You Will Own Nothing

I think that hookup culture is also linked to how so many outsource so much of their lives – why cook when I can pay someone else to do it? Why own a car when I can rent? Why buy a house when I can rent? All of those things tie you down. “Live simply,” they say, which actually means, “have other people own and maintain everything you use so you can just pay for the few times you want to use it and not be encumbered with it the rest of the time.” This makes them feel free and powerful. Because they can get what they want when they want it with money. But they don’t create. They don’t build. They only consume. But because they don’t have a garage full of stuff, they are better than those disgusting suburbanites.

This “You Will Own Nothing” observation has been running through my mind as fitting perfectly with the Riff character in the new West Side Story movie. The actor and script bring out well a character who imagines no future and so not even a present, and when he is dying isn’t particularly disappointed because what else was he going to do? The particular teen-ager from 1959 that the actor picked as his model died at 19, not from a knife, but from a deliberate drug overdose.

https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/society/bruce-davidson-brooklyn-gang/

https://www.indiewire.com/2021/12/west-side-story-mike-faist-riff-1234685450/