Sunday, January 10, 2010

Two Americas

We'd like to think that we are in a postracial, nonpartisan, socio-economically indifferent society. But no matter how hard the politicians may try to convince us this, we are still a country with very different economic outlooks and social status.

The New York Times published a heat map put out by Netflix on the rental pattern of movies across different zip codes. The two pictures here are for the Los Angeles region. The one on the top is for the frequency of rentals of "The Reader," that high-brow Holocaust movie about a German woman who has an affair with a teenage boy (it was legal back then). The picture on the bottom is the rental pattern for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." The title pretty much says it all. You tell me if we have two Americas or not.

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