Evrim Soner Instr. Aylin Vartanyan AE 222.

01 January 7th, 2013

COLLECTIVE MEMORY THROUGH THE FLUTE PLAYER

The Flute Player is a documentary movie that takes place at Cambodia. It films a man who tries to collect the prohibited musicians of the Khmer Rouge era. I may need to give a little reference and a background on the movie and the content.

Cambodia is a South Asian country and neighbours with Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. A group named Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) ruled the country for almost four years between 1975 and 1979. They were influenced by American invasion of their neighbours and had organic links with Ho Chin Mins party. This communist group cut the relation of the country with outer world and forced everyone to work in fields whether child or elderly. They also wanted to shape art like all other dictatorships and with this reason they had, they killed almost ninety per cent of the musicians. The policies of Khmer Rouge included the execution of all Cambodian intellectuals. Under Pol Pot it was a capital offense to wear eyeglasses, which signified one might be able to read. The Flute Player is a one-hour documentary film about the life and work of Cambodian genocide survivor Arn Chorn-Pond. Arn was just a boy when Cambodia's Khmer Rouge military regime led by Pol Pot took power in 1975. For four long years, Arn followed the strict orders of the Khmer Rougedoing whatever it took to save his own life amidst torture, murder, starvation and brainwashing. While imprisoned in a labour camp, Arn participated in the execution of others in order to survive, and he played propaganda songs on his flute for his captors entertainment. Arn

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was later forced by the Khmer Rouge to fight against the Vietnamese when they invaded Cambodia in 1979. After seeing his friends killed on the front lines, he escaped to the jungle, eventually finding his way to a Thai refugee camp. Two years later, an American refugee worker adopted Arn and brought him to the United States. At the approximate age of 16, Arn was living in rural New Hampshire, struggling to rebuild what was left of his shattered life. In an effort to reconcile with his past and to prevent future atrocities, Arn set out, flute in hand, to awaken the world to Cambodias genocide So far so good about the content of the movie. This movie is a great example of reviving and healing collective memory through art and its implications in the sense that it is a current of continuous thought whose continuity is not at all artificial for it retains from the past only what still lives or is capable of living in the consciousness of the groups keeping it alive. Unlike history it is not divided into periods depending on events, nations and sometimes individuals. However, in collective memory the feelings, emotions or experiences that took place in the past develop themselves in an unbroken movement. The present is not the contrast or opposite of the past; on the contrary it prevails as long as the members of the collective memory endure ( Halbwachs, 1950 : 140).

There are several ways of expressing collective memory. In Palestine, poets had a tradition to keep the collective memory alive. Music is the way to deliver the tragedies occurred in the past in Cambodia. When Arn moves to USA and experiences a depression his step father suggests him to tell his story to his friends so the healing process may begin. Arn implements this advice and he

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really starts to heal. That is quite an example of why people insist on creating or keeping collective memories alive, not for the sake of pessimism but au contraire for the sake of healing. Thus Arn felt that if he could gather the musicians of the Cambodia who could tell the atrocities occurred in the territory, he might help this healing process nationwide. Cambodian music is very rich and diversified sort of art which has its own instruments, rhythms and compositional futures. This music has two functions in the point of view of the Cambodians. Firstly it started to fade away since 13the century as a result of Khmers. Also Cambodian music is shaped and manipulated in the Khmer Rouge era. People were not allowed to sing whatever they like but whatever they were ordered. Music was both their prison and freedom. In the movie, Arn realizes that one of the singers Kong Nai was hurt by not being able to sing the truth. Kong Nai represents the restrained person who is not allowed to do what he likes to do most and the best. Restraining art, shaping it according to an ideology is like making the entire nation feels like Kong Nai.

One of the biggest clashes in the movie I saw was Arns self clash. The Inner Tour demonstrated how a clash could be between groups, but my question was how the clash would with yourself? You do have a group of people on your side in the film Inner Tour. However, when you feel like Arn you have nothing to hold on to. Arn, who was forced to help with the killings during the Pol Pot regime, suffers from survivors guilt: I continue to think inside of me that I am both a perpetrator and victiminside of me I never thought Im a good person. I always think Im a bad kid, Im a bad person. When Arn meets another man who shared his experience of having been forced to be a child soldier, he hugs him because I dont know whether anybodywill tell him

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before he dies that he is a good personor hug himI want him to die knowing that one person understands you and be able to give you a hug. People in the world now forgive me. But hugging that boyI forgive myself. Im hugging myself. Arns effort to revive the Cambodian music is self serving in the sense that his desire to honor people who were ignored, exploited and tortured with his help in 1970s. He helps his self-healing with pacta sund servanda to the Masters. Only if one can heal oneself, can one heal his/her surroundings.

The Flute Player encouraged me to think about the complexities of human rights, genocide, ethics of survival in prison camps, musics role in culture and its expression for basic human needs, Cambodia and Vietnam War, psychology of trauma and recovery, impact of international policy and war, post-war reconstruction. These were my inferences from the movie but they all constitute the collective memory for the survival of the holocaust in Cambodia. This art project gave me hope for the future generations in a way that revenge is not the only answer to the avarice and atrocities in the world. Even the most hopeless patience can be cured with the help of collective support and art. In this sense this project creates space for dialogue between both aggrieved and enemy. However just like my general theory on the interlocutor problem in capitalism, there is a problem of the subject to hate or talk here. The killers and the victims were one people: the same skin, the same hands. How does one explain such a thing to the satisfaction of ones conscience except to contend that some people must be born with one spirit and some with another (Rosenblatt, 1984 : 538)? This is the key in the Cambodian concept: the same people are both perpetrator and victim. That is quite why the collective memory here is restrained

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with the people that were subjected to crime and committed the crime. They are the ones who can heal themselves with themselves.

Works Cited
Glatzer, Jocelyn. The Flute Player. PBS documentary, 2003. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory.Trans. Edited Lewis E. Coser. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Rosenblatt, Roger. Children of Cambodia. Ourselves Among Others: Cross-Cultural Readings for Writers. Ed. Carol J. Verburg. New York: St. Martins Press,1984.