Thursday, November 15, 2007

A Thought on the Port Protests & A Call for New Radical Protest

Although not active in the protests, i have been keeping up on what has been going on and they have my moral and spiritual support. I was thinking about the effectiveness of what they are doing, as well as protesting in general, and it is quite apparent that there needs to be new radical forms of protest. Society has become assimilated to the way protests are carried out: they send in a pollice unit, the police brutalize and arrest the protesters, and nobody (the mass public) does nothing about it. We need to find new methods of protest in which the police won't know how to process it. I am suggesting something in the form of high satire. And I started to think of a performance:

The scene is a crowd of performers dressed in full-body, white butoh make-up, naked except for a turban on the their heads and cloth around their genitals (as to not get arrested for "indecent exposure"). They will play the dead Iraqis. A sea a dead Iraqis writhing on the ground, exposing their wounds and spitting up blood. The protesters will boo and hiss at the Iraqis, kicking them down and spitting at them when they reach out for help. The protesters will also be armed with little debbie brownies, which they will hurl at the Iraqis as well. The Iraqis, being offered no aid from the protesters, have no other choice but to reach out to the policemen for help. As this is going on, a performer dressed as an Iraqi woman is being raped by a group of American soldiers. Amidst this commotion a performer dressed as a politician (Bush) is wandering around chuckling to himself, counting a large wad of money and gluttonously drinking oil from a can. The back drop is set by large speakers pumping out music by Metallica, Disturbed, and 3 Doors Down.

3 comments:

evn said...

Hi Ian, I just stumbled upon your blog from here to there. We've met before on an informal occasion, you did some mean harmonica, I did clarinet/computer wackiness...

I fully agree that protest needs to take on new forms. Like you described, the roles in traditional protest have been defined; there is nothing new to be gained from it. I like your idea of creating confusion amongst the police, by convoluting lawlessness. Redefining the parameters of the confrontation, and making the confrontation itself the statement, is infinitely more effective than wagging a sign in the air and letting the same old story of Cop vs. Agitator bear down upon you.

Cool stuff here, in general. Let me know if you ever want to shoot the wind about any of it, I'd be interested in talking...

-evan

Literary Nutria said...

That sounds good, and doable. Call me if your gonna do it. Ill rally people up.

Literary Nutria said...

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