The days of future past

The center of town is closed today as a group of people plan to protest the Thai military coup. So what did I do? I went to the movies, and I watched a fantasy about our inherent ability to change.

I don't know what else to tell you, as the feudal elites of Bangkok shut down all democratic process, I had nothing else to do but wonder around aimlessly eating and thinking about buying plastic crap that I didn't need. 

X men: days of future past is a film about changing the past to heal the present. Just like so many other Hollywood fictional narratives, it has a subtext which significantly distorts historical fact in order to celebrate the western ideals of choice and free will. 

During the Vietnam war, the United States of America dropped more high yield bombs on Vietnam than had ever been dropped by any other nation in the history of human conflict. This is a fact. The United states bombed Cambodia and Laos, two nations who were not at war with anyone. This is a fact. The United states of America littered south-east Asia with a destructive force that still claims the lives of locals to this very day. Whether we like it or not, this is the true legacy of western civilisation. 

The Hollywood machine continues to perpetuate a narrative of American suffering that overshadows the real human suffering. All of the technological might and individualism of the west could not defeat the collective mindset of the Vietnamese; yet, in a twisted way, Hollywood makes the essence of the tragedy an internalised conflict in the western perspective - it somehow neglects the deaths of countless Vietnamese civilians. 

Days of future past is no different from any other Hollywood representation of this story, it appears to blame the liberals at home who curtailed military spending. There are so many excuses which evade challenging the foundations of autonomy and self governance which are at the very heart of western culture, and this is for good reason. Hollywood diverts us from asking the really important questions such as... 

•  Is there truly any choice in the concept of democratic free will? 
• Are the principles of autonomy and self governance which shape the western cultural perspective truly a universal standard for human existence? 

Sometimes I wish I could just go to the cinema, read a book, or look at an image and not feel compelled to deconstruct it in this way. As I looked around the audience, I saw a handsome gay couple who smiled at each other. One man was Thai and strong and the other was a tall and haughty English man. Occasionally they stroked each other with a tenderness that made my heart ache for something that it had never had. Oh I have experienced the tenderness of contact, fleeting moments, but I have never allowed myself to be so completely entertained by the shadows dancing on the wall. I was not jealous of their love. I was, however, so jealous of their ability to be mesmerized by the spectacle, that I shed a tear - just one. It blistered from the corner of my right eye and awkwardly fought its way over my wrinkled cheek until I was thinking of the soldiers in the street. Men with guns wearing ill-fitting uniforms who were prepared to shoot at people who wanted the right to choose their fate.

We keep telling ourselves that we have a choice, wherever we happen to be from. We sing songs of freedom that are filled with platitudes and pathos. Yet in the west, even as our institutions built on lies fragment we elevate the single voice, as though it can be heard above the din. I cannot help but tell myself that I alone have participated in my fate, but here I sit alone, as trapped as any man in any ill-fitting uniform. As the culture of my people fades into the past, I cling to the fictions and the fantasy of free will, unable to make a real change. I tell myself I did it all on my own, my way. Alone in the dark, I shed a tear for freedom and I told myself that I still had a choice.