Why does Marxist criticism seem to apply so much better to North Korea than to, you know, capitalist societies? To the Gypsy Scholar’s observation, I’d like to add this example: Wovon Lebt Der Mensch. It plays during the opening credits of The Threepenny Opera, a blunt instrument of 1920’s German Communist propaganda whose Brecht-Weill score still contained some good gritty, gripping songs that have outlasted the film.
In the op-ed pages of Wall Street Journal, Melanie Kirkpatrick reports on the guerrilla cameramen of Rimjingang. They actually held a press conference in D.C. this week, and I regret that work prevented me from attending:
It is next to impossible for ordinary North Koreans to get close to military installations, the gulag or Kim Jong Eun. So the reporters have decided to focus on day-to-day life in North Korea, especially starvation, the growing market economy and corruption. They have produced more than 100 hours of video on these subjects. Among the tapes I viewed were ones that showed bags of rice labeled “WFP”–for the United Nations World Food Program–being sold in a marketplace, and soldiers using a military truck as a bus service for paying customers.
I hope this means we’ll hear and see more from them soon.
More on that rumored plot by Kim Jong-Eun to kill his older brother, Kim Jong Nam.
Hmmm. “South Korea’s military plans to construct refugee camps should internal turmoil in North Korea result in a massive influx of North Koreans here, a lawmaker revealed Tuesday.”
Jon Stewart’s take on Kim Jong Eun.
Thanks for the link, Joshua.
Jeffery Hodges
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Seoul Arrests Alleged N. Korean Spy
By Mark McDonald and Lee Su-Hyun
Ri Dong-sam is accused of going to South Korea to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/asia/21korea.html?_r=1&ref=world
“But investigators became suspicious when he gave confusing answers about his hometown.”
Seoul Arrests Alleded N. Korean Spy
by Mark McDonald and Lee Su-hyun
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/asia/21korea.html?_r=1&ref=world
Question: Did the journalist teams pay their own way into Pyongyang last week, and if so, wouldn’t some of them be in violation of international sanctions?
Also, thanks for the shoutout and the link the other day.
Jason,
International sanctions against North Korea don’t prohibit travel or general commerce with North Korea. The sanctions are specifically targeted at North Korea’s weapons proliferation activities and other illicit operations.
The US government maintains restrictions on the importation of North Korean goods, but transactions incidental to travel are not prohibited and neither are general financial transactions between Americans and North Korean citizens and companies (so long as these companies or individuals aren’t associated with illicit activities).
Thought you might be interested in the Chinese English-language press of all places denying South Korean (Korean-language) reports that a big contingent of PLA is on the way to Pyongyang.
There is also, by the way, a simply wonderful German site on North Korea (which is where I heard about the story in question) whose links (even if one does not speak German) tend to be rather rich, even if its author is evidently not quite the rollback and Goetterdaemmerung enthusiast that Joshua is.
Thanks Milton. I guess I assumed they wouldn’t be in violation considering journalists go there fairly often without recourse (that I knew of), it just struck me at once that their monetary support for the regime may be considered anti-productive and even possibly illegal, but I guess not. Even though I definitely took advantage of all the coverage recently, I still think, as a principle, it’s wrong to drop everything and pay the North foreign currency just to watch their elaborate propaganda display and report it as unbiased, “observed” news. But it will continue regardless of principle since any access we can get into the country is a good thing. Plus I’m sure their coffers were only boosted by a couple hundred thousand at most, but then again I have no clue what they charge, I only know that if international phone calls are “exorbitant”, then everything else must follow.
Jason,
Agreed. I too think it’s wrong to hand over all that foreign currency, especially considering no real information was gained. Really it was just about the networks being able to say that they had been in Pyongyang. Everything that was shown could have been garnered through KCTV news feeds and what not.
If North Korea were, say, more like Myanmar where tourists are free to explore, interact with the populace, and choose where they spend their money, I would have no problem with North Korean tourism or journalism expeditions. But it’s the fact that you pay the government upfront for all your expenses and spend your time on a very short leash seeing only what you’re wanted to see that makes the whole thing a pointless and morally wrong exercise.
Why does Marxist criticism seem to apply so much better to North Korea than to, you know, capitalist societies?
Answer: Because it is so much easier to see: The class divisions and the greed at the top
are more extreme.
NK does not have the rich resources to match either the US or China, depending on which comparison between capitalism and communism you take. They remain at the mercy of the world’s most powerful paymasters, despite their own despicable policies. They cannot come close to countering economic pressure applied from outside. The greater the pressure, the sooner the fall and the better for the common man everywhere.
Pulling back from the trees to see the entire forest, it may make sense to consider that
human nature is the same but only takes different forms, whether capitalist or commie.
