Fairytale of Kathmandu
Posted by Maman Poulet on 12 Mar 2008 at 02:18 am | Tagged as: Uncategorized
The film was broadcast on RTE 1 tonight, I don’t know what I was waiting for more – to see it or to hear what Dermod Moore was thinking about it.
As promised Dermod posted his column originally published in Hot Press a few weeks ago. He also has a summary of a DVD released yesterday of interviews with friends of Cathal’s in Nepal.
For me? I think O’Searcaigh came across as silly and naive, hypocritical, powerful and in parts taken for whatever he would give. I felt extremely uncomfortable with what I saw of his personality and what I have determined as exploitation and it was not just the editing. Before tonight’s broadcast I have also had questions of the film maker and her ethics particularly around releases and the understanding of her Nepalese subjects as to what would happen to her work and the way she painted them in her interviews and the whole charity bandwagon she seemed to jump on.
I feel terribly sad, and let down by both O’Searcaigh and Neasa Ní Chianán for some reason – and I still don’t really know why. Don’t ask me to explain the let down thing! I should after watching it just leave it all – but the eyes of the some of the young men in the documentary were very sad and will haunt me for a long time and yet others were full of joy and admiration – but they felt like they were facilitating O’Searcaigh on his quest for acceptance. And how come O’Searcaigh could not find the words in English for what he was doing with the young men? (At that stage I was shouting at the television.) I have far too many questions for this hour of night.
I was prepared to watch the programme with an open mind, but by the end of the programme I felt sad, sick and angry. What particularly enraged me was the sight of O Searcaigh rhapsodising about the “innocence” of the Nepalese boys and how one of them had asked him “what is sex?”, only later to see that the boy had asked this question after a night with O Searcaigh. It seemed like he just couldn’t accept that there was anything exploitative about the huge, huge power imbalance between himself and the boys. How on earth can an educated western man not be aware of the implications of sitting in a chair while a bunch of poor “native” boys sit on the ground, polishing your fu*king shoes and packing your suitcase and practically dressing you? It was revolting. He seemed to get a huge kick from his godlike status. And even with the language barrier, he talked to those boys like they were children (and as far as we could see, he had made no effort to speak the language of his supposed “second home”); his manner was enormously patronising.
And he couldn’t seem to explain why exactly it was “different in Nepal”, perhaps because what was different was the presence of people who were so in awe of him they’d do whatever he wanted. He seemed to think that it was only abuse or manipulation if he’d physically forced the boys to do anything (“the door was open!”), which was ridiculously disingenuous. The whole thing was really depressing.
I saw the screening at the IFI, and in the post-film conversation with a friend, I said there were two wrongs. One was what Ó Searcaigh had done, but the other was the film.
The post-film discussion with Ní Chianán* When she started she set out to make a “poetic” film, about a poet with an adopted family on the other side of the world whom he sees once a year. For such a film she had planned “poetic” standards. However, it became something much more serious and she failed to apply the standards that issue merited. When she shifted to an expose, it became a piece of journalism, and she did not treat it in that way. For example, the final interview with Ó Searcaigh lasted an hour, but we get very little of that. We know that before the movie was first screened, there was legal correspondence, but that is not explained. And, to take another example, why was a young man explaining how he had been sexually exploited interviewed in the open air?
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*Aside: in the first Irish Times news article (not the Saturday feature), I noticed that after the first mention of the two people, when both names were used, she became “Ms Ní Chianán” with a courtesy title, while he became just “Ó Searcaigh”, in the style that convicted criminals get named. Here, I will use just surnames
hmmmm if i or you were to set ourselves up in ballymun as
a celebrated writer from Hollywood .. for example.. and hang around the local secondary school to solicit boys or girls of 16 , from the flats , for sexual favours, in return for patronage and a community arts project, adopt a local and his sweetheart, and take on literacy classes later with teens would we be within our legal rights….hardly. but that is what C O S and others are doing in nepal and developing communities worldwide.they can do it because of the endemic poverty just as oscar wilde was free to roam among the ”lower classes” for favours in his time .
we can philosophise about sexual desires, cathals homosexuality and invent clever articulate rational
to explain the predatory tendancies of
sexually complicated older men but the fact remains that
some of these boys brought official complaints to the relevant authorities themselves.
Dermod Moore patronises Neasa as a female, and states that females may not understand the male sexual desire but the boys who objected , correct me if i am wrong , were male. he cautions against the maternal protective instinct in viewing all sex as romantic and nurturing or
loving even and viewing cathals actions as wrong or abusive.
How would he explain the many stories emerging in ireland of clerical abuse to boys here ? he denies the power play in both situations and would have us believe that these boys are legitimate instruments of cathals desires.
fair trade sex tourism as described on another forum.
it is wrong and if cathal o searchaigh has been travelling to nepal for years to do this under the cover of providing aid and patronage to disadvantaged communities he should be banned by our own government from travelling there again. it is shameful that the intellegentsia can deem this case worthy of defence.
indefensible.
