A State of Mind: a Leap Into the “Secret State”
Terence Michale
WR150SA3—Paper 2
6/27/2013
A State of Mind: A Leap into the “Secret State”
This paper addresses the question: is A State of Mind (2004) enough for us to understand North Korea? Drawing upon the historical context of North Korea’s isolation and lack of understanding about its people among the rest of the world, I am making a case for North Korea being a secret state, probing for new perspective of this country—its people. Then, I examine some of this film’s successes in doing so and argue that this film is doing enough justification for our understanding. This paper will raise larger question about the necessity for various perspectives in making judgments of an unknown territory.
The Mass Games, also known as the Arirang Festival, is an annual event celebrating the founding of North Korea following its liberation from Japan in 1945; it is "the largest choreographed spectacle in the world" involving almost a hundred thousand people of all ages. In the documentary State of Mind (2004), British filmmaker Daniel Gordon follows the lives of two North Korean schoolgirls as they prepare for the 2003 Mass Games—the country’s most anticipated socialist realism extravaganza. He captures the girls ' daily lives in the capital Pyongyang under the communist regime, offering an unprecedented account of the North Koreans ' state of mind in the context of the mass games. In an interview for the DVD extras, Daniel Gordon expresses that his intention of making this film is to "show a society; this is it. We 're trying to understand it." This ambiguous statement, however, raises questions about the film 's representation of North Korea: how can the lives of two girls represent an entire society, especially in which one subordinates his or her "[individual] desires to the needs of the collective?" Does the portrayal of Pyongyang, the “showcase capital” as Gordon maintains in the film, undermine other parts of North Korea, where people are living in
WR150SA3—Paper 2
6/27/2013
A State of Mind: A Leap into the “Secret State”
This paper addresses the question: is A State of Mind (2004) enough for us to understand North Korea? Drawing upon the historical context of North Korea’s isolation and lack of understanding about its people among the rest of the world, I am making a case for North Korea being a secret state, probing for new perspective of this country—its people. Then, I examine some of this film’s successes in doing so and argue that this film is doing enough justification for our understanding. This paper will raise larger question about the necessity for various perspectives in making judgments of an unknown territory.
The Mass Games, also known as the Arirang Festival, is an annual event celebrating the founding of North Korea following its liberation from Japan in 1945; it is "the largest choreographed spectacle in the world" involving almost a hundred thousand people of all ages. In the documentary State of Mind (2004), British filmmaker Daniel Gordon follows the lives of two North Korean schoolgirls as they prepare for the 2003 Mass Games—the country’s most anticipated socialist realism extravaganza. He captures the girls ' daily lives in the capital Pyongyang under the communist regime, offering an unprecedented account of the North Koreans ' state of mind in the context of the mass games. In an interview for the DVD extras, Daniel Gordon expresses that his intention of making this film is to "show a society; this is it. We 're trying to understand it." This ambiguous statement, however, raises questions about the film 's representation of North Korea: how can the lives of two girls represent an entire society, especially in which one subordinates his or her "[individual] desires to the needs of the collective?" Does the portrayal of Pyongyang, the “showcase capital” as Gordon maintains in the film, undermine other parts of North Korea, where people are living in
Cited: Choi, Suhi. "A Filmic Reality: Images of North Korea in the British Documentary A State of Mind." Asian Cinema 22.2 (2012): 290-304. Gordon, Daniel. A State of Mind. New York, N.Y: Kino Intl. Corp, 2004. DVD. Haltof, Marek Pryluck, Calvin. “Ultimately We Are All Outsiders: The Ethics of Documentary Filming.” Journal of the University Film Association 28.1 (Winter 1976): 21-9. JSTOR. Web. 22 May 2013. "Social realism."Oxford English Dictionary "Stalinist."Oxford English Dictionary. 2013. Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 24 June 2013.