Master's jokes

In the following text, we will talk about the fact that colonialism has not died - only it exists in our heads. Colonialism not only is alive, he is cheerful, cheerful and even jokes.

Two people entered the small stage in the bar. One has a motorcycle helmet on his head, crowned with amusing deer horns, in his hands - a pioneer drum. A partner - with an uncovered head, but armed with a completely different drum, huge Turkish. A strange march, taken from some classic work, obviously the twentieth century, but to determine more precisely, no opportunity to determine. Under the phonogram, showmen were irregularly beaten into their drums, focusing more on the visual effect than on the sound.

When the music fell silent, the one that without a helmet went to the microphone and read it - from a piece of paper, in an English -non -born manifesto. The document announced the creation of a certain Barents Liberation Army, which should end the injustice and do something incomprehensible. Incomprehensible, but radical. Then on the screen hanging on the back of the scene, they showed a movie. It was hilarious. At first, it was about the flights of the first aviators, then the plot (if you can use this word in this case) went to Gagarin.

Gagarin, approved there, learned to fly either on the Kola Peninsula, or in his environs, where in the training flight, performing something unusual, his friends allegedly died. The story was accompanied by a video sector, including paintings by a monstrously shabby former Soviet garrison - peeling houses, broken roads; Against the background of all this, freshly painted busts and honorary boards. It was not possible to verify the frames; However, the film did not imply the desire of the audience to verify something. Meanwhile, the sunsid text became more absurd, the video sequence is more sophisticated.

Gagarin flies already on a spaceship and passes the Queen encrypted messages about how the earth from space looks like. As a secret code, the astronaut uses a recipe for cooking, because all other tricks of the insidious American enemy will easily unravel. The first astronaut flies over the Barents region, snow, clouds, no soul below. Spectators are increasingly penetrating the belief that they are inflated, but they have fun, fun. The paranoid logic of the film focuses on the coast of the Barents Sea, the narrative moves from Gagarin to the colonization of the Scandinavian Arctic. Deer rush along the tundra. They chew galyucinogenic mushrooms and understand the meaning of life. The Barents of the Earth and Water are great and abundant, they even have a certain initial order, but various colonialists come and begin to operate the whole thing.

We are already in the twentieth century, in its last decade; The malicious Norwegian politicians, cruel Russian and international corporations establish their orders in the region; Local residents are perceived as semi-wild aborigines, something like an anthropistance to innumerable natural resources, gas, metals, fish. By the way, a very funny episode is already connected with fish, borrowed (as I was later explained) from the famous Norwegian film of the nineties. The side of a small trawler, among the trembling fish, invitingly trembles a large naked young woman. The young man watches her, sitting at the side, then he throws off his pants and energetically has sex with her; Two white bodies rhythmically move among the chaotic trembling of hundreds of fish.

Soft porn is so comical that the hall does not even giggle, but just laughs. In general, there is something to laugh at - cutting scenes from various films and documentary chronicle is made masterly, and the text that reached the tops of the absurd turns comicism into a truly aesthetic experience. At the same time, the political message of the work is not lost, it is stronger, is honed, and becomes more convincing. Even the very concept of “barrels of the region”, minted by politicians from Oslo, it turns out, is an attempt to symbolic appropriation of these territories. In general, discourse is not without Foucault. And, of course, Down with the colonialists! We will free the Barentsov region! Enter Barents Liberation ARM! The film ends, the same music plays, agitators are just as irregularly hit in the same drums. The announcement is crowned: those who want to join Bla are invited to the stage.

The reception process is simple and effective - since it is pleasant and unforgettable. Fruilly white -haired girls put you on your body (where exactly - your choice) pseudo -tutor, which depicts a large red heart, and against its background, as in the rays of dawn, is a dark figure with a Kalashnikov automaton in their hands. The second part of the ritual is a stack of ice vodka, which the newborn should drink. The process resembles the recruitment of soldiers into the hired European army of the eighteenth century; Given the unusual prices for alcohol in Norway, who want a lot, a lot, almost all the audience. Agitators clink with the public.

