Last Friday, I made a choice. A conscious choice? No. But a choice nonetheless, and one that turned out to be the best I’d made in a long time. My night started out like any other Friday in the dorm: loitering around my friend’s loud and inexplicably musty room, balancing a cup against my leg and picking through the bucket of heart shaped chocolates still out from Valentine’s Day, as ping pong balls and unidentifiable liquid sailed past my nose. After realizing that my phone must have been done charging, I skipped off to my room to retrieve it, only to notice my laptop sitting so forlornly on my desk, all juiced up but alone. “I’ll just check my email really quickly,” I thought. Ten minutes and twenty tabs later, Netflix was open, and I was watching a documentary on the North Korean regime.
Once I got past the impeccable irony that this activity was so completely antithetical to the alternative that awaited me three doors down the hall, I became consumed by the film. At first I was laughing at Kim Jong Un’s haircut (it had to be done), and gawking at the crazy huge parades his advisors orchestrated, attended by thousands of people, just to make Kim Jong think he was awesome. But then it started hitting hard. And I started feeling really bad.
First I saw the North Korean people barraged by endless government-produced propaganda aimed to deceive them into believing all types of wild things, like that New York City was bombed by their military, no one in North Korea was impoverished or underfed, and that their country was overflowing with products and resources. To persuade the people of their plentiful production, the government even set up an entire fake mall where propagandists still film all the time, and people can walk around but can’t buy anything! One of the filmmakers asked an employee how much a dress cost and she straight up said, “We don’t sell things here.” If this happened to me at Providence Place Mall I would pass right out. All of this real deception made me feel awful, because just that morning I had been significantly disgruntled at the obviously intentional deception of the Trader Joe’s trail mix packagers who phrased “coconut, chocolate almonds” to make me expect chocolate AND almonds, only to find that they were chocolate COVERED almonds and that my trail mix was now lacking a vital element. This, I see now, is not of the utmost importance.
The makers of this documentary also spent some time with kids living on the street, who couldn’t work for various reasons including prejudice and missing limbs. It was snowing and obviously freezing out and they were huddled around a garbage can fire for warmth, and if my Korean ear is to be trusted (oh, you need subtitles?) they didn’t complain once. Not even a beleaguered sigh! Flashing back to my life, I did not hold back any grievances against modern technology when the heater in my dorm room broke for one day only, and I had to do my homework in my friend’s room instead. Ten feet down the hall.
This documentary pointed out that in North Korea, it is a rare and cherished occasion if you have the chance to hide out in your room, stuff towels under the door and daringly risk your life and the lives of your family in order to watch a smuggled movie, so that you can maybe piece together some semblance of an idea of what the world is like outside of the regime. Back in the U.S., we all know how it went that day Netflix went down. There were only about 5 movies available on the site but another one hundred DVD’s on the shelf two feet from our faces and we were PISSED that we couldn’t watch The Prince & Me or Django right at that moment.
As if this weren’t enough, the way these smuggled movies got into North Korea was predominantly through the efforts of one man who, prior to smuggling, was tortured for years by the North Korean government (knee-caps broken, starvation, the whole deal) before escaping to China; he now risks everything in order to smuggle movies across the border just so that the North Korean people can have some knowledge of outside world. And for the pleasure of sticking it to Kim Jong Un. I have no U.S. comparison for this – I just thought this guy was freakin’ incredible.
So yes, watching this movie was basically a repetitive reminder of my non-North Korea-residing privilege, which made me feel increasingly crappy and like an ungrateful jerk as the night wore on. These depressing sentiments eventually lulled me into a restless sleep, from which I awoke the next morning with an unexpected sense of clarity, and an epiphany.
I first realized that I was possessed with two dominant feelings: guilt and disgust. These obviously correlated to my own privilege and ingratitude, and not-fully-explored disappointment in all of Western society for taking freedom and endless Netflix for granted. I then started thinking about my friends, whom I had abandoned without explanation the night before, and who were doubtlessly waking up from their night of drunkenness and debauchery around the same time. An ensuing flurry of text messages would confirm that they as well were possessed by the two predominant feelings: guilt and disgust. Guilt from making out with their friend’s ex, vandalized school property, and not getting any work done. And disgust from making out with their friend’s ex (he was gross), finding unidentifiable yellow sludge in their hair, and in all of American society for glorifying partying and drinking when it just makes their head hurt and their new shirt stained and their friend mad (specifically, the one who’s ex they made out with).
Here, the superiority of my choice to stay in and watch a documentary is clearly illuminated. Even though a night spent having so called “fun” with friends (guffaw guffaw guffaw), and a night with North Korea both led to similar feelings of guilt and disgust, I am the one with unstained shirts and happy friends and a clear mind and body! I have more info in my mental “data box,” as my AP Lang teacher used to say, and I’m sure I’ll have a considerable advantage over my friends if Crazy Things Korean Dictators Have Done ever comes up as a Jeopardy category. Maybe my new knowledge will make me a better person (so far unpromising), or contribute something to my understanding of global inequality. At this point you might be thinking that I used this film and by association, others’ pain, solely for my own benefit; but maybe not. Maybe it has inspired me enough to one day do something to help the humanitarian cause, or abolish the dictatorship through involvement in international politics (House of Cards has taught me pretty much everything I need to know for that). However, I do feel it is important to recognize that while my friends are currently useless hung-over carcasses, I now know how to deceive a large population of people into thinking I am their divine ruler (if the situation ever arises that I need a whole subcontinent of people devoted to my image).
So yeah, if asked again if I would have preferred to spend my evening plastered, or plastered to the screen, I would give you (Kim Jong) Uno answer – North Korea every time.
Image via.