Monday, April 14, 2008

the black pope

I just had a strange question and answer of La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo. I have slept probably 3 hours in a plane in the last 36 hours. We checked into our hotel off the airplane in the Abasto neighborhood of Buenos Aires but they wouldn't let us get a room so early so Cat and I walked around the city and I found a DVD rental place that has a bunch of leftie docs about the Montoneros, Tupamaros, etc.. and we went and ate at the Gato Negro, an old and charming cafe. By the time we got the room, I had to deal with festival stuff and then dinner and then my movie and q and a. I tried to speak English but I ended up speaking mostly Spanish, which sounds cool but I may have misread the audience. There were a couple of cranky lefties that did not like or understand what the hell I was doing so they kept the questions focused on why false documentary and how I was kind of making fun of the prisoners and kind of not. A couple Peruvians were there and one remarked again on the facts and what I got right or wrong. What is your concept of ideology is pretty interesting. I kind of rambled with that one talking about evil Soviet bobsledders in the seventies and how after 1989 Marxism is basically forgotten. I want to go back and look at this and remember the good things about the critical analysis of capitalism as well as the authoritarian tendencies of leftist groups. I talked about factionalism as well and how I see my work in the tradition of American satire creating characters that criticize my country and my capitalist ideology from outside the system. The translator and theater guys thought it was great. I felt a bit defensive, especially since many of the critical questions came from people who then got up and left shortly after. Which I thought was lame, by the way. I was tired and managed a 30-minute Spanglish q and a jetlagged so hooray!

Anyway, two women audience members came up to Cat and I and said are you Obama or Clinton, which I thought was funny. I'm Obama because I'm hoping he can do something even though I know he's a centrist, but I'm actually sympathetic to the argument that at this point the two are not far apart and that maybe Hillary would actually be able to get things through the bureaucracy. I asked what they thought and they said that they both were lousy and that Obama scared them. I said why and they said because you don't know anything about him. I talked about the culty criticism of him and one of them told me he was the Black Pope of the Apocalypse, which I thought was an insane and strange metaphor. When I got home, I googled it and found that it's a real conspiracy theory.

No comments: