A North Korean critique of Western media

[Zenn3k]

They did nail us pretty good in that video. Its not 100% accurate or anything, but it certainly drives the point that most American's are dumb, lazy, and crave pointless useless things.


capcha - Its super delicious <-- pretty funny considering the subject that the capcha is an ad

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

Oh please. The American media has a big problem and it has nothing to do with what North Korea's talking about. Let's start with the bobblehead 'pundits' who are nothing more than a mouthpiece for their corporate masters. Let's talk about the NFL rigging games and using the Beyonce announcement to sweep it under the carpet. Let's talk about every goddamn television show finding creative ways to embarrass blacks for the crime of trying to succeed.

Also fuck North Korea.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

With so much to do online, and so many people with internet access I'm always surprised anyone watches TV anymore. It's like the crap that used to be 'daytime TV' has spilled over, because the only people watching any more demand that sort of thing.

-clarification edit-
I didn't actually watch the video, I'm just gathering from the comments and skipping through it that it's criticising our TV programs.

 

[RufusMcLaser]

Western media culture is huge, and (for better or worse) US input tends to dominate Western media culture. With tons of content being pumped out every day it's never difficult to find something to look down upon, is it?
The NorKs can thumb their noses at the rest of the world, and even make some valid criticisms of some very vapid, stupid things that pass for entertainment. I, on the other hand, can ridicule my govt's ruling party over a tasty dinner with my very healthy friends and family in our well-heated domicile. That's more than most North Korean citizens can say.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

I do agree, 90% of the media we consume is garbage.

90% of everything is garbage! It is called Strugeon's law.

Spoiler: May I also remind everyone that this is the kind of media North Koreans are forced to endure?

 

[FalloutJack]

Not everyone in the West watches what it put ON the TV. I couldn't give a crap about American Idol, Survivor, or the like.

 

[Loonyyy]

Breaking News:

North Korea releases anti-American propaganda film showcasing how bad American media is. Film is part of North Koreas ceaseless drive to fellate itself and convince it's citizens and the rest of the world that 'merica is "evil" and that North Korea is "the best".

Film contains images of the worst examples of American media, hyperbolic "facts", and is narrated with inflammatory and pithy, yet sometimes appropriate, dialog.

World response: "Oh North Korea. You so crazy. We all know pop-culture media is flooded with garbage. Tell us something we don't know. By the way, ever fix that starvation and totalitarian government thing?"

More at eleven.

This. The problem isn't that it's an analysis of a culture. The problem is that it's propaganda being used to create a disgust of a culture.

Look at it this way-if my knowledge of videogames came entirely from Zero Punctuation reviews, my opinion of videogames in general wouldn't be very good. Yahtzee raises valid points, but his job is to focus on the negative, and deconstruct things crudely. In context, knowing the games in question, it's amusing and informative. In isolation, it's biasing and useless.

The North Koreans have that limited viewpoint. This isn't the same as Westerners criticising Western media to Westerners. This is presenting exclusively critical views of a culture to a group of people who aren't given access to all of the facts, and who may be largely ignorant of the culture, as education on our culture.

 

[SadakoMoose]

La Distinction, BUY IT.

"Bourdieu claims that aesthetic choices both create class-based social groups or "class fractions," and actively distance people in one class from another. Predispositions to certain kinds of food, music, and art are instilled at an early age in children and guide them to their appropriate social positions, by forcing them to internalize a preference for objects and behaviors that are suitable for them and an aversion towards the preferred objects and behaviors of other classes. When an individual encounters the culture or art of another class, he or she feels "disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance (?feeling sick?) of the tastes of others."

Trash Culture? More like CRASH Culture!
...Crash is a good thing, btw...

Not that this necessarily applies to the North Koreans, but maybe more toward actual Americans...like the ones in this thread or in the comments for that video...

 

[Korolev]

I don't know why they bother. No one in North Korea sees documentaries such as this - it would give the game away that other nations are richer than North Korea (which insists that it is the richest nation in the world, and that the US is the poorest). They ostensibly make this stuff for people in the West or in the South, but no one living outside North Korea believes it (aside from some very, very gullible communist-wannabes).

They're wasting what very little money they have, fighting a propaganda war that ended in the 1980s with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Oh and Funny Fact: no one is allowed to talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even mentioning it in North Korea, or even being in Eastern Europe at the time as some unfortunate North Korean exchange students were, is enough to be labelled a dangerous traitor for daring to have witnessed a communist government being overthrown by the people. There are North Koreans who were in East Germany when the Wall fell - those silly enough to return home got imprisoned immediately lest they tell their friends and family of what happened.

Is most Pop-Culture trash? YES. Absolutely. But so what? Most culture, throughout ALL periods was trash. We look at the fine art of the ancient Greeks and Romans, of the Victorians and Renaissance painters, and we wonder why our culture is so inferior when compared to those past glories. Little do we realize that we are only seeing the VERY BEST of those older cultures. The muck and the garbage didn't survive the test of time - only the brilliant works did. This gives us a skewed view of past cultures. 1800s Europe wasn't brimming with Van Goghs. He was a rarity, an unappreciated rarity, in his own time.

Mark my words, 200 years from now, future generations will look back at our Great Artists and wonder how far their culture has fallen, and trash like "America's Next Top Model" and "Fiddy Cent" will have disappeared into obscurity.

But back on topic - North Korea, you've surely got more important things to spend your time and money on, like, I don't know, modernizing your agricultural system so your people don't starve and starve and starve.

 

[RufusMcLaser]

...North Korea, you've surely got more important things to spend your time and money on, like, I don't know, modernizing your agricultural system so your people don't starve and starve and starve.

Your entire post is spot on in my opinion, particularly the closing. We can't imagine the continuous waking nightmare that most North Koreans endure, and there is little chance things will improve in the near term.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I have a hard time believing that 11% of my country can't find its own country on a map. Its gotta be bull shit. Please please let it be bull shit.

That number is probably pretty conservative. Back when I was in high school, our Geography teacher had us draw a map of the world from scratch at the end of the year to see if we'd learned anything.

If the majority of the class's maps were to be believed; Hawaii is secretly Japan, the US was as large as Europe and Asia combined, and the only thing to the East of Africa, besides Russia, was Hawaii-Japan. Or as I like to call it, Hawpan.

Edit: I'm not saying that my map was a whole lot better, but at least mine had Guam on it.