Yeah, I probably should have just said "pattern" instead of "trope."
With the Detroit thing, I was just talking with some colleagues about how Malcolm X went by "Detroit Red" when he was a gangster, because nobody had ever heard of Lansing, let alone Mason, MI. Part of the Detroit thing is convenience in conversations with people who don't know Michigan's geography. I probably told you about that party I attended in DC. A congressman's aide asked me where I was from. I said Lansing, Michigan. He said never heard of it. I said it's Michigan's capital city. He said well, that's super. An affiliated problem with the idea that nobody gets Detroit is that it's the Michigan city they know best.
Basically, the rest of the country considers us a fly-over zone.
Also, I think people may say they are from Detroit not just for the street cred, but because most suburbs of Detroit lack an urban center. There's a downtown Birmingham, but no downtown Troy, Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield, Wixom, Sterling Heights, Huntington Woods, etc. So you have a ghost town at the center of a sprawling population with basically no concept of downtown life. Ferndale has a main drag, but it's not quite a downtown. Hamtramck has a downtown, but most people wouldn't walk it. So do Royal Oak and Birmingham. Most metro Detroiters whose families go back a few generations know that Detroit was the anchor for the family when it first came to Michigan, so it's sort of every suburb's downtown, except, as you pointed out, it's weird compared to most downtowns.
I also agree that rewriting one's own personal history for street cred is lame, and probably the fastest way to jeopardize street cred.
Jack White grew up in Mexican Town, but it's not like that's where he gigged when he was a kid. Goober and the Peas was definitely a suburban band. I know he went to a Catholic elementary school, but he went to Cass Tech for high school. Eminem counts, too. But yeah, Kid Rock is Romulus. Still, what is downtown Romulus...the airport? So I get why he says Detroit. Of course, I'm from Birmingham, and I think on the scale of Detroitness, Romulus is more Detroit than Birmingham. Incidentally, I am also a poseur. I say I'm from Birmingham because when I was a kid, my mailing address was Birmingham. When I was maybe in middle school, it changed to Bloomfield Hills even though we didn't move. It's easier to relate to Birmingham than Bloomfield Hills because Bloomfield Hills doesn't have a downtown. But my deep, dark secret is that I'm really from Bloomfield Township. Also, I thought I could escape the lie in Traverse City, but really, I live in Garfield Township. Oh, the humanity!
Anyway, you and I aren't pretending we're from Detroit. We've created fictional characters who are from Detroit, and they flee Detroit, end up in Lansing, and at least Will still claims to be a Detroiter even though he actually could have done quite a bit to protect his corner of Detroit instead of cashing out and leaving. Also, his Dad is part of the reason why Detroit became such a difficult place to live, so he follows the pattern of a lot of the people I grew up with, who made all their family money in Detroit, led so many of the self-interested policies that crippled Detroit, then pulled all their money out of Detroit and put it into the suburbs, other states, or overseas. And then still had the gall to think of themselves as Detroiters, and to blame the fall of Detroit on people who didn't have the power to call the shots.
Really, Will Witkowski is heavily shaped by my vantage point growing up as someone who didn't fit in very well in Birmingham and resented a lot of the wealth and privilege that surrounded me. My dad was born in Detroit and grew up in Melvindale, and my mom is from a small town in Ohio. It doesn't make a ton of sense that we ended up in Birmingham. Really, I see it as a great blessing: my sister and I got to go to Country Day for 10% of the tuition thanks to my parents' working there, and we got the sort of education that is reserved for the ruling class. But really, we're not ruling class people; my parents were both teachers. You know how it is for teachers and their families: we had all the benefits of wealth, but none of the money.
Anyway, I was a strange fit for my hometown, and it's easier to evaluate it from afar if you're on the outside looking in. And I could never look at the wealthy suburbs of Detroit without looking at Detroit and examining correlations and causalities. I don't know...in a weird way, I feel like setting Will as a Detroiter isn't about my trying to pretend I'm from Detroit as much as it's expressing my teenage frustration with Birmingham, so in my own deranged way, I'm representing Birmingham.
Although, again, I'm from Bloomfield Township, and maybe it's not representing if you are ripping on it. And Will doesn't flee to Birmingham, he flees to Lansing, which is my way of representing Lansing. But it's probably not representing if my vision of Lansing is a place where a 70's legend and his brother could drop off the map, although I do think that's an accurate representation of Lansing.
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