Tibetan Music Videos (Blog-off entry #2)

Tibetan music videos are mesmerizing. Mesmerizing in the way that a car wreck is mesmerizing--you want to look away, but you can't for the fact that you just can't quite believe that this is happening; that is this something that actually exists in the world.

Imagine this: A Tibetan man in a field in a traditional Tibetan coat, with stylish western sunglasses and bluejeans He has one hand on his heart, the other in the air, and then he switches hands, and switches again (this seems to be the entire course of the choreography). The music is a love song, in Mandarin Chinese, with flutes, an electric drum beat, and soul-crushing synthesizers. In the far background of the field are office buildings. In the next shot he riding a horse. In the next shot, he is in someone's driveway. Back to the field again. I am left confused.

The thing is this: in 1997 Zhongdian decided to be doubly-named Shangri-la (after a book written by a westerner who had never been to China--the story is that he envisioned the place after a National Geographic article), in order to draw tourism. Among many other changes, not long after the re-naming did the "ethnic-style" music videos appear, first there essentially for the tourists, to further exoticise the Eastern Tibetan culture, to package up their traditions in a little box for others to see. But then, not before long, the residents of the town decided that they really liked the music videos--so now, tourists or not, you can walk into most households and there's a good chance that you'll see one of these epicly bad works of melodic cinema, blaring in the corner.

And so I get worried: with all of these packaged-up mutilations of the cultural traditions, will the original songs and dances be butted out? It's starting to seem that way. But the second question is this: do I have the right to tell them to do otherwise? America has been a nation of near-constant development and change, and who are we to deny another culture the same thing? And hell, drive around the southwest for awhile and you'll be guaranteed to see a similar packaging and marketing and changing of traditional culture in the resorts and attractions that revolve around many of the glorified tribes of native americans.

But while the Chinese history of invading Tibet seems like a tea party compared United States' history of nearly destroying its now-minoritized indigeneous cultures, the marketing of the Tibetan culture (among other southwest minorities) has reached levels that seem to surpass anything in the U.S.

Tricky things to judge for a foreigner.

-s