What is Kim Jong Il up to?
This is a story that just didn’t seem to make it into the mainstream media…OK,
Newsweek ran a peice (Gluckman’s), but
it was more or less buried everywhere else, and I suggest this was a very important story. The Pyongyang
International Film Festival ran at the end of September and, for the first time, showed several American-style films
that had the audience rapt and enraptured. Ron Gluckman, the writer who penned the piece says North Koreans “roared” at
the jokes in “Bend It Like Beckham.” (roared? giggled perhaps. man, they MUST be starved for Western humor).
Anyway, why is any of this important?
While “Bend it Like Beckham” is a light comedy, it does address issues of racism and sexism, as well as a modern
urge for Westernization.
Yeah, OK.
Anyhoodle, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is a self-avowed Hollywood film fanatic, and purportedly has a huge
collection of DVDs, with a particular fondness for James Bond films. (One wonders if he’s seen
Team America yet). But who would have thought he’d hold a film
festival showing Western films? Michael Moore was apparently invited but declined to attend…I can only imagine what
people would have said about him if he’d gone..and how much DVD sales of Fahrenheit 9/11 would have declined.