Years of Poems and Spirits

Saw The Last King of Scotland last night. Here is what I thought: it is a good, serious movie. Yet its artistic richness cannot overcome the story’s hollowness.

The movies uses a fictional character to paint a picture of Idi Amin who, perhaps more than anyone else, defines the term “African dictator”. Although the movie raises several good points, such as the peril of blind liberal allegiance with the downtrodden, or how terrible Ami was as a ruler (especially for the younger generation who have never heard of him before), I was struck by how Euro-centric the movie is–”not there is anything wrong with it”, but that is what I mean “hollow”.

The whole story was told by the young doctor from Scotland, who escaped from a bourgeois future to seek excitement and adventure. He was soon secuded by power, statue and charisma and became a unwilling servant of Idi Amin. It is really odd to look at Idi Amin this way because he meant so much more to his people, his neighbors and to history than he could ever have been to a lone Westerner.

In the movie, Amin, played by Whitaker, invoked his tribe, his agenda against colonialism, Libya and the PLO during conversations. Those names, each saturated with historical significance, matters a lot to everyone else except the young Scot who was engaged in a passionate affair with one of Amin’s wives. Therefore, the enormity of Amin’s crimes came to the young Scot’s–and us viewers’–consciousness only through the terrors he cast upon the two adulterers. I thought this arrangement errorneously aggrandized western individualism (I doubt even Satre would object to an Ugandan dictator torturing a green-eyed hunk for screwing his wife behind his back. If so, then what Amin did wrong?) but trivialized the suffering of the victims–after all, hundreds of kids starved to death before they are old enough to play Paolo and Francesca!

Another issue I have with this movie, and the portrait of African politics in the West in general, is that the picture is too simplistic: it is either “he’s his people’s savior” or “he will turn the country into his personal checkings account”–as if there is no shade of grey in between. After all, nationalism was invented in the West, when Amin keeps saying, “my country”, what exactly does he mean? Does he equates a head of state to a chief of a tribe? If so, where is the evidence? If not, where are the nuances? It is always the subtlety that tells a more complete story. Unfortunately, all the subtlety The Last King of Scotland has is the flirtacious eye contacts between the young Scot and his black beauty. What a waste of time!

A day after I wrote about Steven Bach’s book on Leni Riefenstahl, here comes another documentory film maker controversy: Ken Burns was critisized by Latino groups for failing to include the stories of their soldiers in his WWII documentary. The story went to extra inning when Burns refused to alter his story at first but gave in after Hispanic politicians threatened to cut PBS funding because of this.

The cacophony from the left and the right ridiculed the strong-arm tactic by the Hispanic lawmakers, yet their colleagues in the Congress largely remain silent. As much as I dislike anyone taking political shortcuts, I am grudgingly agreeing with the agitators: everything they have done so far is by the book (i.e. the Huntington’s book, that is): they stayed within the political system, participated in it and claimed their stake through legislative venue.

This is particularly important because of Latino citizens’ relative marginal status in our society. More specifically, they are politically under-represented because of their immigrant stigma. They filled the cities, the factories, the schools, and the churches of this land, yet their political status is forever in precarious state because of a piece of paper issued by the only institute of the land they do not fill. Therefore, the “justification” of their political exclusion is even more ridiculous than that against the Blacks during the segregation era. In this regard, we should be appreciative that they stayed in the current political regime and exercised their influence the way we are accustomed to.

I got side-tracked a little because what I meant to say was how Latino activists justified their tactic. Recently, one such lady on Jim Lehrer’s News Hour put in one sentence why Burns must change his movie: because of the sacrifice of the Latino soldiers and the large Latino population we have in America today. The congruence of the two arguments struck me as odd at first but moments later, it makes so much sense! As a matter of fact, I myself have written on it: what is history? Or does history belong to the people in the past or people in the present? My thought was triggered by a story on dying WWI veterans: even if there is a time machine that we can travel back with them to their time, we would not come back with the same “history”. It is so fascinating that I found some supporting argument but didn’t recognize it. Apparently, as I have learned from Marketing, there is a substantial difference between thinking and feeling.

It is getting too late … but want to keep the following thoughts:
I was listening to Diane Rhem while hiking up Mailbox Peak, heard couple stories that triggered the following thoughts:
1. What’s the difference between a documentary film maker and a propagandist? The story was about Leni Riefenstahl. NYKr also had a profilt/book review on her recently. Some people are still very upset and called her a criminal. But really, what was she? A propagandist or a film maker? Did she make up anything in Triumph of Will that did NOT happen in the summer of 1934 Nuremberg? As far as I can recall, it is a silent movie so there can’t be any misleading statement. Isn’t this all about interpretation (i.e. presentation of “reality”)? Knowledge is never only a collection of factual truth, but how they are related and organized. No documentary film maker is not a story-teller. The same can be said about a propagandist.
2. Turkey: the secular and the religous conflicts. I was just wondering: how can a paternalistic and authoritative institution as the military safeguarding secular democracy? Kemal Ataturk apparently didn’t trust either the efficacy of democracy or the nature of Turkish people, so he decided to use state violence as the final guarantee. This is kind of unique and strange, I suddenly realized. Nevertheless, living in an increasingly religious and moralistic America, the Turk’s faith in secularism is both refreshing and admirable.