Keywords

Foulcault on reform vs. critique

Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: ‘Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.’ That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction which concludes: this then is what needs to be done. It should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.

With regard to the economy, conservatives always preach restraint in the face of forces beyond our control, warning of unintended consequences if we overreach.

E.g. David Brooks:

But you don’t have the power to transform the whole situation. Your discrete goods might contribute to an overall turnaround, but that turnaround will be beyond your comprehension and control.

With regard to war, however, conservatives always insist on the need to act, no matter what. If you don’t support their morally, legally, politically, and strategically questionable course of action they insist that inaction is not a possibility—daring you to offer up a slightly-less-horrible course of action instead.

E.g. Christopher Hitchens:

As we engage with the horrible idea that our government claims the right to add its own citizens to a death list that is compiled by methods and standards unknown, we must concede that no government on earth faces such a temptation to invoke what I suppose we could call a doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense. Those who share my alarm at the prospect of this, and of the ways in which it could be abused, are under a heavy obligation to say what they would do instead.

We have some very exciting announcements to make regarding our documentary film, Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir! But before I get to that, I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to our Summer fundraising campaign. We raised just over $5,000 through the generous donations of over fifty people. Thank you all so much! And thanks to the many other people who helped out in other ways: translating subtitles, organizing fundraising parties, and otherwise helping get the word out about our film.

Thanks to your help we were able to get a beautiful new master tape out for the Busan International Film Festival in Korea, where we are having our “World Premiere” next week. For anyone whose seen the film before, the new sound mix and coloring, done by some of the same studios responsible for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films, will knock you out of your seats. It is like looking at an entirely new film.

Unfortunately, even with your generous donations and Shashwati’s tough barganing skills, we still ended up having to borrow money to pay for this work. That’s why we’ve launched a new Kickstarter Campaign to raise an additional $5000 to make ends meet. We’ve already received $940 in pledges, but because of how Kickstarter works, if we don’t reach our goal by October 15th, we won’t get a dime. If you pledge just $15 or $20 you would be making a huge contribution to the film, and you could earn one of our many prizes at the same time – including the opportunity to download your own digital copy of the film.

Jean Rouch Award For Collaborative Filmmaking

Shashwati and I were very proud to learn that the Society of Visual Anthropology will be awarding us this year’s Jean Rouch Award for Collaborative Filmmaking – the SVA festival’s highest honor. In making Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir! the films of Jean Rouch were a great source of inspiration for us. In particular, we admired the way Rouch collaborated closely with his subjects, employing a variety of devices which we ended up using in our own film. We can’t think of an award we’d be more proud to receive.

Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival

We are also very excited to announce that our film was selected to be part of this year’s Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival (TIEFF). TIEFF is organized by the Taiwan Association of Visual Ethnography and, under the leadership of esteemed Taiwanese ethnographic filmmaker Hu Tai-Li, has grown to be one of the most important ethnographic film festivals in the world. It is truly an honor to be one of the handful of films selected for this year’s festival.

A Note on Donor Prizes

Whether you donated to our previous campaign, or to our new Kickstarter campaign, we have been giving out prizes for each level of donation. These include a poster, access to an online version of the film, the DVD, etc. We have been working hard to make sure that each of these prizes is worthy of your support. We promise to get these to you as soon as they are ready, but we need a little more time. Please be patient.

Those who have access to the online version of the film will be getting an updated version of the film for free. We’ll be putting this up soon after the Kickstarter campaign ends. This new version will include the new sound mix and color correction which were paid for with your generous support.

Institutional Sales

There has been a lot of interest in using the film for teaching. We hope to be ready to start institutional sales soon. If you are interested please send us an email and we will let you know as soon as we’ve finished the DVD. And let us know if you’d be interested in a campus visit or online discussion via Skype.

We are very happy to announce that our film, Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!, has been officially selected to have its world premiere at the 2011 Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in October! The Independent listed BIFF (“Asia’s largest film festival”) as one of the top twelve film festivals of 2011.

In order to make the most of this exciting opportunity, we need your help to make an exhibition-ready copy of the film to show at Busan. In return, we are offering our supporters the opportunity to watch a special “Sneak Preview” version of the film, either online or as a DVD. Read on to learn how you can be one of the first people to watch the film by making a donation.

Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!

Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir! is about a troupe of young Chhara actors using theater to fight police brutality and the stigma of criminality. The Chhara are one of 198 communities in India, over sixty million people, whose grandparents were labeled “born criminals” by the British. Although the British are long gone, the stigma still remains.

To learn more about the film and make a donation visit our webpage.

Crowd-sourced Filmmaking

A significant portion of the film’s budget came from individual donations collected over the internet. Donations received during our initial round of online fundraising ranged from $15 to $5000. The film wouldn’t have been possible without every one of these donations. People have also helped out in other ways: translating subtitles, recording music, designing the poster, etc. We also received grants and assistance from The Bhasha Trust, The New York State Council on the Arts, and the Asian Cinema Fund.

