It's hard to tell both the severe ultra-capitalists and the crazy anti-capitalists that they're both wrong and that we need to find a happy medium, when the capitalists keep fucking everyone around en masse. It makes the craziest, most extreme among the anti-capitalists seem dangerously close to sane.
The latest big fuck-up to worry about is a leak of documents from the Heartland Institute, an American organisation devoted to making things more capitalisty. That's my wording, but honestly not changed too much from their own mission statement. And these leaked documents suggest that they have been awfully unethical in trying to convince people that climate change isn't a real thing. Interestingly, Heartland is denying this, saying the documents are both stolen and fake, which suggests they either aren't stolen documents (they're merely fakes that someone else made, and so cannot have been stolen), or that they keep a supply of their own fake documents, and someone stole those, or that Heartland is full of shit. All very odd.
So what do these documents say? You can read the link above for a fuller account, or better still, read the original documents yourself, but in summary it's a policy document discussing their plans to stop people hearing anything about science (specifically climate change-related science), in school and in the media, and to replace it with their own denialist propaganda. And they've got piles of cash dedicated to nothing but spreading their own message and blocking any other. (And somehow, people call me crazy when I suggest that we live in a society that allows advertising, marketing and public relations far too much influence. It's a struggle to get any important, straight story out past all the random noise, let alone the direct counter-propaganda.)
Contrast this with the 2009 CRU email leak, which had climate change deniers crowing for a short while. The recent Heartland leak has been called a counterpoint to that event, but the two have very little in common. For a start, the Climatic Research Unit people didn't immediately deny everything (nor call the emails fake, let alone both at the same time). They agreed that the emails were genuine, but not a big deal, and carefully explained how they were no sort of evidence of conspiracy at all, that they merely showed some routine processes of honest science, and then pointed out that absolutely none of their data was uniquely "theirs" and that anyone doubting their figures could check with the originators of the data. A perfectly reasonable response by scientists engaged in science, and no serious scientist has thought anything more of it since then.
Heartland, on the other hand, has shown its PRvertising streak by immediately throwing out some meaningless confusion, pointing fingers elsewhere and trying to draw attention away from the actual content of the documents. Given that there can be no genuine scientific value in a large and blatant propaganda campaign, they would be foolish to even consider debating the merrits of their policies honestly and directly.
To be fair, this could be some sort of fakery, a smear campaign against Heartland, but given their actual public policies, you really wouldn't need to fabricate anything new to smear them pretty well. I took a look at their education policy, just out of curiosity, and their position can be summed up as, "pay public teachers less, make private schools for rich kids better." So, fuck 'em.
Also, someone give me a better collective term for all the various commercial opinion-manipulation services than 'PRvertising'.
Finally, this last bit should not be taken as any sort of serious evidence that they're Evil™, but given my established interest in names and naming, am I alone in thinking that The Heartland Institute is a pretty decent Evil™ Corporation name, in the 1984 Doublespeak style? The 'institute' part makes it seem like they're official and clever and officially clever, while Heartland has got to appeal to patriotic sorts - with their hearts and their lands so bizarrely intertwined - without even gluing itself too closely to any particular state's patriots. Silly, putty-brained patriots; you're one more reason powerful PRvertising is a serious problem. There is, of course, a region Americans informally know as the heartland, and this can by some accounts physically, though not really culturally, include Chicago, where this Institute has been based since its foundation in the '80s. But I'd bet it's a name chosen more for emotional effect than descriptive value.
Monday, 20 February 2012
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
General Catch-up and Colonel Mustard
It's been a stupidly busy few months here, and I'm hoping I can force myself back into blag-writing mode by typing up a few small thoughts, instead of trying to jump straight back into the deep end with a full-sized essay.
