Jingsheng to remind us that Chinese democracy is not all it might be, and a BBCZ number for the cultured to remind us of China's great 'civilisation' by parading its art treasures on the screen.
Pilger's documentary Silent Death of Cambodia — was the most reviewed programme of the week. But there was something disturbing about the reviews; each one had its regulation photo of a sad, dying Kampuchean child to adorn its columns; each reviewer professed him or herself moved by the extremity of suffering Pilger revealed.
Yet the political realities which had caused this pain and suffering hardly got a mention. Yes, we should be sending aid, • can overcome a few little political wrangles that are getting in the way?
Most of the reviewers probably watched the news on television the same evening, yet they didn't appear to notice one little item which reported Chairman Mrs. Thatcher was a second Churchill, a leader who could spearhead the fight 'global exposio mism of phe SR. In other words, st threat' posed no account should Thatcher recognise the Heng Samrin government "WLICI knows, a 'puppet' of Vietnam and the USSR... Fail-safe A couple of days later, Thatcher was asked á Parliamentary question about why aid was going Kampuchea She employed her method of shutting her eyes to reality, taking a also included — Year Zero: The and surely Hua's declaration that "hegemonist is, as yet.
and the defunct Pol Pot usual fail-safe John Pilger with a victim of Pol Pot and the West deep breath, and enunciating clearly that aid was now getting through and she recognised Pol Pot because there was no 'real' alternative The point is that in the documentary could only moral responses documentaries human misery, despite his bold attempts to break out of the naturalistic mould of television technique of making us ambulant evoke the standard about offered, the What is altered is the presentation documentaries and to pin the blame firmly at the door of Western imperialism.
His was a moral analysis, not a political one. How could two human beings decide to bomb a country out of existence? How could Khmer Rouge soldiers massacre their fellow countrymen, women, and children? Without a more profound political analysis than Pilger answers to such emotional rhetoric of horror.
At the same time, television, country) was remarkable only made possible by personal journalistic reputation.
analyse how they got to be that way.
within the context of Pilger's film wAS an achievement. That he was allowed to go so far as to call Nixon and Kissinger murderers (of a and was probably Pliger's own unique His attempts causes OI Kampucher's destruction and its present plight was a first step away from the naturalist tradition of merely "showing' how things look without explaining Pilger refused to avoid making judgements he had a point of view aid he did not try to anaesthetise it beneath the mask of 'balance'