By Mike O’Cull
In recent weeks, I have watched two documentary films on Netflix about the two most isolated countries on Earth, which are North Korea and Burma/Myanmar, respectively. The reality of how the people of those countries are deprived of access to the outside world is just crushing. Both are mere miles away from the 21st Century, which lies just over any of their borders, but it might as well be on the moon. What I found interesting in both movies was that the main thing that drove the youth of both countries to want to change their world and make their homelands more modern and open is Western pop culture. Whenever they get to see films or TV shows or music from the world at large, they get to see possibilities of how their own lives might be, if things were different.
It’s funny to me that we often think of music and movies and such as disposable entertainment but, on the other side of the world, these carry a lot more importance. We take for granted that we can not only consume these things any time and any way we want to but we can also create them for ourselves and others. We can go to the movies, come home and listen to music, and then watch TV. Maybe, though, this stuff really IS more than just entertaining fluff, at least in some cases. The art that we consider pop culture is still art and it reflects the human condition, shows different possibilities, and reflects the concerns of those who make it. I watched as activists tied burned DVDs and loaded thumb drives to balloons and floated them over the border into North Korea, where they were eagerly distributed. People there have established buying and selling these things person to person just like us Capitalists, which was totally illegal a decade ago. I watched people buying DVDs without even knowing what was on them. They only knew it was something that hadn’t seen before. They were very excited to get to see ‘Skyfall.’
Imagine being afraid of shooting video or taking photographs of just about anything. That is the reality of those living in Myanmar, where many have been thrown into prison for much less. We shoot video every moment of our lives these days, it seems, and it is tough to get that that simple act can be seen as seditious and treasonous. The plight of the people there is especially difficult because the military government does not even speak to the people they rule over. No speeches, no fireside chats, no nothing. There is no cult of personality. They simply do whatever they want and pretty much leave the people to fend for themselves. The hopeful thing is that I saw young people there with guitars, mohawk haircuts, and other emblems of rebellion who want the same things that their contemporaries in Thailand and India have. Basically, they want to rock.
All of this got me thinking that all this music we listen to and all these movies we see have a much greater meaning as cultural artifacts and emotional touchstones than we sometimes give them credit for having. If this stuff doesn’t matter, then why do we get so upset when a favorite singer or movie star dies, especially at a young age? We don’t really know them, but we think we do. We identify with them and their work in some way. We see ourselves in them or who we would like ourselves to be. Our cultures of music and film and other forms of popular art have gone through many changes in the last 15 years and most of them have not been for the best. We have seen art and music devalued, stolen, pirated, and given much less cultural bandwidth than they both had decades ago. This is, to me, an indicator that those of us who create these things, who work in these mediums, need to step up our collective game, do our best possible work, and get this human currency back the honor and respect it deserves. We need to do this because we can, because we owe it to the world, because some of this world is not allowed to express its human reality the way we are. We have been drunk on this kind of freedom for so long that it has made us lazy.
So what does all this mean to you and me? It means write your best song, then write another one better. Make the films that are rolling around in your mind. Create and create hard. Express what’s important to you. There is no way to fail at expressing yourself, so give it all you’ve got. Maybe, just maybe, something you create will find its way to some distant part of our world and give someone else a glimpse of what life, living, and people can be. Maybe it will be something that changes a life or two. It might even change yours. Art and artists have power and can help make things change because they make people think and feel. What we make may, as the song says, be only rock and roll, but it fills the spirit with what is needed to live a complete, truly human life, so don’t ever sell it short. Without art and music, life truly would be mistake.
