Interviews >> Matt

Matt Amar

(USA)

Matt and I shared an apartment in West Hollywood, as house mates, for a couple of months. For those of you who are not exactly familiar with the area, West Hollywood is one of the richest districts in the Los Angeles County. It borders Beverly Hills – both geographically and in earning power. It is also the gay capital of LA and can give the less open minded immigrant (or local for that matter) quite a shock. There are banners everywhere depicting embracing men in various stages of nakedness and you’d be hard pressed not to find the rainbow flag (the symbol of gay people everywhere) every twenty feet, hanging from a window.

Matt and I ended up in the same place: me, sharing an apartment in “The City” so I can get to know “It” and make new friends. Matt is auditioning and tending to a career in acting. We didn’t have conversations about my many pairs of shoes, as most decent roommates would, but I provoked him to another type of discussion, that is as close to my heart. What follows is an almost verbatim transcript of it. I won’t add to what ended up being a two hours discussion, with the exception of this: I haven’t edited out any of the harsher expressions that we used. I didn’t make it “nice”. I wrote it like it is, like we talked about it, and like we think. I hope you enjoy it.

Cristina: First things first. Let’s get some idea about you. How did you grow up? Where were you born, what family are you coming from? In short, what kind of a mutt are you?

Matt: I grew up in a town called El Centro, California, in the South-West desert, twelve miles to the Mexican border. It’s an agricultural area 120 miles East of San Diego, in the middle of Yuma, Arizona and San Diego. It was founded in the early 1900’s by a group of farmers who saw that there was a potential to grow food there, in the desert, and the way that they did this was that they irrigated these huge canals that brought water from the Colorado river into Imperial County. It’s a really dynamic community because half of them are the haves and the other half are the have-not’s.

C: Is it that harsh?

M: Oh, yeah. It has the highest unemployment rate in the state of California. Every crime is the highest per capita in Imperial County. But that doesn’t really say much because… I never remember it being a bad place. It was small town USA. It was very dynamic because you had whites and you had Mexicans. A lot of the people born in the US were of Mexican heritage.

C: Most of them were farm workers?

M: Migrant workers or they worked in the farms. Surprisingly enough, my family never had to do labor. My grandfather was a pharmacist. He was born in 1895 and died in 1978. He was Mexican.

C: He was the first generation to come to the US?

M: No, he was born in the US. His father was a Mexican national who worked for the Mexican customs agency. He was sent to San Diego and from San Diego he was sent to Mexicali, which is the neighboring town, on the border. They lived on the US side of the border, in a town called Calexico. That’s why my grandfather was born in the US. Back then there were no fences. You kind of walked across. It wasn’t an issue, coming across the border. If you committed a crime you would be chased down. It was a very different world at the border at the time.

My grandfather became a pharmacist. He went to USC (University of Southern California) and was one of the first Mexicans to graduate with a degree in pharmacology. He was a pharmacist in this area early, early on. There were very few doctors all over, so a lot of the people in town came to see him as if he was a physician, but he was only a pharmacist.

C: Was he the kind of person with a strong sense of mission? What I mean is that with that degree he could have gone anywhere but he chose to live in that depressed area and help people.

M: I don’t really know why he chose that area. It was in the 1920’s that he went to school, he was also part of the US Navy and he served in World War I in the Pacific. He lied about his age to get into World War II so he was in the Pacific once again even though he was past the age. He was a really fascinating man. He had two sisters who never married and they lived in the first built home in Calexico – it was the first structured home. Back then they used to live in tents. This area is still nothing today. The town has 26,000 people. It’s growing but it’s still very small. And this is after almost 100 years of existence.

So the dynamics of the area are that if you come from a Mexican heritage you are from a working, blue collar family, semi-skilled. Maybe your parents worked as book-keepers for the county or worked as assistants at a school, but for the most part you saw a lot of socio-economic differences.

C: You went to school with the poor kids though? Or at the very least, you were very close to them?

M: Yeah, it had to be. Back there, at the time, we had one high school. So everyone was all wound together.

C: What was that like? Your family was now two generations in the States, educated people, and you were living surrounded for the most part by these poorer, less educated, less knowledgeable people, and probably a lot of them didn’t even speak English.

M: Yeah, that’s how it was. I didn’t learn Spanish until my freshman year of high school but I always heard it. My mom spoke English with us in the house but she’s fluent in Spanish, very well actually. From my formative years I remember a cleaning lady, a nanny actually, who was from Mexico but she would cross every day to come take care of us. We spoke broken Spanish to her. During my freshman year I broke out and flourished and was able to grab a hold of the language. We had kids whose parents had come on the other side of the law, they were heavy drinkers, they would come home and abuse their wives, maybe their kids.