Looking at Little Kids for too long
I've reached an interesting if unimportant milestone as an educator: Although 2012 is my 4th year in the teachy-tutory business, it's only this year that I've been with the same kids for over 2 consecutive years. In other words, the grade 10s I started with in 2010 are all in grade 12 now, so I've dealt with them in 3 different grades. Obviously the grade 10s and 11s I had way back in 2009 are out of school now, but I only ever saw them in 2009, so I didn't get to watch their development first-hand. And watching that progress is interesting. You get to see some kids keeping up the same struggles year after year, while others somehow manage to overcome their various hurdles and make immense progress. I wish the boss kept better records, so we could quantify that progress, but the anecdotes alone can be particularly gratifying. For example, the little grade 10 girl, either playing at or actually being a cliche ditsy blond, and either way genuinely struggling with her work, is now one of our best grade 12s, getting marks consistently over 90%. Massive brain on her, and many others, and it does get me thinking a lot about their future prospects. And there things can get a bit depressing again. I know very well how crappy the real world is at helping people make the most of themselves. Some of them have even said they want to go into marketing!
But, good news to raise the mood again: I've kept in touch with some of the kids (well, former kids) from my first batch of grade 11s from 2009, and I'm pleased to see they've turned into some fine young men, putting their large brains to good work. (I hope there are some fine young women with large brains from that batch too, since several of them got consistently higher marks than their male peers, but I haven't heard from any yet.) I'd like to give particular praise to Siyabonga, who took the unusual step of re-doing the whole of grade 12 maths and science last year. You might argue that anyone could raise their results if they got a 2nd year to try it, but 1.) not many people actually bother to do so, accepting the added financial burden and social stigma, and B.) the man improved his results by 26% and 20% respectively, which is not a negligible improvement at all.
Fucking Babies!
More of my friends are breeding. It's like they have some instinctive compulsion or something. I'll have to write a full essay later on, explaining all the reasons this is a bad idea, but in summary: Too Many People Already, and also End of Bachelor Freedom. Of course, nobody listens to me. At the same time, I am quite keen to do my bit for those excess kids who have been forced upon the world by the breeding-mad, as a person who actually exists is a very different ethical entity to one who may only potentially exist. Unfortunately, by waiting for full existence to be confirmed, I tend to miss out on some of the more fun things, like name-picking. It's also possible that some parents get confused by my sudden post-natal flip in attitude, which may alienate me a bit too.
Inappropriate Touches on Short People
I'm quite excited about The Hobbit movies. The Lord of the Rings movies were a breathe of fresh fantasy air when they came out (the first one over 10 years ago! How old am I!?), but I've always felt The Hobbit was the better, more interesting story. I'm generally opposed to Hollywood's re-hash madness, and haven't watched a recently released movie in ages as a result of my re-hash boycott. But The Hobbit is one that may actually be more than worthwhile. There's not much that can be judged from the initial trailer alone, but I reckon it'll be alright. The one thing that really bugs me, though, is that they've fucked with the dwarf beards. Reading The Hobbit back in grade 8 English is the whole reason I chose to play a dwarf army in Warhammer, and their beards, both in that game and in the Tolkien book, are a major point of focus. It's made completely clear that they're supposed to have massive great big fuck-off beards, much as Gimli was given in the Lord of the Rings. So long, they had to be tied in knots and tucked into belts, was Tolkien's description. But instead, it seems the new dwarf look is a bunch of frizzy little gnome-whiskers, and Thorin Oakenshield himself barely has a beard at all! It's madness, and I will not stand for it, much.
I assume it was done so that racist, dwarf-hatin' audiences could tell them apart more easily, but A.) Only fans are going to care which is Fili and which is Kili, and 2.) speaking as a sculptor and painter of Warhammer dwarves smaller than 5th distal phalanx, you can totally make dozens of dwarves with similar massive beards look very different from each other. It's mainly in the eyes and noses, though clothing differences help too.
