“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (2008), a Hollywood film starring Keanu Reeves, takes the beloved 1951 classic of the same name and turns it into an alien-invasion disaster flick. Scott Derrickson directs.
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) is an alien from another world who takes human form. He lands in Central Park in New York in a huge sphere. With him is Gort, a giant, dark-grey robot with a single glowing red eye.
American Defence Secretary Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates) says:
History has lessons to teach us about first encounters between civilizations. As a rule the less advanced civilization is either exterminated or enslaved. I’m thinking of Pizarro and the Incans, Columbus and the Native Americans, and the list goes on. Unfortunately in this case, the less advanced civilization is us.
The American government tries to take Klaatu and Gort prisoner and destroy the sphere.
More spheres arrive, taking each kind of plant and animal from Earth. Then Gort turns into a plague of mechanical nanite locusts that begin to darken the skies. They consume Giants Stadium and then head for Manhattan.
Klaatu wants to save Earth by wiping out the human race. Humans are too violent and destructive by nature, they are too far gone – but not Earth, not yet.
Princeton astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) gains Klaatu’s trust and takes him to see the most intelligent man she knows, Professor Karl Barnhardt (John Cleese). He won a Nobel Prize for his work in biological altruism. The professor tries to talk Klaatu out of killing seven billion people. He fails.
Both Klaatu and Secretary Jackson are locked into a genocidal logic where each aims to wipe out the other. No negotiations, no nothing. That comes not from the difference in technology, as Jackson thinks:
- People in the Americas often greeted the first Westerners with kindness, not with immediate violence like hers.
- The West did not as a rule exterminate or enslave everywhere that it had a technological edge. In some places it did, like Namibia, but in other places it did not, like neighbouring South Africa.
- Before H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds” (1898), aliens came in peace. They were not bent on complete destruction. That was new with Wells, who apparently had the Tasmanian genocide in mind.
Klaatu has a White American mindset: he sees the natives as having no rights to the land or even the right to live. He sees them through a diseased host model. He is bound by no set of morals. When Jackson says “our planet”, he corrects her:
Your planet? It is not.
But then Klaatu learns mercy, empathy, the value of all human life despite its grave imperfections.
When he sees the love that Helen Benson has for her stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith), he goes from an Old Testament god of ark spheres and plagues and cosmic wrath to a New Testament god made flesh who gives his life so that man should not perish from the earth.
See also:
In all fairness, Karl Barnhardt was interrupted by the military before he could finish advocating the view that killing all of the earth people was a bad idea. And frenkly, the entire plot of this film was a little shaky, as there was no given reason for the desire of Klaatu’s people to preserve the terran ecosystem, unlike the original film where the motive was to preventany threat to his people by warning mankind to keep it’s nukes on earth, or the original novella, where the motives were more ambiguous.
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Incidentally, first.
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I will rephrase this comment, I remember viewing this film and Keanu Reeves performance was boring, I remember thinking to myself at the time that destroying planet earth might not be such a bad idea, because we have abused the planet and we have abused and misused each other as human beings.
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I prefer the original with Michael Rennie.
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@Herneith: I do like the original one from back in the day better.
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I’ve never seen the original. I did however, see the 2008 version but i never really sunk my teeth into it very much.
Do all of you recommend, that i watch the original? Is the original a better movie, than the updated version?
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Klaatu was a kinder fellow willing to give the earthling a try even though they tried to kill him. Gort the beloved robot, is on the verge of killing humanity when this happens. Klaatu gave the code words to Patricia Neal(can’t remember her character’s name in the movie), who utters it at the last miute and thus saves the world. A kinder, gentler version than the newest one which I didn’t bother finish watching.
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@sondis: Watch both and compare
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American Defence Secretary Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates) says:
History has lessons to teach us about first encounters between civilizations. As a rule the less advanced civilization is either exterminated or enslaved. I’m thinking of Pizarro and the Incans, Columbus and the Native Americans, and the list goes on. Unfortunately in this case, the less advanced civilization is us.
We could have been and /or are being visited by civilizations/species more advanced but who
1. just want to observe
2.we are of no interest
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Both Klaatu and Secretary Jackson are locked into a genocidal logic where each aims to wipe out the other. No negotiations, no nothing. That comes not from the difference in technology, as Jackson thinks:
People in the Americas often greeted the first Westerners with kindness, not with immediate violence like hers.
“westerners” – africa is in the west – I said this before – westerner is hegmonic code for white european.
