Social tears and (per-) formed sadness – The “truth” about North Korea’s reaction regarding the death of their political leader Kim – Jong – Il

Last month, international politics has been shaken by a situation that might contribute to a transformation in, or even the fall of one of the last “socialist” dictatorships of the world – the death of Kim-Jong-Il, the political leader of North Korea. A few hours after his death, we have been able to see first pictures, first reactions by the North Korean population. But these pictures have been a surprise for many of us. Many might have had expected people to be happy about Kim Jong-Il’s death, to be relieved, to be overjoyed similar to the people in Egypt had been when Mubarak declared his withdrawal, or when the people in Libya finally killed Gaddafi. But the contrary was the case. In many online newspapers and on “youtube” we could see the pictures of people crying publically in front of Kim Jong-Il statues, in front of important monuments, or simply in the Street. We saw people tossing and turning on the floor moved by attacks of sadness, of consternation and shock. We could watch the political and military leaders of North Korea crying in a communitarian dining room – deeply touched.

 

Knowing at least a little bit about North Korea and its latest history, about the scarcities that had shaken the country, the reasons for them and the consequences for the population, knowing something about the iron rule Kim Jong- Il had held over the country, many people started to ask themselves whether and how this can be really the reaction on the death of a man like Kim Jong-Il. How is it possible that people are not happy, how can they really cry, why are they really sad? The unbelievability of the crude fact that someone could have really liked this cruel man opened the space for wild speculations, speculations about the “realness” of the images. Journalists reacted  with strong scepticism, questioning the sincerity and realness of the emotions shown and tears dropped by the North Koreans, concluding that the people shown must be bought actors or extremely pressured people who had to perform the scenes, or that these people must be brainwashed. Accordingly, in the comments on “youtube”, people either made jokes and were extremely ironic about the North Koreans, or they doubted the “realness of the tears, if not of the whole videos”. They found the idea that this could be “real” unbearable, a fist in the face of democracy, contradicting the belief that we all desire the same political system.

 

Apart from knowing from other countries that our Western democracy might not be the solution and the desired political system for all people in the world. And without saying whether this political variety is good or bad, it is something else that is interesting for us. It is the question about the “realness” of the emotions that we can follow on the screen, and what we mean by that. Looking again through comments on youtube and articles on the subject, we can see that what people mainly meant by real emotions and “realness” is that the tears and screams, the crying and breaking down are and have to be an expression of the inner individual self. We see emotions as something extremely personal, their presentation as an insight into someone’s inner life. The emotions we see on the video are then personal expressions regarding Kim-Jong-Il’s death – spontaneous and uncontrolled, showing a deep personal love to their leader. That is why it seems so striking. But the whole question about the “realness of emotions” is wrong. There are no real emotions. Emotions and their performance are always at least to a great part learned and performed.  And it is in social rituals, like the moment of Kim-Jong-Il’s death were a society learns to perform and performs how it has learned emotions. But this process of learning has nothing to do with brainwashing or with the dictatorship, there is no society were emotions are not performed/learned in rituals.

 

If we just follow the definition of an ritual in Wikipedia we are able to reinterpret the situation. “A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual) It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The form, contents, and durations of a ritual are prescribed and not spontaneous at all. The performance of emotions follows clear rules for how strong and long they have to be performed. Their performance is strictly regulated. Rituals and emotions in rituals have to be performed individually or in groups when it is socially necessary. They help to show, perform and reinforce the social relations of those involved in the ritual. In the case of the people in North Korea, we are just seeing one of these social rituals – a ritual in the moment of death wherein all social members perform and demonstrate their respect regarding Kim-Jong-Il by breaking into tears, by shouting and screaming and where they perform and show their bond with their society as a whole.

What they are doing is then not to show their inner soul but in contrast to nivell out all individualism for performing a social ritual, to reinforce their social bonds in a moment of social weakness, in a moment when they as society as a whole are facing death. The question whether their performance is real or fake can just arise to us who believe that emotions are something deeply private and individual and who have forgotten how much the emotions we feel and the way we perform them are dependent on the contexts and well learned in social rituals of various kinds.