Detropia: Detroit's Postindustrial Decline

Detropia

As I watched Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s new documentary, Detropia, last night on the small screen, I wished I’d seen its lush cinematography in the theater. Tony Hardmon and Craig Atkinson have created a film awash in arresting, apocalyptic images—eerie reminders of Detroit’s rise and fall as America’s premier manufacturing city.

These days, the city has come to symbolize the collapse of the American Dream, the country’s decline and how bad it could potentially get, as job loss has forced 1/4 of the city’s population to leave in the last decade. Some say that nearly 1/3 of the city’s land is now vacant, due to home foreclosures and resultant demolition. This represents an area the size of San Francisco. Detroit is a graphic illustration of what happens when corporate greed takes over, as Michael Moore forewarned 24 years ago in Roger and Me. And despite lots of ideas being floated, so far there’s no real workable plan for how to revitalize what once was a vital and fascinating city.

Unfortunately, as many reviewers have already noted, what could have been a great film is marred by too many fragmented plotlines that are never resolved. Some of the local characters are compelling, but the star is really the built environment, as lovingly shot as a Garbo close-up.

The canvas includes myriad abandoned buildings, graffiti, walls, crumbling facades, homes being demolished, and skylines that bear the scars of postindustrial decline. Here is the graphic evidence of exactly what does happen to cities and people’s lives when corporations send jobs to Mexico. Detropia cinematically illustrates the premise of Chris Hedges’ and Joe Sacco’s fascinating book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (see my review on 9/3/12). 

Medford Fruit Warehouse District

I shot this photo with my baby Nikon, along the Medford railroad tracks near the tagged trains and the Jesus billboard. 


This is the old fruit warehouse district. Skulking birds with chiseled black beaks huddle like thugs on telephone wires. Square-jawed dogs prowl and bark, but there's nothing here to guard except paint chips and leaning boards. The air feels damp and heavy. So silent, yet harboring a subtle menace--the abandoned buildings, the razor wire, a length of iron pipe...


Natural and synthetic worlds collude and collaborate. As decrepit as any manmade structure may be, life forms always dwell in and around it, sometimes completing entire cycles of birth and death within a single edifice. A site may have been run into the ground by humankind, but for animals it is a shelter like any other, and they lend regeneration through their very presence.