In the novel The Moviegoer, the character Binx Bolling describes a phenomenon he calls “certification”:
Nowadays, when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him to live. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.
What if a place in one’s hometown is depicted in a scene that is ultimately deleted from the final cut of a movie? Is the place still certified?