My family wasn’t exactly well off. We were working class, middle class, and many times financially struggling. But I always remember having what I wanted, what I needed. We always had food on the table, clothes, entertainment, and a very solid middle class life. But the peculiar thing about where I grew up was that you had this constant identity crisis because if you were educated or you spoke well, or you mingled with the well-to-do people, then the kids who didn’t have or had less or didn’t speak English or they spoke English as a second language… we were always labeled as sell-outs, “gringos”.

C: So you were in a sense the outsiders, in that area, weren’t you? There were so many immigrants and so many behaved like you just described.

M: Well, yeah… there is something else you need to take into account. A lot is factored in on where you were born. So if you were of Mexican heritage but you were born in the US you were still considered a gringo. You weren’t a true Mexican. But here we were raised to understand the culture, the food, the music, the language, and the customs. But yet we were being called gringos.

C: Can you give me a specific example? What were they picking on you for? How were the two cultures different?

M: I remember trying to speak Spanish to a kid who didn’t speak English very well. I tried to extend that comfort level to him but I spoke broken Spanish and he laughed at me and called me a ‘pinchi gringo” which is the equivalent of saying a ‘damn white person’, a ‘damn white boy’ and I remember how insulted I was because here I was, extending the nicety, the kindness of trying to communicate rather than turning my back and pointing a finger and saying how dare you come into this country and not know English or try to learn it.

C: What did you do? How did you react?

M: I remember being embarrassed. Thankfully enough I have that type of personality that for me it was like falling off the bike and getting back on and riding rather than turning back. I think I always knew that I had a little more than them and I was a little more fortunate, and that I had to be kinder and gentler because when you look at it, for what it was, it was wrong. But when you look underneath, below the surface, it was still this person probably feeling insecure about where they were. I think we’re in an era where it’s not even about race anymore. It’s turning into being about economics. I think they just saw me not as the Mexican or the white, but someone who “had”. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I had nicer clothes, nicer shoes, there was probably a little envy and at that age… it must be horrible for a kid to realize that they have less than someone else and it is beyond their control.

C: Did you have any friends like that?

M: I think I was a different case because when I grew older, and in high school, I was always a bridge. I was always very cautious not to turn away or thumb my nose at people who were deemed less desirable, less popular. But I ran with the very popular crowd. I think I was very lucky, I always had the prettiest girlfriends, I was in sports (baseball) so I was with the jock crowd, and yet I was in classes with those people whom I knew had been born in Mexico and immigrated.

C: Do you think your position was a function of your personality or was any of it because of the status of your family in your community?

M: I think a lot of it had to do with my personality. I always saw my father and my mother - I’ve always been very respectful. They always treated people very respectfully; it’s something on my dad’s side. Today I have an uncle who lives in a million dollar condominium downtown San Diego and he’s always honorable and I always admire his respect for people. To give you an example, walking through his building he takes the time to talk to all the window washers and laborers, and he’s never taken himself too seriously or has thought himself better than anyone else and I think that’s something I saw in my family. They always treated everyone with dignity; they deserved it regardless of who they were.

C: You saw a lot of people crossing the border. How was that viewed? Not necessarily in your family, but in the larger community, by the well-off class, the better class.

M: I think there are a lot of people who would probably look down on them. They did. I would see a lot of my friends’ parents and the way that they would talk to the help, to the nannies or the cleaning ladies or the gardeners, and you could absolutely see the separation where that family or individual thought differently of them because of their place in society. I can’t relate to let’s say the working class of Latinos who work in a Taco Bell or in the back of any restaurant, because I didn’t come from that.

C: Did you have friends who came from that?

M: Yeah, sure, I worked in a grocery store in high school, waited tables, but it was never because I had to or because I had to provide for the family. My friends did the same, they took jobs like kids do in college, but I could never… I still don’t have any clue as to what their experiences were like, these other people. But it doesn’t mean that I have any disregard for them either.

C: Was there anything that bothered you about them? Over the years, did you have any other incidents like the one with the kid who turned an ugly word back for you trying to speak Spanish?

M: No. I think that has a lot to do with security. I’m sitting here in West Hollywood and I think I’ve been able to do so much in my life that I know that kid hasn’t done. And so I think that when we pick on immigrants or the poor I think we need to ask ourselves who we are as individuals and what’s missing from our life. We don’t feel fulfilled enough to pursue our own lives that we have to go off and target other people.

C: Well, people give the argument that the immigration wave of the 1990’s was the biggest ever in the history of the US and there are problems: where do you house these people? How do you feed them? They come here and they take jobs that the locals are not willing to take, and they lower the standards because they don’t do as good of a job…

M: Which I totally understand, where that argument is coming from. I acknowledge that the argument has been made, but I don’t think it’s valid at all. Because I think that if we really have a problem with people coming here to seek jobs and opportunities and they do it illegally, then what we need to do is we need to find the people who hire them and fine them heavily. I guarantee you that it will stop. But we don’t do that. That’s not our policy.

C: So you think that people who hire illegals should be punished?

