Browsing through the program of this year's Human Rights Watch International Film Festival one finds a lot of movies about the world's dispossessed, yet mostly done by idler western film makers (particularly the U.S. and the U.K.: 17 of 43 productions presented). This is exactly that noble quirk among the rich: some of them cruelly exploit people in those countries as a source of cheap labor and, occasionally, cannon-fodder, while some of them then write about that cruel exploitation with an unparalleled compassion (and get paid for it by the surplus money earned by the primal plunder). The system works fine, as the self-congratulatory gala on Monday showed: $ 150 a ticket brought in a lot of celebrities showing off their new summer wardrobe, raising funds to pay people to produce moaning reports over conditions in countries which inhumane labor conditions helped produce fabric for those clothes. It is a perfectly closed circle. Wouldn't Kafka laugh? This is all a circus, isn't it? I feel like we are all to them like lions and Christians in some huge Colosseum, and some of them cheer for the lions, and some of them cheer for the Christians: but none of us would ever sit in the bleachers. We are participants - they gently took the noble role of being witnesses. To our slaughter. If I address this article to any one of them - he or she would feel terribly insulted, after "all the good" she/he has done for our people. And if I write this in the global tone, it will be quickly read and quicklier forgotten. In the good new age spirit things contrarian are simply declared not present; why should the rich feel bad? Yet, the fact is that there are many films done for this festival about Bosnia, Bosnians and things Bosnian and former Yugoslavian, but none was done, produced or distributed by a Bosnian (or for that matter a Croat or a Serb). They are all done by the well endowed westerners in a search for their inner child. They "explore interior landscape" of our mind, they "examine" ethnic cleansing anatomically, like a virulent bacteria specimen under a microscope, they are here to "compel viewers to embrace a sense of universal humanity": exploiting the inhumane tragedy that happened to some, somewhere far away, a ghostlike creatures, perhaps. At one point the whole Roman Empire became Christian. But there were no Christians around any more to witness. They were all devoured. Just some Romans feeling the famous "liberal guilt" tore down their expensive robes and pretended to be Christians - cheating hordes of immigrating barbarians with that new faith of politically correct bullshiting. (And what happened to the blonde animals'? They were caged in maximum security cages for life or herded in inner city jungles through which tourist-full of buses dash on their safari excursions.) back forward journal
This is exactly that noble quirk among the rich: some of them cruelly exploit people in those countries as a source of cheap labor and, occasionally, cannon-fodder, while some of them then write about that cruel exploitation with an unparalleled compassion (and get paid for it by the surplus money earned by the primal plunder). The system works fine, as the self-congratulatory gala on Monday showed: $ 150 a ticket brought in a lot of celebrities showing off their new summer wardrobe, raising funds to pay people to produce moaning reports over conditions in countries which inhumane labor conditions helped produce fabric for those clothes. It is a perfectly closed circle. Wouldn't Kafka laugh?
This is all a circus, isn't it? I feel like we are all to them like lions and Christians in some huge Colosseum, and some of them cheer for the lions, and some of them cheer for the Christians: but none of us would ever sit in the bleachers. We are participants - they gently took the noble role of being witnesses. To our slaughter.
If I address this article to any one of them - he or she would feel terribly insulted, after "all the good" she/he has done for our people. And if I write this in the global tone, it will be quickly read and quicklier forgotten. In the good new age spirit things contrarian are simply declared not present; why should the rich feel bad?
Yet, the fact is that there are many films done for this festival about Bosnia, Bosnians and things Bosnian and former Yugoslavian, but none was done, produced or distributed by a Bosnian (or for that matter a Croat or a Serb). They are all done by the well endowed westerners in a search for their inner child. They "explore interior landscape" of our mind, they "examine" ethnic cleansing anatomically, like a virulent bacteria specimen under a microscope, they are here to "compel viewers to embrace a sense of universal humanity": exploiting the inhumane tragedy that happened to some, somewhere far away, a ghostlike creatures, perhaps.
At one point the whole Roman Empire became Christian. But there were no Christians around any more to witness. They were all devoured. Just some Romans feeling the famous "liberal guilt" tore down their expensive robes and pretended to be Christians - cheating hordes of immigrating barbarians with that new faith of politically correct bullshiting.
(And what happened to the blonde animals'? They were caged in maximum security cages for life or herded in inner city jungles through which tourist-full of buses dash on their safari excursions.)
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