Battlefield Hearth

Saw a couple of good films recently: One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Memoirs of a Geisha, and the Virgin Suicides. One of the reasons I liked them so much, (apart from the great direction, especially by Sofia Coppola in the Virgin Suicides) is the recurrent theme of oppression. The oppression in Cuckoos Nest is the one I’m more familiar with: oppressive institutions (in this case a mental asylum) run by people with too much power and insufficient checks, and maybe not enough knowledge. This is the kind of oppression you learn to fight through constitutional/administrative law/human rights law. Memoirs was a bit the same: the institutionalized exploitation of women, through some form of indentured labour, like the original plantation workers in the hills of Sri Lanka.

The Virgin Suicides is about a type of exploitation that’s newer to me, that I'm just beginning to learn about: oppression within the family. I feel more comfortable in dealing with oppression in public/sorta public institutions. It’s a battleground that I’m more familiar with. Familiar with the weapons used. Some types of oppression in families are much more nuanced. Harder to fight, mebbe. The girls in Virgin Suicides were shut off from society, but I don’t know whether the parents broke any laws (except for pulling them out of school, perhaps). And yet the girls killed themselves, and perhaps others do too.

The closest I’ve come to understanding (at an abstract level) is when reading about the artificialness of the public/private divide in jurisprudence/legal theory: The law regulates things that go on in the public sphere. It doesn’t regulate what goes on in private, in family matters. Even when such family matters involve deep imbalances of power…to the point where those who are oppressed think it’s their role in life to be oppressed.

Dada

Saw the Last King of Scotland a few weeks back. Forest Whittaker, playing Idi Amin, was brilliant. I had seen a documentary with original footage of Amin, and Whittaker managed to have the same mixture of maniacal-comical charisma. I wonder whether they added the white Scottish doctor to help western audiences identify with the situation. That’d be sad. The Last King reminded me of how valuable democratic space is, even the modicum available in Sri Lanka. It’s easy to take the machinery used to fight abuse of power (courts, enforceable rights, free media…) for granted, but life without it is sick, fearful and without dignity.

I feel a little uncomfortable with people who are very very confident about life. For some reason it makes me think that they haven’t yet seen how the world can burn you. No matter how well adjusted/clever/powerful you are there’s always the chance that you will one day be helpless, naked and screaming in the mud. Like the many victims of Amin’s regime. The best we can do is to fight for and protect the safeguards we are entitled to, and have some humility.

Tales of the Tower Block

Saw the Soweto Kinch Trio yesterday. They were playing numbers from “A Life in the Day of B19 – Tales of the Tower Block”. The first thing that struck me was how much they sounded like Spearhead. They mix hip hop, jazz and funk (though mebbe Spearhead has more funk) (then again, I’m not sure whether what I mean by funk is actually funk), they experiment and they do socially conscious music.

Kinch, the lead singer, grew up in Handsworth (B19 is a postcode), which apparently is to Birmingham what Wanathamulla is to Colombo, or what Hollandspoor is to Den Haag. This flavours the music, though I don’t know Kinch well enough to know whether it’s a gimmick. The songs I heard/remembered were “So” and another where the chorus goes something like “its all about the monee”. “So” is about the pretentiousness of musicians. About the bragging/swanking/general pretentiousness about millions of albums sold and shiny SUVs. It reminded me of arguments I used to have with Joke. I like old, angry hip hop, where lyrics rage about arrests, hunger and lack of opportunity, not about how many diamonds you’ve stuck in your teeth. Joke used to say though that each artist sings about what they know, the old crowd about poverty, because they were poor, and the new crowd about being rich, because they’re rich.

I still think you can talk about emancipation, even if you’re not dying from the lack of it yourself. I liked Kinch because he seems to be a rich kid who’s not spoilt. Will listen to Tales of the Tower Block and write some more soon.

The Song I Sing in the Shower is My National Anthem.

Read a great piece on BBC by Mehretab Mekonnen Belay. In case its deleted, I'll paste the most interesting bit below:

"I have created my own country...It lies between the heart and the mind with no territorial claim and I feel the whole planet is my home." "...the clothes I wear are my national flag; the song I sing in the shower is my national anthem..."

This is almost exactly what I feel like. Growing up in Sri Lanka, you develop a healthy fear of group identity, and nationalism in general. Because it tends to blow people up, bomb their villages, torture their brothers and make others starve. So I like it when people steer clear of pigeonholing themselves. This doesn’t mean abandoning everything. It means wanting to pick and choose life-options and making your own life. If you want, it means you can be a hybrid.

You can listen to We Go Make Am, Danfo Driver, random Jamaican riddims, grunge mixed with Irish jigs, watch films by Von Trier, Vithanage, Kurosawa, wear Ugandan clothing, speak Sinhalese, English, mebbe a bit of Yoruba, dance meringue, bachata, read Chinua Achebe, Gunasekere, Uzodinma Iweala…and synthesize books and songs and movements and freedom struggles, economies and constitutions out of this variety of experience…

…and perhaps end up killing less people because they have funny sounding surnames or pray to some other random deity.

Art, Vaclav Havel and Richard De Zoysa

Jokerman, in a comment to a previous post, asked for a post on the meaning of art. Hmmm. Felt a bit iffy writing about that sort of thing, due to a previously adopted resolution to avoid being abstract/impractical/generally faffing about. Then decided the post doesn’t have to be like that. I’d say anything synthesized through a creative process has the potential for being discussed as art. (Admittedly the definition sounds dangerously dodgy and would make, say, a space shuttle or a toilet seat potentially art. Well why not yer?)