Mysterious Difficulty Finding Employment
I've known for well over a year that I need to find a new job. Tutoring just never pays enough for a fully independent lifestyle. I've sent off a few CVs, but I think a lot of the problem has to do with how uncertain I feel about my chosen academic field, Development studies. It's not that I regret studying it, but that there seems to be a massive gap between what I was hoping to do with it, and what the world will allow me to do with it. The job ads seem to fall into two neat piles, the drudgery work (reception, fund raising), and the interesting stuff (planning and management, the shit I actually studied), and I'm stuck in an awkward spot between the two, over-qualified and under-excited about the drudge pile, and under-qualified for the interesting pile, almost all of which demands a master's degree and 5 years experience, minimum. And sure, I'm working on the master's (got 2 pages of my proposal written up this weekend!), but how the hell does anyone get a foot in the door in this business?
Looking at Little Kids for too long
I've reached an interesting if unimportant milestone as an educator: Although 2012 is my 4th year in the teachy-tutory business, it's only this year that I've been with the same kids for over 2 consecutive years. In other words, the grade 10s I started with in 2010 are all in grade 12 now, so I've dealt with them in 3 different grades. Obviously the grade 10s and 11s I had way back in 2009 are out of school now, but I only ever saw them in 2009, so I didn't get to watch their development first-hand. And watching that progress is interesting. You get to see some kids keeping up the same struggles year after year, while others somehow manage to overcome their various hurdles and make immense progress. I wish the boss kept better records, so we could quantify that progress, but the anecdotes alone can be particularly gratifying. For example, the little grade 10 girl, either playing at or actually being a cliche ditsy blond, and either way genuinely struggling with her work, is now one of our best grade 12s, getting marks consistently over 90%. Massive brain on her, and many others, and it does get me thinking a lot about their future prospects. And there things can get a bit depressing again. I know very well how crappy the real world is at helping people make the most of themselves. Some of them have even said they want to go into marketing!
But, good news to raise the mood again: I've kept in touch with some of the kids (well, former kids) from my first batch of grade 11s from 2009, and I'm pleased to see they've turned into some fine young men, putting their large brains to good work. (I hope there are some fine young women with large brains from that batch too, since several of them got consistently higher marks than their male peers, but I haven't heard from any yet.) I'd like to give particular praise to Siyabonga, who took the unusual step of re-doing the whole of grade 12 maths and science last year. You might argue that anyone could raise their results if they got a 2nd year to try it, but 1.) not many people actually bother to do so, accepting the added financial burden and social stigma, and B.) the man improved his results by 26% and 20% respectively, which is not a negligible improvement at all.
Fucking Babies!
More of my friends are breeding. It's like they have some instinctive compulsion or something. I'll have to write a full essay later on, explaining all the reasons this is a bad idea, but in summary: Too Many People Already, and also End of Bachelor Freedom. Of course, nobody listens to me. At the same time, I am quite keen to do my bit for those excess kids who have been forced upon the world by the breeding-mad, as a person who actually exists is a very different ethical entity to one who may only potentially exist. Unfortunately, by waiting for full existence to be confirmed, I tend to miss out on some of the more fun things, like name-picking. It's also possible that some parents get confused by my sudden post-natal flip in attitude, which may alienate me a bit too.
Inappropriate Touches on Short People
I'm quite excited about The Hobbit movies. The Lord of the Rings movies were a breathe of fresh fantasy air when they came out (the first one over 10 years ago! How old am I!?), but I've always felt The Hobbit was the better, more interesting story. I'm generally opposed to Hollywood's re-hash madness, and haven't watched a recently released movie in ages as a result of my re-hash boycott. But The Hobbit is one that may actually be more than worthwhile. There's not much that can be judged from the initial trailer alone, but I reckon it'll be alright. The one thing that really bugs me, though, is that they've fucked with the dwarf beards. Reading The Hobbit back in grade 8 English is the whole reason I chose to play a dwarf army in Warhammer, and their beards, both in that game and in the Tolkien book, are a major point of focus. It's made completely clear that they're supposed to have massive great big fuck-off beards, much as Gimli was given in the Lord of the Rings. So long, they had to be tied in knots and tucked into belts, was Tolkien's description. But instead, it seems the new dwarf look is a bunch of frizzy little gnome-whiskers, and Thorin Oakenshield himself barely has a beard at all! It's madness, and I will not stand for it, much.