M: Sure, why not? It’s not working any other way. They keep coming. They are still here.

C: And you think that would stop the wave of immigration?

M: I think it would reduce it enough to satisfy the status quo who is upset at the supposed raiding of America.

C: So what happens to the other side? To the immigrants? They make $3 an hour on the black market and that’s still more money than they could ever hope to make in their country.

M: I think the reason why they’re coming here is because they are being told by people already here of the opportunity.

C: You think those people paint the wrong picture?

M: I think the image that’s portrayed to them back home is that this is the land of opportunity. I think when you compare it to the standard of living that they have in other countries, that definitely is the case. But America is not getting robbed. We’re getting something from it. We’re getting the fruits of their labor and it stimulates our economy. We try to deny it and I think it’s a definite political agenda to scapegoat.

C: Why is that?

M: Because we are a racist society. We are an ethnocentric society. We don’t understand the culture or the language. We’re xenophobic. Our first idea is to kick them out, get rid of them, not embrace the culture, not to learn the way of the immigrant, but to exploit them and then have them removed when they don’t serve our purpose.

C: Funny you say that, because America is the warmest country in the world to immigrants. The famous ‘boiling pot’ in which everyone exists is very much there. We don’t have ethnic problems; we haven’t had a civil war in ages – if ever, at least not for ethnic differences. So to a certain extent immigrants are welcome, and I certainly felt welcomed in many ways.

M: Sure, but at what cost? With you there is a different dynamic because you are talking about people who are escaping oppression. We have a different outlook, depending on where you’re coming from. For instance, if you escaped the communist regime then we treat you differently. If you escaped war, we treat you differently. If it’s a war that we started (i.e. Vietnam) then our outlook is very different.

C: So you think the problem is with economic refugees? People who come here simply to make money?

M: Yes. And a lot of it is racism. Western Europeans can overstay their visas and I swear the I.N.S. (the Immigration and Naturalization Service that changed recently into the Office of Homeland Security) will give them a break. They are not treated as badly or harshly as someone who may be of an indigenous background, coming from South America or Central America or Mexico. If you are a white European you are desirable. We discuss immigration, we make movies about it. We show Ellis Island with the Irish and the Polish and the Italians, but these are the people that we embrace. They are desirable because they speak French. For some reason we have this racism that is embedded in us. We don’t understand our closest neighbor.

C: Do you think the US is screening people in the sense that we want the best of the best from everywhere?

M: Good point. I think we do. It’s the centuries old question -  why do we raid indigenous camps and slaughter Indians and kill them? But we’ve always been intrigued by the French or the Italians or the Germans and I think it’s a question we need to examine. Why don’t we see the beauty in indigenous cultures?

C: Why do you think that is?

M: I don’t really know. Maybe it’s because we have been programmed to think that if you have lighter skin, if you are Arian, you are deemed attractive; if you’re short, as in a squatty looking Indian Mexican, then you’re a piece of nothing and you’re here to wait on tables and to sweep kitchen floors. I think we practice a lot of social Darwinism.

C: Do you think a lot of it is conscious?

M: No. I think it’s just the way things have been. It always seems to be lighter skin being the more attractive. There is a word in Spanish: “Guerro” or “Guerra” which means if you have blue eyes and lighter skin in Mexico you are deemed more attractive. Same thing. The elitists, the bourgeois of Mexico do the same thing to their own people. If you are indigenous you are going to be the nanny. So it’s a really interesting thing. Maybe you just helped me answer some of my questions. Maybe it’s an age-old question of the human race, why do we think that white skin and blue eyes are more attractive?

C: Do you think immigrants are better off by coming here? You were close to them.

M: They possess such a strong character. Go anywhere in LA and smile at a man with checkered pants and a white t-shirt mopping any floor and see what happens. They are the first people to give you back this huge smile. Their spirit is just so strong and yet you see so many people who are deemed the “attractive”, the well-to-doers, and they are miserable. Driving around Sunset Boulevard in their BMW’s, cutting you off and honking at you. So in that sense they have a lot to offer but we’re just not open to it. We’re not open to understand the culture or to know where they’re coming from.

C: What do you think they have to offer that the general culture is not open to?

M: They have a vibrancy of how to treat people, how to interact with each other, how not to let the small things… these are the people who should be the meanest guys around here, because they are working all the time to make ends meet and ten of them are living in a one bedroom apartment in East LA, but why are they constantly smiling? And of course I’m generalizing, that’s not exactly all of them, but try that. Go out and talk to the valet guy, smile and pat him on the back and see what kind of response you get. I guarantee you that 90% it is positive. It’s a very warm culture.

Going back to are they better off here… going by American standards, by capitalist standards and values, probably not. The first generation will for the most part never get to that level of economic comfort to justify the move. But their kids do. It’s a constant struggle but I think you are seeing more and more assimilation.

C: What do you think stops them from getting assimilated?

