Okay. Scratch my last post. The coolest and craziest thing I've seen in, perhaps, forever is found on YouTube if you type in Philippines Thriller. I highly suggest you blast the speakers as loud as you can, and put this on a large screen.
This video just made my brain explode. If you don't remember the original Thirller video, it is more than worthwhile to watch again. In picking up the pieces, I've thought about connecting this to a bunch of other stuff. I'd love ya'lls suggestions and help, even it random and just for fun!
Now, regardless of whether the Phillipines Thriller vid is real or not, I'm thinking of linking this to a history course syllabus where we discuss the role of patriarchy and American foriegn relations at the onset of the 20th century, it's connection with torture in the Phillipines over 100 years ago, and the connection to modern day torture in the so-called global and never-ending "War on Terror" (particularly Abu Ghraib), and finally bringing it all together with Foucaultian notions of Discipline and Punish.
Connected to that Abu Ghraib blib, and also connected to people following orders so much that they become zombies, I thought we could watch the movie 28 Weeks Later, and then read parts of the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City:Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran to talk about the Green Zone in Baghdad (and, if needed, to try and link that to the American notions of fantasy, myth, story-telling, and the Wizard of Oz in early 20th century American culture.)
Hopefully there is some fund out there that might pay me to put something like this together. If you know of one, please let me know! I love you guys. Love, rog
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2 comments:
Whoa. Here's some crazy follow-up on this.
1) The Philippines Thriller dance is not CGI. It's a real group of hardened prisoners, most of whom are/were jailed for murder, rape, or violent drug-related crimes. And, yes, that is a transvestite man who also happens to be a prisoner. But, he proclaims his innocence. Check the news and documentary reports.
CNN:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6658051497653182809&q=Philippines+Thriller&hl=en
Al Jazeera:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6658051497653182809&q=Philippines+Thriller&hl=en
20 min. Brit documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watchv=wAjItY7X0Yc&feature=related
2) There are more videos online, put there by the jail's warden, Bryon F. Garcia:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6658051497653182809&q=Philippines+Thriller&hl=en
3) The dancing is considered, by some, to be forced methods of torture. Yet, these people are in prison. Does that make it okay?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6658051497653182809&q=Philippines+Thriller&hl=en
This leads to the question, is it torture to force prisoners to do hard labor? What if their labors are giant, choreographed dances that have helped eliminate drugs and violence within the prison?
4) The jail system in the Philippines seems amazingly slow as many of the dancers have been in this maximum security prison for years, simply awaiting trail. Wait, that sounds like the US system:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pjim06.htm,
http://www.sentencingproject.org/IssueAreaHome.aspx?IssueID=3
If you look at the facts on those sites related to the American Prison-Industrial Complex, American has a very serious problem with institutionalizing young black men in this country. (I find it sad that the major rise in black prison numbers was in the wake of the Black-Power movement in the early 1970s. Prison was the way the nation responded to Black Power.)
5) The question still stands: would it make sense to institute such a dance program in US prisons? Are arguments either for or against such a program in the US related to the long-standing Western view of Asians as being overly obedient and following orders from above? Is a race-based explanation connected to your answer of whether the dance program would work in the US or not?
6) How is religion related to the Philippines situation, as it is a nation with a strong Catholic background (it was a Spanish colony before being a US colony, then gained its independence from the US in the wake of WWII in 1946)? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYnzL5IuK3M&feature=related
7) Finally, just for S’s & G’s, these two things are wack and cool: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6658051497653182809&q=Philippines+Thriller&hl=en
and http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=25609
Like I said: Whoa.
Might Wikipedia explains more about the Thriller vid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_%28viral_video%29
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