I assume it was done so that racist, dwarf-hatin' audiences could tell them apart more easily, but A.) Only fans are going to care which is Fili and which is Kili, and 2.) speaking as a sculptor and painter of Warhammer dwarves smaller than 5th distal phalanx, you can totally make dozens of dwarves with similar massive beards look very different from each other. It's mainly in the eyes and noses, though clothing differences help too.
Mysterious Difficulty Finding Employment
I've known for well over a year that I need to find a new job. Tutoring just never pays enough for a fully independent lifestyle. I've sent off a few CVs, but I think a lot of the problem has to do with how uncertain I feel about my chosen academic field, Development studies. It's not that I regret studying it, but that there seems to be a massive gap between what I was hoping to do with it, and what the world will allow me to do with it. The job ads seem to fall into two neat piles, the drudgery work (reception, fund raising), and the interesting stuff (planning and management, the shit I actually studied), and I'm stuck in an awkward spot between the two, over-qualified and under-excited about the drudge pile, and under-qualified for the interesting pile, almost all of which demands a master's degree and 5 years experience, minimum. And sure, I'm working on the master's (got 2 pages of my proposal written up this weekend!), but how the hell does anyone get a foot in the door in this business?
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Coarse summary
Life's been hugely chaotic recently. Crazy-busy work as the kids prepare for exams, certain lovely lady-persons moving up to Joburg, complex roleplaying games planning, etc. So I'm full of blog thoughts, but haven't had time to write much. Here at least, as promised, are my closing thoughts on the conflict transformation course I did last month.
In short, it got better. The facilitators never really improved and kept mismanaging time horribly, mostly wasting it on overly-elaborate metaphorical games that could be neatly reduced to a single sentence without losing any meaning. But, ignoring them, it was pretty good. The guest speakers were all excellent, generally relying on a more traditional and more informative lecturing format, and I wished we'd had more time to hear from them. One even gave us each copies of a nice textbook on African socio-economic inequalities that he'd co-written. Our visits to the Apartheid Museum and Constitution Hill were also great, and I can definitely recommend visits to both.
But the real value of the course, for me, was in what I learned from the other participants. Working in the thick of real conflicts (with plenty of stories of beatings, imprisonment, confrontations with police and assorted intimidation), they had far more insider knowledge about the state of their states (some of which, like Malawi, I hadn't even realised had any conflicts to deal with), as well as on the practical side of dealing with such conflicts. The facilitators found their main use in simply prodding us all along, getting everyone to discuss different aspects of their own experiences, and we had much more to learn from each other than any other source. Even I got to teach them something a little useful, as many weren't aware of the continuing racial inequality in South Africa. Most seemed to assume that everything here's been perfectly hunky dory since 1994, and were surprised at the complex, messy reality we've got instead.
I'd also like to point your attention to some of the main, active organisations my co-participants were from, as they're doing hard, important work in their respective countries, and could use some more publicity. At the very least, make yourself aware of the core problems in their countries:
In short, it got better. The facilitators never really improved and kept mismanaging time horribly, mostly wasting it on overly-elaborate metaphorical games that could be neatly reduced to a single sentence without losing any meaning. But, ignoring them, it was pretty good. The guest speakers were all excellent, generally relying on a more traditional and more informative lecturing format, and I wished we'd had more time to hear from them. One even gave us each copies of a nice textbook on African socio-economic inequalities that he'd co-written. Our visits to the Apartheid Museum and Constitution Hill were also great, and I can definitely recommend visits to both.
But the real value of the course, for me, was in what I learned from the other participants. Working in the thick of real conflicts (with plenty of stories of beatings, imprisonment, confrontations with police and assorted intimidation), they had far more insider knowledge about the state of their states (some of which, like Malawi, I hadn't even realised had any conflicts to deal with), as well as on the practical side of dealing with such conflicts. The facilitators found their main use in simply prodding us all along, getting everyone to discuss different aspects of their own experiences, and we had much more to learn from each other than any other source. Even I got to teach them something a little useful, as many weren't aware of the continuing racial inequality in South Africa. Most seemed to assume that everything here's been perfectly hunky dory since 1994, and were surprised at the complex, messy reality we've got instead.
