Lights, Cameras, Deception!

Living in Miami, I feel like I’m on the set of a movie. There’s some omnipotent director telling me how to act my role as a local. On screen guns blaze, dealers light up, and celebrities step onto their yachts docked behind their multi-million dollar homes on Star Island. Each shot lasts less than a second and we actors are constantly running, dying, and blowing things up. There are shots of beautiful women lying on South Beach in revealing bikinis, teenagers rolling ecstasy in grimy nightclubs, and neon lights illuminating the homeless man who flashes his toothless grin at men who walk by in tight shirts and skinny jeans.

We actors know that this movie is an inaccurate rendition of Miami but we’re putting on a show that’ll sell tickets: if we act well enough people may but into the spectacle and come to the theater.

People accuse the mobiles of creating a false image of Miami but we locals are the true criminals: we become what others think we are because we want to live vicariously through exciting false representations instead of our lives that are boring in comparison.