{"id":2336,"date":"2007-09-03T19:29:16","date_gmt":"2007-09-04T00:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2336"},"modified":"2007-09-03T19:29:16","modified_gmt":"2007-09-04T00:29:16","slug":"shocked-and-appalled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2336","title":{"rendered":"Shocked and Appalled"},"content":{"rendered":"

JOHN ALLEMANG<\/strong><\/p>\n

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail<\/strong><\/p>\n

August 31, 2007 at 11:57 PM EDT<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

If there’s anyone who knows the ins and outs of a successful marketing campaign, it’s Naomi Klein.<\/p>\n

So why is the author of the bestselling No Logo<\/em>, the 2000 book that tore apart the pretensions of \u201cJust Do It\u201d brand-building while inspiring the social-justice spirit in young consumers, walking away from a screening of the video for her long-awaited new book, The Shock Doctrine<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s too disturbing,\u201d she says, as she closes the door to the small room that started off as our meeting place but now feels more like an isolation chamber.<\/p>\n

Of course, if you’re a truly discerning consumer of the commodity that is intellectual culture, you’re focusing less on Ms. Klein’s sudden disappearance from her own promotional gathering and more on the fact that her massive new tome (to be published on Tuesday in seven languages) comes with its own trailer \u2013 if trailer is a word that can begin to describe this dense and darting six-minute documentary created by Ms. Klein and Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron ( Children of Men<\/em>, Y Tu Mama Tambien<\/em>), which will shortly make a more public appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival.<\/p>\n

Book videos \u201care the hot new thing in publishing,\u201d according to the 37-year-old Canadian author, whose particularly successful brand of activism-for-our-times has always had a soft spot for the hot new thing. And why not? Why should left-wing politics be preachy and above-it-all, which is certain death for any movement that is sincerely committed to reaching the masses, whoever they now may be?<\/p>\n

Those are particularly relevant questions when the subject is as difficult and unsettling as the one Ms. Klein has chosen for her No Logo<\/em> follow-up \u2013 no less a theme than the human devastation caused by the unrelenting propagandists for the free-market economy over the last 35 years, from the torture chambers of Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and the murderous disappearances in Argentina’s military rule to the morass of Hurricane Katrina and the shock-and-awe destruction of Iraq.<\/p>\n

No wonder Ms. Klein flees her own video. Reduced to a film-festival format, The Shock Doctrine<\/em> scours the vulnerable brain, as the jarring noises of crying babies and wailing cats surround images of pain and torture that are meant to represent the shock-therapy metaphors peddled by unsparing market economists \u2013 in the most visceral and literal way.<\/p>\n

This, to Ms. Klein’s sensitive eye, is the ugly face of capitalism, and it’s a sight she can’t stand to see.<\/p>\n

[Read the article<\/a> | hat tip<\/a> ]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JOHN ALLEMANG From Saturday’s Globe and Mail August 31, 2007 at 11:57 PM EDT If there’s anyone who knows the ins and outs of a successful marketing campaign, it’s Naomi Klein. So why is the author of the bestselling No … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-BG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}