The West did not as a rule exterminate or enslave everywhere that it had a technological edge. In some places it did, like Namibia, but in other places it did not, like neighbouring South Africa.
Interesting , any ideas why?
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Funny, I have seen the 1951 version, but not the 2008 version. I watch the 1951 version to try to see what Washington, DC was like when my father was a child.
I will try to see the 2008 version some time.
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I saw both and I the 2008 version I felt its message was. How dare you guys use something we can use better. You don’t deserve it so we are going to take it away from you. Plus the added message of Even if they did fight back we are more superior we would have won and you should be happy for the compassion we are giving you.
Hurray for such a cheerful message Hollywood.
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[…] "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (2008), a Hollywood film starring Keanu Reeves, takes the beloved 1951 classic of the same name and turns it into an alien-invasion disaster flick. Scott Derrickson … […]
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Now I wonder what self reflections are encoded in this message that the writers of this SF script and white people themselves are desperately trying to get across to each other?
Given the comment Mbeti made above…Are they saying only “beings” with obviously advanced externalised technology could teach them such a concept?
Hmmm…I wonder….
They certainly seem incapable of learning empathy from the majority indigenous “beings” of planet Earth!
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One of the worst movies EVER.A total insult to the original.
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Mrs. Jackson did learn history by watching B-Movies on the american TV, if you ask me…
Or maybe she erroneously assumes that that the peculiar violence visited by her own civilization upon other civilizations is the default modus operandi of humanity? If she were to do some research, she would learn that, beyond extermination and slavery, there exists a whole range of modalities of interactions between different cultures.
The bit about “the less advanced civilization” would be laughable if it weren’t so commonly admitted among members of Mrs. Jackson’s civilization. Truth is, it’s not the “advancement” (whatever it means btw, I won’t even get there) that matters, but the mindset.
Compare C. Columbus and Chinese explorer Zheng He for an illustration.
And, Mbeti…
No, we ain’t.
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@Kwamla
last time I visited your blog,your extensive coverage of the extraterrestrial phenomena as well as a acute awareness of the cultural bias against black people impressed me.
I must admit I hadn’t considered your knowledge and perspective when I posted my femi paradox wikipedia link.
@Dahoman X
what part of the contienient of africa being in the western hemisphere am I missing?
why else are white europeans refered to as westerners?
@tiger
cosign the original was much more dignified.
Its pathieic how some parts of the american film industry seems desparate to expolit any and every itoa of content from its own past and thinks celebrity recognition and special effects can make up for orginal content and good story.
And in closing I think most everyone here including abagond agree that warfare and exploitation are not the only ways a allegedly advanced society can interact with an allegedly less advanced one.
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I don’t have a clue where the western hemisphere begins, or if such a thing even exists. My point is that terms such as “the West” are not just geographical designations. They have also cultural, political and socio-economic dimensions. They are codewords. I guess that’s why white Europeans and Americans are refered to as Westerners.
I usually think of Africa as part of the South.
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@ Mbeti
Thanks for your compliment!
Having recently just watched the SF film “Prometheus”. I was not surprised to see the same themes being portrayed throughout. It really should be more self evident by now to white people (particularly Trolls) commenting on this blog.
Much of their denied exploitative and genocidal contacts with indigenous cultures in the past is also projected into their anticipated future contacts with “deemed superior” ET cultures and beings.
Surely there is still a lesson to be learned here? Which they can Ignore at their own peril!
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@Dahoman X
“I don’t have a clue where the western hemisphere begins, or if such a thing even exists. ”
Interesting and valid to a point.
“My point is that terms such as “the West” are not just geographical designations. They have also cultural, political and socio-economic dimensions. They are codewords. I guess that’s why white Europeans and Americans are refered to as Westerners.”
I completely agree ,however I go another step and refuse to accept or use their codewords for themselves.
“I usually think of Africa as part of the South.”
South -west or south -east? just kidding….;-)
@Kwamla
Your welcome 😉
“Much of their denied exploitative and genocidal contacts with indigenous cultures in the past is also projected into their anticipated future contacts with “deemed superior” ET cultures and beings.”
Yep,I’ve been viewing their entertainment this way for years,part of it is that its not just the past but also the present.
America is not a democratic republic, its an imperial global empire the extension of and continuation of the former european empires.
I was recently viewing some star trek and star wars and in amazed me how primitive ,reactionary and plainly ridiculous many of the premises involved in these films are.
