Danville, a small Virginia city on the state line with North Carolina, is a place I’m very familiar with as it is near where I grew up. And one thing I’ve noticed about it, returning from Alaska, Florida, and everywhere in between that I’ve lived since, is how it has been mighty slow to let go of that “Last Capital of the Confederacy” label.
The gigantic Confederate battle flags you’d see at the first stoplight entering town are mostly gone, their “defiant” but angry and often openly racist small business owners dying off, although some normal sized stars and bars are still displayed, next to the Trump ones.
I think about that as my girlfriend and I are only white folks who chose to catch the afternoon showing of the best of the Christmas Day releases, “The Color Purple” musical. The Danville GCC Cinema is packed.
“The Color Purple” had the biggest Christmas Day opening in almost 15 years — a whopping $18 million and change. EVERYbody, or a good sized sample of “everybody,” is going to see it, and everybody should.
We ducked into “Ferrari” beforehand, and it’s no better than “The Boys in the Boat.” There’s a good turnout for “Aquaman 2,” which is crap, with the smart families taking the kids to other holiday month openings “Wonka” or “Migration.”
As I say, this “Purple” matinee the day after Christmas in Danville, Va. is packed. It’s appealing to a wide age range, nationwide. I saw great grandmothers and great grandkids in the showing I attended. “Packed,” but not with local white folks.
You move away for decades, and you figure the One Big Confederate Monument notion of a city has changed as old industries –textiles — close and more backward generations die off. Maybe their more enlightened children move away, to college and greener pastures..
It’s a lovely old city, with a river running through it. Eventually new folks move in with new ideas in tech, re-configuring ancient buildings as housing. Newcomers and struggling Danville native-born voted for a Caesar’s Casino, of all things, which is now open and bringing jobs and reopened motels, presumably accompanied by the gambling problems that always follow such detours into vice.
But I must say Danville, this is disappointingly narrow-minded movie-going. Maybe you want the sort of history Alice Walker was summarizing and referencing in her fiction, a much-honored best-selling novel, erased. It isn’t.
Broaden your horizons. And grow up.
All this does is explain your gullible desire to follow any rich con man in an adult diaper or slick hustler in a down vest who makes you afraid of people who don’t look, think or vote like you.
Movie Nation 
It’s not all white people. Some of us can’t afford to venture out to the movies these days. Especially if you’re on disability or social security. Rent & Utilities takes most of the monthly 💰 🤑 money. Then there is miscellaneous items needed that cost money. Then there’s usually Food/ Groceries to buy when snap benefits run out. Monthly car payment and insurance to pay. TV programming even with using a fire stick costs with some apps. Maybe some of these Businesses in Danville should run contests to win a pair of movie tickets so some people who can’t afford to pay to see a good movie can.🤔
Regular ticket prices here are cheap, by any standards. It’s still the cheapest “night out” available. Tickets are $6 for seniors, who by and large stop going to the movies in their late 30s. That’s a bargain anywhere.
And I might add, any smart TV has Roku, Tubi and Pluto — for starters — free.
A friend in Danville was remarking how she’d gone to the original “Color Purple” here back in 1985, and seen exactly the same thing. An all Black audience.
In much of the rural South, this is a cultural phenomenon and ingrained. Younger people with the potential to evolve, move away. Old people set in their ways remain. And too few outsiders move in as the place looks backwards and “Confederate monument” reactionary. It holds communities back, generation by generation.