In this all-encompassing economy of violence, every speech-act (including silence) is open to critical scrutiny. So the violence occasioned by legal interpretation cannot be restrictively attributed to the institution (‘them’), but is potentially extended to every functionary constitutive of the imaginary (‘us’). By not acting against domination, we perpetuate it in complicity. The serene absence of any resistance to the regime in the name of the other even after we have come to hear of such violence would attest to one of the uncountable practices of irresponsibility that we inherit, repeat, and proliferate in the everyday. The official website of the anti-secular Christian denomination reports that as of last month nine members are incarcerated at the military detention barracks, most of whom bear the maximum sentence.įor the rest of us who are ‘fortunate’ not to share interpretive commitments that contradict those of the national imaginary, National Service tends to be accepted as a prideful (or else simply inevitable) rite of passage without any critical awareness on our part of the implicative violence on which it is founded. Refusing to serve the two-year conscription term mandated for all male citizens and permanent residents of age is an offence liable to imprisonment for up to three years under Section 33 of the Enlistment Act. The punishment of conscientious objection (particularly by Jehovah’s Witnesses) in Singapore is another telling instance of how far a state could go to affirm the conservative dogma (the ‘nation’ above a hereticised ‘religion’) of its tendentious imaginary (‘national imaginary’). Watch Martin Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ trailer here: Standard It is this responsibility given by God that gives him such a burden not to commit apostasy. You can see how Father Rodrigues firmly hold on to his belief and see it as a responsibility to have such an ethical guideline. Throughout the movie, it illustrates the three key areas of ‘humanities’, the correlation between value, culture and the normative. The dilemma where he is not helping those who are suffering as a Christian priest because he is unwilling to give up his religious belief.Īnd of course, it didn’t take long until Father Rodrigues breaks down from this ethical dilemma and chose to accept this painful truth. ![]() They did this by village massacre, drowning Christians, burning them alive, and having their head chop off…Īll of these were done to question Father Rodrigues’ ethical dilemma, who struggles as he questions whether if he’s being too self-centered or too unmerciful to commit apostasy. Therefore, instead of killing him, what they did was to force him to renounce his faith. They see priest as the root to the problem of Christianity. Once they captured Father Rodrigues, they did not kill him. They see religion as a demonstration of authority. You have to understand that minority culture and belief such as Christianity cannot exist in Japan, as Japan operates under militarism. During his journey in search for Father Ferreira, Father Rodrigues encountered a lot of local Christian populations hidden underground. Instead of documenting the killing involved from the killer’s perspective, ‘Silence’ surrounds missionary Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) in his attempt to look for Father Ferreira (Liam Nelson) in Japan, who renounced his belief on Jesus after being tortured. I guess you can say ‘Silence’ is a movie version of ‘The Act of Killing’. While ‘Silence’ might not be as appealing as it is compared to Scorsese’s previous movies such as ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, ‘Hugo’ or even ‘The Departed’, the amount of killing and torturing involved really reminds me of the incidents described and revealed by Anwar from ‘The Act of Killing’.
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