Main Street: A New Fictional Movie about Durham
There is a new movie out about my hometown and it has Durham all wrong.
Main Street uses Durham as a setting for a story about a group of people trying to make it in a struggling town. Here are a few ways that the script sets up Durham:
- “This city,” says a voice over in the preview, “like many in America, has come to a rough moment in its history.”
- “When you look at Durham,” says the character played by the oddly British Colin Firth, “it is dying.”
My favorite is this gem:
“If you stay in this city….you are a loser.”
One of the characters challenges her friend to get out of the town.
Never mind that Forbes says that Raleigh-Durham is:
- Number two best city in America for young professionals
- Best city for business and careers
- Best job market
- Number three best place in America for starting a business
- Fifth most geeky city in America. This is a good thing in a knowledge economy. The rating is based on the share of workers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions.
- Number two best “boom town” in the next decade.
The drivers for these ratings have been in place for decades. Leaders broke ground on Research Triangle Park, located in Southern Durham, in 1959. Duke University and its near neighbors UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State have been around for some time, too.
Any movie that casts Colin Firth as a southern businessman and Orlando Bloom as a southern police officer is operating well into the realm of fiction.