M: One, it’s an issue of work. They see work and menial jobs, whether it’s a menial job or not but you need to be constantly working. So I think we need to reshape our thinking and to start to indoctrinate education.

C: Steer them towards going to school?

M: Steer them towards education whether that means going to school or entrepreneurship. I think that’s a big problem we have in this country and Latin people are doing it to Latin people. Constantly pushing you have to go to high school, you have to go to college, but this is America, so the greatest stories you hear around come not from Ivy League educated immigrants, but immigrants who are entrepreneurs.

C: Yes, but in order to be successful – it’s not that simple. You have to understand the world that you live in. And that’s part of being assimilated so why can’t they make that transition?

M: At least as far as Latin people are concerned I think part of it is because their focus is entirely on work. So they are not really learning how. I don’t care what anyone says, they are taking the jobs that Americans do not want. That we deem beneath us.

C: But see, to play devil’s advocate, nobody really keeps them there. If they wanted to go to school, they can go to school.

M: Sure. But that’s a question we need to ask: can they really? Is it that easy when you have three children and a wife and you’re both working for minimum wages? Can you really when you don’t have the resources or the knowledge?

C: Again, to play devil’s advocate, who asked them to have three children? To talk about white people, there are white people with a wife and three children who go to school and get BA degrees.

M: But so do Mexican people. They are doing it but we fail to see that. We don’t see the Mexicans like myself. I’m not considered Mexican anymore. I’ve been pushed through. We don’t see that so we keep concentrating on the poor because they are defenseless, because they don’t speak the language. Give them a chance. Their kids are doing it. Slowly. And again, it’s because we like to scapegoat. When things are bad, we like to turn around and blame someone, people who are at the bottom and that’s when I go back to social Darwinism.

C: The question was about the first generation and how they don’t always integrate and is it worth it for them. How do you help them? It seems almost like a wasted generation, whose only purpose is to lay the foundation for the second generation.

M: Then what happens is – if we went by that, then we’d never have immigration. That would end the question of what immigration is. You have to start from somewhere. But how about the immigrants who come here and buy gas stations and liquor stores? I don’t think it’s true that there are only first generation immigrants who come here and don’t establish a foundation for themselves.

C: Of course. But I’m not addressing those, because the successful ones are doing fine on their own. How do we help those people who don’t have a social network, who don’t make it, and who never grow roots?

M: But we have Americans who were born here and do the same thing. So it is a human trait after all? Do we view it as a problem? There are plenty of people that I went to school with who never really adjusted. They sort of wander around. Is that humanism or is that immigration?

C: You know my take on it. I am getting to believe, more and more, that it’s more important how you live not where you live.

M: I think we have a tendency to really – for the person who immigrates and assimilates and adjusts and gets the big picture in this country, it’s really easy for that person to turn around and ask “Why are you unable to do what I was able to do?” I think we have to just keep focusing on the realities, to see the full spectrum of what’s happening, and not just the microscopic, so we don’t succumb to generalizations and we blame them for their social class or for not understanding the language. How many Americans speak two or three languages?

C: I know, but you could argue that they don’t need to.

M: They do need to. They should. There should be a desire to, I think, a desire to reach out, just for knowledge, like reading a book.

C: But then now we go into the problem of human nature. Most people have a small circle, they are not interested in anything beyond it, and that’s their life.

M: This is a big misconception. People may read this interview and think this guy is anti-American and if he doesn’t like it, why doesn’t he get the hell out? It could be misinterpreted in this post 9/11 era. It’s not that you are anti-American, it’s because you do love your country and you want to see it get better.

C: So you think we should welcome everyone trying to come in?

No, not necessarily welcome everyone, but if we’re going let them come in, let’s not be blind, let’s not be deceiving ourselves saying they are invading our country. Let’s be honest and say we are receiving a lot of benefits by having these people here, and by hearing another language. It’s enriching our lives not depleting them. But if we’re going to be afraid of it we’re going to stay on this course to see it as a thread. We are afraid of embracing culture and it goes back to a xenophobic way we have about us. If immigrants come and they commit a crime, that’s bad. But what I’m saying is let’s focus on the human element, rather than their race or their immigration status.

C: But see, it takes a lot of resources to adjust to another culture and people may argue that it’s their responsibility to adjust because they came here.

M: You always hear of America as the melting pot. I don’t like that expression because you don’t melt, you have enclaves. You have little Russia, you have East LA, you have Beverly Hills.

C: Yes, but nobody’s arguing, nobody’s fighting like in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe, to give two recent examples, and people are able to live in peace.

M: But when you go back to the foundation of this country, “Give us your tired and your poor” I think at the inception of the United States we wanted people here, there was a lot of opportunity so we were calling for immigration because we needed it.

C: But now, 200 years later, it’s not the same.

