BALANCE of CULTURE

BoC Dérive: 30 December 2011

Goodbye, 2011!

Online Dérive:

STATUS QUO: North Korean officials warn "foolish politicians around the world" (especially South Korean ones) not to expect any policy changes from NK.

BEAUTY: China using the beauty industry as a diplomatic/soft power tool.

UK: Is British culture "in flux"?

ESCALATION: Fresh protests against the Syrian government is under way today.

BANK: Jay-Z & 'Ye really fattened up their bank accounts at a sweet sixteen party in UAE.

TIME WARP: Entirely skipping December 30 this year, this tiny island nation will be the first to officially welcome the new year.

"Creativity" in state funerals, from North Korea to US

Last night I happened to catch an interview during CNN's coverage of Kim Jong-il's funeral with Barbara Demick, author of "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea." Because her award-winning 2010 novel/interview project with North Korean refugees is certainly worth a read, I was less than impressed with her on-air opinion about how North Korea is not "creative" with their funerals, based on how Kim Jong-il's funeral looked so similar to his father Kim il-sung's funeral in 1994 (below):

Perhaps the only major difference between the two rituals is clearly the weather, since Kim il-sung died in the summer months. However, Demick's comment of North Korean funerals as not being "creative" is a strange and awkward thing to say. Are American or, say, British funerals any more "creative"? Are any funerals really that "creative" in terms of "besting" the last one the country experienced? I've seen many state funerals that tend to look very similar, even from different time eras.

Here's an example:

I don't know about you, but the two black and white photos above look pretty similar to me, even though they come from different centuries. The top photo is an image from Abraham Lincoln's funeral in 1865. The picture below is JFK's funeral in 1963. Hmm, JFK's funeral had nearly 100 years to differentiate itself from Abe Lincoln's funeral, but I don't see that much "creativity" going on...

Could it be that perhaps this is because a funeral is a traditional ritual that, for the most part, is done a certain way in the Western world (the world that Demick's perspective comes from, obviously), similar to how a funeral is likewise a traditional ritual in other cultures?

It's always a little disappointing when someone who has come out with respectable work reveals a tiny bit of their cultural hegemony and incorrectly-biased armchair analysis of things that are so universal.

Funerals are traditions, basically, no matter where you are in the world. Having said that, I'd still say the North Korean funerals have been the most aesthetically-impressive, creative ones to date. That's precisely why the internet is -- and has been -- obsessed with North Korean spectacle events, like this one:

I'm sure fallacy of logic falls upon all of us here and there, but it's people's inane obsession with creativity these days that is kind of unfortunate. The last thing that North Korea, and North Koreans, are concerned with is creativity, and Demick should clearly understand that.

North Korea Cries for Kim Jong-il

This looks like something from a movie, doesn't it? Look at all these people freezing in the snow as they join the "skies in crying" over the dead dictator Kim Jong-il. This is 2011! In many ways, these images are beyond parody if you know the story behind the scenes.

Bracing for Kim Jong-un to reveal his agenda is our next step in all this now. No matter how he turns out in the future, the young successor should be ashamed of himself this very moment for maintaining his overly plump figure in a country full of starving citizens. That is simply offensive in this context.

The revolution continues to be tweeted in front of our eyes

This NYT article is a reflective look at how ordinary citizens behind technology like Twitter shockingly served the world's "elite" an inevitable wake-up call this year.

I'm also relieved that the writer addresses Malcolm Gladwell's painfully ignorant "the revolution will not be tweeted" thesis…until he makes his comeback, Gladwell's intellectual credibility continues to bleed in the public eye. It's disappointing but shows that even the most eloquent writing style simply cannot protect a theory so unfortunately -- and confidently -- confined and parochial.

2011 was the defining year when many of the world's "elites" started to realize that the joke (of their elitism, that is) is probably on them, whether they like it or not. This doesn't mean any of them participate in social media or tech communications one bit, and it doesn't matter if they ever do. But they're quickly being left behind in the dust, which is probably where they belong anyhow.

BoC Dérive: 23 December 2011

This straw hat has been all over the world, and here it is in lovely Hawaii in December…one of the best places to be during the cold months, especially so close to LA! Today we're finishing up the last of our holiday gift shopping. I know, so last minute…but honestly, we don't have much left to do thanks to online shopping this year, which totally saved us so much time this hectic week. Happy holidays, whatever this may mean to you and yours! xoxo

Online Dérive:

DWINDLING: The late Kim Jong-il's economic legacy in one sad, sad chart.

