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30 November 2008

Reality Program "The Edwardian Country House"

That was DVD of the reality program broadcasted in U.K.

Ordinary people experience early 20th century life of rich family who owns a very big country house and their servants for 3 months.

They live exactly the same style as the old days wearing the same clothes.

The gap between the family and the servants was very obvious. The servants have to work all day long without day-off.

The family never know how hard their life is. That is like working poor of present days. They had work in such terrible condition with meager pay. Not only that, in those days there was no law to prohibite such slave-like treatment. Even if servants got sick, their masters can easily lay them off.  

The other interesting thing is that how the relationship of Britons and colonial Indians in those days. It was imperialist time.

Great Britain colonized India. Indians seem to have had very hard time by British imperialism. But interesting thing is some Indian people admired British Empire. Some of the parliament members were Indian at that time.

  

Exploring old times is really fun thing. It is like doing time-travelling.

 

My interests in history inspired me to write some interesting novels such as below.

 I am planning to write novel which a story takes place in 1930's Germany when Nazi came into power. A young Japanese woman and a Jewish man met in Berlin. They fell in love but Nazism got in their way. What do they do?

 

Or I may be writing a story that takes place in 1950's America. Young Japanese Fulbright exchange student rent a room in a middle class American couple. He was treated well by them. But the couple had some problems. He tried to help them out.  

 

Or two young Japanese men came to London in late 19th century to study very sophisticated western science and culture. One was a big admirer of Western civilization and the other was very samurai-minded man who prided himself as Japanese but at the same time he thinks he should learn great things from the West for modernization of Japan. They met a British man who was Western supremacist who looked down upon other civilizations. They had to deal with him.

Wouldn't that be interesting?

21:43 Posted in Britain, Culture, Film | Permalink | Comments (2) | Tags: history, documentary

29 June 2008

CBS Mini-Series "Hitler, The Rise of Evil"

I've bought a DVD of that show a few years ago. I've watched it many times. I highly recommend all the people on the earth to watch it.

The show was produced amid the fear of coming war in Iraq by Alliance Atlantis. It caused controversy because the show featured Hitler as living man not just as evil guy.

Maybe the producer was worried about the atmosphere in the U.S. after 911 was like the one in Nazi-Germany.

Focal point of the film is indifference of ordinary people of that time. People did not want to care about politics because they were too tired of hearing serious news.

But the result of such indifference was Auschwitz.

In the show, there was a journalist who became counterpart of Hitler. His name was Fritz Gerich. He established the newspaper "Straight Path" to criticize Hitler's Nazism. But at the end, he was murdered in Dahau concentration camp after Nazi regime took over all the authorities of Germany.

Fritz wrote letter to his wife, it said "Urge others to speak up even what they say is unpopular."

That impressed me a lot. That may be most difficult thing on the earth but necessary to change things better.

The other thing that impress me was a leader of Storm Troops, Rohm was gay. Rohm was Hitler's long time comrade and Hitler knew Rohm was gay. Interestingly enough, Nazi murdered hundreds of thousands of gays in concetration camp along with Jews and Roma (Gyspsies).

I will visit Berlin and Auschwitz soon. I will telll you what I feel about the sights and their histories.

05 April 2008

"Sicko" Sick society, USA!

I rented a DVD of Micheal Moore's documentary film "Sicko."

The film described how terrible the U.S. medical system is. 50 million of Americans don't have health insurance. Even if you have one, the insurance company wouldn't pay for your treatment by making up technical problems.

Once you get a serious disease, you might bankrupt. Insurance companies and the government don't want to provide national health insurance like Canada, England and France. Of course, in my country Japan does. You government prioritizes money over human lives of the poor people. They say national health insurance is socialist idea that restricts individual freedom.

My opinion for the realities presented in the movie was that America is no longer role model for the world. Such scary society. Spending so much money on invasion of Iraq and other parts of the world, killing innocent civilians outside the country and leaving sick people die inside. Pathetic!

 

Well, I wouldn't say my country is best nor other country in Europe. But USA is trush. I know nice Americans personally but where they come from is sick land.

Recently I've been regretting that I tried to imitate as many things from USA as possible in the past. There are things I should learn from them but they have things I never want to learn from.  

Overall, the country is arrogant, corrupt, and undemocratic society. Who wants to live?

21:50 Posted in Film, USA issues | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: health, documentary

17 February 2008

Mockdocumentary: "Death of a President"

President Bush was assacinated in Chicago. Who killed him?

Of course, this is the fiction. Janre of mockdocumentary, but it looked very real.

After the assacination, the U.S. government used this fear to justify amendment of Patriot Act, tightening the freedom of citizens. Muslim man was arrested but there was not enough supporting evidence to convict him but he was convicted by the jurors.  

Why? This is the same old fashioned rhetoric. Once awful thing happened, no one can have objective view.

It was well-made documentary although it was a fiction.

But I wasn't very impressed. I am kind of tired of such anti-Bush propaganda films such as Micheal Moore's "Fahrenheit 911."

 

Yes, Bush was wrong. He did the wrong things. So did other politicians in the world. It is just easy to criticize the politicians but what are behind the actions they make? Think about it.

Even Gore was elected as President of the U.S., he might have dispatched troops to Iraq. Accusing just one politician for all the wrong things in the world doesn't actually change the world better.  

22:45 Posted in Film, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: Bush, War, Terror, Documentary