Warning: major rant.
Yesterday morning after watching the Opening Ceremonies live from Beijing, I came here to discuss what I'd just experienced. No one was talking about it, which was understandable as Americans, for the sake of profit, were denied access to the live broadcast.
So I posted a quick diary to alert people to be sure to watch the Ceremony, for the message it carried (see below), crafted by China's visionary film maker Zhang Yi Mou. The diary scrolled quickly off the list, but not before a few cries of BOYCOTT (i.e. don't watch). This from Americans whose country gathered around its TVs to whop and cheer as their government poured fire and death on the people of Baghdad, laid waste to Irak, shredded the U.S. Constitution and plundered the U.S. Treasury, all while lecturing China and others on democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law. Well excuse me while I tear my hair out.
The irony of it is that if Obama makes it to the White House, one of his biggest early challenges will be changing American foreign policy, specifically with regard to China. Yet I've seen no goodwill, no glimmer of openness, nothing that bodes well for the state of preparedness of even the most so-called "liberal" Americans (at least as represented on Daily Kos) on the question of America's future relations with 1.3 million of our fellow earthlings. The massive indifference displayed here and elsewhere in the blogosphere to the message China and especially its most accomplished artists were sending is frightening.
So what was that message? I guess it helps to have some familiarity with the works of the visionary film maker who conceived and executed it. Anyone who has seen his movie "Hero", which did quite well in the U.S. in 2004, (probably because it stars Jet Li, among others), remembers Broken Sword, one of the four assassins bent on killing the Emperor (who later went on to build the Great Wall, and whose recently discovered terra cotta army guards him still).
In the film, Broken Sword, China's greatest swordsman, is also a master calligrapher, who in the course of perfecting his art comes to a realization, which he then shares with his co-assassin and which ultimately impells the latter to spare the Emperor's life, for the sake of a peaceful future ("Peace under heaven").
This realization is contained in a scroll which the assassin gives the Emperor, on behalf of Broken Sword, showing a new version of the character for Sword. And the same message is also delivered via the assassin to the Emperor in the form of two words which Broken Sword writes in the sand with his sword. Those words, "Tien Shà", mean "(All) Under Heaven" (and not "Our Land" as the subtitles for the American DVD purport).
Upon reading the scroll and hearing Broken Sword's message as conveyed to him by his would-be assassin, the Emperor himself has an epiphany which opens his mind and heart, convincing him of the truth of Broken Sword's words: "Peace under Heaven", as the culmination of human pursuits, the highest attainment of both the artist and the warrior.
Yesterday Zhang's unifying message was broadcast to the world on the exquisite voices and faces of the children who performed in the magical tableaux Zhang had created. It was present in every passionate, flowing, perfectly synchronized movement of the unseen dancers (2008 of them) who manned every part of that stupendous tableau on movable type, one of the four great Chinese inventions featured in the presentation (the others being paper, gunpowder and the compass -- another four-part narrative, just as in "Hero").
And that message took flight with the torch bearer, as he bestrode the world with his head in the stars and the flame of hope held high, before lighting the great beacon obove the Bird's nest stadium.
That message was carried in the simple theme song, which repeated the message of Broken Sword "We are family". Friends. Friendship. Love. (Echoes of the Sixties, All You Need is Love, Imagine and We Are the World) "Agape", as the Greeks called it, which is the highest degree of love we earthlings are capable of. For once conveyed without kitsch or triteness, but powerfully emotional and sincere. Borne on the wings of Hope. And yet it finds no echoes here.
This was not a message from the Chinese government. It came to us as art, from one of this or any century's greatest artists (formerly labeled a dissident by his own government, in the days when his movies, all featuring his wife and muse, Gong Li, were better known outside of China than to its own people). It came to us with the pride and goodwill of the Chinese people.
So while the Opening Ceremony itself filled me with renewed hope for a better tomorrow (just think what could happen if the level of ingenuity and know-how the Chinese displayed in that one performance were applied to the climate problem), the navel-gazing indifference of even the outwardly best-intentioned of Obama's base of supporters went a long way to dash my optimism.
I hope America wakes up and begins to behave with the "decent respect for mankind" that the Founding Fathers instructed them to. But after the last eight years, which Americans have wrought on themselves and the world, I won't hold my breath.