Erotcism in East Asia and Kim's Hanyo

Today I came across a review of a new book entitled, "The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters," whereby the author claims that most non-Western cultures can be categorized under "the culture of the harem;" where there is no sinfulness or sense that one would suffer eternal damnation that is found in what he calls "Christendom," or Western cultures.

The book opens up with a story about a British expat teaching English in Shanghai who prolifically blogs about his sexual exploits with former students and the general Chinese public as it may seem.

The first post I read in Sex and Shanghai struck a chord. It is about a woman nicknamed Sweetie, 23 or 24, who was sleeping with her married boss. After the wife catches them having sex in her house, the husband arranges to have Sweetie move in with them and to treat her as his wife's sister. The wife dutifully obeys to this seismic shift in the relationship's dynamic.

I immediately thought of Ki-Young Kim's Hanyo, or the Housemaid (1960) from South Korea, recently restored by the World Cinema Foundation, it can now be seen for free on The Auteurs. Click on the picture for the direct link.

Housemaids provides a screen into what South Korea was like in the 1960s. Heightened economic prosperity and increased American involvement brought about a steady middle class population that demanded two story houses, televisions, and microwaves. It soon became feasible for lower-income families to hire live-in housemaids. Husbands having affairs with maids was practically expected in society.

The film is a reflection of those anxieties and a mille-feuille of psycho-sexual distortions, strained nervousness, mental breakdowns, ubiquitous/relentless tension, and haunting cinematography. With it's blatant depictions of sex and violence, subtle rebukes of consumerist behavior, and photographic starkness, there is nothing old nor traditional about Kim's the Housemaids.

Salt Mines - Las Salinas

The Dominican Republic is truly a country in transformation, thanks to the democratic patina of the current president, Leonel Fernandez. With a quick change to the Constitution and riding on the age-old tradition of bought votes, he is currently serving his third term - even waving away a pesky implication into a corruption case which only served to increase his popularity.

I saw him speak a few years ago at New York University as part of the "Voices of Latin American Leaders" series. When he was asked about the direction of the Dominican Republic, he curled his lips in a smile and said, "I want to turn the country into a little New York." Everyone laughed and applauded as apocalyptic visions of a merengue-driven Babylon flashed before my eyes. (A quick digression: I recently read that Israel and the Dominican Republic are seeking to improve business ties.)

All of these changes can be seen in the the production of salt. In the 1960s the Dominican government created an umbrella organization called Corporacion de Empresas Estatales, a cooperative of state-owned companies. A part of this was the Distribuidora de Sal, a monopoly in charge of salt distribution that guaranteed protection from outside competitors and stabilized prices.

A couple decades later the Dominican Republic begins to fully fling open it's doors to foreign investors and dismantles the CEE. The repercussions are still being felt in this food-deficit country - inflation continues to skyrocket while the market is being flooded with much cheaper rice, pastas, etc. from Venezuela, Chile, and Spain.

I decided to check out Las Salinas, one of the country's most important (and only unionized) salt producing centers. At about an hour and a half from Santo Domingo, it is home to a sleepy kite surfing village that is much too close to a naval base.

When I arrived, I was too amazed by the primitiveness of the whole operation to pay attention to the explanation of how salt is harvested (simply put - solar evaporation of sea water). Men pushing and pulling carts laden with salt up a rickety make-shift train track made me think of the opening scene of POWAQQATSI: Life in Transformation.

"POWAQQATSI is a celebration of the human-scale endeavor...that defines a particular culture. It's also a celebration of rareness -- the delicate beauty in the eyes of an Indian child, the richness of a tapestry woven in Kathmandu -- and yet an observation of how these societies move to a universal drumbeat." - Godfrey Reggio

And it is this drumbeat that made me forget, even if just for an hour, my constant beef with the Dominican government to take in the full meaning of what it means to be a culture in transition.

Part 3 - Border Market at Elias Pina

As soon as we left the funeral we came upon cement block houses, the only ones we've seen on the entire trip and undoubtedly built by an international relief agency.

We finally arrive at Elias Pina, a small border city that rests in atop a fertile mountain valley. Three times a week a border market transforms the city's streets into seemingly bustling activity. The goods were similar to the ones in Dajabon: enriched imported pasta, cheap imitation perfume, toilet paper, powder soap, socks, plantains, etc.

