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| Why fuss over this? | |
For the proletariat, Ayres Rock is the place to go to have your babies eaten
by wild dogs, but the big red rock means considerably more than that to us
intellectual elites. Uluru (ie Ayres Rock), is an important symbol of traditional Aboriginal
culture, and many of us remember being forced to sit in school watching grainy
anthropological films of overweight topless Aboriginal women performing their
not-so-secret women's business - dancing around at their corroborees, before
being forced to write essays on the sanctity of multiculturalism. This is a traumatic image which for most of us, thankfully, fades from memory
over time. But not so for 25 year old French exotic dancer Alizee Sery, who
apparently was to taken by these anthropologist gems that she felt the need to
make a tribute to the traditional owners of Ayres Rock, by doing as the local
Aboriginal women traditionally did - going topless and dancing.
Fortunately for
the sake of posterity, she had the presence of mind to bring her own amateur
anthropologist to film the event, and then (in the interests of sharing) put
the film up on youtube. At this point, one could comment merely on the artistic nature of the film. It
is foreign film made in Australia, which captures the harsh and rugged beauty
of the Australian landscape, and yet contrasts it skillfully with the soft
curves of the female form. But that would miss the significant cultural
contribution of the film itself. It would be hard to imagine the Aboriginal population objecting to anyone doing
what they had done themselves for the last 40,000 years or so, but the local
Elders seem to have gotten upset once Alizee's film went viral. Local Elders
have been so fired up over Alizee's film that they have even demanded her
deportation. Why on earth would they do such a thing?
Maybe they are trying to create a monopoly on topless films?
Or maybe they just don't like French?
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