Cinéastes Sans Frontières
Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron, writes in the Guardian of a borderless state of freedom with regard to film-makers that perhaps presages a wider movement in many other markets:
"My hope for the future is for people to start cutting loose from those geographic roots, to begin moving towards a state of freedom, of rootlessness. I feel this is what someone like Alejandro [Gonzalez Inarritu] has already done. By shooting [Babel] in Morocco and Japan, you could say that he was leaving his roots and finding his identity.
"I have a huge appreciation of backgrounds. What I have a problem with is borders. The language of cinema is cinema itself: it doesn't matter whether it is filmed in Spanish or English or French or Japanese. The same goes for the people who make it. Yes, I'm a film-maker from Mexico. But I also belong to the world."
The same can be said of free markets, comparative advantage, peaceful relations, and mutually beneficial exchange.
The efficiency of markets transcends all borders.
The language of satisfaction is the purchase itself.
Comments (10)
Am I the only one who saw Children of Men only to be shocked at how overrated it's been? A pretty basic chase/action movie, with an interesting science fiction scenario that doesn't really go anywhere.
Presumably time preferences would rise high in such a world (where all women have become infertile, so there are no children) and things would be chaotic, but that idea plus a non-hero dodging gunfire isn't enough.
Published: February 7, 2007 10:26 PM
Please no thread jack, I don't think this post was about the content of a certain film. To get back on topic, perhaps it is time for Economistes Sans Frontieres, non?
J.H. might want to read the P.D. James original for more fulfilling entertainment or voice his concerns on Rotten Tomato.
Published: February 7, 2007 10:44 PM
In my own work borders are meaningless, and I am overwhelmed by a competing/contrasting interest in both ethnography and the jet-set. I've seen expressions of this internal wrangling played out badly (Figgis's The Loss of Sexual Innocence or seemingly any film that posits the internal affairs of South Africa as its subject), so-so (the usual fare), or brilliantly (the "documentary" films of Werner Herzog). I think the mainstream approached something like what Cuaron envisions in the Sixties and Seventies before breaking apart again into regionalist blocs in the Eighties.
I confess that I am surprised in some sense to witness this argument put forward by Cuaron, of all people. As I recall the bit I'm about to paraphrase I read in a time approximate to that when his entry in the Harry Potter franchise was released and I read it in Entertainment Weekly. Apparently, his statement was in response to threats by the Federal Government in Mexico City to withhold continued subsidization of the Mexican film industry.
In any case, Cuaron was indignant. Apparently, to make good on the threat would be an affront to the greater Mexican art and the Mexican people. Perhaps it hadn't occurred to Cuaron that the Mexican people were perfectly capable of supporting Mexico's film industry on their own, voluntarily... unless, of course, that is the Mexican film industry was incapable of providing anything that they might individually value.
It occurred to me at once that this sort of subsidization discourages a global outlook and reinforces an insular dynamic. In addition, it places shackles on the filmmaker, in that his or her art must jive with official sanction. Of course, Cuaron derived benefit from it and, therefore, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The sentiments blogged here are nice but I don't think Cuaron really understands the full ramifications of what he is saying or what the consequences of which might have in store for his beloved Mexican filmmaking industry.
Cuaron certainly had adopted a nationalist argument at odds with the embrace of the international to which I am replying. The editors of Entertainment Weekly seemed to embrace Cuaron's vision of the proper way to finance filmmaking and, at that, I threw down the rag in disgust.
Published: February 8, 2007 1:38 PM
>>>To get back on topic, perhaps it is time for Economistes Sans Frontieres, non?
That is the fervent desire of the bureaucratic and corporate elites who currently hold power in the West: a borderless world, where nations are mere markets and the powerful reap the benefit of a unified, global tax base. Capital will flow freely and local culture will be abolished in favor of uniform consumerism. All of humanity will swear their loyalty to this new Tower of Babel. Heaven on Earth!
There will be nowhere to hide.
Published: February 8, 2007 2:16 PM
There will be nowhere to hide
Yes, it will be terrible as international companies relentlessly try to offer you better deals on products and services...
Published: February 8, 2007 2:49 PM
>>Yes, it will be terrible as international companies relentlessly try to offer you better deals on products and services...
If your only goal in life is to be a wage earner for large companies and consume cheap products, then yes, global government must seem a great thing.
Published: February 8, 2007 5:15 PM
Reactionary,
How ironic that both the collectivists/corporatists and the libertarians want a politically borderless world, the difference being that the former want a world state, while that latter want no state.
This is the ultimate battle, is it not?
Published: February 8, 2007 5:43 PM
The term 'Libertarian' is a broad one. I am not an Anarcho-Capitalist, and I would be happy with a small local government. I prefer Swiss-style confederation to Euro-fed. I think of myself as an excentricarian, extolling the right to be as eccentric as you want. My preferred pro-liberty symbol would be of a blue circle which has an 'X' superimposed on it, i.e. excluding the world from my world. Perhaps this could become a world-wide symbol of Liberty? Feel free to use it!
Published: February 8, 2007 7:32 PM
David,
They both want the same thing: Heaven on Earth.
Published: February 9, 2007 8:58 AM
No, Reactionary, the libertarians just want the freedom to see where humanity can take itself, as that would be heaven enough.
Published: February 9, 2007 1:10 PM