Is “The Experiment” Working?
Posted in Education PolicySocial Justice on Sep 01, 2011 - 10:55 AM
It was a classy affair with an attendance of perhaps fifty guests, and I was lucky enough to be granted an invitation to an exclusive screening of The Experiment at The New Orleans Museum of Art.I walked into the place – a tad bit under-dressed – and filled my hands with an Abita Amber and a flat mushroom-filled pastry, which turned out to be delicious. In the buffet line, I met a well-dressed young man (about 10 or 11) wearing a (fake?) diamond-encrusted cross on a silver chain and questioning me as to whether I’d purchased a ticket.
When I said no, he seemed disappointed, saying, “Man, so they just giving tickets away to anybody?!” I asked if he had paid for one and he told me, no, he was in the movie. This kid turned out to be Gerald Carter, the precocious crowd-pleaser of the film.
I was afraid I would have no one to chat with during the reception, but fortunately I ran into Damekia Morgan, one of New Orleans’ social justice advocates. We chatted about our upcoming mission to reopen New Orleans Free School as a 300-student Type II Charter democratic school. I quiver with anticipation!
The film began promptly after the audience made way into the screening room and into the padded, reclining chairs. In the opening scene, we were introduced to a crime scene and a near-hysterical woman demanding to know if the dead child was hers.
Ben Lemoine, producer/director of The Experiment, gave us a glimpse into his life as a reporter. He told us how his job was to take a complex story and “package” it for consumption; how he became desensitized to the corpses lyin