Big giant ships with hundreds of people but only five or six really matter.
One dimensional alien societies that are all equally militaristic and fiercely territorial.
A evolution of technology but never any social ,psychological or biological evolution.
Etc etc
I’m sure you have similar observations as well.
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Your analysis and “Western cultural” observations are spot on! Mbeti…
It is highly evident. On a subconscious projective level this is exactly what we find in SF films and series, like Star Trek. Even in the present, today, as you correctly state. The ability to advance culturally, socially, economically and collectively as an inclusive, instead of exclusive, species on this planet is sadly lacking.
No one can doubt their abilities to advance technologically (although they did, its been well documented, have a little help from certain ET friends!) but on a spiritual and cultural level they are far behind other so called “primitive” and indigenous peoples and cultures on this planet.
Its not surprising then this is exactly what they have been told from the more spiritual and technological advanced ETs they have encountered during the past 80 years… Most of which, much like the prevalence of global white supremacy, is denied in their own culturally projected SF films. This is why we never see issues such as “race” debated and depicted or when we do the blind assumption that “racism of the 21st Century” has already been eliminated is made!!!??
The act of debating and depicting racism – “white supremacy” – in a futuristic SF setting would immediately draw attention to parallels of present 21st Century Earth injustices and inequalities.
If they are unable to address such concerns in the present why would they be expected to be able to address them in the future?
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@Kwamla
A profound, and brilliant point.
Abagond says:
More than any other kind of genre, mainstream Sci-Fi is a place of white re-invention: in this kind of Sci-Fi, white people get to imagine and image themselves as personifications of the Innocent Masses Under Attack from Alien Forces. (Just for a change!)
That’s an inversion which is always the starting point.
The world created in these kinds of films have “an artificial environment” that we see as NORMAL, because the white American people in it are so NORMAL — they don’t have “an accent”, or an ethnicity — only representations of what is universal and neutral — the viewer is not, no, NEVER — supposed to notice that. We are not supposed to see that normalcy is a simulation. We must just take it for granted.
We are not supposed to see that that depiction of normal goodness is a media spectacle.
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I’ve never seen the original, but when I saw the 2008 version of “The day the Earth stood still” I thought it was all right, but more than that I didn’t like that it was Keanu Reeves who played Klaatu.
Keanu Reeves WAS Neo, from “The Matrix”. In that, he was vulnerable and under attack. I suppose I didn’t accept that in “The Matrix”, it is the black-suited sunglasses-wearing Agent Smith who despises humans, their smell, and wants to cleanse the world by terminating humans like diseased rats.
The world of the “The Matrix” is more clearly SHOWN as an artificial environment. The Innocents are a variety of ethnicities, but, again the role of Genocidal Maniacs is played by out-of-control Technology in human-looking skins, rather than a culture or a psychology:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_OJI)
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Probably my first exposure to the Sci-Fi was Doctor Who. I haven’t watched that series in a while, but according to Wiki’s article titled “Earth in Science Fiction”, the essential character and the future of the Earth is place where humans come from and expand out of to create numerous Empires…by the year 200,000, the Earth is in the middle of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. …
The main character, Doctor Who, is a time-traveller who is thousands of years old. He has seen everything… Yet, I don’t think I’ve seen the Doctor show any recognition of what Empires do to the conquered. Inequalities do not exist in a post-colonial world, maybe they never did…
Surely the Doctor has seen the horror of that over and over, being so old?
Obviously not.
The impression I got was that humanity, whether past, present or the future, is always the same, always equal, the outcome is always the same one, “inevitable” and somehow harmoniously homogeneous. This view of the world just wrote out “difference”, like no one could see Doctor Who was an Englishman or a Scot…
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These aliens are always landing in Washington or New York and are out to destroy “humanity”.
No wonder Americans can envision the 9/11 incident as an alien attack. It has already happened time and time again on the screen.
And it is always by “not quite like us” people. That is why the USA needs to have “perpetual foreigners” — aliens living among us, as it were.
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Thank you Bulanik!
This is also so evidently true…
The problem with the “Dr Who” invention is the same one of pre-occupation and a fatalistic obsession with the wihte image. Or more precisely the white male’s image. Diversity and Gender really frighten them. They have played out the white male supremacist fantasy of their own ability to keep on regenarating and re-creating the same white male image. Without the need to pay lip service to impure issues of race or gender in new and emerged characters.