M: I think we have a policy in this country that says when we need you, we’ll open the doors and when we’re done with you we want you out, and it’s very difficult for people, it’s like being in a bad relationship where there is this revolving door. We’re a pusher and a puller. We want to pull you in then push you out. I think we have to examine and be more introspective as to what it is that we need and what it is that we want. If we want these people, if we want their labor, if we want their unskilled labor, and we want them in here because we need them at a certain time in our history, we have to be willing to pay a price. We need to be more open, more embracing towards those people and we have to understand that they are not robots. We can’t expect them to come here and work and put them back on the shelf when work hours are over, expect them to start families of their own and have problems like the rest of Americans.

C: How about those enclaves, you have two or three generations of people living next door to each other or even in the same house, and they never learn the language, they speak broken English, and even after 50-60 years they are not assimilated and their children are not assimilated because they hang out with the same guys, they don’t speak Spanish well and they don’t speak English well either.

M: That does exist. There is a comedian, George Lopez, who makes fun of a grandmother who has been in the country for forty years and doesn’t speak a word of English. That person, or that group of people, they will never reap the rewards of what America is. But we can’t impose our value system on other people.

C: But if she gets sick she goes to the public hospital and we’re paying for her care.

M: Yes, but we do that for a lot of people. I think there is this undercurrent – and it’s politicized, especially with the South of the border, it’s been politicized to make Americans think and feel that once again these people are coming over here, they sit around and deplete all of our resources. But that woman, if she’s an old grandmother, she’s been here for, say, thirty years and the first ten or twenty years of those she was a nanny or a cleaning lady. She was your personal assistant. They are almost non existent, almost shadows. They do contribute but they do it in a very soft way. We don’t really count them or what they do.

C: Do you think there is a big black market?

M: If you walk past Doheney drive in LA, on the outside of Santa Monica boulevard and you see that little park, in Beverly Hills, take a look next time and you’ll see a lot of $2,000 strollers being pushed by women that to me look of Hispanic descent. That is a huge service that these women are providing. To leave a child to someone who will play such an important part in your life, so you can go off and work 13 hours a day in a law firm or a production company, that’s a huge task. And let me ask people if they know what the income of these women is, are they receiving health benefits, because if you took those children to a day care you are going to be paying a lot more than what these nannies get paid. What I’m saying is it’s almost like these people need to stand up and say we demand the respect and we demand the wages of every other working person in this country.

We use this term “success” in America and if you are a person of color or of another culture, success is the closeness or the proximity to being white.

C: So what’s the white definition of success?

M: Driving a BMW, living in the most desirable geographical area of town or the state, or being coastal.

C: So basically it’s about money and what it can buy you.

M: Yeah. So we’re trapped. I did it myself recently. I said the second and third generations get closer to success. And I know in your mind, in my mind, and in any listener’s mind, we are thinking college education, a top position in the corporation or the company, top income earner… so I think what’s happening with Latinos is that as we remove ourselves from what’s deemed unsuccessful, which means unskilled or semi-skilled labor. But for that top 2% of the Latinos who do make it, my question for them is how many return to where they came from to help pull people up? How many people who make it return to contribute, to teach English classes or volunteer time?

C: You think people forget where they came from?

M: Not necessarily where you came from because there are people who have never been unskilled laborers. But I think it’s about investing in people and we don’t do that enough in this country.

C: You think??

M: I think. It’s a very individualistic way and it’s a very “I don't care about you” mentality. I did it so now you do it too.

C: Sink or swim?

M: Sink or swim.

And it’s, I think, at core, very individualistic, very “I don’t have time for it”. I also think that once you assimilate, you also worry about the counter-effect of you trying to go back and help people who have less. You may offend the status-quo that you have now become a part of.

C: We talked about the “white American” dream. How about the Mexican dream? If you are in Mexico, what would life be like?

M: This is the dilemma. The Mexican government needs to clean its act up. I think that Mexico, to a point, still operates as a caste system, where the money class rules and the further you pull away from your indigenous roots, the better off you are in society. In social standings. So they are doing a disservice as well to this labor class. That’s another question but I can’t speak for that because I wasn’t born in Mexico. And this is a very touchy subject because I’m assuming a lot of people who might be reading the interview will think that I am anti-American, that I am defending “them”. “He doesn’t understand us”. There is always “us” and “them”. And I’m not sitting here saying that I support the Mexican government and its endeavors. I think there are many injustices being done to the working class of Mexico, and there are many ways of corruption, theft, and greed. But what I’m saying is what if these people were purple, if they came from Mars…how would we treat them then? I try to be as logical as I can and see it for what it is not for what my fear drives me to say. Or my misunderstanding. Or my reluctance to understand.

C: So what do you think is the big fear? That there isn’t enough for everyone to get around, that these people are strangers and they don’t “get us”? That they’re out to use us and not contribute?

M: I think the fear comes from not knowing what’s on the other side. If we don’t know, we’re afraid of it. We’re afraid of change. I think that is also a human characteristic, embedded in us. I think that we as Americans really do fear uncertainty. 

