Tuesday Afternoon Diversion: DPRK Party Rock Anthem

By Kevin Robinson in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 20, 2011 9:00PM

The death of Kim Jong Il has demonstrated to the world what an anachronism Stalinism is, while also prompting a reaction of both revulsion and horror at the North Korean way of life. Consequentially, internet culture has its own take on this event, interpreting the event broadly, from both absurdist humor to the more stark reality of the traumatic existence of daily life most North Koreans face.

While the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea cope with the third heir to the dictatorship of their state, we in West are confronted with the perversion of conformity and tradition that Kim's death has brought to the forefront. Especially for those of us in the U.S. that remember the Soviet Union, footage of the reaction in North Korea is like looking back in time - it satisfies a voyeuristic tendency in people, while also stirring something nostalgic, like staring the Cold War dead in the eye.

Consider today's diversion an experiment in retro-futurism. What if communism hadn't fallen? What if the West had continued progressing, technologically, culturally and politically, but on the other side of the globe entire nations built on fear and conformity and isolation had maintained, acting as a counterbalance to Western capitalist power. With that in mind, we present DPRK Party Rock Anthem.