Granted, no one can defend the brutal, inhumane situation in NK, but we should also keep in mind that our own society is also sliding toward despotism, be it ever so gradual and subtle. To be 100% honest is to revisit the criticisms of the communists in pre-1933 Germany, and see if they were valid points then and is there even a 1% shred of validity when we look at ourselves…
First: To call “The Threepenny Opera” – probably the best and most famous opus of one of the best and most famous writers in Germany (Brecht is actually required reading in German classes) – a “blunt instrument of communist propaganda”, reveals a simple-minded and anti-intellectual anti-communism, wich I would expect in the time of McCarthy but not in 2010. You don’t have to like his writings or agree with his political views, but you can’t reduce the whole world to your obvious hermetically sealed ideology.
Second: NK isn’t a communist or marxist-leaded country and more important: IT DOESN’T CLAIM TO BE ONE! Not marxism but 주체 is the dominant ideology in NK. Confucius has a more important influence on NK than Marx or Lenin ever did. If anything you can describe NK with the term of national socialism (not especially the nazis, more in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialism).
PS: I’m sorry for my bad English, but I’m not a native speaker.
The film is actually fairly different from the play, though — among other things, the song order was heavily altered (for example, the play saves this particular song for the finale of Act II). The film is regarded as something of a red-headed stepchild of the original by most critics, not to mention Brecht and Weill themselves. (Brecht actually went to court to try to stop the film, albeit for the rather perverse reason that the producers rejected his ideas to make it even more unlike the play. Weill’s own lawsuit was successful and he was able to supervise the scoring of his own music, and it’s significant that the music comes off better than just about anything else.)
Of course one’s opinion of the play will hinge heavily on the production, although one-dimensional characters are de rigueur with Brecht, with maybe a handful of exceptions (Life of Galileo, perhaps). But I find the film itself a rather weak rendition and I’m far from alone in that.
(as a mea culpa for the remark about characters, I’ll throw in that Mother Courage is probably one of the great female roles for stage, 20th-century or otherwise — again with everything hinging on the production and who’s actually doing the acting. On the page it’s unbearably lifeless, which I find with most Brecht plays. Maybe they read better in German, I dunno.)
It’s one thing to criticise Brecht for real or supposed deficiencies in his writings and another thing to reduce his work to “a blunt instrument of communist propaganda”. This blunt phrasing alone reveals the prejudiced attitude of the author. Of course this is not not really surprising for a blog, where for example korean left-wing protesters were described as “communist rat bastards”.
NK’s “communism” was rather a concession to it’s former allies in the Eastern bloc than a product of deep conviction. Kim Il Sung or his son hardly ever qouted Marx or Lenin in their opus and it would consider a great imagination to find any marxist elements in the juche-ideology.
PS: If Brecht was such a bad writer and got only historical relevance, why is he so popular around the world? Why are his works required reading in the hardly socialist school system in present Germany? Why he had such a big influence on modern theatre (as you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht)?
As I told you: You don’t have to like him, but your try to deny his importance because of his political views is pathetic.
You missed the point, which was to note the persistence of Brecht’s lyrics, even if in a way Brecht wouldn’t have intended. I really don’t care about the importance of Brecht, which is nothing more than the echo of a bleating herd.
But since you bring it up, there’s an argument to be made that Weill’s melodies were far more popular and influential than Brecht’s lyrics, other than within a small circle of dour German intellectuals and wannabes. But have you ever heard Louis Armstrong or Bobby Darrin singing about Jenny Tauber raped in her bed at night? Of course not. Weill wrote some nice melodies, and the explanation for their popularity really doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. Why else did Die Moritat Von Mackie Messer go on to global popularity as Mack the Knife, without Brecht’s disturbing lyrics? Sure, I think some of the lyrics are interesting, but on a global scale, very few people have ever heard them. Most sensible people also agree that Brecht’s ideology comes to nothing good.
I think the final insult to Brecht’s legacy must have been that most global audiences only know his ex-wife and greatest performer of his works in German, Lotte Lenja, as an ugly old commie Bond Villian with the cobra-venom spikes in her shoes. I wonder how Bertolt would have liked that.
Lenya was Weill’s (off-and-on) wife, never Brecht’s.
NK’s “communism†was rather a concession to it’s former allies in the Eastern bloc than a product of deep conviction. Kim Il Sung or his son hardly ever qouted Marx or Lenin in their opus and it would consider a great imagination to find any marxist elements in the juche-ideology.
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Eh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche
In 1972, Juche replaced Marxism-Leninism in the revised North Korean constitution as the official state ideology, this being a response to the Sino-Soviet split. Juche was nonetheless defined as a creative application of Marxism-Leninism. Kim Il-sung also explained that Juche was not original to North Korea and that in formulating it he only laid stress on a programmatic orientation that is inherent to all Marxist-Leninist states.
Kim Il-sung’s policy statements and speeches from the 1940s and 1950s confirm that the North Korean government accepted Joseph Stalin’s 1924 theory of socialism in one country and its model of centralized autarkic economic development. Kim himself was a great admirer of Stalin. Following Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, the North Korean leader wrote an emotional obituary in his honor titled “Stalin Is the Inspiration for the Peoples Struggling for Their Freedom and Independence” in a special issue of the WPK newspaper Rodong Sinmun (March 10, 1953).
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Concession and not conviction?