But Elias Pina was marked by a pervading feeling of apathy and hopelessness. It looked like I was the only foreigner there and yet no one tried to hawk me their wares. Merchants fell asleep atop their goods or left their stands unattended (most of the merchants are women, and they pay a small fee for a slice of sidewalk.)

Part 2 - Evangelical Funeral on the International Road

Our second day of travels we came upon an Evangelical funeral taking up the whole road. Quite a sight to see on this dusty and desolate mountain road: close to a hundred people all bouncing to the same rhythm while passing around a coffin.

Thanks to our connections with Padre Regino Martinez at Solaridad Fronteriza (a prominent, outspoken critic of Haitian's working/living conditions in the Dominican Republic), we were allowed to take photographs, record music, and take part in the celebration.

(The third picture down is of a man jumped onto the coffin and started vibrating on it.)

Gospel of the Creole Pig - Michelange Quay

More visual poetry in motion than a short film, Gospel of the Creole Pig is a beautiful yet complex dialectic on U.S. - Haitian relations. The movie poses difficult questions and offers no semblance of tidy resolution, mirroring the United States' unwillingness to take a definitive stance on aiding it's poor(est) neighbor.

A stratosphere of issues are compressed into each frame : the burden of colonial legacy; the inefficacy and dependence on humanitarian aid; race relations; and diasporic communities just to name a few. Combine this with potent symbolism, mythology, and a meditative soundtrack and you've got yourself a Quay film.

After a long pan of a littered Haitian landscape, the film begins with a close-up of a pig speaking:

I am the Creole Pig. I am what I am. I'm the pig of your ancestors. There's no other pig than me, this Creole Pig, black, apocalyptic, a pig of the New World whose blood has washed the slaves free of sin, whose flesh is your flesh, until the end of time.

In this film, Quay reminds us that we are individually multiple, and to understand ourselves, we must understand our collective and individual shadow. It is a striking portrayal of myriad Haitian issues, refracted through a pig's life.

Do yourself a favor and click on the image above to watch the film. Quay has uploaded it onto Facebook, unfortunately it is in French with French subtitles.

To learn more about Quay and his films, check out this interview with Cinema Scope.

Part 1 - International Road between Haiti+ D.R.

Along the Dominican-Haitian border is a road referred to simply as "la carreterra internacional." It's a mountainous and serpentine stretch of fallen roads and forgotten people. Built by the Dominican government in 1929 (and not cared for since), it is dotted with dilapidated army barracks that house disgruntled and weary soldiers who roll off their list of complaints to anyone willing to listen. You could just smell the colonial era ruin.

I didn't know what to expect. Dominicans very rarely travel the road - you need a permit from an agency that works along the border and signed by the military just for access. Most people I spoke with weren't even aware there was an international road and if they did, they would spin tales of the violence and danger the Haitians are waiting to perpetrate on foreigners like me.

No Dominicans live on the international road, not even the poorest of the poor. The bleak terrain is inhabited solely by Haitians who move from other parts of the country. Their sustenance is dependent mainly on hand outs from cars passing and the occasional relief agency. They rejected their homes to be constantly rejected on the border.

Chicana author and poet Gloria Anzaldua says, a border "es una herida abierta (is an open wound) where the third world grates against the first and bleeds; (when it) hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country, a border culture."

I wondered if life along the Haitian-D.R. border would be similar, a bizarre hybrid of both cultures. Not so. Here the culture is imperviously suspended above both, as if following it's own space-time continuum. Everything except their desires are antiquated - the clothes seem to be fashioned by 19th century Puritans, they live in simple one room mud houses with tin roofs, and the only form of transportation is by horse. Every so often their lives are punctuated with the glint of modernity when they hear the thrum of a car. Young and old alike run down from all sides of the mountain, shouting, "Dame Algo!"

What's it like to live on the extreme peripheries of both nation's consciousnesses for fifty years?

En route to the international road:

Please note the vintage merengue records being used as decoration in the background....agh!

Along the border is pretty much the only place you'll find pine forests still left in the D.R.

International Road Begins: