Well, feh!

[rabidsamfan]

Spent sixty bucks on an impulse ticket to go see a Chinese New Year production and walked out just after intermission. The opera house was full of families with young children, many of them non-Chinese parents of adopted Chinese children who had brought their children along to help them learn about their heritage I'm sure, and the producers (New Tang Dynasty Television) decided to do a sequence about a modern Falun Gong practitioner being tortured and executed right in the middle of the show. I'm sorry to have missed the Tibetan dancers and the Mongolian bowl dancers and the drums etc., but blast it, torture is not an acceptable topic for young children, even if you are going to show the person "being rewarded" afterwards, and especially not if the audience doesn't know that's what they're in for when they pay for the tickets. I had a cramp in my leg, which helped me decide not to go back for the rest of it, but mostly I was just disappointed. I'm willing to bet that most of the people who watched the rest of it are going to come away with a bad taste in their mouths about Falun Dafa instead of any kind of sympathy for the people who wanted the story told. I know I did. And it's going to take me a bit of reading to keep it from spilling over to Buddhism, too, since several of the other bits and pieces were about Buddhist beliefs, and I know that's completely unfair.

Feh.

Comments

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. That was definitely BAD karma. *shudders*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

It was. And I have now managed to spill most of the food I was cooking for dinner, and drop my bottle of soda. I'm not washing the dishes -- no way -- there are glass glasses and sharp knives in there and I want to live to live to liiiiiiiiive!

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Any Chinese Food you could order instead?

*would like to come over with a broom and clear up the mess*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I ate the bit that didn't spill. And I cleaned up the worst of it, I'm just not washing the dishes. *waggles tongue at sink* I'm just disgusted by my lack of natural grace.

Oh, well. A bit more and I'll have managed to finish the first draft of the Berlin story. I'm self-sabotaging at the moment, out of sheer disbelief, but it edges closer, it does...

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

No need to be distrustful. I enjoyed very much what I had the chance to see so far. And now I have to go to bed; it is 2.00 a.m. over here - lucky enough we''ll have a "Church Brunch" this morning and I don't have to make breakfast for my family. Thank God even for the smallest of blessings. *smiles*

Night, dear! And be careful with the shards!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Sleep well! It sounds wonderful to have someone else make breakfast...

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

My goodness! And they didn't make a warning about how it might not be appropriate for young children? *shakes head*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose the Easter story isn't all that benign either, but at least when I was a kid my mom knew that was what was going to be under discussion -- and when I was a little kid, the version I knew was pretty sanitized.

A warning would have been nice. They did announce what they meant to do, which was when I bailed.

[danachan.livejournal.com]

Feh. What claudia603 said.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I should have been warned by the earnest bad grammar. I'm not sure why proselytizing does that to people, but it always seems to, no matter what belief they're pushing.

[sayhello.livejournal.com]

I third what Claudia says. Was that supposed to be entertainment??? Educational???? Ick.

Hewene

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Most of the rest of the program wasn't so blatant. Heck, if they'd done that at the very end, so that people could bail with their kids, I probably wouldn't have minded quite so much. And I'm sure that they're very sincere in wanting to show the story -- I'm willig to bet that some of the cast members probably have personal experience of being persecuted. But that didn't make it any easier to swallow.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Hon, that crap has about as much to do with Buddhism as Scientology does. That is to say, there's some bits and pieces stuck in there, but it's not Buddhism. Please don't let it taint whatever concept you may have of the Dharma, which is a noble and useful tradition. Falun Gong is a cult, just like those Nichiren nimrods that were practicing in the 70s. The Buddha would be deeply dismayed to see what goes on in his name sometimes. (Just like Jesus.)

(frozen) (no subject)

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I think that's what frustrates me. I know just enough to know that the two aren't the same, but I've no idea about the rest of the audience - and I know a lot of them were too young to discern the difference. Oh, well, sixty bucks down the drain. I did like the dance they did for Mu Lan, though.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Bleah. Proselytists. What's next, a Vietnamese New Year celebration that re-enacts the Tet Offensive? Hey Kids, we're spending Valentine's Day in a garage in Chicago, Yay!!!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*yyyyeeeeeerrrrrkkkkk*