Went to see Under the Sun today

[conuly]

It's a documentary on a typical North Korean family. North Korea picked the family and scripted as much of their interactions as they could. (But the intrepid filmmakers smuggled out all the scenes they were supposed to delete.)

The sad truth is that even if the filmmakers had gone along with the little game, the jig would have been up anyway. Maybe it doesn't matter if you have a captive audience, but it turns out that North Korea is actually not very good at propaganda. In one scene, the little girl and her parents are eating a presumably "typical" dinner... which is more food than a family of ten could eat in one sitting, let alone three! And such a variety of dishes! Either we're supposed to think they're cleaning out the fridge, or it's a holiday. Except it's plainly not. And then the father gives the kid a (scripted) "off-the-cuff" comment on how "kimchi is one of our traditional foods". We know it's scripted, because the filmmakers showed several different takes of that scene, but honestly, we would have guessed because even in North Korea, it's not possible that people actually talk like that. Later, the dad goes to his (fake) job, and his sub-manager makes a speech about how their factory hit 150% of their quota. The second time she makes the speech it's 200% (a poster on the wall reveals it's probably around 40%), but does it matter? Nobody would believe either of those numbers, and it's insulting that the North Korean propaganda department apparently thinks we would.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

" Nobody would believe either of those numbers, and it's insulting that the North Korean propaganda department apparently thinks we would."

Really, it's more insulting to them, that they're dumb enough to think we're that credulous.

[conuly]

And that's just two examples, too. I really thought North Korea understood the whole propaganda gig, but apparently....

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Perhaps there's a language/culture gap, so that their propaganda works on their own citizenry - who may be generally less sophisticated than Americans, or who may not be at liberty to say what they really think about it. A lot of Asian cultures are heavily into maintaining polite fictions- after all, pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes is a good way to get one's head on a spike outside the Imperial Palace. So... whatever one's superior says, that's how things are, even if that's clearly not how they are.

In America we're free to cry "Bullshit!" when we see it, so our propaganda-makers have to be more subtle about hiding it from us. Not that much more subtle, though. Look at the 'average Americans' in commercials and sit-coms, estimate the real cost of their clothing, cars, homes and other material wealth: not so average, are they? And who really talks like the idiots in commercials? But it's our own culture, so we overlook all that. Possibly a Korean would find it insultingly obvious.