Hi Epiphanie,
Yeah, I’ve head all about how great
However, I’m surprised that you’re surprised that
The Nigerio-Bollywood connection sounds interesting, and I would suppose it’s about how well
Bollywood also seems to be about how a hyper-traditional culture can loosen up a bit. For example, we all know that arranged marriages in
As for a specific Nigerian parallel, I haven’t a clue. Solinka and Achebe describe urban environments in which relationships are more or less free on a personal level, the problems being elsewhere.
Bollywood would seem to accommodate the emotional needs of developing nations by proximity in an ‘Indians r us’ sort of scenario. All of these nations have developed a gentrified urban class of young professionals and preppie wannabes, and this is their collective story. Bollywood is a universal, idealized narrative of how to navigate modernity.
What’s important for me is how a director can demonstrate how diverse an alleged monolithic culture really is. In other words, we write our anthropology from the fat middle, trying to discover an essence of sorts. OTH, filmic genius is all about the cracks and fissures, the marginalia. On of my faves in this respect is Olivier Assayas.
I’m likewise happy for you—and to hear in general—that Angloworld is not just a larger representation of Amerika. This, of course, is yet another argument as to why the wrong guys won in 1776, but I suppose the development of this particular counterfactual can wait for another time and place. Or perhaps I can hope for reincarnation as an Aussie!
In sum, the de-centering of which you speak is a process that we’re all for. You seem to be living it, which is great, too.
But there’s still the persistency of numbers:
BH
Bill wrote: ‘Well it's not for nothing that Paris is called "The Buenos Aires of Europe...And let's not forget all of that great wine from Mendoza! Indeed life can be better on the rim--rather than in the center---of Empire.’
To go beyond the banter and get serious for a moment, if I may be allowed, this is a particularly interesting response, because it no longer corresponds to the non-virtual reality.
First, ‘Empire’ has no single centre. It’s a network of metropolitan centres. Which they are depend on what sector is referred to. For example, the centres of finance capital include New York, London and Frankfurt, while the cultural centres include New York, London, Paris, Berlin, etc., with subcentres for individual sectors like Los Angeles and Paris for cinema.
Second, notice that these are all ‘world cities’. But there are also a good many world cities beyond the metropolitan countries, in what you call ‘the rim’. In Latin America, for example, the principal world cities are Mexico City, São Paulo and Buenos Aires. It is not an accident that these three cities are also the centres of the three major film industries in Latin America (with Rio de Janeiro as a subcentre in Brazil). It is also symptomatic that you wouldn’t know this from following Film-Philosophy, which for various reasons remains fixated on the cinema of empire, with very occasional forays into other territories. I haven’t seen much recent Mexican cinema, but I’m very impressed with both Brazilian and Argentine cinema, both of which produce more (I believe) than the UK, which for the most part remains a mere appendage of Hollywood.
Third, the truth is is that it’s become misleading to think of those countries and cities as ‘the rim’. When I’m in Mexico City, I often think of the remark of Octavio Paz that Mexico’s problem is being too far from god and too close to the USA, but this sensation is very reduced when I’m in São Paulo or Buenos Aires. I grant that this is subjective, but there’s something else, which has become clearer since the crash of 2008: there has been a highly significant shift in the configuration of the world economy, which is not only apparent in the rise of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) but also this, that the domination of empire is reducing. In the case of Latin America, a whole number of countries have escaped the effects of the financial crash and their economies are growing at a much faster rate than the countries of empire, even without the effects of the recession. They include Brazil, Argentina, Chile, even Peru (not Venezuela, largely because it’s plagued by its dependency on oil). It is possible that the driving force for this shift is the growth of Chinese investment in these countries, but on different terms from the unequal terms of trade which dominated previously, when the dominant economic power in Latin America was the USA, or previously, the UK. And in any case, Brazil is emerging as a major economic force in Latin America itself, but again on different and more equal terms from previous economic imperialists.
Each of the Latin American countries I refer to has its own complexities, economically, politically and culturally, but one thing that particularly impressed me on my recent visit to Buenos Aires (and not for the first time) was how different the configuration of the contemporary world appears from there, as if the world was turned upside down.
Just a few thoughts for rumination…
Michael
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