Fair Trade Sex Tourism? Oh I’ve heard it all now…
Must say I felt eerie watching it as couldn’t believe she didn’t questioned him earlier in her filming but waited till the end to do so.
Also she didn’t questioned his “spirtual” son about Cathal bringing young lads to his hotel room.
Haven’t never seen a docu like it as all over the place in that it suppose to be about an tribute to him but unfolded to reveal a darker side to him. Found his behaviour at times to be so childlike & his sense of reason so far out there.
I can’t believe I missed this last night! I’ve been waiting to see it for weeks, but thought it wasn’t on until tomorrow night.
Does anyone know if it’s going to be rebroadcast and, if so, when? Or if not, if it’s available for viewing on the internet somewhere?
I watched this programme with disgust.. As a regular visitor to Asia, I know too well how these poor poverty-stricken people view us Westerners. I remember on my first trip to India feeling like Princess Diana – bus loads of children waving at me, for no other reason than the colour of my skin, which to them meant “wealth”. I doubt any visitor to Asia would contradict me in saying that Westerners are indeed almost idolised and looked up to. (Lord knows why – they have very little over there, but they’re a lot happier than us living in this Materialistic culture!) Cathal O’S wouldn’t get away with his actions in Ireland, so he travels to the third world, where adolescents are vulnerable, desperate for money and somewhere where he can feel godlike. I find this man repulsive. Another sleezebag from the world of entertainment springs to mind – Garry Glitter. He too chose Asia to prey on his victims.. Well done Neasa – I admire your courage in completing this documentary.
There are many questions arising from “Fairytale of Kathmandu”. Apart from the obvious, there is the matter of the film maker’s objective in making it. It is not a lyrical piece, nor is it a serious exposé of dubious practices surrounding foreign aid. It emerges however as the agent of the destruction of Ó Searcaigh’s reputation. Neasa Ní Chianain’s unconvincing soulsearching does not wash – the treatment of the issues is shallow, sensationalist and utterly devoid of rigour. The young Nepalese who spoke to camera were painfully exposed, and may well not have understood the extent to which the interviews would be publicised. Ó Searcaigh’s complete lack of a sense of self-preservation led him to appear ridiculous in several ways. It is very easy for a film-maker to do that. It advances the debate on the serious issues not at all. Cui bono?
Corcaíoch mná
Only caught a few minutes of it (the bit where he was having a good guffaw over one young man’s misunderstanding of maoists and mouse. Why didn’t this colonial wannabe actually try and learn their language?). Had to switch over because it was so cringe worthy have to watch him be so patronising to the young men. I can’t believe that those who have seen the documentary and are defending him to the skies have chosen to completely overlook this very unpleasant of his behaviour.
Me, patronise her? She has proved to be an extremely powerful woman. Patronage is in the eye of the beholder, surely. By pointing out the difference in sexuality between men and women, and by raising the issue she brought up herself in the film’s website, the fact that she was nursing a child at the time and it may have influenced her, I appear to have offended quite a few women. No offence was intended. I am trying to work out why she was so naive and avoided asking her gay friend about his cruising and his sex life, until after he had left Nepal.
Comparing clerical sexual abuse of children to Ó Searcaigh’s relationship to his friends is really not fair. Because that is exactly the perspective from which Ní Chianán views him, and without offering a balance, a different perspective, how are we to make up our own minds?
The film’s presentation a bit fey. But I cannot really understand the literati’s objections to the film maker. She presented what she found and produced a film that was painful, but revealing.
If she had suppressed the film, the poet might still be over there picking up these apparently innocent teenagers. The film raised all sorts of issues about sexual exploitation and the gay issue is beside the point.
To present O Searcaign as the victim really twist morality to breaking point. The literati come over in this episode as a blinkered, self-serving clique.
[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my site using a feedreader or email. Thanks for visiting – Damien.So now that more people have seen the documentary about Cathal Ó Searcaigh there’s a greater number of opinions out there than there were at first. Suzy has pointed out her thoughts on the matter and I think she was quite balanced about it and dare I say it quite political correct. While it seemed obvious the documentary maker turned what would have probably been a rather bland docu into a sensationalist piece and got a huge amount of attention, the most damning thing about all of this is the way gay people and those in the Arts have twisted the stark reality of the situation and common logic to apologise and forigve the predatory acts of Cathal Ó Searcaigh. This guy is a serial abuser and the documentary, rough as it was, showed how he got whatever he wanted due to the massive power imbalance between him and the boys he “treated”. [...]
“they felt like they were facilitating O’Searcaigh on his quest for acceptance.”
Just had to say that’s the most insightful comment I’ve seen yet on the relationship he had with his young friends.
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