I'd also like to point your attention to some of the main, active organisations my co-participants were from, as they're doing hard, important work in their respective countries, and could use some more publicity. At the very least, make yourself aware of the core problems in their countries:
- Zimbabwe Human Rights Association
- Swaziland Democracy Campaign
- (more to follow once I've looked them up again)
Monday, 24 October 2011
On the Facilitation of the Utilisation of Bullshit
Ugh.
I was offered a great bargain on a peace-building (or conflict transformation, as they call it) course and leapt at it. Today was day 1 of the 5-day course, and these are my initial, unprocessed thoughts. I'm tired, grumpy and a bit disappointed, which will likely colour my assessment.
First, it was certainly professional enough. I've had far, far worse. The venue's nice (not their fault the weather's so shitty hot), the manager took interest in my vegan needs (though someone fucked up communicating that there'd be me and 2 vegetarians, so it was dumb luck that lunch was edible), and the course materials are all decent quality.
What annoys me, more than anything, is how incredibly dull it's been. I'd been a bit fearful, expecting something really challenging and well out of what I'm used to (I haven't formally studied anything like this in 5 years, nor worked in it), with towering intellectuals mocking my inexperience as they passed around concepts that I could barely identify. Instead, it's been piss easy. The other participants are all bright enough, and mostly more experienced than me - almost all are from other African countries, where conflict is more real and pressing - but I get the impression that nobody's taken it as seriously as me, and that a few even view it as some sort of holiday. And the two main lecturers, or whatever the term is, the only speakers we had today, frankly aren't up to my standards. When I asked challenging questions, rather than opening things up for discussion, they were more eager to railroad us back onto their prepared lesson. There were scheduling problems, and I blame it on the wanky time-wasting activities they gave us in place of serious teaching. Badly communicated activities too, so that half of us didn't actually get what they wanted from us. It's all a bit baby-level.
I'm hoping, though, that this was just the first day intro crap. Tomorrow, we're getting a real professor (head of my old Politics department, though he only arrived after I'd left, so I've never met him) and then a tour of the Apartheid Museum, which should at least be more interesting. Then I'm GMing my regular weekly WFRP game immediately after that, so I hope the heat doesn't kill me.
I'll report in again at the end of the week. I hope it's good news.
I was offered a great bargain on a peace-building (or conflict transformation, as they call it) course and leapt at it. Today was day 1 of the 5-day course, and these are my initial, unprocessed thoughts. I'm tired, grumpy and a bit disappointed, which will likely colour my assessment.
First, it was certainly professional enough. I've had far, far worse. The venue's nice (not their fault the weather's so shitty hot), the manager took interest in my vegan needs (though someone fucked up communicating that there'd be me and 2 vegetarians, so it was dumb luck that lunch was edible), and the course materials are all decent quality.
What annoys me, more than anything, is how incredibly dull it's been. I'd been a bit fearful, expecting something really challenging and well out of what I'm used to (I haven't formally studied anything like this in 5 years, nor worked in it), with towering intellectuals mocking my inexperience as they passed around concepts that I could barely identify. Instead, it's been piss easy. The other participants are all bright enough, and mostly more experienced than me - almost all are from other African countries, where conflict is more real and pressing - but I get the impression that nobody's taken it as seriously as me, and that a few even view it as some sort of holiday. And the two main lecturers, or whatever the term is, the only speakers we had today, frankly aren't up to my standards. When I asked challenging questions, rather than opening things up for discussion, they were more eager to railroad us back onto their prepared lesson. There were scheduling problems, and I blame it on the wanky time-wasting activities they gave us in place of serious teaching. Badly communicated activities too, so that half of us didn't actually get what they wanted from us. It's all a bit baby-level.
