A Brief Meditation on Empire

American empire, if that's what you want to call it (I do) is a fascinating thing. Of course, there's the fierce military power projected around the globe, and the largest supercharged consumer economy the world has ever known. Hollywood, too, has a powerful grip on the imaginations of the world's movie-going and television-watching masses. But artsy, underground cinema from the Global South? Say it isn't so!

Last night I went to MALBA, the modern art museum, for a free short film screening, expecting a taste of independent Argentine cinema, and perhaps an interesting cultural experience. What do artists in Argentina want to communicate through film? What stories do they want to tell? Wouldn't it be cool to find out!

But as the film began, I had an uncanny sense of familiarity with the scene unfolding on the screen before me. Is that -- no, couldn't be... wait, it is! -- the Manhatttan Bridge and the rooftops of Brooklyn? A NYC taxicab? The streets of the East Village? Turns out the independent Argentine filmmaker got his degree from the Tisch School at NYU. All the dialogue was in English, and the characters and story were echt NYC. The film basically felt like a nicely-made Wesleyan senior thesis project, but screened at the leading contemporary arts museum in Argentina instead of the campus auditorium in Middletown, CT.

What does it mean that an independent Argentine filmmaker chooses to portray a story not from his own culture, but from mine? Is the simple fact that the director is a native of Argentina reason enough for a major cultural institution here to so prominently feature his work, despite its explicit lack of any national or regional context, content, or meaning? I guess so.

In a way it's perversely enjoyable to feel like my (soon to be) hometown is universally acknowledged as the undisputed center of the universe, but COME ON... I didn't come all the way to South America to bask in the glory of my own country's sick magnetism and global allure. For that, I'm planning on spending the next three years living right there, in the belly of the beast. Maybe it's time to get out of slick Buenos Aires and off into the Bolivian Altiplano, where somehow I figure there's bound to be a bit less high class cultural detritus floating around.

Ah, to be an American traveler at the height of our Imperial folly!