Harry Manacsa
Prof. Valverde
ASA150E
4 March 2017
Week 9 Blog
One
of Cathy J. Schlund-Vials’ focuses
in War, Genocide, and Justice is the misrepresentation of the
atrocities in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Often, these skewed conveyances
are indirectly caused by the renewed missions of various memorials and
tributes, as they somehow discredit the actual atrocities that took place.
For
example, Schlund-Vial believes that in remembering “genocidal crimes” in the
Tuol Sleng Prison Museum comes the “restaging and reimaging [of] Khmer Rouge atrocitizes.”
(Schlund-Vial 40). She sees a disconnection between a hanging scaffold and its
placard. In other words, the placard cannot encapsulate the grief and terror
that the scaffold represents for victims. Likewise, pictures of prisoners
showcased in the museum are often of the victim’s booking—in essence, before any
actual harm was done.
Additionally,
Schlund-Vial underscores the debilitating consequences of heavy tourism in
Cambodia. In her depiction of a tour of Angkor Wat, an icon of Khmer
civilization, is the idea of “dark tourism”, a recurring “presentation and
consumption of visitors [for] real and commodified death and disaster sites.”
(Schlund-Vial 63) She believes that, even in a place meant to honor culture is
a need for the government to displace guilt especially to American tourists. In
fact, Angkor Wat is a prominent fixture for Cambodian nationalism. This is all
to say that the U.S. continues to have influence over how Cambodia should
illustrate their histories.
Somehow,
this is also seen in rapper praCH’s compulsion to rap about the “killing fields”
of Cambodia, for the U.S. shaped the stagnation and stratifications of
ethnicities into “ghettos” and ethnic enclaves and spawned the voices of Ice T
and N.W.A for praCH.
Question: Is
Schlund-Vial correct in asserting that the Cambodia wants to commodify the
tragedies of the Khmer Rouge?
Vendors at Angkor Wat
Schlund-Vials,
Cathy Jean. War, Genocide, and Justice Cambodian American Memory Work.
Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota, 2012. Print.
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/vendors-and-visitors-at-angkor-wat-picture-id518285233
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