7/20/2007

Thriller, or: I Don't Know What To File This Under

We're not a filter blog, but I feel a strong need to pass along this video to our readers. It features the inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines reenacting the video for Michael Jackson's Thriller. I want to write something really meaningful here about Foucault and the nature of surveillance and governmentality, and possibly something about the discourse of the body as it moves through confined spaces, and maybe also something about how I've recently been reading stuff about mass parades in the Stalin-era Soviet Union and present day North Korea, and how that seems to inform a particularly strange reading of the video at hand. But really, when it comes down to it, the intersection of amusement and horror in my nervous laughter as I watched the video pretty much sums it up. update: These guys do this sort of thing quite a bit. Hmmm. [thanks to Boing Boing for the link.]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A definite contender for the "probably awkward"! You should probably talk about Foucault here. This facility apparently prides itself on its technique of distracting inmates from forming prison gangs via "physical fitness." (I looked it up.) It's especially eerie since extrajudicial killings and political prisoners are on the rise in the Philippines. You can't tell from this video, though.

Asad said...

I don't feel awkward or conflicted at all about the performance. I just thought it was great. Foucault Schmoucault.