THEFT: More and more public art sculpture pieces are stolen due to soaring metal prices/theft epidemic in Britain.

POP: Anime warms ties between Japan and Russia.

YOUNG DINOSAUR: Award-winning Spanish novelist Lucia Etxebarria is so angry that more readers have illegally downloaded (rather than purchased) her book, that she has announced she has quit writing.

LOOKS & $$$: Not what most Oprah fans want to hear -- this woman tells Oprah how her 10 plastic surgeries have directly helped her become successful in her career.

URBAN: The best reading on some of the most interesting cities around the world for 2011.

ART: …or Not? It's up to you!

Vaclav Havel on Kim Jong-il from 2004

This is a wonderful piece from 2004 by the late former Czech Republic president/playwright Václav Havel on the subject of Kim Jong-il. His words are still undeniably relevant today in 2011 after both leaders have passed. Havel was widely known for his intellectualism as much as his global humanitarian efforts:

Fortunately, people who use direct eyewitness testimony in attempts to expose the greatest crimes against humanity can be found in each era and all over the world. Rithy Panh described the terror of the Khmer Rouge, Kanan Makiya detailed the brutal prisons of Saddam Hussein and Harry Wu has tried to show the perversion of the Laogai system of Chinese forced labour camps.

Today, the testimony of thousands of North Korean refugees, who have survived the miserable journey through Communist China to free South Korea, tell of the criminal nature of the North Korean dictatorship. Accounts of repression are supported and verified by modern satellite images, and clearly illustrate that North Korea has a functioning system of concentration camps. The Kwan-li-so, or the political penal-labour colony, holds as many as 200,000 prisoners who are barely surviving day-to-day or are dying in the same conditions as did the millions of prisoners in the Soviet gulag system in the past.

The Northern part of the Korean peninsula is governed by the world's worst totalitarian dictator, who is responsible for taking millions of human lives. Kim Jong-il inherited the extensive Communist regime following the death of his father Kim Il-sung, and has shamelessly continued to strengthen the cult of personality.

Havel also references a 2004 resolution that passed at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, which condemned the practices of the North Korean government. I happened to work on this very resolution in Geneva that year, and it's a very poignant feeling to read this piece and recall various meetings -- some successful, some not so much -- with ambassadors from around the world, urging some of them to even acknowledge the human rights abuses in North Korea.

Fortunately, I do feel that the global public is now much more educated on the matter, no doubt due to influential figures like Havel who took the time to address humanitarian concerns in regions of the world that were so distant and foreign from his own home and culture.

He was certainly ahead of his time when it came to world affairs. RIP.

Food for thought: Bolivia reject McD's

I love how Bolivia's culture ultimately countered the aggressive corporate planning of McDonald's entering their market. This is the official trailer for "¿Por qué quebró McDonald's en Bolivia?" a documentary which explores why McDonald's ultimately failed in Bolivia. 

McDonald's failing in South America? That's a big deal, because the aggressive fast food chain has been pretty successful at infiltrating in other neighboring countries:

• Argentina: 192
• Brazil: 480
• Chile: 55
• Colombia: 97
• Ecuador: 19
• Paraguay: 7
• Peru: 20
• Uruguay: 19
• Venezuela: 180

And here I was all this time thinking that no capitalist market or culture could resist the power of McD's. We'll see how long this resistance lasts, I suppose. Is it only a matter of time before Bolivia follows the steps of their neighbors?

North Korea is our "intelligence failure"

NYT:

Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.

Of course it's true what the New York Times asserts above -- Kim Jong-il's death was indeed an "extensive intelligence failure." But I'd take it even further...

It's not just about the man's death…the elusiveness and mystery of North Korea's context as a whole -- in 2011, smack in between a rapidly rising China and first-world South Korea/Japan -- is the true extent of the intelligence failure. It's not that easy for a country to maintain rogue status yet simultaneously scrape by with unpredictable yet sufficient negotiations with its cautious neighbors.

North Korea, not merely Kim Jong-il's death, is the real intelligence "failure."

 

Totoro Sushi!

 

Video: Pyongyang Weeps for Kim Jong-il

Some raw and fascinating video footage straight out of Pyongyang, North Korea today.

Seriously, is there any other place in the world where a dead brutal dictator still holds so much influence? The calm, weeping crowd standing in the middle of a freezing public square is both astounding and creepy. These citizens are still on lockdown but behind their automatic tears, I'm sure they're wondering what the future holds with Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-un.