I’m ill since days which drives me mad. Worse than that, since days, insanity goes through my mind because of the newest thing going on in Turkey. But I coulnd’t collect my senses to put some sentences together just to describe how insane this is.
Today I resumed working again. One of the first mails I read was about Georg’s trip to Iraq.
It’s ten years now that the US left Iraq, and I recall a reportage about the first heavy metal band from Iraq called Acrassicauda. They were the only one performing under Sadam’s regime, of course they were censored, and of course at least one song of their repertoire had to worship the great dictator. The weird thing was: head banging was forbidden because that would have had too much of a similarity with Jewish-orthodox praying rituals.
But how would heavy metal work without head banging? The band flew to Syria, and after a while to Turkey, where they enjoyed temporary freedom to bang their heads again.
You never know, head banging could cause heavy head ache. It’s actually not far away from pixelating all cigarettes in movies shown on Turkish TV because it’s unhealthy. People are laughing at this. May be it’s funny, in a way. Imagine “Good Night and Good Luck” with pixelated cigarettes. It was not so funny when Halk TV, a tiny, unknown but only channel which extensively reported about the Gezi protests, was fined 500.000 TL (= 200.000 €) because they forgot to pixelate a cigarette in a movie they’ve shown.
Nevertheless, I would have said this will never happen. Istanbul, the emerging city of art.
But then, a few days ago I heard something really insane. Something that reminds of entartet art, and if it wasn’t so serious, it would be too funny to believe or just a copy cat of a Louis de Funès police movie. There is a police division in Istanbul which was ordered to literally watch 2.000 hours (equals some 2.600 episodes of House of Cards or so) of telenovela (I know this is not art) to document all sorts of traffic violations such as crossing red traffic lights, driving without a seat belt or just too fast. This done, producers, directors and actors were contacted and politely reminded that they shouldn’t do that in films because people on the other side of the screen take them as role models.
I agree. Films shouldn’t show robberies, killings or any other crime. This is actually how all the evil begins.
So, now dear fellow citizens, I wonder where this will end? Head banging-free heavy metal? Car chasing film scenes with cars stopping at red lights? Actually, in the seventies it was sort of an unspoken rule in Istanbul to not stop at red lights. Seriously, I’ve seen guys being beaten up in front of their kids because of stopping at traffic lights. Bad role models, good old days.
In the meantime Acrassicauda had asylum in the US but now returned to Iraq I heard. I need to ask Georg about the head banging there.