Which brings me to Vaclav Havel. Why? Because he was a poet/playwright who led dissidents in former Czechoslovakia against an oppressive regime, won, and became president through a non-violent “Velvet revolution”. It also brings me to Richard De Zoysa, who was a bit similar, but lived in Sri Lanka. They found his body in the sea, in Moratuwa. He had been shot in the head and the throat, his jaw fractured.

What I mean is, Art can be pretty much anything, but the Art that rocks, for me, is the type that makes people change the world.

More soon.

From the Republic of Conscience

... is one of my all time favourite poems. It's about the suffering of immigrants, abuse of power, universal citizenship and written (by Seamus Heaney) without an iota of hopelessness. It reminds me (don't laugh) of an Eminem song about reform in the US. I won't link to the Eminem song because I don't agree with all the sentiments in it.

Anyways, both works are about reform, Heaney using a mix of sadness, hope and anger, and Eminem using just anger. Like I said in a previous post, I like artists who make great art which is also great advocacy. When I was younger I used to think thats the only kind of art that should exist. Hmmmm.

Crash

Wrote the following comment on "Crash" on the IMDB site, years ago :

Crash was the best film I have seen in a long while. Like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", this is a film which has Hollywood actors, but still manages to have a great deal of depth. Instead of the black and white, two dimensional nature of most attempts at tackling racism, Haggis does a beautiful job of showing how complex racism and discrimination is, and how misunderstanding causes terrible hurt and waste. The link between fear and racism is explored well. And all this without any tinge of "documentary"ness. Unlike one-sided displays of racism towards one group of people, which usually provoke righteous but shallow indignation, Crash provokes an almost helpless anger at how messed up the world is.


Will add current musings in a bit...

And Krystyna Says

Decided to post Krystyna’s response to a previous post about abortion:

"HA HA have you ever thought that maybe your obsession arises out of a freudian type jealousy or sense of loss due to the fact that, being without a womb, you will never be able to have a baby? I think that would make a good poem :-) we will have to watch that movie again in 2007, I think there is a lot more I could learn from a second viewing. "

The movie she’s referring to is Saved in which, among many other things, a teenager becomes pregnant, and has a baby, and lives happily ever after.

For my witty riposte, watch this space… :-)

One Big Damn Puzzler

I read One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding a while back. Its about an American lawyer who visits a south Pacific island, to obtain reparation for the locals who were injured by landmines laid by the army. Part of the book is about the impact of external ideas on the culture of the inhabitants of the island, and the conflict between those who want the old ways to continue and those who want them replaced.

This morning Fadzai told me that in Victoria falls, a fake "tradition" exists where people dress up as "warriors" and sing, for the benefit of the tourists. This reminded me of a temple in Bentota (Sri Lanka), that I saw several years ago. The place was a spruced-up (Pimped?) version of a buddhist temple, with numerous figures and statutes and very brightly coloured paintings. I remember thinking that this must be for the benefit of tourists, since none of it accorded with what I was accustomed to seeing in a Sri Lankan buddhist temple.

I was derisive about this back then, but less sure now. All culture is a construct. Practices form for some reason, and then this reason is sometimes forgotten, and then people do it anyway, and its venerated as our rich heritage etc etc. On this basis, mebbe there's nothing that can be called "authentic", and so, nothing that should be looked down upon as "fake".

Junior Gong

Damian Marley falls into my favourite genre of musician, being socially conscious while still making great music. Songs like Stand a Chance are angry and activist without being self-rightous, soppy or sounding bloody awful. Damian has a Counting Crows-like way of shoving a book's worth of text into a song, but stays structured and rhymy (just made that up). I don't subscribe to the jah-worship in Rasta culture, but the burning anger for change is an almost-chemical high.

Spearhead, with Michael Franti also do great activist music. Will write something on it soon... Meanwhile, All the Freaky People is one of my favourite Spearhead songs. Positive is another great Spearhead number. Its about HIV.

The Music in My Head

Bought "The Music in my Head". Liked the cover because of the title (its the kind of title I'd like to have used, for something). The author fills the book with "African" music facts. I like that sort of thing (e.g. Loved "High Fidelity" the movie made off of Nick Hornby's book, because of the music trivia). The book explores his (platonic) relationship with a musician. This is interesting because although the main character has an elitist take on "Africa" in general, his relationship with the musician ties him into the local picture. This occasionally pulls him out of the bubble within which most expat people write about developing countries. Don't have the book with me now, but will add to the post when I dig it up again...

Interesting Book on Suicide Attacks

Started reading "The Stragic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (Yer, not an encouraging title). The reviews weren't particularly intelligent, but Pape (the author) makes an interesting argument: that suicide attacks generally emerge from nationalist causes, where there is occupation (or virtual occupation), where the majority religion of the occupying power differs from the majority religion of the occupied people. He contrasts this with normal suicides which arise out of alienation etc. He also discounts brainwashing as the cause. Unusually in this field, he recognizes that most suicide attacks are not a product of Islamic fundamentalism (Most have taken place in Sri Lanka). However, despite this recognition, the bulk of the case study section is on Al-kaeda etc.

I tend to agree, but think a) Pape is too conclusive b) I suspect his stats aren't as perfect as his language indicates c) I'd replace religion with with ethnicity in his theory

Prasanna Vithanage

http://www.vithanage.com/html/pv_about.html

Vithanage is an interesting director, who has made (at least) two films on the Sri Lankan conflict. I saw "Purahanda Kaluwara" (English title "Death on A Full Moon Day") which was about how a father deals with his (soldier) son's death. The war is present just around the edges of the film, nothing full frontal, but this heighten's the impact. Will write more about it after seeing it again.

He also directed "Ira Madiyama" (English title "August Sun"). According to the DVD cover, its about three sets of people affected by the conflict (a Muslim boy looking for his dog, a woman looking for her husband, and a soldier). Will edit this post after seeing the film...