Now, after five years, and thanks to your support, we are ready to show the film to the world. Our goal is to have as many people see the film as possible. For a documentary film that means trying to get on TV. Film festivals like Busan are a great way to meet producers and purchcasing agents, but we’ll be competing with hundreds of other films showing at the same festivals. That means having the best-quality exhbition master we can afford, attending the film festivals in person to meet with potential buyers, and even hiring a professional publicist and graphic designer to help promote the film. We can’t do any of this without your help.

See the Film Now!

We’ve been overwhelmed by all the support and encouragement we’ve received, and we’re happy that we finally have something to give people in return for their generosity. Starting today you can watch a special “Sneak Preview” of the film online (this includes a download link) or, for a little bit more, we’ll send you the DVD.

For every level of donation we also have some special rewards, including a signed poster, your name in the credits, your name on our IMDB page, and even (for the most generous donors) a private screening with the directors.

Donate now.

This Sneak Preview is intended for personal use only, and is not intended for institutional sales. If you would like to use the film for teaching, or for public screenings, please contact us directly.

Goalposts

We’ve created a series of goalposts for this final round of fundraising. Each goalpost we reach will exponentially increase the film’s chances of success. The first twenty-two thousand dollars are essential—they will pay for an exhibition quality mix and color correction—after that we will spend as much on travel and publicity as we can raise. Everything we raise will go towards the film. All donations are tax-deductible (for U.S. taxpayers).

Donate now.

1st Goalpost: $24,000 for an Exhibition-Ready Copy.

This involves color correction and an “online” edit at a professional studio. [Watch a short video about the difference color correction can make.] Even the HD tapes required by some festivals are expensive. We urgently need to reach this goal in time for the Busan International Film Festival in October.

2nd Goalpost: Travel and Accommodation for Three to Four Festivals or Markets @ $3,000 each (max $12,000).

Since we live in Taiwan this is more expensive for us, and high oil prices mean tickets are more expensive now. But it is essential that at least one of us attend in person if we are going to close a deal.

3rd Goalpost: $10,000 to Hire a Publicist and a Graphic Designer

If we can raise a total of $44,000, the last $10,000 will pay to hire a publicist and a designer. To really do things properly we need to spend money publicizing the film. Making posters and post cards is cheap enough, but if we could higher professional graphic designers and a publicist we feel we could have an even bigger impact.

Donate now.

Other Ways To Help

The easiest way you can help is by spreading the word. Share our page on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. Share our trailer. Like our Facebook page. Or just tell your friends about the film. Independent documentaries like ours live or die by word-of-mouth. You are our buzz-machine and we depend on you to help get the word out.

If you have a blog or newspaper or journal and you’d like to review the film, just let us know and we’ll send you a review copy of the DVD. If you are a graphic designer or publicist who can donate your services, you could help us meet our third goalpost before we’ve even started fundraising. And if you have another way you’d like to help just let us know! Thank you.

In his review of Google+ Farhad Manjoo compares their “Circles” feature to arranging wedding seating charts. Having to sort people into lists before you can interact with them online is annoying. But the problem isn’t lists. I like lists. I use lists. I might not be a typical user (Manjoo says that only 5% of Facebook users use this feature), but I think the problem is that there are two usage scenarios for lists and Facebook/Google emphasize the wrong one – and not very well at that.

The first scenario, the one that Facebook and Google think people want, is focused on privacy. You have baby pictures and only want to share them with relatives? Set up a “relatives” list and share your pictures with them while keeping them private from your professional contacts. The problem with this is that social networks are context specific. My sister’s boyfriend might be considered a “relative” for purposes of family dinners and sharing of photos, but not for talking about family finances and medical problems. Lists are simply too rigid and static to handle how we actually decide what information to share with whom and when.

Another problem with this scenario is the illusory nature of privacy. Like DRM on DVDs, online privacy is all about wishful thinking. Once you’ve posted something online anyone can share it with whomever they like. If you are a Congressmen who sets up a Circle of online girlfriends with which you share photos of your private parts, it is just a matter of time before someone reposts these to someone outside that Circle. It is better to treat everything online as if it was meant for public consumption. That way you are never caught by surprise.

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In this “Thinking Allowed” interview with Stuart Hall, he discusses the Middle East and has some interesting things to say about our inability to judge the importance of history as it is unfolding. I especially liked his comments about how the manner in which history unfolds is as important, if not more important, than where it ends up.

I think that I’m wary of the old left response of cynicism. “Oh well, the military took over and made it possible really…”"The West is busy sending helicopters in there. They’re just waiting for the opportunity to secure the oil field…” History does not work like a conspiracy. It’s not only to be judged in terms of what happens in the end. What happens on the way to the end always has and impact. It always leaves a trace behind. Things are never exactly as they were.

