Just in Case You Needed a Context

[bcholmes]

I watched Red Dust, a 2004 film about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. It was an okay film, a bit less sensational than In My Country. But I found it slightly jarring to read the title cards at the beginning of the film.

The title cards explained recent history in South Africa. About apartheid. And the transition of power in South Africa. And I thought: I guess there are people who probably need this history. But, um, it was hard to quash a feeling I had that you'd have to be pretty out of touch to not have heard anything about it. I am aware of the problems with that feeling, but the feeling was there nonetheless.

Comments

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

This is what I call the "101 syndrome". It's what ruins many perfectly fine films for me -- Transamerica ("Trans 101"), Crash ("Racism 101"), Brokeback Mountain ("Queerness 101"), just to note three recent examples. They might be fine films, but I realize soon after they begin that the filmmakers are assuming I (the viewer, that is) have never encountered the film's Big Concept(tm), and they're happy to edumacate me. *sigh* I feel like a snob for feeling this way, but it doesn't add to my experience to be talked down to, or more accurately, "taught".

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

201ism is one of the things that keeps me going back to WisCon year after year.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I plan to be there next year. I've never been, and have always assumed I wouldn't find anything to interest me, because I don't, in general, read science fiction. lcohen, wild_irises, vito_excalibur, and others have convinced me I would at least have tons of fun being around cool feminists, and how could that be bad?

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

My first thought was that they were putting it in context not only for ign'ant foreigners, but also for future generations for whom it will not be 'news'.

[angilong.livejournal.com]

Yeah. My daughter did a report on South Africa for school a couple years ago (she had to choose a country, and she picked that one off the globe). Before that, she'd never heard of apartheid. Even afterwards, she didn't really understand it. But hey, she was only 7.