First-Torture for Taxcollectors.It's YOUR MONEY!
Saudi Arabia abolished income tax in 1975,over a quarter of a century ago,
more than twenty five years for the morons amongst us.
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=219660&group=webcast
NOW to the Spazz...
While being a moron may help gaurd against actual mental illness,its no bed
of roses as I hopefully began to explore in my Film,'The Idiots.'
Extract from a Review,here...
http://www.disabilityworld.org/07-08_01/arts/idiots.shtml
After the initial shock that these actors were not acting mentally and
physically disabled roles, but were acting as coherent adults choosing to
"spass" for social experimentation, I tried to look beyond what I was
seeing, to what Mr. Von Trier was saying.
In the restaurant, Henrik and Stoffer manage to get themselves a free meal
by playing on society's unease around people with severe learning
disabilities. The maitre d' is so desperate to get them away from his
customers, who are tolerating them with embarrassed politeness, and out of
the restaurant, that he doesn't even ask them to pay.
The men are using the fact that no one would dare suspect they were frauds
because there is this unspoken rule that disabled people shouldn't be
alluded to with anything less than total reverence, which is unnatural and
stifling and further separates the disabled from the rest of society.
Karen is vulnerable but conscientious and it takes her some time to warm up
to the idea of "spassing". Even before she is convinced of the merits of
the group's activities, she stays with them, such is her desperation to
belong and to be loved and when she makes the transition to her first
"spass" she is embraced fully into the fold.
Her initiation highlights the compromises we make in our quest to be
accepted, our need to be a part of something, anything because we cannot
stand to be alone. It shows our reliance on social structure, that we
respond to coercion and influence and we like guidelines and restraints
because without them we would have to use our imagination and be individuals.
Within the group, everyone has a reason to be there; "spassing" is used to
escape responsibilities or problems.
Axel justifies abandoning his family by pronouncing that having a wife and
baby is "so middle class". Katrine returns to the group apparently having
decided she wants "to spass", but clearly her motivation is to re-kindle
her affair with Axel. Karen has run away from her family after her baby's
death and when Josy's father turns up, he reveals that she hasn't been
taking her pills.
The fact that no one in the group, not even Ped who's a doctor, knew Josy
was on medication, shows that pursuing a common ideal can be destructive to
people who may use it to avoid focusing on personal problems. Their group
is just another social structure flawed with superiority and ignorance.
Ironically, when with people who have genuine learning disabilities, the
group is patronising, calling them "sweet" and "cute" as if they're
children or small animals and wanting to take photos of them as if they're
exhibits. This infuriates Stoffer (rage being his flaw) but the others fail
to recognise their hypocrisy.
As the outside world encroaches on the group, there are disturbing results.
When the man from the council offers Stoffer a grant to move his "private
home for the handicapped" out of the area, Stoffer is so incensed that he
has to be physically restrained by the group, to stop his maniacal
flailing. Then, when Josy's father comes to take her home, Jeppe becomes
hysterical and prostrates himself on the bonnet of the moving car. Has
their "spassing" liberated this torrent of expression? Or were they using
the "spassing" to mask their emotional frailty?
The real test of being "true to themselves" and Stoffer's philosophy, comes
when he challenges them to take their "idiot" out into their everyday
lives. This separates those for whom "spassing" is just another clandestine
activity from those who have really found a new part of themselves that
they don't feel ashamed of.
Henrik and Ped will not honour their inner "idiot" in their public lives
because they'll lose their jobs and Axel leaves his mistress and his
"spassing" and slopes back to his "middle-class" wife and baby. For them,
there is too much at stake to risk being rejected by a society that is so
intolerant of differences and so fearful of expression.
Karen succeeds in "spassing" in front of her family because she has already
lost her baby; the one thing that was really important to her. She doesn't
need to hide away her idiot because the people who accept her "spassing"
are the people she now loves, (although she's only known them for two
weeks.) It's harder for her to go back to her family and face her loss than
it is to stay with the group and "spass".
The film itself doesn't undermine the disabled at all, but being upset by
the film, does. Thinking it's "wrong" that Stoffer and his gang are
pretending to have disabilities, but it would have been O.K if they'd been
pretending to be from a different country or a different social status to
create a reaction, feeds the alienation of disabled people which society
creates through "special" treatment.
"The Idiots" is filmed as if it's a documentary with an off camera
interview asking the group "why?" Bits of the crew's equipment occasionally
comes into shot and, talking of equipment, genitals do have a large part to
play, if you'll excuse my Carry On Punning writing style, with breasts,
penises and vaginas intermittently on view just in case we were starting to
relax a little.
There's Stoffer's erection in the women's showers where the women just
giggle as they walk past, not feeling threatened by the sexual arousal of a
disabled man, demonstrating again how differently disabled people are
perceived and how their sexuality is not taken seriously.
Also, we see a penis sliding in and out of a vagina in glorious
technicolour during the gang-bang. This jolted me into Quaker mode,
wondering how well the actors knew each other, and did their
partners/spouses mind, and were they both on the same money? And, as money
was changing hands was this technically prostitution with the casting
director as inadvertent pimp?
The scene is also shocking because some of the group are "spassing" whilst
having sex, but, why does this upset us? I had very convoluted feelings
about this which I found extremely hard to articulate but I thought no
one's being raped or hurt here, in fact everyone's enjoying themselves and
exercising free will. They're role-playing, which, in a sexual scenario,
isn't entirely unheard of; if they were being nurses or firemen would that
cause offence to people on behalf of those groups?
Again, this illustrates that society denies the sexuality of people with
disabilities, especially those with learning disabilities. Society dictates
that it's wrong to separate emotional and physical desire, even 'though we
know this is idealism and all humans can and do feel sexual without feeling
love or even like. Society will not admit to sexuality being purely
physiological so it cannot allow people that do not fully "understand"
emotions to be sexual.
Also, is there something frightening about this scenario? Does it remind
the audience of a dark and horrifying problem? Even though Stoffer and the
gang are only pretending to be disabled, it may remind us of society's
failure to protect the mentally and physically vulnerable from sexual
deviants.
Ultimately, the use of sex, nudity and disability in the film is to
illuminate the hypocrisy of our social structure and the emotional and
spiritual limitations of our "civilised" way of life. The more we slip into
stereotypical social roles and worship materialism, the more we lose our
basic connection with others and ourselves.
Stoffer makes some dubious militant comments like "sheds are bourgeois
crap" as he squats in his Uncle's mansion. However, his point that you
can't justify acting your idiot, but finding your own inner idiot is
acceptable because it's just accessing a part of you makes some sense; we
do need to re-claim some of the characteristics we've lost by living in our
cynical social environment.
I applaud the premise of this film because I like the idea of stripping us
down to our socially untainted and primitive selves and forcing us to
question the way we live our lives.
Whatever you say about Von Trier, he is consistent; he thinks freely and is
an inspiration to individuality. The more shocked you are by his work, the
more need you have for it in your life.
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=219675&group=webcast