The Middle East, which has been the source of huge geopolitical instability for twenty or thirty years…Geopolitics cannot operate in the same terrain once the people say: “Well, you really helped to keep us down because you made of alliances with disgusting dictators. And you knew they were disgusting. And you knew that they didn’t deserve to be where they were according to your values. But you settled for self-interest instead.” And I hope the Americans, and the British, and Western Europe are asking themselves: “Well, how can we secure our interests in a world which has woken up to the fact that we have made alliances with the most dreadful people in order to accomplish our own success and hegemony in the world?” There will be consequences. I can’t tell you what they will be.

You knew 1968 the student revolts… everybody said, well of course it didn’t come to anything. They didn’t win. They didn’t win state power. They tried to win state power by allying themselves with the working class, by being supported by the Communist Party… Absolutely, no hope whatsoever. They didn’t win. Life since then has been profoundly transformed by 1968. It will never go back to what it was before that. Ideas of communitarianism, ideas of the collective, feminism, all sorts of things… Theoretical work? Transformed by the impact of a revolution which did not succeed! If you look back at the 19th century, 1848 is exactly the same. So, I don’t believe in judging the historical significance of events as they unfold in terms of our, usually faulty judgment, of where they may end up.

If we come downstairs before Juno she will often sneak into the bedroom (where she isn’t allowed) and steal socks from the laundry basket. (Somehow she always manages to steal a matching pair!) When she comes downstairs she will then dance around looking somewhat ashamed, with her tail between her leg, as if to say: “Look at me, I’ve been a baaaad dog. Shouldn’t I be punished?” Of course, it is all just an elaborate ruse for attention, so we mostly ignore her.

Unfortunately, ignoring her hasn’t cured her of the habit. Nor do we always remember to close the bedroom door. So we decided on a new approach: rewarding her for coming down the stairs without socks in her mouth. We thought this worked when, this morning, she came down without any socks; but, it turns out, that she had still stolen the socks, but simply dropped them at the top of the stairs so she could get her cookie!

On the trip to Cambodia I finally had some time to read Jon Lee Anderson’s excellent New Yorker Article on the counter-insurgency in Sri Lanka. Because the piece isn’t available online (except for this Scribd posting which I don’t expect will stay online for long), I thought it worthwhile to share some quotes:

The “Sri Lanka option”:

In military circles around the world, the “Sri Lanka option” for counter-insurgency was discussed with admiration. Its basic tenets were: deny access to the media, the United Nations, and human-rights groups; isolate your opponents, and kill them as quickly as possible; and segregate and terrify the survivors—or, ideally, leave no witnesses at all.

It ain’t over till it’s over…

From the military’s perspective, the war continued. “The L.T.T.E. inculcation of the youth—this is a big problem for us,” he said. The Army needed to maintain a presence in the north to insure that Tamil radicalism never started again. To gather intelligence, another senior officer told me, it had infiltrated the Tamil population and installed electronic surveillance systems.

“China is probably our biggest single investor.”

In the not too distant future, Sri Lanka may be seen as an early skirmish in a new “Great Game” of influence between China and the United States and their proxies. “Sri Lanka has read the situation and seen that the West’s influence is diminishing,” Harim Peiris, a Sri Lankan political analyst, said. “So this government has made some strange friends: Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar, Russia, and Japan. China is probably our biggest single investor. These are ‘softies’—soft loans without pressure.

“When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.”

“Murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty,” he wrote. “When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.”

If you can find a copy, it really is worth reading the whole thing…

Catching up on Cambodian history as we make our way to Phnom Penh, I came across some interesting historical context for the current squabble over Preah Vihar temple. The temple is mentioned in John Tully’s A Short History of Cambodia, during a discussion of King Sihanouk’s nonaligned policy in the 1950′s:

Another running sore was the issue of Preah Vihar, an Angkorean temple on the border that was claimed by both Thailand and Cambodia (and eventually awarded to Cambodia by the World Court at The Hague in 1962). While the hardline anti-communist rulers in Bangkok and Saigon scarcely needed encouragement, Sihanouk suspected with good reason that the United States was egging them on and said that if Washington chose it could call them off. He stated publicly that US policy was unjust and ‘dangerous for peace in South-east Asia’ and moved further towards diplomatic rapprochement with the communist countries.

In short, it seems that the U.S. encouraged Thai claims on the Temple in order to bully Sihanouk to abandon his policy of neutrality during the Cold War, but the policy (like much U.S. foreign policy) backfired, pushing Sihanouk closer to the Communists.

Today’s New York Times article about how Swedes are choosing new names for themselves probably belongs in the large folder of non-trend trend articles in the Times. (“Last year, there were 7,257 name changes” out of a population of over nine million…) But be that as it may, it gives me an excuse to link to my favorite story from the Lonely Planet guide to Iceland:

It’s also forbidden to bestow non-Icelandic or foreign-sounding names upon Icelandic children. Even foreign immigrants must take on Icelandic names before citizenship will be granted. The only exception ever made was for conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy (which led a subsequent immigrant to request the new Icelandic name ‘Vladimir Ashkenazy’!).

(Thanks to John Emerson for pointing out the percentages.)