularly good documentaries out there about people who are addicted to drugs. (see what I did there?) Among other things, I think I might want to watch the movie All the President's Men, which is about Watergate and Nixon and journalism. I wonder how much I'd enjoy it and what kinds of similarities to the present day it might have.
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