We watched the movie TOWELHEAD yesterday.
We were attracted to it because it was written and directed by Alan Ball. Alan Ball has written/directed such masterpieces such as SIX FEET UNDER, TRUE BLOOD, and AMERICAN BEAUTY…. to name a few.
What is more impressive is the fact that he is from Marietta, Georgia. I knew his older brother.
The movie TOWELHEAD is about a displaced half-Lebanese girl. I don’t know if “displaced” is the right word – she just didn’t seem to fit in, due to no fault of her own.
The Lebanese girl is thirteen and is just coming of age. She just started her period. It seems that males of all ages were checking her out, and some went beyond that. I think it all had to do with her problem of being accepted.
Because she had dark skin and looked like she was from the Far East, like her strong-headed father, she was treated as an outsider by her peers. They would knock books out of her hands, call her names, and so on.
People can be very intolerant and cruel to people different from themselves. That has always been the case, and I don’t see it changing.
Actually, the teenage girl was a naturalized citizen, born and bred in the U.S. of A. the same as the people who thought she was a muslin enemy. She was Catholic.
In the movie there was a bit I got a charge out of – it was flying the American Flag, in its full glory. Somehow, some people have got the notion that the more you wave the flag the more patriotic you are and thus your opinions count more…. In the subdivision they lived in was a little almost unspoken competition of who could put up the best looking flag.
It was a typical Alan Ball black humor observance of American behavior.
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