And in what could be described as possibly one of the more creepy things to come out of HamasTV in a while: Farfur, the militant Mickey Mouse clone. Farfur has been getting a lot of play all over the web in recent days. I think the Guardian has the best write-up about it, however. If you want to see the clip that’s been having all the bloggers banging their keyboards, you can check it out on YouTube.
Now, personally, I’ve always found adults who dress up as large plushy animals to be creepy. When I was 6 and the family was at Disneyland on our way to Arizona where dad was stationed in the Army. We stopped there for a couple of days and the highlight was when my sister, spindly armed and aged 9, turned around and socked a guy dressed as Tigger, who kept trying for a hug, in the gut, causing him to double over.
But that was some minimum wage slave, and Farfur is Mickey Mouse on a brainwashing mission. The Librocats blogger writes: “Meet Farfur, the Palestinian Brainwashing Mouse, from the Unhappiest Place on Earth — I wish you were flake.” That would be far too easy, and it’s a problem with those who tend to support human rights stuff. The PR hazard inherent to dealing with a zone traumatized by decades of struggle — whther it’s Chechnya, Burma, Gaza, Sri Lanka, Darfur or anywhere torn apart — is that a certain amount of ugliness bubbbles up over time in some very bizarre ways. With today’s modern, easy-to-learn and obtain technology, that ugliness can be broadcast all over for instant critique without bothering with context.
It is this residue, the occasional outburst of weirdness that happens in such zones, that detractors easily latch on to and parade around and cause the rest of us to cringe. It doesn’t matter how much one can point out the hatred taught to children in Israeli settlements in places like Hebron. It doesn’t how many Palestinian homes are destroyed or how many Palestinian kids the Israeli military uses as human shields, or whose people are getting killed in greater numbers. A Hamas lackie jumps into a big furry costume and it’s all over.
This has always been the case when media (even outlets sympathetic to the plight of the occupied) from nations on the side of the dominating culture report on the subjegated. But ignoring these ickier aspects doesn’t help. In fact, people working for the implimentation of international law, human rights, just peaces, etc., etc. should be spotting these things first and examining them, talking with locals (in this case, Palestinians) about them, and so forth, instead of putting on blindfolds, sticking heads in the sand or doing whatever metaphor you prefer. Often when these things come up, the short response is a terse “ignore it.” This is a shortcut that avoids dealing with the situation and the resulting trauma on the ground.
After all, much has been repeated about how textbooks in Palestinian schools have supposedly “taught hate,” (I personally think all the soldeirs and settlers trying to push out into nonexistence does a better job of that) but there’s been hardly anything mentioned on the ongoing racism in textbooks on the other side of the Green Line.
Now, maybe this wouldn’t be such a big deal to the West if Disney had just followed copyright laws and simply let Mickey’s visage drift into the realm of public domain. And I have to agree with Diane Disney Miller, the last surving child of Walt, who said “Of course I feel personal about Mickey Mouse, but it could be Barney as well.”
That’s true. Mickey, Barney and the likenesses various other annoying costumed creatures have been used over the decades to promote aggresive militant capitalism at some great cost to the developing world. When mouse ears are made in slave-like conditions, the news is resigned to special interest groups like Sweatshop Watch, which is pretty much ignored by the masses of the “billions served” crowd who are too busy keeping their Donald Duck pajama-swaddled toddlers chunky on Pocahontas movie tie-in Lunchables and Happy Meals. Corprate America can do whatever evil it wants with these likenesses, but when officially sanctioned villains do it and it gets plastered on the internet, Condoleeza Rice gets involved.
So I think we can dispense with the handwringing in the progrssive camp. Take a close look at it dead on and ask people about it. “Farfur” is a creepy, stupid thing, created in the vaccum where engagmement with the outside world is highly limited, unless it involves tanks, missiles and fighter jets. There’s no more likely place for something like this to develop on TV. Teletubbies, meanwhile has no excuse.
SEE: More on teaching hate.
Tags: Gaza, media
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