User:Zigbe/writingTriester3

Enjoy Poverty III x Pervert Guide to Ideology x Act of Killing

Cynic reasoning.
In "Enjoy Poverty p.III" you see Renzo Martens in a journey to Africa where he implies to come to help Africans to understand that poverty is a resource which the Africans should know how to exploit by themselves. In order to illustrate that idea he shows how journalists and NGOs benefits from African poverty as much as more obvious entrepreneurs such as farmers, diamond and gold hunters. Renzo is sharp on his comments, his vanity is clearly stated towards the end of the film and his arrogance confuses the feelings of the viewer. Eventually he is quite straight forward when saying to a worker that he should loose his hopes because nothing will ever get better. At this point my own hypocrisy manifests like punch on my stomach and I want to hate Renzo.
Renzo is sharp portraying his position as the western trying to help the poor people of Africa. He is aware of his patronizing position using arrogance as a medium to develop his idea. There is no clear border between right or wrong, leaving it to the viewer to find one's own path. Renzon straight forwardness to the Africans when telling them to loose their hopes for better is painful, it makes my stomach move inside out. Despite Africa being the main subject in the screen, I believe Renzo manages to add so many layers to the whole film presenting it with so many possible interpretations making it a quite rich and confusing experience to watch the film. One thing that becomes more obvious every time I watch it again is that it I not a film about Africa. Besides using Africa as a the subject, the film is a quite evident self portrait of the remains of western colonialist arrogance (if I may call remains), a superiority complex towards the "other". It also shows that this arrogance is so engraved and indoctrinated in western culture, that his attitude becomes confusing even to the most well intended minds. The film also breaks open that the charity / NGO industry benefits as much as African exploitation as the "evil" exploitation already known, and the "good will" industry is not only profiting financially from African poverty, but also ideologically. All the good will propaganda surrounding it works to help clear the mind of the richer minds around the globe who believes in The altruistic intentions of the countries ad NGO's, but also keeping a hierarchical position inside Africa, which keep the Africans believing in their inferiority. As Zizac puts well, they keep the Africans alive and just content enough to not protest against this whole system build on top of them.
Zizac film Pervert Guide to ideology, where he reads trough the images of Hollywood films the iconic representations of ideology used as capitalistic propaganda disguised as entertainment. His interpretation are sharp and quite interesting. But here I see the cynic reasoning in a different lens. Not trough how he reads the films, but he is read. On my view his soft-radical discourse puts him in the same position as he reads Starbucks in one of his discourses. He represents the amazing paradoxical and complex layers of capitalism. A system that not only aloud itself to be criticized, in contrast to communism, but also, a system which transforms radicalism and self criticism back to itself and gain from it. I feel that Zizak soft discourses very often becomes just entertainment for the intellectual "politicized" elite, which enjoys listening to him to believe they are consuming something important, and that they care about the world and politics. Zizac represents here his own version of bio-fairtrade-radical-socialist-frapuccino.
Using Zizak comments on full metal Jacket, both himself and Renzo Martens work as the Joker. The character who can be inside a system keeping his distance enough to have a critical view on it, but at the same time becomes the perfect soldier.
In Act of killing the director portraits a character of the Indonesian dictatorship. This character was responsible for the death of several communists and through out the film he describes with pride how he killed people with no entropy what so ever. Coming from a country which suffered from dictatorship myself, the film raises several questions in my mind.
At first It is impressive to observe the level of alienation of the gangsters, completely educated by American cinema. They seem to fit as perfect empty vessels for an ideology they don't even understand but are happy to fit in without questioning it in order to manifest their violent behaviors. Still in contemporary times the country celebrates the atrocities committed during the time, while the people seems to silently disagree with this violent celebration. The protagonists seems to barely understand communism convinced that all his killings and violence against his own people is right since he was grated to power to do so. He makes uses of a situation he doesn't fully understand as an excuse to abuse of power and murder people. Reenacting his killings seems to have an effect on his character. While he seems to deal with the ghosts of the past he raises his head with pride and show off in front of the director. Coming from a country which suffered from dictatorship, I see a contrast in their actions. We learned thought out the decades to question the situation, not only condemning the killers and people in the front line but as well questioning the invisible powers behind which manipulated and supported the dictatorship by imposing an ideology which didn't fit South America by the time.
Fin.