I'm hoping, though, that this was just the first day intro crap. Tomorrow, we're getting a real professor (head of my old Politics department, though he only arrived after I'd left, so I've never met him) and then a tour of the Apartheid Museum, which should at least be more interesting. Then I'm GMing my regular weekly WFRP game immediately after that, so I hope the heat doesn't kill me.
I'll report in again at the end of the week. I hope it's good news.
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Alice Who? A Review
It's been a slightly crazy couple weeks for me, with all my usual patterns jumbled up, and next week is going to be even worse, as I'm off on a course that I'll write about later.
One recent thing I did that I felt worth writing about was a dancey performance wossname I went to, for my friend Kobie's birthday. It was Alice Who? This Ain't Wonderland, performed by a bunch of Uj dance students at the Uj Arts Centre. This is at the Kingsway Campus, where I spent 4 years studying and am technically still currently studying (though the last time I went in for academic reasons may have been as far back as 2009), and yet this was the first time I'd set foot in (or even at all near) the Arts Centre. I watched them build it, I think in my 2nd and/or 3rd years, and I still couldn't have told you a thing about what was inside there. The theater part of it, it turns out, is quite nice, retaining the bare concrete look of the rest of the buildings, but still managing to look a bit sophisticated and clean.
The performance itself was pretty fucking cool. I don't think I've paid to watch dancing ever, not because I have anything against it, just that I never have. But this was visually amazing, with colour and movement and shit all working together seamlessly, and it impressed the pants off of me. Totally worth the cost (and cheaper than some movie tickets). I think, with all the conveniences of modern 3D animation and other technological wossnames (you may have noticed, I'm a bit out of my depth on the technical details), you'd still struggle to make something look as impressive and enchanting as the "simple" movements of just people alone. It was simply really well planned and executed, by someone who'd thought very hard about how the end result would appear to the audience. The dancers themselves were also obviously really good, to pull off some really complicated shit and make it look effortless. I have nothing but praise for the dance side of this dance performance.
The only weird bit was the plot. Be warned, spoilers will follow, though this isn't really the sort of thing you watch for the plot. From the title, you should have guessed that it was a variation on Alice in Wonderland, but it seems I got a totally different interpretation of this modified story than anyone else. Officially, and it seems everyone was just happy to take this as given, 'Alice Who?' was a drug tragedy, with the White Rabbit representing drugs and with Alice slipping between reality (where she had some vague relationship trouble) and "Wonderland" (where interesting things happened).
I can kind of see how you might have read it all that way. But bear in mind that it was entirely wordless, and so there was plenty of room for interpretation beyond the obvious, physical stuff (which, remember, was all dance, not the clearest form of communication). I got quite a different plot, and I think I can show that my interpretation fits the performance far better than just, "Alice is on drugs, drugs are weird, plus there's bad stuff."
The core of my version is that Alice represents Africa (not because the dancer playing Alice happened to be black, though that doesn't hurt the metaphor), and the whole performance is about the place of Africa in international politics, and how the continent remains under something of a post-colonial yoke, abused and controlled by the world's great powers. My first big clue was the White Rabbit, who was fairly neutral and disinterested in the original story; he was just trying to sort out his own life, and Alice kept following along behind him. In this version, he was distinctly sinister, giving Alice/Africa small treats, but clearly also someone to worry about. And compared with the other players, the White Rabbit was quite subtle, almost a background character, not yet very clear to Alice and so poorly understood. Clearly, I thunk to meself, the White Rabbit here can only represent the expanding influence of China.
After that, the rest all fell neatly into place. The Queen of Hearts and her entourage clearly represented the US (or perhaps the West, more broadly), dominant, powerful and arrogant. This American faction was divided into two groups. The first, the Queen and her burlesque dancers (I don't recall them from the original story, but you never know with Lewis Carroll), represented the misleading attraction of the US. Pretty on the surface, maybe, with its Hollywood glamour and American Dream, but beneath that, simply brutal, executing prisoners like some tinpot dictatorship and thinking nothing of completely dominating Africa. The other half, the break-dancing/capoeira Playing Cards, stood for the military-industrial complex. Aggressive, dangerous, mechanical. Couldn't have been more plain. (The fact that Alice can so easily knock the cards over is perhaps a reference to how flimsy American might has proved to be in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, suggesting that Africa is only dominated by American interests when it allows itself to be.)
