calin on Thu, 20 Mar 2003 16:09:37 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Lysistrata |
Something to cheer up my fellow nettimers in those times of war. I rushed last week into town (Amsterdam is for the moment an annex to my country side residency), to catch up with the Cannes Festival awarded documentary “Bowling for Columbine”. It was a late hours show, after some 4 weeks of screening in a mainstream + cult cinema (Tuchinski), positioned conveniently right at the heart of the city nightlife – the Munt Plein, that is. At the cashier in front of me two local red necks were contemplating the board with the offer and after having a short doubt between Chicago and the Bowling, opted for the last. Overlooking the strange event I bought my ticket and entered confidently in the cinema, to realise in shock that it was fully packed with (mostly) young people, who cheered along the movie all the (generously spread) moments of stupefying realism, and applauded with rumours all the moments of silent drama. Wonderfully scripted and brilliantly “played” by its maker (an almost unreal impersonation of the middle class American – fat, relaxed and proudly a member of the American Rifle Association), the film is a matter of factly, compassionate, funny and hopeless satire of the conundrum which underlies the US society – freedom of expression and lack of respect for human life (in short). I do not know what brought all those people for weeks in a row to see the movie – snobbery, political restlessness, media pressure, genuine curiosity – but I felt very strongly that night that we are living in special times, and that the US culture has a strange magnetic power to define them, for the good and for the worse. Meanwhile, in my little village with rich people and retired civil servants, the local theatre group plays Lysistrata by Aristophan, a couple of millennia old commedy turning around a very simple concept – if women would refuse to have sex with their war mongering husbands until they stop fighting, peace on earth would be a matter of weeks. I don’t know what was the potency expectation for the men in Classic Greece, but I somehow doubt that this type of vaginal blackmail would work for Dubya and his gang. Something to cheer up my fellow nettimers in those times of war. I rushed last week into town (Amsterdam is for the moment an annex to my country side residency), to catch up with the Cannes Festival awarded documentary “Bowling for Columbine”. It was a late hours show, after some 4 weeks of screening in a mainstream + cult cinema (Tuchinski), positioned conveniently right at the heart of the city nightlife – the Munt Plein, that is. At the cashier in front of me two local red necks were contemplating the board with the offer and after having a short doubt between Chicago and the Bowling, opted for the last. Overlooking the strange event I bought my ticket and entered confidently in the cinema, to realise in shock that it was fully packed with (mostly) young people, who cheered along the movie all the (generously spread) moments of stupefying realism, and applauded with rumours all the moments of silent drama. Wonderfully scripted and brilliantly “played” by its maker (an almost unreal impersonation of the middle class American – fat, relaxed and proudly a member of the American Rifle Association), the film is a matter of factly, compassionate, funny and hopeless satire of the conundrum which underlies the US society – freedom of expression and lack of respect for human life (in short). I do not know what brought all those people for weeks in a row to see the movie – snobbery, political restlessness, media pressure, genuine curiosity – but I felt very strongly that night that we are living in special times, and that the US culture has a strange magnetic power to define them, for the good and for the worse. Meanwhile, in my little village with rich people and retired civil servants, the local theatre group plays Lysistrata by Aristophan, a couple of millennia old commedy turning around a very simple concept – if women would refuse to have sex with their war mongering husbands until they stop fighting, peace on earth would be a matter of weeks. I don’t know what was the potency expectation for the men in Classic Greece, but I somehow doubt that this type of vaginal blackmail would work for Dubya and his gang. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net