Surely, for an entity like Dr Who. Someone who has lived and seen a multitude of worlds over millions of years. Surely they would want to experience such an obvious and emmense body of diversity?
The only rational explaination is a deep inner fear of their own weak, fragle being and the potential for self imposed annilation…
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@ Kwamla, re the fabricated image, the body of diversity that is avoided, its concomitant fragility and fear of self-imposed annihilation: I haven’t reached my own conclusion yet. That’s because, as much as I respect rational explanations, including your own, I have no explanation for played-out fantasies of this kind myself, because experience has taught me as that rationality isn’t always the most useful path to all truths..
A theme that comes up in films like The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Matrix, The Terminator, Stargate, Alien, etc., is the recurring conflict with technology: technology becomes an entity which was given life by the white male human but the horror in that marvel of his own mind, is that artificial life has the potential to become:
1. out of control or, even worse — it is
2. too weak for the God-like power in any other-worldly contest, threatening all that the white male has created with his great mind.
A common conceit of Whiteness is: “where would the world be without our brilliant inventions”, something that’s a common element in Sci-Fi drama is the subliminal idea that when the gods are defied by giving life to inanimate objects, then the defiant ones who were responsible for this life-giving will bear the consequences of their over-reaching intelligence and inventive daring.
These are very old themes, such as the dangers of unfettered intellectual hubris, or the “unnaturalness” of men giving birth…
It’s in the “Prometheus” myth, where men CAN give birth (you mentioned the film of the same title, and that film touches on at least one element of Prometheus myth). It’s also written into the inner moral struggle which is explored the oldest of books as well.
I feel many Sci-Fi dramas seem to centre on possible destructive outcomes of hubris. The is a price to pay for transgressions: it brings anguish to all.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26YLehuMydo)
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@Bulanik
we where discussing another Sifi film series (planet of the apes) over at
I would be interested in your views about my current comments in regards to this series,Kwamla your viewpoint would also be welcome to in as well.
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Mbeti, certainly.
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Sci-fi, don’t get me wrong I do love thee, but I have learned a lot of strange things from you can’t you see. Like in the future if there is a minority as on of the sides that person is the only one in the movie. Unless you have to see family no where else do other minorities live.
If you are an Asian male in a western Sci-fi you almost never get the girl. No matter how kick-ess you may be.
Native American’s rarely if ever get mention in the Sci-fi because somehow they all died out.
African’s never make into a the future. If a Japanese character does make it no matter how much weapons have improved in the future you better bet you ess that a katana will come out, even if that person is not really Japanese. No Aboriginals ever make it into the future because the future is almost as white as snow. So time a mysterious Indian woman will make it through but somehow she has a tragic history or in a tragic situation (ever since Around the World in 80 days.) If their is a black character and female in the future you can bet her life story is going be something of tribulations and woe that made her the hard ess woman you see today. If there is a black guy in the future you can almost be that he has super strength given to him by some super soldier program. If not then he his actually the blackpotation guy somehow transferred to the future.
Nerdy black guys usually go crazy or do something incredibly stupid for a smart guy, seems like they can’t handle being smart in the future. With the rate of black characters getting killed in the future they must love violence or getting killed before the mid of the movie. Hispanics sorry buddy because everyone is speaking English in the future and those that don’t are aliens of course. Still, I do love thee Sci-fi.
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@ Bulanik
“…@ Kwamla, re the fabricated image, the body of diversity that is avoided, its concomitant fragility and fear of self-imposed annihilation…”
You make a good point about the introduction of external technology by white people. I say external because this is always the result of something lacking from the original physical body. So right there it seems there is an acceptance that the only way to compete physically with Black people or other non-whites is through this external adaptation.
Its clear that when we strip everything right down and technology is eliminated from human existence white people would have the least chance of survival in the physical natural environment.
So where did this obvious subconscious assumption spirng from to be projected so evidently in all these SF films and series?
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@ Kwamla
I do NOT believe it’s “obvious” that these films are primarily about white peoples’ physical deficiency. I am cautious about applying Freudian or Jungian psycho-analytic concepts of projection and tranference to the film-makers themselves. That’s because these films are fables, and what they point to are (white collective) MORAL deficiencies, CULTURAL instabilities: misgivings that are historical and constructed.
Yes, I made the point about technology because that is the central theme of the films/plots we are discussing.
Yes, I brought in the subject of technology because human beings have had a long, long spiritual struggle, to humble their nature.
