Price of Ignorance - Essay Example

Too People nowadays are passive, ignorant creatures, limited by the ideology of the society they live in. They create heroes, villains and limits of permissible actions with their own hands, and decide what is right according to their limited worldview. The slaughterers often believe that they do something necessary, in order to protect the certain state of things. It could have sounded ridiculous if such proclamation of the massive massacre being justified was present only in «The Act of Killing». But it actually is not – world news, historic books, so called documental films – there is the same thing everywhere: A tendency of killing a person or a group of people for the sake of certain ideology and the united cruelty against common enemy in order to protect the current world. The scariest thing in this movie is not the actions of the radical party itself – but the multiple examples of similar behavior through the world as a part of everyday life of our peaceful and stable society. According to such state of the things, it would be suitable to observe «The Act of Killing» not as a historically-documental film, for the information provided in it is not exact ( there are no defined amounts of victims, neither it includes such historically important aspects as coinciding of time and place of certain attack, etc.). It is more like psychologically-documental film that observes mental state and the way of thinking of people inside radical organizations in times of legal powers’ being unstable or insufficient. The face of a conflict itself can be seen perfectly. There is a description of power as something unsuitable to provide neither legal protection of the country, nor freedom and luxury for common citizens. There are people that work outside the system; for they see that system itself is an illusion. Anwar Congo laughs at the Geneva Convention, as he understands it’s temporal and imposed value. He is right, for nearly each conflict can boast with its violation – and latter covering of the consequences. And, when everything is over, it turns out that ones who kill millions of people are not monsters – there were just two groups of ideologically different people and only one has survived in order to prevent the destruction of its world. It would be adequate to compare «The Act of Killing» with any Hollywood film that is shot from the antagonist’s point of view. The scariest thing is that such history, being well produced and not documental would probably have been popular. People love free-minded strict antagonists that rebel against the system and then fight against greater evil using dubious methods much more that protagonists that can share someone’s life if that person would later attack again. Modern culture loves such guys and internet is full of adolescent fans of antagonists. Moreover – it is logically indescribable, but the guy that killed thousand people is felt through the screen as only the strong actor would be. He is real. And the scenes of tortures are real – they are not from Hollywood where actress screams similarly whether she is happy, scared, is raped or killed. Torture scenes are scary and ugly, sort of revolting. They don’t bring that joy of massive justified killing that modern films do to the extent of waiting for more so called “special effects”. Someone should have shown suffering for real as in films it looked kind of sadomasochistic and urged people to search for more. A feeling of pain in pop-films is usually a kind of producer’s empathy to suffering character that is being transferred to us. In this film the pain and fear, indifference and perverted joy are shown directly, for a spectator to emphasize himself. Someone should have shown such dirty emotions for people to stop glorifying artificial suffering. It is symbolic for Anwar to die in his film being decapitated or strangled. There is unscientific fact that head describes a bound with the Heaven: everything moral and conscious in human nature. And that is exactly what Anwar Congo and people that shared his beliefs have done. As it can be seen from their words, they have thrown away their conscience and humanity, thus symbolically turning into beasts – in order, as they believed, to protect the things that seemed valuable. They become mostly inhuman creatures that had lost an edge between necessary protection against communism and massive human slaughter that cannot be adequately justified. Thus it is worth repeating that film is more suitable for depicting certain state of mind rather than trying to analyze or uncover historic facts. Still in this aspect «The Act of Klling» is necessary for the modern world to reconsider its values in order to prevent other massacres that easily can occur at the basis of ideological conflicts. Film would also help to understand a psychology of a person that lives outside the moral borders of the society. Moreover, film shows that massacres are not “insane evildoings made by monsters in human flesh”, but acts of free will that would later be either justified or forgotten by means of drugs, drinks and so on – by killing own humanity. “The Act of War” brightly describes the vagueness and insecurity of modern world and its moral, helps seeing beyond own worldview – to the things that no one would prefer accepting. According to everything before mentioned, I cannot agree with the point of view, stated in “We love impunity”. It is acceptable that its author preferred describing emotional and moral side of response to the movie. «The Act of Killing» can be disgusting, amoral, not exact and far from being artistic – moreover this movie has no certain plot and brings any moral. Still, it is not worthy judging the chosen devices without clarifying the goal of movie creator. No one promised for this picture to be good or artistic – it is just obviously subjective truth. The truth that is required. Perhaps modern society is not fed of films that call for empathy and bring moral while being highly unrealistic – it is nourished on them. Movies do not show what is going on, their goal nowadays is to imbue the spectator with feelings that he must feel from it. Before seeing tasty self-justifying fight one should understand that it is just a fight where would be no hero, and no fun exactly. Just inhuman instincts that feel disgusting and would later make one vomit. So for me it is fine that film is shown as it is, without cliché-like “indescribable heroism in the struggle with the enemy of the nation”. War is just a senseless fight caused by the difference in worldviews. There is nothing good in it. Anwar Congo is a murder, but it is fair from his side to show grandsons a truth. Obviously subjective, deformed, beastly - but truth. Understanding how cruel this world can be people may try to be less ignorant – as such overpowered impunity is possible only in the case where majority is unable to protect own lives by neither legal nor illegal means. Depicting self-justification is actually a good idea - in Bosnia, Rwanda, Israel or wherever more. The picture of a murderer that counts himself a hero while destroying people that are dangerous for his world is a thing everyone should realize before starting a fight, for he can be right to the certain extent, but the price for that rightness would be incommensurate. Indifferently from how ugly and inhuman «The Act of Killing» can be, things described in it are a part of human nature that is worth paying attention. It is easy to say something like “I am not sure I want to share such feelings”. But it is easier to suppress something that one knows to be wrong, than to face it and just forget about everything, in order to follow self-justificatory mood of the society he lives in. The truth is worth being available, I agree here with Nick Fraser, the author of “we love impunity”. But I can’t agree that whitewashing the truth would help, by any means. Truth can be made better only through cognition, accepting and action. Works cited Fraser, Nick. "We Love Impunity The Case of The Act of Killing." Film Quarterly 2013: Pp. 21-24. Print. The Act of Killing. Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer. Det Danske Filminstitut (Denmark), Dogwoof Pictures (UK), Drafthouse Films (US), 2012. Film. Read More