There are very few films which actually deal with tenement predicaments as a central motif, and Polanski only succeeded at it, in his attempts, by making his movies into a horror trilogy. When I am well enough, if the dowager has any true resurgence left, nursing a head cold in these leonine winds, a head cold apparently days in the making, I'll buy The Tenant, if necessary, and then bread my meats in a shake-n-bake. I saw the film many times, and know that, as the last in his series, it was about a man desperately attempting to warn himself about losing who he thought he was, after skirting the edges of where he shouldn't have ventured, but I can't remember the entire narrative, just the nail polish scene, the body cast (and don't we know a thing or two about skin yellowing after a year in plaster paris) and Shelley Winters behaving like a fatalistic concierge, which leads us to the issue of gentrification and a basic liberal anger.
Sure, I have the rage of many a disabled activist; I wrote as much in earlier posts, but an overweening level of classification is as evil as too much austerity on the other end of the spectrum, which is why Congress needs to revisit public housing. Like many other Americans, once I was screwed over by former supervisors and a paradigm into which I was indoctrinated with contradictory platitudes, I faced the same problems as the rest of you who lose jobs: harassment by debt collectors, particularly after default, the breakdown of my medical equipment, and months, literally months, of what felt like hostile captivity. Between 99 and 08 my life was almost a living hell, excepting my wedding plans, and now, eight years later, how in god's name am I supposed to find the strength of will to remain competitive, returning to substantial gainful activity? I can't ignore it. Federal law is punitive, regardless of my age and symptoms, and Treasury will, eventually, garnish what little I subsist on. This is why my fury is enough to dissuade Councilmen, even those designated as "special needs," because we do end up feeling like Catherine in Repulsion, protecting our body from scavengers of our innocence, or Mia and Roman overwhelmed by an entrapment conspiracy. We may not have the solution to the problem of stacking ourselves up on top of one another, a plate of pancakes, but it is a living hell when we're shackled to confinement against our will. It did not cost Presbyterian Homes anything to allow me to change my mind, leaving the unit in Diamond Park, right off Temple University's campus, for Riverside's internecine back bite, but it cost me; a career, an extension of a hostile environment, my confidence, self esteem. Any public housing lawyer would say how lucky that is. Yep.
