{"id":3780,"date":"2006-09-14T08:42:22","date_gmt":"2006-09-14T13:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=3780"},"modified":"2006-09-14T08:11:19","modified_gmt":"2006-09-14T13:11:19","slug":"a_movie_about_i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/14\/a_movie_about_i\/","title":{"rendered":"A Movie About Idi Amin and an ‘Opera’ About Gadhafi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chick Pea<\/a> mentioned recently that there is a new film opening on Ugandan dictator Idi Amin<\/a>, who is infamous amongst desis for summarily ejecting Uganda’s 50,000 Asians in 1972. Most of the Ugandan desis got out, and many came to thrive in places like England and Canada. We saw this discussed in Mississippi Masala<\/em>, and it’s referenced in the writings of M.G. Vassanji. Unfortunately, the 300,000 Africans (most of them fellow Ugandans) who died as a result of Idi Amin’s various military campaigns and programs of internal ethnic cleansing did not have the same second chance. This is a man who caused untold suffering, and who led his country down a truly catastrophic path.<\/p>\n\n

A new film on Amin, called The Last King of Scotland<\/em> (in reference to one of Amin’s more fanciful titles for himself), starring Forrest Whitaker, recently premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, and seems to be generating a fair amount of buzz. The Washington Post reviews the film<\/a>, and while it’s too early to really get the film’s slant, it’s a little bit worrisome to me that the director is quoted in the article saying how he really wanted to show Idi Amin as a “complex” character, and his actions as partly justifiable:<\/p>\n\n

“A lot of the things he tried to do were very popular,” said Macdonald, highlighting even the expulsion of the Asian business leaders as something that had resonated with Ugandans who became shopkeepers and business owners for the first time.

\n\nThe Asians, expelled in 1972, had formed the backbone of the Ugandan economy before Amin came to power.

\n\n“Amin made Ugandans feel proud to be African, and proud to be Ugandan. He was someone who tried to get rid of the colonial inferiority complex,”<\/strong> Macdonald said. (link<\/a>)<\/blockquote>\n\n

That last sentence should be a reminder to people that it’s just as easy to commit injustices in the name of fighting colonialism as it is to do so the other way around. I should also note that it’s distressing to hear the director of the film speaking so appreciatively of a truly brutal dictator. (On the other hand, perhaps he’s simply trying to make the film sound<\/em> non-depressing for the media.) Meanwhile, in London, the English National Opera is hosting the Asian Dub Foundation’s musical play about Moammar Gadhafi<\/a>. As with the Idi Amin film, the project seems to be a biographical sketch of Gadhafi that aims to includes the “good” (or at least the “complex”) along with the bad. From the Guardian:<\/p>\n\n

Chandrasonic has been intrigued by Gadafy since reading a book about him when he was a teenager, and sees the opera “not as a factual biography” but as a way of exploring the “modern myth and counter-myth” surrounding a man “who was considered a mad dog and desert scum” by the west, but has ended up rehabilitated and shaking hands with Tony Blair.

\n\nIn the course of the opera, Chandrasonic hopes to tackle everything from the politics of oil to Gadafy’s attempts to “update the Koran with democratic, radical proposals”. Lockerbie and the Yvonne Fletcher killing “will be dealt with – we’re working out how”, and so, presumably, will Gadafy’s funding of terrorist groups and his more recent change of allegiance from the Arab to the African world.

\n\nAlex Poots, ENO’s director of contemporary arts, who commissioned the work, hopes it will go even further, to “explore the bigger picture – the lack of understanding between the Middle East and the west”.<\/strong>(link<\/a>)<\/blockquote>\n\n

The bigger picture? Maybe there’s a bigger picture worth debating regarding the Middle East and the West, but I’m not sure Gadhafi is the best man for the job. Hm. CNN also has some worrisome quotes:<\/p>\n\n

“It is not exactly opera but it makes the perfect PC (Politically Correct) musical,” The Independent newspaper said.

\n\nBut composer Steve Chandra Savale of the electro-rap band Asian Dub Foundation said the opera was definitely not intended as a piece of political propaganda.

\n\n“It is more about the myth of Gadhafi. It is about the invention of a cult personality and how it fits into the international framework,”<\/strong> he told Reuters before opening night.

\n\n“It is about politics as ritual, politics as performance, politics as charisma.<\/strong> This is something that musical theatre can do.” (link<\/a>)<\/blockquote>\n\n

I’m skeptical. Gadhafi is perhaps a more complex figure than Idi Amin, especially since Gadhafi seems to have “reformed” himself somewhat since the mid-1990s. But I don’t think there is really a “bigger” picture that needs to be looked at, not after Pan Am 103 and Gadhafi’s many years of supporting terrorism around the world (including the IRA, back in the day). And not after Gadhafi’s actions led to international sanctions and unprecedented suffering for the people of Libya.<\/p>\n\n

It’s always dangerous to condemn art you haven’t seen, and I don’t wish to do that here — though one can<\/em> respond to what an artist says about his or her subject in the media, and make an educated decision about whether it’s worth one’s time. I will definitely go see the Idi Amin film to see what they do with it, but somehow the descriptions of the ADF hip-hopera on Moammar Gadhafi don’t pique my curiosity; I’d rather go see, I don’t know, Talladega Nights<\/em>. Still, it is perhaps worth discussing the fact that this is being put together by Brit-Asians (as opposed to people of Arab descent), and the actor playing Gadhafi, Ramon Tikaram, appears from his name to be South Asian as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chick Pea mentioned recently that there is a new film opening on Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who is infamous amongst desis for summarily ejecting Uganda’s 50,000 Asians in 1972. Most of the Ugandan desis got out, and many came to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3780"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}