A State Of Mind

This was a really fascinating look behind the curtain of North Korea. I never fathomed that the government would allow such a thing to happen. But I guess I juts assumed that because they'd never let U.S. have a peak back there. They hate the U.S. Blind hatred. The comical kind of hatred where everything that goes wrong (the nightly power outages, famine, etc) is somehow the fault of the U.S. They're raised to hate America. They love socialism and communism, and we don't, so they hate us. Also, we bombed them pretty bad in the 50s and they think of us as US imperialists. They have a great example to fall back on with Bush invading Iraq and basically destroying it. Old U.S. Up to their old tricks.

The fact that North Korea hates the US because of the war and the bombing and the atrocities and the killing of millions of their people, makes me feel bad. I know I had nothing to do with it, but it kind of feels like that guy you hate at work who when you find out he hates you, it makes you feel bad. Even though you don't like him yourself. You don't want the people you hate to hate you. You want everyone to like you, even the people you hate.

Still, I don't even know how they got this kind of access. I would assume Kim Jong Il's people had to approve of it before it could be released. And they do only make all true statements that just seem to come off as offensive because of what the truths are, but it's still pretty impressive that they got that much access.

When it comes to the actual content of the film, what a look into their way of life. The TV has one channel (full of propaganda) that runs for 5 hours a day. The state run radio pipes into each and every home. You can turn it down, but you can't turn it off. What a power trip. That has SUCH implications. On the upside, when it comes to the tv stuff, it's easy to say to someone "hey, did you catch this on tv last night." Makes small talk really easy. Unfortunately, they don't seem to do small talk.

From the outside, this thing functions like a cult or some excellent long con brainwashing. Like, it's fine for them, because they know no other life, but you guys, as Maria, my busser at Fridays says, "this is no fine." And you could say that who are we to judge because it works for them...but is it really?

It's pretty impressive how nice of a floor show they can put on when they practice from 12 hours a day in 8 below freezing whether...on concrete.