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HVK Archives: Tibet all set to enter Western consciousness via Hollywood

Tibet all set to enter Western consciousness via Hollywood - The Times of India

Richard Bernstein ()
27 March 1997

Title : Tibet all set to enter Western consciousness via Hollywood
Author : Richard Bernstein
Publication : The Times of India
Date : March 27, 1997

One thing the Academy Awards did not have this year was a speech on
Chinese repression in Tibet by Richard Gere, the actor who has led
the way in Hollywood's growing concern for Tibetan rights.

But in a larger sense, Mr Gere banned as an Oscar presenter after
his televised denunciation of China in 1993 -no longer needs to
steal a platform to advance his favourite cause. Tibet is looming
larger than ever on the show business map.

Last June, 100,000 people attended a two-day Free Tibet concert in
San Francisco, where saffron-robed Buddhist monks talking about
their imprisonment mingled with music groups including the Beastie
Boys and Smashing Pumpkins.

In August, at an American Himalayan Foundation dinner in Los
Angeles, Harrison Ford, Sharon Stone, Steven Seagal, Shirley
MacLaine and other stars lined up to shake the Dalai Lama's hand.

And three weeks ago, at an anniversary benefit for Tibet House in
New York, founded ten years ago by Mr Gere and a Columbia
University scholar, Robert Thurman, the performers included Allen
Ginsberg, Philip Glass and Natalie Merchant. Honorary chairmen
included Roy Lichtenstein, Henry Luce 3rd and Mr Thurman's
daughter, Uma.

Most important, perhaps, the isolated mountain kingdom, which been
the concern of a relatively small group of scholars, human rights
advocates and celebrities for the last decade, is now the subject
of four movies being made. Two of them Kundun, Martin Scorsese's
movie based on the life of the Dalai Lama, and one by Jean Jacques
Annaud are major productions that seem likely to draw worldwide
attention to the Tibetans' plight.

"Tibet is going to enter Western popular culture as something can
only when Hollywood does the entertainment injection into the world
system," said Orville Schell, a China scholar who is writing a book
on Western conceptions of Tibet. "Let's remember that Hollywood is
the most powerful force in the world, besides the US military."

Why Tibet rather than some other cause, whether the oppression of
women in the Islamic world or the continued detention of the
Burmese opposition leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi - who, like the
Dalai Lama, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate? What is it about
Tibet, which has languished in obscurity for most of the last half
century, that makes it the cause du jour for celebrities and
non-celebrities alike?

The answer has several factors. There is the ferocity of China's
actions in Tibet, and China's status in the post-Cold War world as
the most important large country still holding another land in
subjugation. But there is also the growing appeal of Buddhism in
the United States, Tibet's remoteness and mysteriousness and the
Dalai Lama's personality. For Tibet is not just a good cause.
Tibet is also a state of mind, a distant place onto which
Westerners have long projected their fantasies.

No other cause just now contains the full mix of ingredients of the
Tibetan plight: the size and growing power of the occupier, the
reputation for spirituality of the oppressed, the country's
continued image as a pristine place where spirituality takes
precedence over materialism.

"The Tibetans are the baby seals of the human rights movement,"
said Mr Thurman, who is in a sense the academic godfather of the
Tibetan cause, a former monk- turned-scholar who has translated
some of the Tibetan Buddhist classics into English.

The image is apt, suggesting the innocent, pacific and largely
defenceless Tibetans being clubbed by giant powerful, merciless
China. Given the harshness of the Chinese occupation, Tibet is a
legitimate and compelling cause.

In some ways, the Chinese occupation of Tibet is a very old story.

It began in the 17th century, but since China put down an
insurrection in 1959 and forced the Dalai Lama, Tibet's political
and spiritual leader, into exile, China has sought to eradicate the
Tibetan identity to annex the territory culturally as well as
physically, Tibetan activists say.

Chinese spokesmen retort that Chinese rule has brought modem ways
to a poverty-stricken and superstitious land run by a kind of
medieval theocracy. But human rights advocates accuse China of
closing all but 13 of the small territory's 6,254 Buddhist
monasteries, sending thousands of monks to re- education camps,
banning the display of photographs of the Dalai Lama, and
resettling tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese colonists on Tibetan
land.

The argument is that Tibet's existence as a distinct culture is
threatened by Chinese policies. And given the acceptance of that
accusation in the West and the exotic appeal of Tibet itself, the
surprise may be that Tibet took so long to become a celebrity
cause.

"The fascination is the search for the third eye," said Melissa
Mathison, wife of Harrison Ford and the screenwriter of Kundun.

"Americans are hoping for some sort of magical door into the
mystical, thinking that there's some mysterious reason for things,
a cosmic explanation."

Ms Mathison, explaining how she became interested in Tibetan
culture, said the first step might be a search for spiritual
meaning, which is soon replaced by an awareness of the Tibetans
themselves, especially of the personality and character of the
Dalai Lama.

"Tibet offers the most extravagant expression of the mystical," she
said, "and when people meet His Holiness, you can see on their
faces that they're hoping to get this hit that will transcend their
lives, take them someplace else."

Mr Gene explained that he first became interested in Tibet more
than a decade ago when he became a Buddhist and was introduced to
the Dalai Lama during a visit to the leader's home in exile in
Dharmsala, India.

"It became clear to me that the situation for the Tibetans was
worsening, and they had no public voice, no contact with the media,
no presence at the United Nations," Mr Gere said. "They had been
gobbled up by the Chinese and had no protector."

The movies on Tibet, especially given their star quality, could now
even become an issue in Chinese-American relations, making
Washington's efforts to improve the atmosphere with Beijing more
difficult. Last November the Chinese government warned the Walt
Disney Co. that it was jeopardising its future business in China by
producing Kundun, leading 59 prominent Hollywood figures to call on
President Bill Clinton to resist China's efforts at censorship.

Others close to the campaign say public interest in Tibet is
reaching a new high. "The movement has had it ups and downs," said
John Ackerly, director of the International Campaign for Tibet.
China's suppression of student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square
in 1989 helped the cause, he said, because "that validated what the
Tibetans were saying."

(New York Times Service)



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