Just as you enter Muranow, one of my favourite cinemas in Warsaw, there is a sign in big golden letters which says - "Cinema is the most important of all the arts for us" and the quote is signed Vladimir Lenin. Seeing it there has always amused me, which is probably why I remember it.
The reason I bring this up is that as I watched The Schoolgirl's Diary I couldn't stop thinking about the little bit of old Soviet cinema I had seen and that Lenin quote. Essentially that's what the film was, it was like seeing a propaganda film from the socialist realism era, only it was made in 2006 :] Btw, according to wikipedia North Korea, Laos and to some extent Vietnam are the only countries in the world that still use socialist realism principles in art. Even China has pretty much retired that art style.
Anyway, about the film... Artistically I don't think there's much to praise in the The Schoolgirl's Diary (frankly Soviet cinema was much more creative), but as a piece of propaganda it's first rate. It's the story of a girl who is angry with her father. He's a scientist and he works so hard that he neglects the family and yet he has no results to show for it. They live in greater poverty than most families, his work receives no praise and on top of that he's never there. They don't see him for weeks, sometimes even months. Of course in the end he succeeds, the girl realizes she was wrong and the moral of the story is that hard work pays off. For more info on the film please check out the Variety review, the rest of this post is just my rambling :]
I think that after seeing the film I kind of get why a world like that may seem attractive. It's a world where everything is orderly, everyone has their place and everyone believes in the same kind of moral conduct. This makes life very simple and secure - far more so than in our world. In a certain way it's a beautiful world. I can't help but wonder how close they have really come to that ideal. At the same time I am acutely aware that I could never surrender myself to a lifestyle like that. I guess I'm just too spoilt and evil :]
Another random thought I had while watching The Schoolgirl's Diary (I had quite a few of them - that's because the film itself wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention properly ;) ) was what kind of purely commercial films could be made and watched in a world based on the principles underlying the film. Anything that came to mind just didn't fit. Even Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad which I always thought was a film so innocent it couldn't possibly offend anyone (unless someone finds it offensive to see sexy men crying rivers every 5 minutes for various ridiculous reasons ;-P) wouldn't be appropriate. That's because the main characters are a very rich family, who didn't have to work hard for their wealth (though they are honest people) and also I think the structure of the film wouldn't go down well. It's not orderly - it has random song numbers inserted all over the place and the story itself is a little random at times. I remember hearing once that most regimes would not allow abstract art. I didn't fully grasp why that was, but now that I saw this film it totally makes sense. I can't actually explain it, but it just does :] It's such an orderly world that everything has to be orderly and abstract art is anything but that.
Finally I wanted to share one more thing, though it's totally random and more about Japan than North Korea, but whatever :] In my recent Japanese pop culture discoveries I came across some bizarre, offensive comedian called Egashira. According to wikipedia he once went to North Korea and made some sort of critical joke about the country and was arrested for it! He's still on Japanese TV AFAIK, so I assume they either got him out somehow or wikipedia is wrong :]
He seems to have really been in North Korea though cause he's showing off some material from a North Korean circus on the clip below:
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4 comments:
this is the first time your relitve moral view point is too much to bear for me
Hmmmm... I didn't really feel like I was making a moral point, but perhaps it would be better if I elaborate in case I've not made myself clear.
1) When I wrote that in a way it's a beautiful world, I meant the world portrayed in the film. And the world is *never* entirely the way it is portrayed in feature films, documentaries or even news clips, regardless of whether they are tools of propaganda or not.
I am, however, curious to what extent the film resembles reality in North Korea and what life there is really like.
2) When Poland was communist certain things (like finding work for example) *were* much easier and simpler. I've met a number of people who are very nostalgic about those times. This doesn't mean I believe the communist regime was better for Poland, but I think one can understand the nostalgia even if one does not feel any personally. That's sort of what I got from the film. Before seeing it the idea that anyone might think the lifestyle in North Korea is something they would want for themselves seemed totally incomprehensible. Now I sort of understand it even if my gut feeling is that it's wrong.
3) The quest is to understand what's really going on (probably impossible, but I'm sure one can do better than I am at this time :]). If you don't try to look at it from their perspective then you can't possibly develop a fuller understanding of it. Nothing is ever black and white.
4) I think the only other comment that might be difficult to take is the one about Soviet cinema being creative so I'll explain that as well :) The foundations of editing theory came from the Soviet Union. Before them nobody had properly experimented with how one should put shots together. What they did was path-breaking for world cinema and is appreciated by most filmmakers, film historians etc. despite the moral principles the films supported.
