Che Guevara - Anatomy of a Myth
Sorr no subs on this one currently
Here is one of those films you wait around for hoping it might pop up with subtitles. And once again it is Vladtepesblog who provides the goods neccesary for our online enlightenment. This is most appreciated.
The story of Ernesto "Che" Guevara de La Serna as told by people close to him from the time of his first meetings met Cuban revolutionaries until his death in 1967.
From the movie website
"Through testimony of those that knew him and fought with him the mythical "Che" is demystified. The video shows the other and darker side of the man behind the myth.
From the Cuba revolution via the failed international campaigns over cultural icon to mass marketing image. That is the "road" the image of Che followed. This video wants to show the man behind this varied myth. As so often reality is a lot uglier than the myth.
What will be the long term legacy of Che? Will he survive the inevitable exposure by history of what remains hidden today? Today the myth still inspires people. They desperately want to deny the reality behind that myth. But mythical men fall from their pedestal. Even his own grandson has referred to Fidel Castro as a "dictator" and Cuba as a "state capitalist" country. "
It is important to remember that we live in a time where the cultural elite applauds Benicio del Toro as he dedicate the prestigious "Best Actor" award in Cannes to "the man himself" Che Guevara. I could come upon no better symbol of the intellectual bankrupcy of the "creative class".
How can they applaud a devout admirer of Stalin and Mao? Does their creative imagination not allow them to picture what life is like when a region of millions of people are dying as a consequence of controlled famines? Do they understand the horror of eating your own?
...Here, have another Hors d´euvre Monsieur Toro. Would you like another frogleg to go with that Champagne?
This disgraceful behaviour reminds me of a crucial passage in Platos "Republic" Book X, where he lets Socrates contemplate the dishonesty and hedonist character of the arts.
"The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, and has inferior offspring
(...)
Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily imitated?
- Clearly.
And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side of the painter, for he is like him in two ways: first, inasmuch as his creations have an inferior degree of truth --in this, I say, he is like him; and he is also like him in being concerned with an inferior part of the soul; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. "
