Following up on writing about
Let Fury Have the Hour, I felt I should write about another documentary that looks at revolutionary activity
in the face of oppression directed by Stephen Maing (pictured below) called High Tech, Low Life. It is a less spectacular affair, as its
subjects come strictly from the realm of everyday citizens, but the stakes for those documented are much higher; they engage in activities that run in direct opposition to the longstanding
government regime whose control they live under.
High
Tech… looks at China at a time when blogging forums had risen as a prominent
means of communication. As major social
networks like Facebook were already being blocked by vast firewalls (referred to during the film as the other Great Wall), these blogging
domains became a way for ordinary citizens to create their own media, one that paints a less than ideal
picture. This is significant, as major media outlets in
China are shown at the outset of the film as being essentially under the
control of the government.
The
film focuses on two activists in particular.
They share the same pursuit of truth, but besides that there are some
striking differences beginning with their age.
Zhou Shuguang aka Zola is quite young.
He equates his actions to those espoused by individualism. While he claims to be selfish and just having
a fun time, his highly risky actions suggests more caring than his mischevious
persona lets on. His reports show a
certain level of attention seeking, and the provocation it stirs often draws
negative reactions from those that would be supporters of his actions. The film and Zola himself make no bones about
showing this to be the case.
Tiger
Temple, on the other hand, comes across as a weathered veteran. He has a similar goal of uncovering truths
apparently hidden from the public, but his age and perhaps details of a difficult past
make him a more sympathetic figure. In
fact, he spends a lot of time with the victims of society he tries to
help. In a very touching scene, a few of those
that he helped after exposing the truth about mass evictions of people in low
income housing projects try to protect him from police attempts to disrupt his activity. While Zola claims
his motivation to be youthful rebellion, Tiger Temple’s stance is one of having
been through so many years of hardship already, he has no reason to do
anything but keep on telling the truth.
In the
process of detailing their exploits, we see the impressive array of gear
involved in their ventures, showing that what the two are up to is very serious
business. Lest you think they hurl their
attacks, immobile, from behind the flicker of a computer screen, you will
become aware of how much motion these two undertake. By bicycle, Tiger Temple travels across
China’s great landscape, at times evading tails, presumably sent out by a government
agency. When Zola sets out to report, he
essentially becomes homeless for long stretches at a time, leaving his
countryside family home behind. In one
scene, we see him camping out in a warehouse space, which receives a strange
visit suggesting a covert form of intimidation.
The range
of oppressive activity that the two, each on their own separate paths, work to
uncover is impressive in scope. They
investigate likely cover-ups of rape and murder by a political figure,
pollution being dumped on the grounds of struggling farmers who are not being
paid adequately by the government that is supposed to subsidize their work, and
homelessness epidemics being caused by big companies destroying low income
housing to make way for profitable developments.
Tiger
Temple describes a sociological phenomena so well versed, it would fit in
perfectly with the scholarly analysis delivered in Let Fury Have the Hour…so
much so that I had to double check my notes to check that I wasn’t quoting one
when I meant to reference the other. He
speaks of a present day situation where economic growth has lead to a
distracted, complacent population where there is a greater inner sense of being
oppressed throughout the population than any other time in recent history.
There
is not much in the way of dramatizing or stylizing what we see. With a soundtrack of some moody instrumental indie
rock (a song by The Books can be heard at one point), it is a fresh and for the most part very
straightforward account of two activists seeking to make a difference against
overwhelming odds.
