If You Could Read Dutch You Would Know...
Mar. 17th, 2008 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fj...that the country is building up a hype that will make Danish Cartoons About Mohamed look like some kind of Richard Scarry moment.
So at the turn of the millennium some culture critic wrote an article in a major newspaper about The Multicultural Drama and how integration in the Netherlands had failed, this failure creating enclaves of Muslim immigrants who had not become part of general Dutch society and were in danger of becoming a permanent underclass, much because state had kept too much distance. The discussion then went bad because a large part of the white Dutch middle-class thought it was finally ok to crudely voice their thoughts about Islamic terrorism and headcoverings and those people not speaking Dutch and Moroccan teens snatching cellphones as all one big connected thing, leaving many Dutch Muslims wondering when they had become responsible for 9/11 and stolen cellphones just because they prayed five times a day, or not had parents who did. A Somali-born Dutch politician, Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, always pointing out how bad Islamic culture and countries treat women and minorities, worked together with a Dutch low-budget provocative director, Theo van Gogh, to make a short movie denouncing the treatment of women under Islam. The director got knifed to death one morning by an Islamic fundamentalist, the politician went in hiding and now lives in DC working for some thinktank.
The discussion about integration did not get any better since. Everybody is getting publicity voicing feeling insulted and marginalized, the previous minister of Immigration decided to become mega-popular by becoming an integration hardliner and shoving as many refugees out of the country as she could, and one guy from the conservative/libertarian party, Geert Wilders, started demanding so much attention during question time and in the media for the, oh god what all did he not call it, violent, racist, women-hating, Christian-hating, sharia-striving, untrustworthy, etc, etc religion of Islam, mostly by pointing at Iran and Saudi and going through the Koran, that his party threw him out and he is now a one-man party in parliament. His previous media-coup was claiming that for the same reasons Dutch law outlawed "Mein Kampf", Hitler's manifesto, from being printed and sold, the Koran should be too, as he started pointing to passages in which all non-believers should be killed and the results of Islamic revolutions.
Ok, here comes the good part: for the last couple of months, Mr. Wilders, borrowing a page from Hirsi-Ali, has announced he is making a movie about how violent Islam and the Koran are. Over the weeks information has dribbled out: I believe it will be like 15 minutes. He will post it on YouTube. He is making it, although that gets reported in such a way it is unclear to me if he is actually writing, directing, producing, or just bankrolling it. The man has been so vocally denigrating to Islam he has been living in hiding under protection for years now, so he is doing this while lving somewhere else every few weeks, appearing in parliament, and doing his media-ops.
Islamic countries are already not reacting well to the news a Dutch movie that is "insulting to Islam" will appear on YouTube soon, I believe supermarkets in Bahrein or something are now boycotting Dutch and Danish product already. The prime minister has had a discussion with Mr. Wilders in which he points out what damage to international relations -- being a small country NL actually cares about things like that -- and danger for Dutch people in foreign countries this movie could create; Mr Wilders wasted about the time it took to walk to the nearest gaggle of reporters with cameras before crying, incensed of course, that this was "pure intimidation" while the Prime Monster said he was just pointing out responsibilities and consequences, and in other words nobody got anything out of this except more media-ops. Dutch Islamic politicians are telling Wilders he is marginalizing whole groups of people, Wilders says they should become apostates of this bloody ideology that contrasts with everything that is good about Western civilization.
Today a front-page page-wide footer ad in a very large Dutch newspaper was placed by a private person, Harry de Winter, producer and TV presenter with the text:
So, here we all sit and wait for ten minutes of YouTube, wondering if Hamas will start shooting rockets up north now, and Pakistan will take over YouTube globally yet again and fill it with Bollywood clips only. Here's the thing I am wondering about though: I knew this already, but reading a couple of blogs here and there (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zodmicrobe, zombietruckstop, popebuck1) I know that even making a low-budget indie let's-max-out-the-credit-cards film is a) hard work b) takes so many people a crew of twenty is considered "small". So who is actually shooting this movie? Who is holding a camera, who is the DoP, where is the catering coming from ("Oh man, shoarma again? Is this irony or something?"), where is it being shot, who is doing the make-up, who the hell is in it? This many people cannot keep a secret, especially of something so newsworthy. If this movie is being made, there must be leaks about production circumstances, if only about the people making it striving to stay anon because they are so scared. Are they shooting by a script written by Mr. Wilders? Is he actually directing? Who is editing this footage together into something watchable and interesting, a very valuable and specific skill, even if this is just a Ken Burns style pan-and-zoom over texts and images while Mr. Wilders narrates?
I am starting to think logistics prevents this movie from even existing. And if it does, it will most likely not incense anyone, because it will be so awfully made nobody can get through the first minute.