C: That is a very human trait, I can say that. Doesn’t belong to any one country.

M: Yeah, but I can only talk from my experience of living in this country. It comes down to the fear of not knowing when you hear another language what people are saying. It’s very disruptive. And I think a lot of what we do in this country … we have a machine that likes to turn that because to be imperialists, to be the police force of the world, we have to continue to tell ourselves that we are the greatest, that no one comes close to us, and that you need to come up to our level.

C: But other people argue – immigrants included, that I have talked to – that America is the best country in the world. Yes, it has flaws but it is the best country in the world in terms of opportunity and quality of life. Nowhere in the world are you safe to do anything you could possibly want to do, nowhere else in the world do you have the resources and the ease with which you can apply them.

M: If you have the mind…

C: But then you can argue that if you have the mind, the know-how, you can make it happen anywhere perhaps?

M: Yeah. Well, I think if you are at the top of the food chain, sure. What happens if you are someone with a disability, what happens if you are born into severe poverty, and you lack the education. Everyone, I think, no matter where you come from and where you go, everyone has the same goals. You go into the projects, into a crack infested neighborhood in New York City, and you ask any child “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and they’ll tell you the same thing that a child in white suburbia America will tell you: I want to be a doctor and a fireman.

C: Really?

M: Sure. I do think we all have the same goals, we just don’t have the means.

C: In my experience of talking to people I think that the biggest obstacle against fulfilling a life, a good life, is not on the outside, but inside people. And it’s that they don’t know the possibilities. They don’t even know that some things exist, that they are possible. And I think in the white culture the key to success is, beyond all the options and the connections and the money, the fact that from the moment they open their eyes to the world they hear “You can do anything you can possibly think of doing”. You don’t hear that in these other cultures. You hear “Well, you have to know your place, and you have to sit tight, don’t aspire to too much, learn how to be content with a small piece”. I certainly heard that in the culture I’m coming from, and it was even prized and valued, that you have to know your place in life. The flip side of the “I don't care what you say" mentality is “I don't care about you. I’m not going to listen to that. If I want to go to school and become a doctor, that’s what I’m going to do” and I think that’s fantastic. So I think that that’s the biggest obstacle for a lot of people, for kids who come from depressed areas: they don’t hear the possibilities. They don’t even know it is doable. Did you notice that?

M: I know I was very lucky because I had a very supportive family and supportive friends. About my acting… when I was younger I was always very afraid of what people might say, what they would think. Because where I came from, we had the exact attitude that you described. “What are you thinking about? Go get a real job. Stop this nonsense.” I had a friend – and here is the cultural divide – from Brazil, with whom I used to work in a major US corporation. When I said “I’m leaving the corporation, I’m moving to New York to pursue acting” at first he said “That’s great”. And then he saw that I was serious about it, he laughed, and then he said “Man, you need to stop messing around with this acting idea of yours. Your place is here at the company where everyone likes you. You’re going to do well here, I can see you one day being district manager.” So here’s the cultural divide. This guy had grown up in the streets of Brazil, he’d been shot at and mugged, and saw such disparity, so he thought being in the US and being given this opportunity to work for this corporation was just incredible. So that is what we as Americans fail to see as well: what would it be like if every morning you walked to the market and you heard bombs go off? Or people being shot in the street and mugged every day? And you constantly walk around with no sense of security and you are always made to feel that you have to watch your back. So we run around here with our soy lattes and our jogging outfits on Sunset Boulevard and complain about people who are here to work?

C: Do you think we have it too good?

M: No, and certainly not in the sense that it’s bad to have it so good. But we fail to see how lucky we are. And that can be taken from you any minute. Having your body or health, your mental faculties, that can be taken from you. You could be struck by a bus.

C: And then you’d end up in a hospital, probably being taken care of by a Mexican woman….

M: Or ten years down the road your insurance may cancel on you and you could depend on Medicare, state aid, that may be cut by someone who says “These people are lazy”. Or you may develop schizophrenia and need to be institutionalized, and the government cuts the services for these institutions so you could be put out in the street. It did happen. In the eighties. The human appetite for more and more and more can be a very scary characteristic.

C: But then we finally get to the age-old question: what is it all about? You get to a certain level where you are completely comfortable materially and you really don’t need to strive. So what do you do with yourself?

M: That’s when we implode. That’s when we start being self-destructive. That’s when we wreck our relationships, with our friends, our spouses, with each other, we cease to see what we have, what we are surrounded by. We do drugs and alcohol, we overeat. We attack people.

C: And you don’t see that happen in poorer cultures because they have to worry about what to put on the table for the kids to eat?

M: No, I just see that the value systems are very different. For instance in Europe the value system is very different.

C: How so?

