Lessons to learn; beware the grip of the iron fist, thinly veiled by the velvet glove.

Lessons to learn; beware the grip of the iron fist, thinly veiled by the velvet glove.
January 8 2008
Heritage, while it often constitutes and defines positive aspects of culture, is a malleable body of historical text; subject to interpretation and easily twisted into myth. Worse still; simply wafted away, like a smoke dragon, made to be no more corporeal than the twisting shapes of the smoke from burning incense.
David Lowenthal says that “history is a foreign country”. Just what does he mean when he says this? Perhaps he refers to how facts are not always Facts, or maybe he simply referred to how history is all in the interpretation. Without historians visiting the texts of our history... would they not soon come to mean literally nothing to us? The study of history is an evolving art, it is undergoing constant tectonic scale shifts, the incredible efforts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to create Independent Media sources... places people can get quality information, and with a format, style and texture that everyman can absorb. What was just twenty years ago a pipe dream, and the workspace of the radical, are today’s blogs, or you-tube’s, which has given the pundits chair to more and more people, with countries such as India experiencing a 90% increase in cell phone users between 2000 and 2005; most new cell phones bear integrated digital camera’s which capture video. This spreading of technology could allow the voices of the currently voiceless to disseminate the truth’s of globalized organizations and corporations, and their laws; the weight of globalization which is unequally carried by the third world. India “has” ¼ of the world’s poor. What nations make up the 'Third world'? What role will motion picture play in this battle to spread awareness?
The “colonies” of old are the 'third world' of today. Film has evolved immensely, where it used to be centralized; massive studios owned the rights to virtually all films from concept statement to writing, through production, distribution and release! This is no longer the case, rather than getting only a very few options in opinion, paradigms, story pacing and patterns... today we can get opinions, stories and culture, instantly, from across the globe. On with the reverse conquest.
Through the 16th, 17th 18th, 19th and the early 20th centuries, why has the west dominated with such impunity and the ability to constantly claim moral superiority, often amidst bloodshed of their own design. The answer lies in a strange fact that as oppressed cultures become more exposed to their oppressor’s culture, a certain affinity begins to be experienced and a certain connection to this outsider culture develops. This leads to the adoption of idiosyncrasies by the colonized peoples. This has given the Euro-centric mind ample hay with which to fashion their image of self superiority. When one’s own culture is derided, shunned, oppressed, and considered less than human, it is perhaps “easier” for the oppressed psyche to try to adopt the tendencies of the oppressor, if only to be able to blend in a tiny bit more.
Within this desire to blend in, and not be noticed is a strong inclination to conform to the values, attitudes, and beliefs of the dominant group, which may include the dominant group's discriminatory attitudes and practices. Often this begins as a simple fascination with the foreign culture, or merely an adaptive necessity, eventually oppressed cultures begin to identify themselves with their oppressors, to the detriment of their own traditions. More specifically they identify the culture which has managed to place a hold on them as indicative of having achieved a higher level of development, when in actuality this scenario is more like a self fulfilling prophecy... The very act of “bowing down”, of inviting the oppressor into your culture, the human desire to belong to the strongest group is in fact one of the greatest tools in an imperialist’s arsenal.