The Accusation by Bandi (April 2018)
The Accusation is a recently published book of short stories from (and about) North Korea. The entire story about how the author, Bandi, managed to get this collection out of the country is described in the last section of the book and is well worth a read.
Of the seven or so stories in The Accusation, I reread ‘City of Specters’ and ‘On Stage’. The latter in particular has stayed with me since I finished the book. The story features many of the anti-totalitarian themes present throughout the collection but emphasizes them a step further by framing them in the context of acting. Bandi’s insight that a totalitarian regime will never allow its best actors to fully express their gifts can be easily interpreted as a metaphor for how such regimes demand complete acceptance of party ideology at the expense of self-expression, improvisation, and spontaneity.
In a larger sense, The Accusation is about how a totalitarian regime punishes deviation. The fear of suffering the consequences for sticking out serves as an essential survival skill for the average citizen. Whether the deviating event is a suddenly ill parent, a baby who cries at the wrong time, or an isolated moment from acting school, the consistent tension in these stories centers around how Bandi’s characters suffer from the everyday deviations we in free societies think little about.
One up: I liked the observation that people sometimes punish themselves by striking out at what is most important to them. These moments hint at lives where emotions are suppressed or actions are closely monitored. A sincere and genuine life is not possible in such circumstances because people will always opt for conformity ahead of self-expression.
I also liked the thought that domesticated creatures can only free themselves by breaking their restraints. A wild animal is tamed by being taught to return to the cage. The first step for helping these animals return to their natural state is to break the cage so that their reference point is lost forever.
One down: Although we in the USA live in essentially the exact opposite society of North Korea, there are some uncomfortable similarities in our democratic ways with life under totalitarian rule. The fear of sticking out is very much alive and well here (especially for those who spend large portions of their time in closed worlds) and our loyalty to maintaining order results in the highly conforming public behavior Bandi outlines in many passages in The Accusation (1).
Perhaps a good rule of thumb for determining how likely something is to resemble a scene from life in a totalitarian state is to consider the amount of tradition involved. In almost all cases, a tradition requires strict conformity to maintaining established order and anyone who deviates is penalized for sticking out.
Just saying: ‘On Stage’ makes a point about how all North Koreans are actors – they must portray a certain public character at all times to survive in the regime. The best ‘actors’ are those who draw not just on their few years of schooling but rather from their entire lifetime of maintaining a certain persona.
I think this is an important lesson that I’ve seen for myself. At work, for example, I’ve always felt that those with distinct professional and personal selves were far less effective than colleagues who simply carried themselves in the same way whether they were on the job or not. I do not think there is any special explanation for this outside of simple math – the pure professional can only draw on so many years of professional experience whereas the full person has an entire lifetime of experience to draw from.
