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| Shoot 'em up! |
This evening, I ran across this television crew filming a new telenovela - to be called 'La Mariposa' - about
drug cartels.
They looked like the prohibition-era Chicago mobsters.
Colombians often blame Hollywood for perpetuating
an image of Colombia full of drugs and violence while the
Colombian government tries to sell the country as a tourist paradise.
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| The object of our affection, a loaded armored car. |
But Colombian media also do their part in scarring their nation's image. Recently, government officials, newspapers
and others have
criticized the country's TV producers for glorifying narcotraffickers and painting Colombian history as more violent than it actually was. (The country has suffered some five civil wars, as well as huge riots, insurgencies, etc etc.- so is fictional violence needed?)
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| The neighbors love it! It's even better than television. |
Newspapers complain that the miniseries and soap operas will lure kids into criminal lives. Television producers respond that 'it's art'.
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| Cartel de los Sapos: Guns, money, cars, beautiful women - what more could a mobster ask for? |
In fact, sex and violence sell, here and in the U.S. And television and the movies happily and profitably provide them, with few moral compunctions about the consequences. And
Colombians do eat up violence - as tho real-life didn't have enough of it.
The country still has an armed conflict in remote regions and a homicide rate far higher than that in the developed world.
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| The gunfight over, the casualties rise again. It doesn't happen this way in real life. |
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1 comment:
Hey Mike. Maria and I actually live on the street where the scene was shot. At first we thought that it was an actual drive bye shooting but later realised that it was the only the series being captured :o) When we went outside to watch, we starting chatting with the guys playing the cartel goons. The point is that one of the guys was an actual victim and had survived gunshots. He was actually wearing the same west, with real bullet holes in it, under the film shooting. I just thought that it was an interesting story to tell. Hope you're doing good and you soon Mike.
Regards Farid
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