British Council: This huge gymnastic display, where more than 100,000 performers are choreographed into performing astonishingly precise tableaux with their bodies is an amazing thing to witness — people so synchronised that it perfectly replicates the idea of individuals subservient to a single state message,¨people as pixels in effect. For us, where pluralism and diversity contribute to the full expression of who we are, it’s hard to appreciate a country where art is seen only as a vehicle for an ideology that has been discredited everywhere else in the world. But if we can find the forms of expression that will allow each side to explore a little of who we really are, or might be, then it is definitely worth pursuing. blog.britishcouncil.org/2014/07/11/exhibition-a-glimpse-of-everyday-life-inside-north-korea/ Me: In the West, we consider it proper to condemn government censorship of art and media. In North Korea, the production and consumption of art and media is more strictly controlled and politically micro-managed by the ruling party than anywhere else on earth. Ironically however, there may be no government-censored art for which commentators in the West so often ‘suspend disbelief’ with regard to values we otherwise uphold and defend in our own world. Perhaps there is more sympathy for the notion that judging North Korean works according to our values is Orientalist, than there is for the notion that by denying these values as relevant to North Koreans we make them our ‘other’. englishpen.org/north-korean-love-poetry/ *** My very small contribution to this (truly sickening) debate is over with that. Its up to the citizens of our socially-politically-correct zeitgeist in the West to judge for themselves, where we would prefer to stand.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:49:09 +0000
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