So at the turn of the millennium some culture critic wrote an article in a major newspaper about The Multicultural Drama and how integration in the Netherlands had failed, this failure creating enclaves of Muslim immigrants who had not become part of general Dutch society and were in danger of becoming a permanent underclass, much because state had kept too much distance. The discussion then went bad because a large part of the white Dutch middle-class thought it was finally ok to crudely voice their thoughts about Islamic terrorism and headcoverings and those people not speaking Dutch and Moroccan teens snatching cellphones as all one big connected thing, leaving many Dutch Muslims wondering when they had become responsible for 9/11 and stolen cellphones just because they prayed five times a day, or not had parents who did. A Somali-born Dutch politician, Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, always pointing out how bad Islamic culture and countries treat women and minorities, worked together with a Dutch low-budget provocative director, Theo van Gogh, to make a short movie denouncing the treatment of women under Islam. The director got knifed to death one morning by an Islamic fundamentalist, the politician went in hiding and now lives in DC working for some thinktank.
The discussion about integration did not get any better since. Everybody is getting publicity voicing feeling insulted and marginalized, the previous minister of Immigration decided to become mega-popular by becoming an integration hardliner and shoving as many refugees out of the country as she could, and one guy from the conservative/libertarian party, Geert Wilders, started demanding so much attention during question time and in the media for the, oh god what all did he not call it, violent, racist, women-hating, Christian-hating, sharia-striving, untrustworthy, etc, etc religion of Islam, mostly by pointing at Iran and Saudi and going through the Koran, that his party threw him out and he is now a one-man party in parliament. His previous media-coup was claiming that for the same reasons Dutch law outlawed "Mein Kampf", Hitler's manifesto, from being printed and sold, the Koran should be too, as he started pointing to passages in which all non-believers should be killed and the results of Islamic revolutions.
Ok, here comes the good part: for the last couple of months, Mr. Wilders, borrowing a page from Hirsi-Ali, has announced he is making a movie about how violent Islam and the Koran are. Over the weeks information has dribbled out: I believe it will be like 15 minutes. He will post it on YouTube. He is making it, although that gets reported in such a way it is unclear to me if he is actually writing, directing, producing, or just bankrolling it. The man has been so vocally denigrating to Islam he has been living in hiding under protection for years now, so he is doing this while lving somewhere else every few weeks, appearing in parliament, and doing his media-ops.
Islamic countries are already not reacting well to the news a Dutch movie that is "insulting to Islam" will appear on YouTube soon, I believe supermarkets in Bahrein or something are now boycotting Dutch and Danish product already. The prime minister has had a discussion with Mr. Wilders in which he points out what damage to international relations -- being a small country NL actually cares about things like that -- and danger for Dutch people in foreign countries this movie could create; Mr Wilders wasted about the time it took to walk to the nearest gaggle of reporters with cameras before crying, incensed of course, that this was "pure intimidation" while the Prime Monster said he was just pointing out responsibilities and consequences, and in other words nobody got anything out of this except more media-ops. Dutch Islamic politicians are telling Wilders he is marginalizing whole groups of people, Wilders says they should become apostates of this bloody ideology that contrasts with everything that is good about Western civilization.
Today a front-page page-wide footer ad in a very large Dutch newspaper was placed by a private person, Harry de Winter, producer and TV presenter with the text:
"Als Wilders hetzelfde over Joden (en het Oude Testament) gezegd zou hebben als wat hij nu over Moslims (en de Koran) uitkraamt, dan was hij allang afgeserveerd en veroordeeld wegens antisemitisme'A true point, for it doesn't take much time going through the Torah to find plenty of violent passages, utter xenophobia towards non-believers, and some really women-unfriendly talk. In further interviews Mr. de Winter accused Mr. Wilders of creating the same kind of discussion about Islam in The Netherlands as existed about Judaism in Weimar. (Alas, Mr. de Winter bought it not in the most widely-read popular newspaper, but in one of the middle-class aspirational ones. Still big though, but not on-target IMHO, like he wanted to play safe. I consider it chickening-out.)
If Wilders had said the same about Jews (and the Old Testament) as what he is bleating now about Muslims (and the Koran), he would have ages ago been swept away and found guilty of anti-semitism.
So, here we all sit and wait for ten minutes of YouTube, wondering if Hamas will start shooting rockets up north now, and Pakistan will take over YouTube globally yet again and fill it with Bollywood clips only. Here's the thing I am wondering about though: I knew this already, but reading a couple of blogs here and there (
zodmicrobe, zombietruckstop, popebuck1) I know that even making a low-budget indie let's-max-out-the-credit-cards film is a) hard work b) takes so many people a crew of twenty is considered "small". So who is actually shooting this movie? Who is holding a camera, who is the DoP, where is the catering coming from ("Oh man, shoarma again? Is this irony or something?"), where is it being shot, who is doing the make-up, who the hell is in it? This many people cannot keep a secret, especially of something so newsworthy. If this movie is being made, there must be leaks about production circumstances, if only about the people making it striving to stay anon because they are so scared. Are they shooting by a script written by Mr. Wilders? Is he actually directing? Who is editing this footage together into something watchable and interesting, a very valuable and specific skill, even if this is just a Ken Burns style pan-and-zoom over texts and images while Mr. Wilders narrates?I am starting to think logistics prevents this movie from even existing. And if it does, it will most likely not incense anyone, because it will be so awfully made nobody can get through the first minute.
