User:Luisa Moura/writing/ideology/draft

(in progress)

How can we read the mechanics of Ideology in films like the ‘Act of Killing’ of Joshua Oppenheimer and ‘Enjoy Poverty’ of Renzo Martens? It is clear in both that we are forced to question and review our order of values, our own ideological threads. Understanding and interiorizing what these documentaries confront us with is a matter of ideological review. Two works that puzzle our perception in what is moral or not, in what is inherent in our own behavior and belief and what we refuse to see as other than something foreigner to our own context.

In both documentaries we are confronted with a reality that is at the same time politically or economically convenient for a ruling class and extremely immoral and tyrannical for a subjected mass of individuals. In the ‘Act of Killing’ the enormity of crime and its impunity is embodied in the enactment of an almost childish public tale; it is clear what is the desired political narrative and its clear which kind of strategy is followed to achieve it, its agents and their procedures. In ‘Enjoy Poverty’, the message is harder to get, in the sense that is much deeper embedded in what we actually tend to consider right. It refers to a subtle system of exploitation based on charitable intentions.

I’ll try to shortly introduce the content of both documentaries in order to be able to refer to it in a clearer way. The ‘Act of Killing’ tell us about the purge of communists, or people related to the communist party, that took place in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966. Thousands of people were killed by the military forces, trained or not trained civilians, Islamic volunteers and hired criminals. The documentary follows a small group of this ‘gangsters’ that still live in impunity and public glory nowadays. The ideological farce that allowed the killings has been kept alive by guarantying the stability of interests around all its perpetrators and by the permanent re-telling or re-enactment of the events.

In ‘Enjoy Poverty’ Renzo Martens takes us in several steps to understand the market value of poverty in Congo and the reasons underlying its persistency. He points out to the local inhabitants that his purpose is to tell them that their poverty will actually never end and that they would better get used to that idea and enjoy what they have.

(Loose notes)

Enjoy Poverty

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International aid: war, vulnerability, starvation, IN NEED. Žižek: designation of a victim in need (taxi driver, searchers), embodiment of action, objectification for a broader purpose. In Congo, natural resources, taxi driver, Travis’s hidden fantasies.

We need a moral reason to act publicly in the pursuit of our desires: engagement of the others, collaborative deception, and the necessary framework for ideology (the offer of a public deal) Charity: the ego of the developed country citizen. Identity and position (Titanic); convenient disguise for the victimhood produced by our own means of exploitation; illusion of hope for the exploited and the perpetuation of their poverty. Photography (art) as ideological laundering: framing of reality and value maker. Territorial invasion and geographical control: humanitarian help, military forces, diplomatic agents, for a state of peace but actually protecting commercial exploitation.

(...)

Act of Killing

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Ideology: the country is free from a disgusting plague. Concentration of fears into one subject (Žižek); what were people afraid of? Political instability, latent violence; people choose to channel this into the ‘other’ as soon as they had the chance to. The engagement of civilians in the killings was fundamental for the actual status quo; everyone feels guilty and is still kept in a state of fear (Hannah Arendt and the Nazi late gossips: spreading the guilt).

The mechanisms of impunity and the preservation of ideology: cognitive dissonance; public rewarding of gangsters, ignorance, violence, stupidity and narcissism; re-enactment of events, repetition of senseless propaganda. (The Emperor’s new clothes)