M: Take France, where they have a socialist government. They take polls and they ask people what they feel about what the government gives to the people. They are all fine with it. “I think it’s fine if we can reduce homelessness by 50%”. “No, I don’t want my taxes cut”. Can you imagine hearing that in this country? If someone said “I will pay $100 a year. If every American could pay $100 a year we can reduce homelessness by 50%. And I’m not talking about putting them in luxury hotels. I’m talking about putting them in tent cities. Where doctors would come and volunteer their services to at least keep these people healthy and fed. Can you imagine that?

C: But then we have ultra conservatives who ask “You have an able body. Why don’t you work? Are you lazy?”

M: How come if a Hollywood celebrity has a drug or alcohol problem we applaud them when they check themselves into Betty Ford or some other drug rehab center?

C: The thing is that these people can pay their way in.

M: But we push for it. A professor out of San Diego State University, his last name is Buck, did some research. He teaches a course on wealth, status and power … I’ll never forget a study that he did. His research found that from the 1980’s 13 cents of every dollar that was taxed went to pay the national debt. Which was left from the Reagan years from our exorbitant spending on defense to end the Cold War. However 2.5 cents went for welfare. And yet we constantly heard how horrible welfare was and how much it cost us. We rationalize when we say “13 cents of a dollar was to defend ourselves”. It was mostly, as we know, a perceived fear that the Soviets would come and kill us. And I’m not saying that I’m for or against it, but what I’m saying is that we need to know, we need to find out what it is really costing us. Can we rationalize and accept 13 cents per tax dollar versus 2.5 cents per dollar? Why is it so easy for us to say that these people are taking, taking, taking and that it’s coming from our pockets? And that’s what I would challenge America to do: see. So then we come to a point where we have to ask ourselves who is promoting this. Who is telling you that immigrants and poor people suck the system dry?

C: Who do you think it is?

M: People who protect their interests and have the money to do that. Corporations. The defense industry. It’s a very small fraternity and they need to promote their wars. They need to go around the world picking fights, to sell weapons and drive their stock up.

Politicians need to promote to corporations, to the top 2%, that they can have profits, wealth, but they need to be responsible and balanced. I think government ought to impose an equilibrium, and not just runaway greed. It really clouds our vision and that can lead to a lot of destruction. It doesn’t improve the quality of life. It doesn’t create harmony. Rather, I think it creates a lot of confusion, a lot of disillusionment, and a lot of strife. So I think that the people who are running the show need to see how much responsibility is in their hands. And let’s face it, the people who run the globe are the people with the money. I think that they really have to understand the power that they have. It’s not the president, or the first lady, but rather the entrepreneurs. The Bill Gates. The CEO’s of Enron, Exxon…

C: Actually, I think Bill Gates is a bad example, because you know how much money he gives away: education, health.

M: Yeah, sure, what I’m saying is people like him. Bill Gates should be made an example. The ironic thing of what we do is that we create these conglomerates that at some point manipulate a lot of people, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, to make that a great company. And isn’t it ironic how then they turn around and give billions back? It’s the “white man’s burden”. The only thing that’s missing from the “good old days” is corporate greed. I don’t think Americans are missing anything from 40, 50 years ago. We like to say that back then it was easier.

C: Do you know what I miss from back then? And granted, I wasn't even alive back then but… people seemed to care more about human values. Look at what’s happening today on television – which is probably a quick and fairly accurate x-ray of our psyche as a nation – all the shows are about how to make a million bucks, for love or money, and you never see someone being so happy that someone agreed to marry them, or they have a new friend, as much as they are happy about winning a million dollars. They scream so hard you’d think they’re having a seizure. Even the movies they were coming up with. Look at “Grease”: it’s about friends, and falling in love.

M: I think now we are more honest. If you look at the 1950’s, and that squeaky clean image… if we start back in the 50’s, with Buddy Holly… the parents of children in the 50’s thought that rock-n-roll was horrible. Elvis Presley was considered obscene because of the way he moved his pelvis. Every generation has it.

C: But now we’re pushing the limits. Where do we go from here? We are devaluing human relationships.

M: We have to understand something though: the US is a very young country compared to the rest of the world. This is very new to everyone. Every civilization always starts with a puritanical foundation. Religion being paramount. As the civilization evolves people get away from religion and become more enlightened. People nowadays say look at the sex in America. It’s all sexual. Well, the US is really a teenager when you look at its evolution. We’re oversexed just like an adolescent. When you were a kid you thought about sex but didn’t talk about it with your parents. Look at France: the ads are much more sexually provocative but they are not going crazy about it. Sex is part of human nature. But they’ve already explored that and they moved on. They don’t have religious zealots pounding down doors, saying that we’re tearing at the fabric of our mores, of our society by showing this. Janet Jackson gets her shirt torn off and shows a little breast, and the whole country flips out. We didn’t know how to handle it. So I think that what’s happening to this country is good in that respect. It’s part of the growing process. Take homosexuality for instance. When I was going to graduate school, it wasn’t even discussed. It was something that was very taboo. At least in my school. And in only ten years, you turn the TV on and they are showing gay and lesbian relationships in high schools. In the MTV world you’re seeing high schools where gay kids can go to the prom together, and it’s now open for debate, for discussion. Our society is just ignorant in pretending that homosexuality didn’t exist. It’s always been around. Why couldn’t people discuss it? We didn’t understand it, we were afraid to discuss it, and I think that as we discuss sexuality and gender and gender bending we become desensitized to it, and then it becomes simply just a part of life. And we move on.

