It was amazing, both the documentary and the Games themselves. The documentary blew me away for how much subtext you can cram into a camera angle or a well-placed silence, and how strictly the letter of the law was followed to gain unprecedented access to the every day lives of North Koreans with state permission. Seriously, that's saying a lot. If you watch the movie through the filter of knowing that a government minder must have sat through it ready to pounce on any untoward remark about the Dear Leader, or his penchant for pageantry, or about any of the preposterous things that make up the curriculum of the average school day for these pre-adolscent competitive gymnasts... it's incredible how much still gets through and how decorously even-handed the film makers are about how they say all of it.
The Games, though: here's where I caught myself really struggling with the content and message of the film. The Games really are fucking amazing. The discipline required in learning and executing all those moves, the perfection of symmetry among hundreds and hundreds of human bodies, some of them clearly no older than five! And the conceptual creativity required to tell the same--admit it, lame, thin, and certainly improbable--story of nationalistic glory, year after year with varying themes totally blows me away. How many different ways can you say "Kim Jong Il totally rocks and it's great to be from North Korea"? Many, many, many apparently. I am totally serious when I say that watching the footage of those performances, the perfection of execution and the earnestness on the performers' faces, actually brought tears to my eyes. They really believe. And who knew little tiny kids could concentrate and train that hard? Maybe we are lazy imperialists...
Of course, all of this is tempered by seeing how sadly meager the content of their classwork is, and the degree and severity of the injuries caused by such incessant training, not to mention the utter lack of sleep and the ongoing food and energy crises the country gamely suffers through. And the most heartbreaking thing of all? Spoiler alert: out of 40 performances of last year's Mass Games, the Dear Leader hauls his permed, make-up wearing ass to exactly zero. And the kids hear about it and are crushed each night he doesn't show, and yet they still make up reasons not to be disappointed, just as they've heard their parents doing to explain why there's not enough food or why the electricity went out when it's -8 degrees outside. Again.
Also, because I am unusually prone to drawing connections where none exist, I will say that perhaps my main beef with the Wives' Club is that they appear sometimes to have taken a page from Kim Jon Il's playbook. What will keep the masses from grumbling--with good reason-- about the steadily dwindling time they have together with their spouses? Too many fundraisers! Whose purpose is to raise funds to put on more fundraisers! Volunteers are needed [strongly suggested] and a sign-up sheet is being passed around! Your absence will be noted [ha ha! No, really.]!
Thus begins my long-awaited, and long-delayed campaign of gradual disengagement. Do I fear reprisals and the isolation of unplugging from the hive mind? Sadly, yes. But for bad reasons. Part of me stayed involved for so long because I had hoped the organization would actually lend some kind of support when I was feeling most alone, or help me make sense of military life and its attendant sacrifices. That didn't happen, and I should have unplugged the moment I was certain it wouldn't, which would have dropped me from the rosters about a year ago. The Bad Me stayed on longer in vindictive researcher mode, subjecting myself to meetings purely in order to take notes and figure out why the hell anyone else was going. The problem with that is that then you're the scientist who's got a hypothesis she's so sure of, it blinds her to the experiment's actual result. Which was what? Who knows anymore: that's exactly my point. I'm so pissed off and disappointed I've lost all perspective and am instead like the tiny particles of lead in your brightly painted nursery: a toxic influence blending in.
So instead, I watch Netflix documentaries about North Korea, liberally employ the delete button on my email account, and if I make any baked goods at all they go straight into my own mouth. If that's not American to the core, I don't know what is.