Does it still sound *that* bad? *blush* It's just that what I feel and what I think doesn't always go hand in hand :] You've been pretty good at bearing it in the past, so please don't give up on me ;)
you very often make moral points and don't feel like it
you see north korea is black - even if the people there are good, nice people. and going there is a very bad thing to do exactly to these nice people that suffer from the regime; because there is no possibility to go there and not sponsor the regime (like you could go for instance to birma, cambodia etc) if you go there you finance the regime and it's lil science projects like biological and chemical weapons research. and all you see when you go there are the sites especially prepared to be seen - so it is like going to a zoo or theatre; you wouldn't have a chance to see the real life of korean people and you wouldn't even be able to talk to anybody on the street, because they would get arrested for that and nobody will know what happened to them. for instance they could end up in a work camp and work for 18 hours a day, get little sleep or none at all; and in the end become the test subjects for the latest weapon the local hard working scientists (like the one in the propaganda film) would invent. because in north korea there is little proof of being any research conducted that would be for the benefit of the public, most of it is weapon research (biological and chemical also)
and to the nostalgia i understand it and i also understand the mechanics of it; because the world hadn't been easier back then and even if you got a job, there was a problem of getting a flat, or food or even toilet paper at some point; but these little inconveniences are forgotten and nice things are glorified. and the point really is that it is their youth these people long for. besides it is the fear of the new and unknown that powers the nostalgia and not the glory of the old; plus in most cases the inability to adapt to a new situation. the ones for whom the old regime was really a better place to live, were mostly the ones that lost power when it fell.
and i believe that people can be creative under any circumstances, and that censorship and oppressive government can only inspire to be more creative, because it is more tricky to get your point across.
i do understand a lot of points of view, i can see where they come from and blah blah, but still i think some things are wrong - torturing and killing people for beliefs (religion of philosophy) or trying to force somebody to live according to some oppressive beliefs - and you think that the only thing you're doing is showing that you can understand a point of view, but for a person that is not as intelligent or interested in all possible points of view it just seems that you don't mind what's going on in a place like north korea because you understand the reasons behind it and can explain them in an educated way
On the tourist point - yes, you're absolutely right. And here I should clear up what I meant cause the way I wrote it definitely doesn't say what I meant and it *was* careless. I apologize. In fact as soon as I finish writing this comment I'll edit it out of my original post.
I never envisioned going there in the sense of going there for 2 weeks and staying at hotels. As you say, that wouldn't be interesting and I agree there is something immoral about doing that. I was thinking more on the lines of for example going to South Korea or China and crossing the border for a day or something like that (if that's at all possible - I'm still naive about how militarized the borders are). And none of this is going to happen any time soon (if ever) anyway because that's a difficult trip to make.
I never thought I'd be talking to anyone either. I wouldn't want to risk getting anybody into trouble. I just want to listen, observe and feel. When I go abroad that's one of the things that tells me the most about a place. The stupidest details like how close to each other people are standing when they're queuing or how they greet each other can tell you a lot about a place and a lot of those details will be present even in a show for tourists.
you see north korea is black - even if the people there are good, nice people
If the people are good and nice then for me it is not black. Or at least not black enough to not be interested in what the good and nice people think regardless of whether they've been brainwashed.
and to the nostalgia i understand it and i also understand the mechanics of it; because the world hadn't been easier back then and even if you got a job, there was a problem of getting a flat, or food or even toilet paper at some point; but these little inconveniences are forgotten and nice things are glorified.
IMO the nostalgia is a bit more complex than that. Sometimes even the inconveniences of those times are glorified because they brought people together more. In fact I'd say that that's what I hear most often.
A lot of the time when people get into that sort of nostalgia they're completely aware that they wouldn't want those times back. That doesn't mean they don't think that there were some aspects of life which were much better then.
in north korea there is little proof of being any research conducted that would be for the benefit of the public, most of it is weapon research (biological and chemical also)
That's how things would appear based on the information I've got from the West, but based on what I saw in that film and what I've deduced from the documentaries, it seems like there's quite a bit of research going on about work efficiency and organization and stuff like that. The father portrayed in the film worked in a factory on stuff like that from what I understood.
AFAIK there is also a lot of research on sport. At least sport seems to be a fairly important part of life there and certainly what they've achieved in figure skating is mind-boggling. With pretty much no outside help, no top international coaches helping out etc. they've got junior men doing triple axels and senior men doing even quads in practice - I can't think of any country in Europe without a strong figure skating tradition that has achieved that much. That would have required quite a bit of research (in Russia Mishin has written even a doctorate about the physics of jumping I believe).
i do understand a lot of points of view, i can see where they come from and blah blah, but still i think some things are wrong - torturing and killing people for beliefs (religion of philosophy) or trying to force somebody to live according to some oppressive beliefs - and you think that the only thing you're doing is showing that you can understand a point of view, but for a person that is not as intelligent or interested in all possible points of view it just seems that you don't mind what's going on in a place like north korea because you understand the reasons behind it and can explain them in an educated way
Well if I've made anybody think that then I apologize. That was most certainly *not* my intention. I *do* mind very much.
It's because I mind that I'm trying to picture the situation in different ways - that's my way of trying to understand something.
Btw, my aim in writing down all these ramblings is not to show I understand something (IMO I'm very far from developing an understanding of North Korea yet). It's more about trying to clear up something in my head. If I truly understood it then I would have no need to write about it. Also North Korea is really bugging me lately, that's why I feel I need to clear things up in my head. And this discussion with you is helping loads too, so the aim is very much being achieved.
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