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2 ResponsesFairytale of Kathmandu
Have you heard about this yet? Probably, it looks terrifying. From the wikipedia entry for Cathal Ó Searcaigh:
Ó Searcaigh sponsers the education of many boys in Napal and has an adopted son from this country. In 2008, Fairytale of Kathmandu, a documentary on his charitable work in Nepal presented a disturbing view of the poet. The producer, Neasa Ní Chianaín, alleged that some of the teenage boys that he had helped financially had also been seen going into his hotel room, insinuating that he was grooming them beforehand with gifts. She said the boys were over the age of consent but noted the “power disparity between a poor Nepali boy and a relatively wealthy westerner”, and interviewed some boys who alleged that Ó Searcaigh had had sex with them.
Variety have a good review up. The Irish Times had a good feature on it from a few days ago: PDF link.
It’s showing as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival; details here.
Blogger Silly Old Twit has loads more on the subject and the post is well worth a read.
Digg this article
[...] Via the delicious Jazz Biscuit: The nightmare that is the Fairytale of Kathmandu saga. The Chancer Opines: Face it… When you’ve been the main story on Liveline three days in [...]
I am wondering about the mixture of motives among blog commenters for taking such concentrated and widespread interest in this tv documentary and the shadow it seems to cast on an Irish language poet. I am aware that his poems are on an exam syllabus and he is therefore read as a chore by a majority of pupils who otherwise don’t give a toss for Irish and will in fact put it all behind them as soon as they’ve sat the Leaving. I am aware that op-ed writers in the newspapers and electronic media who personally care nothing about the language are animatedly discussing the pros and cons of possible deletion of his poems from the syllabus.
The language is not benefiting from this media frenzy. What then is being achieved by all the hullabuloo and moralising? Newspaper sales? Television and radio TAM ratings? The welfare of teenage boys in faraway Nepal? People’s prurient curiosity about sexual happenings? Schadenfreude?
One thing that becomes plain after the ink spillage and cyberspace posturings of recent weeks is that we Irish have become thirsty for scalp hunting. We are looking around for worthy targets on whom to mete out our group vengance, our hyped-up spasms of righteous indignation.
Such blood thirstiness is both unsavoury and likely to spread out of control as new social offences are formulated and discovered and new culprits denounced and isolated. Innocent individuals will suffer. The age-old presumption of innocence may be drowned in a rising blood lust.
I have not seen that documentary and I am glad that I cannot rush to judgement. Something awesome is happening to public emotions in contemporary Ireland.