Shame of a Nation

(Spoiler Alert to "The Departed")

“Colin has a bag of expensive groceries and wine. Living the Beacon Hill dream. He climbs the steps slowly. He nods to a neighbor, an old lady coming down with her dog (who incidentally will never accept him as a neighbor, and Colin briefly seems aware of this). He gets to his door, and beginning to use his key, just starts to cry, and nearly crumples.”

Moments later, Colin was shot to death.

~ Last page of “The Departed” movie script

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Dear Alex,

I am angry for having watched “The Departed”. Never heard of it ‘til I read your last blog.

Never heard of Scorsese until I read your earlier posts.

Never heard of an Independence Day turning from celebration to massacre as today in a Chicago morning parade, an epidemic of mass shootings.

I have a problem with Scorsese’s films. They are not the typical genres I’d opt for in theater: torrents of gunshots and vulgarity, corpses in static camera shots, blood smeared as lip tints. At every turn sluts and slums overturn our views, creeping closer to our bathrooms, a throat slit up-close.

I need to know why he is the master filmmaker of American culture so last week, I searched for a list of his landmark movies and first streamed “Taxi Driver”. I could not sleep that night. Or the night after. His still shots of rampant deaths live in me.

If there may be a unifying Q&A from my journeying this past week through the two Scorsese’s classic films, none of which have a “proper end”, perhaps this may be a start:

If the “how” and “when” of our personal ends are directed by the “here and now” of our present living, why would we expect anything prim and proper for our grand finale?

The good looks more like the bad today, the innocent butchers, and our self-destructive, highly addictive, universally sorrowful tendencies lurk unhinged at large. No wonder we return to Marvel superhero movies for proper endings.

Truth be told, if we dare stomach the truth, our hearts will rage always, implode in mansion or Mount Everest - until we quit shooting at empty targets, plow the land that feeds us and knock on our neighbor’s door, worn and weathered as they may be, to listen for an end we could never dream of.

Happy Birthday, America. Thank God we’re granted today the privilege and liberty to work and write with thumbs and trousers in tact, flag at half-staff, eagles unrelenting.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

You chose the image above from "The Departed," with a big X, and I wonder if you know why - not why you chose it, but why the big X.

Scorsese was paying homage to another great American movie by possibly the greatest American director Howard Hawks.  The movie is called "Scarface," the 1932 original, which is also known as "Scarface: The Shame of a Nation."

The shame of a nation, today, a day to celebrate life together, lives broken apart.  Never again, your people said, tried to cross out the possibility of another tragedy.

X marks the scene of a crime.

Yours, Alex