Minnesota’s Night to Shine!

So it has come to this. Now, I’m not one of those locals who wants to see the local-boys-and-girls-made-good fail, but after a quarter century in these parts, I never cease to marvel over why a story’s connection to us is still the most important aspect of the story?

Why do we only hear about the elephant mauling in Thailand if an ex-Minnesotan was mauled? Why do so many of us see the attention we receive from out-of-town media or celebrities as validating our worth rather than noblesse oblige, which it more often is? Why are so may of us so indifferent to our region investing in dreaming big, competing with other cities, and making a national splash yet then so obsessed with it when it happens?

The Chicago Tribune did not lead Monday’s paper with “ex-Chicagoan Diablo Cody . . .” in a headline nor was the fact that Cody grew up in suburban Lamont mentioned until the thirteenth paragraph—though her connection with Chicago is no different than the Coens’ with Minnesota (grew up here, parents here, visit irregularly).

And what makes the matter more ironic is that neither Cody nor the Coens claims this place as their home. Minnesota is somewhere they left and ain’t coming back to. Fargo told you everything you know about how the Coens’ view Minnesota. It set the Twin Cities back about a generation in how the country perceives us: as a bunch of affable rubes driving Oldsmobiles in the snow.

Diablo Cody had a cup of coffee here. She did some notable work (the feather in our cap in all this, perhaps), got discovered, and split. She speaks of us affectionately.

Both the Coens and Cody are compelling stories. They stand out in Hollywood because they are nonconformists and have maintained an admirable artistic integrity. They have an interesting body of work (Cody not so much, obviously), and their Minnesota status is deserving of little more than a passing mention in the third paragraph because it is not at the heart of their success or interest.

Embedded in our fascination with the lives of our émigrés is our insularity, our provincialism, and sometimes our hubris—that sense that life and people are just better here, and now and then the world finds out. Just the sort of hothouse attitude in which creative people flourish.