And that’s why I thought it was most pertinent and revealing to include the short clip of Robert Oppenheimer — showing his anguish and unspeakable regret — as he translates the words of Vishnu in the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. He had remembered these words when he saw the weapon of destruction he had created — the atomic bomb. Again: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26YLehuMydo)
My point was that films like The Day the Earth Stood Still explore old and very human MORAL struggles that pre-date:
-Film technology,
-European civilization, or,
-Any notions of whiteness (and theories of white physical deficiency).
This is why I meant when I said films like this are about: “..the dangers of unfettered intellectual hubris…” Imo, this subject has seized the imagination of white film-makers over and over again, time after time, because of suppressed guilt and sense of accountability, not only conceit…
When I mentioned the White Inventor Argument (this one “where would the world be without the brilliant inventions of white people”), I did not do so because I subscribe to the belief that white people create “external” technology because it’s an expression of their essential “lack” from the original physical body”.
Why? Because — if we are talking about technology — then white people are not the sole inventors of “external” technology, or any technology!
(I realize didn’t actually say that they were, but if you assert their “difference”, then reference must also be made to their “similarity” on this point.)
The history of technology that white people can take credit for is probably less than a few hundred years old, and only flourished through this ongoing era because it was stabilized by violent colonial domination. And even though the point which it is at can be described as “exponential” in its growth, the technology of today was made made possible only through the technology, or existing “external” technologies of non-Europeans that has been around from millenia before white people where on top.
And, what’s technology anyway? It’s control and adaptation of the material world — and that kind of tool-manipulation probably started with the making of fire, clothing, shelter-making, agriculture, etc. Isn’t that something ALL humans had to do in their natural physical environments, no matter how “complete” we think our non-white bodies are!?
And, as far as our bodies go, isn’t it also true that human bodies adapt over time to their physical habitat? Humans do so through biological responses like acclimatization, cultural practices and using technologies as well as by changes in our genetics.
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@ King of Trouble
Funny and true: I’m also bored of seeing that over and over. So much of the black and brown parts in films get white washed and have white actors take the role. There aren’t that many, but there are other characters and films that have stuck in my mind simply because there are smart and strong black men who survive to the end so that the viewer can get behind. For instance:
— “I am Legend” (Will Smith — he dies at the end but it’s kind of his choice, he wins the fight.)
— “Predator” (Danny Glover)
— “The Book of Eli” (Denzel Washington)
— “Riddick” (Vin Diesel)
— “Lando Calrissien” (Billy Dee Williams)
Remember Joe Morton who was the “Brother from Another Planet”?
Let’s not forget Sanaa Lathan in another Predator film with the Alien xeno-morph. I was transfixed by The Oracle in the first of the Matrix films.
Tina Turner also springs to mind in one of those Mad Max films.
I shall always Jada Pinkett as Niobe in one of “The Matrix” sequels.
Uhura, of course. There are more, not many, but I probably remember the ones I do because there have always been so few…
It’s true what you say about Native Americans, they ARE omitted in Sci-Fi.
I can only think of Chakotay in Star Trek and the tracker “Billy” in the first “Predator” film.
Africans are almost invisible.
Yet, I don’t know if I am alone here on this, but something about Africa rooted in my mind when I saw the first 10 minutes of the film “2001: Space Odyssey”. Remember where the ape-like hominids first meet the great black monolith — what else could this be but reference/homage to the African?
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1OZCHixR0)
Perhaps in the Sci-Fi of white, western imagination all the people of the African continent die out. I think, though, that even if African film-makers themselves also imagine an Apocalypse in Earth’s destiny, then that destruction is more of a more “biological” one that wipes out life ON the planet in the future, rather than eliminating every African person as such.
This is the theme of “Pumzi”, a Kenyan Sci-Fi short-film: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3elKofS43xM)
I can’t think of a time in mainstream Sci-Fi when The East Asian man gets the woman — unless you count Keanu Reeves, but he gets cast as “ambiguously white” rather than as Asian, so that doesn’t count. You can bet too, that any Indian man — if he is shown at all — is a joke-figure because he wouldn’t ever be allowed to be kick-ass like an East Asian male character. Bollywood does do a small number of Sci-Fi, and in one recent offering, East and South Asian males both seem to kick-ass and have success with women. Because it’s set in Asia and made by Indians, the references are based on spiritual and scientific histories of India and China — nothing European — so largely unseen by a Western audience.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjKUepar5TE)
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