Then there were the guests at the Mad Tea Party. Fun, vibrant, silly, but ultimately powerless any time outsiders butted in. This whole party represented the way outsiders see Africa; a bunch of traditional dancers and tourist-pleasers, good for movies like The Lion King or Born Free, good for nature documentaries made by old white men, but not to be taken seriously as real political players on the international stage. Alice can distract herself in the tea party mentality for a short while, but soon reality (the Queen of Hearts) arrives and shows how unfeasible it is for Alice to pretend she belongs at the party.
Finally, there's Alice's boyfriend back in "reality." In fact, he is the fantasy, standing for the rose-tinted view many modern Africans have of pre-colonial African culture and politics, with a manly man in charge who Alice needs to make her complete and happy, but who was really mostly a paternalistic, despotic mess in most historic cases (Shaka Zulu being a prime example). And sure, some parts of the old boyfriend/pre-colonial culture might have been nice, and it might be worth looking for the same qualities in someone/something new, rather than just taking a cookie-cutter culture from elsewhere in the world. But that doesn't mean the old boyfriend/culture wasn't also bad in enough ways that it's better for Alice to move on now. Her pining for a false past distracts Alice when she should be focusing on the Queen of Hearts and White Rabbit, and she suffers as a result.
A masked ball starts up from nowhere, standing for the secrecy, indirectness and two-facedness with which a lot of international relations happen. The Queen and White Rabbit, openly hostile before, are happy to play nice so long as the masks are on, and there's no immediately obviously risk to Alice. But, of course, it really is all quite nefarious underneath the metaphorical and literal masks.
Suddenly, the single, subtle White Rabbit turns into swarming dozens of White Rabbits, now directly confronting Alice and dominating her directly. This does not end well for Alice. I'd surmise that this was meant to be a prediction that eventually China's presence will stop being subtle and indirect, once all the political dancing is done, the US/the West is out of the way and China can swoop in directly, taking what it wants without any serious resistance.
As I say, I'm apparently the only one who read the plot that way, but I think it's so much deeper and richer than anything the Uj Dance Company likely had in mind. I think if anyone was putting together dance shows as deep as I imagined this one to be, and as well performed as it really was, then I might do this sort of thing more often.
It also suggests there's much, much more that could be done by the PhD dancers.
The performance itself was pretty fucking cool. I don't think I've paid to watch dancing ever, not because I have anything against it, just that I never have. But this was visually amazing, with colour and movement and shit all working together seamlessly, and it impressed the pants off of me. Totally worth the cost (and cheaper than some movie tickets). I think, with all the conveniences of modern 3D animation and other technological wossnames (you may have noticed, I'm a bit out of my depth on the technical details), you'd still struggle to make something look as impressive and enchanting as the "simple" movements of just people alone. It was simply really well planned and executed, by someone who'd thought very hard about how the end result would appear to the audience. The dancers themselves were also obviously really good, to pull off some really complicated shit and make it look effortless. I have nothing but praise for the dance side of this dance performance.
The only weird bit was the plot. Be warned, spoilers will follow, though this isn't really the sort of thing you watch for the plot. From the title, you should have guessed that it was a variation on Alice in Wonderland, but it seems I got a totally different interpretation of this modified story than anyone else. Officially, and it seems everyone was just happy to take this as given, 'Alice Who?' was a drug tragedy, with the White Rabbit representing drugs and with Alice slipping between reality (where she had some vague relationship trouble) and "Wonderland" (where interesting things happened).
I can kind of see how you might have read it all that way. But bear in mind that it was entirely wordless, and so there was plenty of room for interpretation beyond the obvious, physical stuff (which, remember, was all dance, not the clearest form of communication). I got quite a different plot, and I think I can show that my interpretation fits the performance far better than just, "Alice is on drugs, drugs are weird, plus there's bad stuff."