Having swallowed a portion of the frozen “Russian standard” ( sic !) And turning the sleeve of shirts to cover up the still humid sign of distinction, I notice in the crowd of various people, from the famous TV presenter once in the country (on the eve, she boasted to me that, at the eighties, she first invited young, unknown “a-ha” to anyone), before the American cultural attest in Norway. The people are having fun, the founding fathers BLA cheerfully finish off the third drink-they can be satisfied, the performance succeeded. The next day, the famous Norwegian portal published a large article with their photos. To summarize: Bla's first fight won that it is not surprising-the main tool of the struggle of the barren-revolutionaries call win-win things, sex and alcohol.

Actually, this successful joke could not be written in Russian, leaving it to chew on the local media, if not for the important circumstance, more precisely, two. Firstly, the joke is really successful, smart, a combination of video and text is so virtuoso that Guy Debor, its films, the situational concept of the “detailed” (“abduction”, “theft”, “conscious use of non-purpose”) of images of bourgeois pop culture immediately come to mind. That evening, the foundations were not undermined in the polar Norwegian Kirkenes, but they made me think about something. And about this is my second.

I ended up there at the annual Barents Propel, a first-class festival, which is not for the first time for the first time. The purpose of the event is not so much to entertain the population of the ten thousandth town at the Russian border as to demonstrate that Kirkenes, all the Arctic, whose Norwegian, Russian, Finnish is not a colony at all that it is interesting to be here (it’s difficult to believe at first, passing hundreds of desert kilometers through a snowy, incredibly, too beautiful “wild” and economically) and economically) and economically) and economically) and economically) profitable.

This region is on the threshold of another life , no longer as calm as now-everyone is talking about the future of the international use of the Barents Sea Barents and that soon the Northern Sea Route will be almost the main trading road from the Far East and Southeast Asia. The anti -industrialization of the new industrialization, the new development of the ice desert is strong, therefore - despite the completely frivolous mocking tone - a conversation about colonialism, begun by the founders of the Barents Liberation Army, is serious. This is generally not a joke, although BLA does not intend to conduct any fights except sexual and edible.

I am familiar with one of the BLA generals, with the one who beat the Turkish drum. Morten Stroxes, the Norwegian writer, Scandinavian incarnation of Ryshard Kapushinsky, composing documentary books about drug trafficking in Mexico, the life of Palestinians in Gaza, I don’t remember the sharks already where. The presence of the writer (and, thank God, not a fiction) and gave the whole venture subtlety and taste. I remember in December last year we discussed with Morten Deborah , the revolution and the Norwegian North as an eternal object of operation of the Norwegian south. Morten himself was born in these parts, but the teenager ran away from the house, hated everything here - snow, coal mines. NATO military radars, the established harsh life of local residents. He wandered around the world for many years, until, finally, he suddenly became interested in the place from which he once barely escaped. Equipped with global experience, he decided that he would be able to see the local one differently.

The story is ordinary. Only now in it colonialism (albeit cultural, of course) is no less than in the activities of some Australian company extracting iron ore under Kirkenes. Exotic not only where the palm trees grow, the abdominal for drug dealers ripen and the shark fins the shark. Exoticism inevitably arises where condescendingly (albeit friendly, and even humanely) you look from the cutting of your personal transatlantic caravel. From this observation point, local are no longer a little people; More precisely, they are not people like us. This “not tug” should be protected from us.

That is, a strange mechanism acts here: the “liberation of the colonies” is proclaimed by people whose consciousness is a product of colonialism. The smart “liberator” guesses about this, therefore his speech is full of irony, he seems to wink, they say, you know that we know that you know that we are just joking. Our jokes are addressed to us; I can hardly imagine the Kirkeness Shakhtar, who would appreciate the detective Morten Stroxes. It is precisely the colonialists will appreciate, drink vodka, slap the shoulder of the jokers and go home to wash off the revolutionary tattoo. I was able to eliminate my only a couple of days later. Bla bail to the body.

This story is related not only to the Norwegian North. And not only to the European North as a whole. She is generally about Europe and generally about a world that is divided into those who are not very seriously and sincerely indignant about the difficult position of the oppressed, and the oppressed themselves, who do not understand subtle jokes about their own position. The latter, I must say, is not at all up to all this. It is more familiar to live and enjoy sex with alcohol without any ideological sabotage. Personally, I am ready to die in the ranks of BLA, but, alas, there will be no revolution, since no one actually wants it. Gagarin was right, translating the story about his cosmic impressions into the language of the recipe for the habit.