C: To what?

M: More poignant issues.

C: Like what?

M: Whatever it is for that person. When a gay couple can sit next to you on the bus, and you don’t absolutely freak out, that’s progress – I think. That’s evolution. When an interracial couple, a black woman and a white man or vice versa, walk down the street and you don’t have a thought one way or the other and accept it as just life, that’s progress. That’s evolution.

C: You went to France earlier on. What was that like?

M: It just seems that there is so much less testosterone out there. People seem comfortable in their skin. People seemed to me to have a stronger sense of security with themselves. I didn’t get the sense of everybody trying to prove themselves. I’m not saying that that’s the absolute truth, it’s just what I got. We Americans have this John Wayne attitude about us. Do as I do or else you suffer the consequences of a label being slapped on you. After 9/11 – look at France’s reluctance to go along with the current administration and what we did. We looked for any name calling device that we could use. And we renamed the French fries “freedom fries” – how immature is that? “If it wasn’t for us in World War II you guys would be speaking German” and so on and so on. Americans are reluctant I think to understand or to come to some kind of communality, common ground and say “Oh, okay, I understand your culture. It’s different”. The French have this definite reputation for being arrogant. I didn’t think they were arrogant. It’s just their DNA. It’s them being different. And instead of embracing it and saying that they are a little more demanding in what they expect, in what they view as important is different, and to us, we cram up Big Macs in the car, whereas in Europe they may say that’s horrible. A horrible way to live your life. We need to sit down over two hours and have a good meal and a discussion, and talk. So it’s just about respecting each other’s differences. To go back to your question as to what was my experience in France – it was a lot more polite. Of course I’m not old enough, but I saw France as what I imagined the United States was during World War II. It seemed that people were a lot slower, willing to slow down. Life here is very fast. Back there they take time out for whatever it is. Here if you sit out at a café at noon you are either lazy or over privileged. What are you doing, you are not working? What could you be possibly doing at noon, you should be at work! Or if you are at a café, sitting out at Starbucks, it must be because it’s your day off. You must be working retail. And I don’t know if you noticed that but I sure have. It’s almost like you’re stigmatized. People ask each other all the time “What do you do?” it’s one of the first questions people ask. And let’s say the answer is “I’m a senior analyst to the vice-president of marketing” which translates to personal assistant. I hate that question: “What do you do?”

C: That’s so right. The first question is what is your name, and the second is what do you do. Everywhere you go. Your identity is your job. It’s not your family, not your hobby, not your passions, but what you do. Which many times translates into how much money you make.

That’s right. Where you stand in society. And I think what we don’t realize is – I think in Europe the difference is that the thing is not what you do, but who you are as a person. I think they are much more interesting and they are much more layered. If you meet somebody who does masonry, they don’t view it as a blue collar, semiskilled work, they take pride in every blob of concrete that they lay; every tile that I lay, every ceramic tile I cut, I take pride in it because I am contributing. Maybe I’m being a little absurd, like a friend of mine likes to say, I’m being a geo-bigot. As in geography bigot, because sometimes I’ll compare the East cost of the US to the West coast and I hold the East coast in higher regard.

C: Why is that?

M: I think there’s too much sun in the West. When I was talking about being insular or about being implosive… I think a little bit of struggle and a little bit of difficulty are good for us. When I was in New York I really respected the people there because they have to endure so much more due to the elements. Picture someone out here who is doing manual labor who goes to work on the bus but lives in constant 70 degrees weather. Now picture somebody who is doing manual labor but lives in New York, has to worry about slipping on ice, has a hard time breathing because it is either very cold or very hot, or having to walk up and down stairs. The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t apply to New York. There are no ramps there. It’s an old city. You can’t really do anything about it.

There are many things one can do in America – including having an unrestricted, all out conversation about every possible subject, without fear of recrimination or ostracism. Thank you, Matt, for a great conversation.

Matt Amar was born on August 16^th, 1975. He graduated from San Diego State University with degrees in sociology and political science. He studied acting at the Actors’ Studio Drama School in New York City. He has acted on stage, in film and TV. He is currently in pre-production for two theatre projects in Los Angeles and San Diego. He recently located to West Hollywood and lives with his Rottweiler, Leo.

For any comments about this interview please write the editor@sentimentalrefugee.com .

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