The core of my version is that Alice represents Africa (not because the dancer playing Alice happened to be black, though that doesn't hurt the metaphor), and the whole performance is about the place of Africa in international politics, and how the continent remains under something of a post-colonial yoke, abused and controlled by the world's great powers. My first big clue was the White Rabbit, who was fairly neutral and disinterested in the original story; he was just trying to sort out his own life, and Alice kept following along behind him. In this version, he was distinctly sinister, giving Alice/Africa small treats, but clearly also someone to worry about. And compared with the other players, the White Rabbit was quite subtle, almost a background character, not yet very clear to Alice and so poorly understood. Clearly, I thunk to meself, the White Rabbit here can only represent the expanding influence of China.
After that, the rest all fell neatly into place. The Queen of Hearts and her entourage clearly represented the US (or perhaps the West, more broadly), dominant, powerful and arrogant. This American faction was divided into two groups. The first, the Queen and her burlesque dancers (I don't recall them from the original story, but you never know with Lewis Carroll), represented the misleading attraction of the US. Pretty on the surface, maybe, with its Hollywood glamour and American Dream, but beneath that, simply brutal, executing prisoners like some tinpot dictatorship and thinking nothing of completely dominating Africa. The other half, the break-dancing/capoeira Playing Cards, stood for the military-industrial complex. Aggressive, dangerous, mechanical. Couldn't have been more plain. (The fact that Alice can so easily knock the cards over is perhaps a reference to how flimsy American might has proved to be in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, suggesting that Africa is only dominated by American interests when it allows itself to be.)
Then there were the guests at the Mad Tea Party. Fun, vibrant, silly, but ultimately powerless any time outsiders butted in. This whole party represented the way outsiders see Africa; a bunch of traditional dancers and tourist-pleasers, good for movies like The Lion King or Born Free, good for nature documentaries made by old white men, but not to be taken seriously as real political players on the international stage. Alice can distract herself in the tea party mentality for a short while, but soon reality (the Queen of Hearts) arrives and shows how unfeasible it is for Alice to pretend she belongs at the party.
Finally, there's Alice's boyfriend back in "reality." In fact, he is the fantasy, standing for the rose-tinted view many modern Africans have of pre-colonial African culture and politics, with a manly man in charge who Alice needs to make her complete and happy, but who was really mostly a paternalistic, despotic mess in most historic cases (Shaka Zulu being a prime example). And sure, some parts of the old boyfriend/pre-colonial culture might have been nice, and it might be worth looking for the same qualities in someone/something new, rather than just taking a cookie-cutter culture from elsewhere in the world. But that doesn't mean the old boyfriend/culture wasn't also bad in enough ways that it's better for Alice to move on now. Her pining for a false past distracts Alice when she should be focusing on the Queen of Hearts and White Rabbit, and she suffers as a result.
A masked ball starts up from nowhere, standing for the secrecy, indirectness and two-facedness with which a lot of international relations happen. The Queen and White Rabbit, openly hostile before, are happy to play nice so long as the masks are on, and there's no immediately obviously risk to Alice. But, of course, it really is all quite nefarious underneath the metaphorical and literal masks.
Suddenly, the single, subtle White Rabbit turns into swarming dozens of White Rabbits, now directly confronting Alice and dominating her directly. This does not end well for Alice. I'd surmise that this was meant to be a prediction that eventually China's presence will stop being subtle and indirect, once all the political dancing is done, the US/the West is out of the way and China can swoop in directly, taking what it wants without any serious resistance.
As I say, I'm apparently the only one who read the plot that way, but I think it's so much deeper and richer than anything the Uj Dance Company likely had in mind. I think if anyone was putting together dance shows as deep as I imagined this one to be, and as well performed as it really was, then I might do this sort of thing more often.
It also suggests there's much, much more that could be done by the PhD dancers.
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