Dear China,

I am not impressed. 南天一柱 was a perfectly good name and it was pretty; “Hallelujah Mountain” is just a kind of cultural appropriation that is not out of sync with all the other appropriations going on in that movie.

And then, of course, I feel bad, because who am I to prevent someone who may be desperately poor benefitting from the little extra cash that this might bring in?

Though I have my doubts as to whether that’s what the tourist officials were really thinking…

In less than ten years’ time, Avatar will be largely forgotten, remembered, perhaps, as the first 3D movie of what has now become the norm.

I only hope you’ll change the name right back.

Love,

Lillienne

So back during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, the media thought it was a wonderful idea to bash China on its human rights issues.

Now what I want to know is why we aren’t doing the same to Canada. Is the way we treat First Nations peoples any credit to our so-called human rights record?

This is written more out of frustration than because I think there’s any real literary merit in it. There isn’t. But I’m so angry it has to be expressed somewhere.

—

I hated the news running up to
the oh-eight Olympics—that need to search
in the crevasses of another language,
or the stretch across an ocean
for the English papers back in the old
home, for the simple acknowledgement
of the pro-China protests happening
next to the anti-ones. What happened to
reporting both sides of the coin? A feature
never seen in the media of this country
that I so want to proudly call mine.

This was supposed to be about sports,
not politics. So I believed until my
Canadian friends persuaded me
otherwise. Here was a forum for speech,
a chance to hang the dirty laundry
and maybe make some change!

Except now it’s oh-ten, and everything is again
lopsided, now in the other direction.

No one points a finger at the plight of our
First Nations, the one that we put them in.
No one questions the state of the homeless
in the host city of the most beautiful place on earth.
No one calls us out on our hypocrisy of being
a peacekeeping nation refusing to stop pumping
the greenhouse gasses destroying our world.

CTV anchors keep asking me, with smiles
on their faces and merchandise on show, do I believe.

What can be said but that I tend
not to commit myself to unstated blanks?

I’ll believe when we hang the dirty laundry.

At least, they were yesterday!

Yesterday was the first time I went to the Norm to watch one of the Film Soc’s screenings (I’d been there before for events like Mental Health Awareness Day). The Norm is nice and comfortable, and tickets are cheap: $2 for members and $4 for non-members. (Membership is $10.) Some quick calculations at the beginning of the year told me I wouldn’t watch enough movies to get my money’s worth were I to get membership — I’m not a movie buff — but the Norm’s still an excellent way of getting the cinematic experience while paying less than the usual $10 fee.

I didn’t really mind waiting to see Where the Wild Things Are; I suppose the movie’s only interesting to those who grew up with the book. It wasn’t one of my favourite picture books, but I definitely wanted to see how it transferred to the big screen. My thoughts? It was surprisingly depressing. But judging by the incessant commentary coming from a group of three children behind me and my friend, it was probably much funnier and more interesting for them.

P.S. You can find the Film Soc’s schedule of future screenings here.