mondojohnson

A surprisingly beautiful and human documentary about two girl gymnasts who are preparing for North Korea’s appropriately titled “Mass Games.” The Mass Games are gigantic, Leni Riefenstahl-type rallies that the North Koreans have held for over fifty years. You would recognized them from the news: astonishingly synchronized dancers and acrobats performing in front of an arena-sized backdrop mosaic created by schoolchildren holding up colored cards.

I am reminded of Don DeLillo‘s Mao II: it’s worth quoting. He is describing a Moonie mass wedding:

When the Old God leaves the world, what happens to all the unexpended faith? He looks at each sweet face, round face, long, wrong, darkish, plain. They are a nation, he supposes, founded on the principle of easy belief. A unit fueled by credulousness. They speak half a language, a set of ready-made terms and empty repetitions. All things, the sum of the knowable, everything true, it all comes down to a few simple formulas copied and memorized and passed on. And here is the drama of mechanical routine played out with living figures. It knocks him back in awe, the loss of scale and intimacy, the way love and sex are multiplied out, the numbers and shaped crowd. This really scares him, a mass of people turned into a sculptured object. It is like a toy with thirteen thousand parts, just tootling along, an innocent and menacing thing….When the Old God goes, they pray to flies and bottletops. The terrible thing is they follow the man because he gives them what they really need. He answers their yearning, unburdens them of free will and independent thought. See how happy they look.

Yeah, what he said…