I received this letter from a person who works for one a North Texas city similar to the ones profiled in Subdivided. It reminds me all over again why I made the film, and how I felt in the beginning, especially.

I currently live in a North Texas suburb and I am employed by one of the cities of North Texas just outside of Dallas. We (both citizens of the area and especially the city employees) are repeatedly assured that this is one of the best areas of the U.S. to live and raise a family. This is supposed to be the “gold standard” of life in the U.S. and even the world….and yet I feel that something is horribly wrong. It’s all fresh, new, clean, and strangely……soulless, isolated, and impersonal. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of very decent people living here…most of them in fact. I also don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me. There is no doubt that the various city administrators mean well. That doesn’t change the fact that there is a lot about this area that seems to be…well… just “wrong.”

When I came to work here, kids were dropping like flies from heroin overdoses, parents were in complete denial/ignorance, and the construction of cookie-cutter homes and shopping centers was moving ahead with all the fury and intensity of the Manahattan Project. Today, construction continues, brick boxes erupt everywhere and there seems to be a pervasive “sameness” all around me…. I watch as families and children live isolated lives among the millions who reside here.

…. After several years of critical thought and cautious observation, I am more convinced than ever that there really is something terribly wrong with this way of life. Strangely though, even the mere mention of such thoughts in this area of the world will trigger some mighty passionate denials that there is anything wrong; sometimes the denials come from those in whom the pathology is most apparent.

We lived in this house for three years before I ever even spoke to my neighbor across the street. He actively avoided me all that time and I never made the effort to walk all the way across the street. I strongly suspect that the only reason I met my neighbors on either side of me is because they are older and retired and are thus more available and sociable. All of my friends and colleagues report similar behaviors in their own subdivided neighborhoods.

Making the film helped me with these feelings, helped to put them in perspective and to understand what creates and sustains these conditions. My hope is that the examples given will inspire people to work a bit harder at their communities, and to pressure civic leaders to do do their homework and do what’s good for democracy and people, not just cars and buildings.

James Lee has penned a column in response to the KERA broadcast and notes the importance of churches and schools, and the fact that these topics were left out of the film. It’s a valid point, and not one that escaped my attention. The issue of churches and religion was left out of the film on purpose, along with a few other big topics like the role of media. I’m working on a post that talks about these matters. The bottom line on my view of the role of churches is that they can be connectors but, importantly, they can can also be dividers - it depends on the church and how politicized they are.

I especially appreciated this line:

I’ve traveled the world, and it has been my experience that, whether in neighborhoods or foreign countries, people generally get back what they radiate.

Absolutely. If everyone around you is cold, its very hard to be warm, and vice versa.

In terms of the portrayal of Plano Texas (a suburb of Dallas referred to in Subdivided), I’ve been pretty supportive of folks there when they were fighting the Wal-Mart a few years back, including in print. I had a sequence in the film about it but took it out because it had become stale, and there are other films critical of Wal-Mart out already. Plano is used as a symbol in the film, though some people will take it for a wholesale bashing. For many people in city neighborhoods, Plano represents the kind of suburbia they do not want anything to do with, and in fact a number of them left there because of the poor state of some of the neighborhoods. They are not all like this, of course.

I also wanted to portray some of the class issues in a subtle way: many of the working class Little Forest Hills residents have an outright dislike for the upper middle class and the “soulless suburbs.” I do not think its entirely defensible or rational, but it was pretty much universal, hence its prominence in the film. It also goes the other way. Looking at the Frisco-online forums you see the opposite perspective: people who react strongly to criticism of their lifestyle of big homes and SUV’s and have little sympathy or interest in the concerns of the bohemian urban dweller. Everybody has blind spots.

So Plano ends up being chosen as a symbol because, well, it was there right in front of me (and I had a lot of photos). But also because I was (a) emotionally offended in that the community spirit where I was living was nil, (b) visually assaulted by the design, and (c) politically offended because a lack of community is bad for democracy. J. S. Mill, I’m paraphrasing here, said that without participation in public life, there is no collective interest and people are not participants in a democracy, they are competitors. John Dewey, one of my preferred philosophers, said “liberty and equality isolated from communal life are abstractions… Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.”

So there’s a two fold response here. One is that the portrayal of Plano in Subdivided is a representation of class perspectives, and ones I do not necessarily share, and two that it is a critique of design, and a message to those developing communities to not make the same mistakes, and to consider other ideas about how to design their communities. The idea is to end up with neighborhoods rather than just subdivisions.

I live very near Plano now and spend a good deal of time there. My son goes to school in Plano. My critique via Subdivided is a way of participating in the civic life, to help generate discussion and debate, and to hopefully help a few people see some things slightly differently.

Feedback on the KERA screening - what are your thoughts?

Had some interesting comments and questions during the radio interview on 90.1 KERA today (which I’ll upload later), and I’ve received quite a few email comments. Please feel free to leave your thoughts and stories in the comments section below.

If you would like to get a DVD when they are released soon send me an email at [list at subdivided.net]. And check back here soon for extended interviews, video extras, and outtakes. I shot some 60 hours of video and there are lots of interesting bits that did not make it into the film.

Finally, if you would like to keep up with my future film, internet, and writing projects send me a note at [dean at deanterry.com] and I’ll put you on a mailing list, or just check deanterry.com from time to time.

I’ll respond to some of the many emails I’ve received shortly. Meanwhile here’s a response to comments I’ve heard regarding the nature of documentary film itself.