A More Serious Take on Homelessness

It’s kind of odd that I mentioned the homeless guys in Atlanta yesterday and then, without thinking about it, stuck in Dark Days to watch while the in-laws were watching TV news. Dark Days is an independent documentary by Marc Singer, a British expat living in New York, about the homeless squatters who had built a village in an Amtrak tunnel in New York complete with electrical hookups and houses.

That part is not so surprising. It’s a captivating idea for a film. This is something that the bulk of us, at least though of us with enough free cash for movie tickets and Netflix memberships, have had absolutely no experience with. Being homeless is unthinkable to me and it’s amazing to see what these guys managed solely through scavenging. This is an obvious topic for a good documentary. The bizarre thing is how this film came to be. The director had struck up friendships with some of the homeless people living on his street and one of them had mentioned his thinking about moving into the tunnel to get away from the harassment of kids and cops on the street. So what is the logical next step for Mr. Director? Let’s go hang out in a dark train tunnel with homeless people. He didn’t go into the tunnel to make the film. No, he went into the tunnel to hang out and help and one of the homeless people suggested the film. He wasn’t even a filmmaker to start with. He had to get the camera store guys to teach him how to use the camera.

Here’s the thing. I’m as liberal as the next guy, I support any effort to help those less fortunate because the less poverty and desperate people there are, the better off we all are. That still doesn’t mean I’m going to go hang out with homeless people especially in the dark next to train tracks. First off, I’m not the most comfortable interacting with people I have a lot in common with. If you’ve ever had a phone conversation with me lasting more than a minute, you probably understand that. Second, homeless people are homeless for a reason. They suffer mental illness, have major issues with drug addiction, or other issues, none of those things make them likely examples of good judgment. I’m obviously not poor and I’m in a confined space with people who are poorer than poor away from any law enforcement presence. I’m not saying that all homeless people are dangerous, thieves or crazed psychopaths. Not everyone in the projects is a gang banger or ex-con. I’m not going to be walking through the projects counting my paycheck in dollar bills either. It’s not the struggling but good people I’m worried about. I’m not even saying that poor people are evil. The seriously wealthy are often just as sinister, if not more so. In fact, I think there’s actually a sociopathic quality that drives many of the extremely wealthy. They’re just more socially acceptable, which is a tragedy for another post actually. The evil in the wealthy communities aren’t worrying where their next meal or hit are coming from though. They’ve got plenty of money for their fois gras and cocaine, they’ve got no need to take the effort and risk to mug me for mine. Those guys in the train tunnel do have those concerns, however.

I do have to say this guy has my respect, even if I don’t really call what he did as bravery. I think it was more naiveté, personally, but what he did was a truly good thing. The film helped to get many of these guys off the streets, cleaned up, and working to keep themselves off the street. They even worked as the film crew for the entire shoot. I do think the film glossed things over a bit. I don’t bye that so many of these people stayed cleaned up. I’ve got a feeling that many of them are back on the street putting pipes back to their lips, but it is nice to think that some of them might have been changed permanently for the better because of this. Even if it made no real long-term change, I think it’s good to be shown sometimes just how varied the human existence is. Singer does an incredible job of showing the humanity of these people and that they didn’t want this lives for themselves. A particularly poignant example of this is when they show Dee, in tears, recalling the deaths of her children in a fire while she was locked away in prison and how she misses the responsibilities of being a mother and sending them off to school to get the education they needed to make something of themselves. This is immediately followed by scenes of Dee lighting up her crack pipe to help ease the pain.

The film doesn’t hide the fact that these people are there because of their own mistakes, but it does bring out an important fact of life: You can pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but only if someone else shows you where they are and how to do it. There’s a reason ghetto kids tend to turn into ghetto parents and breed more ghetto kids while rich kids tend to turn into rich parents breeding rich kids (and recent research backs this up). I don’t think any discussion on poverty, crime, or governmental welfare systems should even be attempted until all parties take that fact into account.

Of course, this is a raw film. It’s not scripted; the homeless people talk the same way they always do. That means this isn’t for those with sensitive ears. That should mean that Chris and Meaghan should feel right at home with this film.