Terror and The Duduk
Posted on October 30th, 2008
by Freddy Gray |
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Below (Via Andrew Sullivan) is the latest bad ad from the McCain campaign:
Leaving aside the ridiculous, wrong-headed message, what’s that spooky-cum-mystical Arabian sound whirring away in the background? I believe it’s a duduk.
It’s certainly a familiar noise to all of us today. In the Age On Terror, the duduk, a 3, 000-year-old Armenian woodwind instrument, is increasingly played and heard all over the place. It is an ever-present backing noise in the mass media’s ceaseless racket about the clash of civilizations. Off the top of my head, I recall hearing that same reedy whine in several movies, including “Kingdom of Heaven”, “Rendition”, “Babel”, “Syriana” and even (I think) “Iron Man”. The duduk has almost replaced the oh-so-80s-and-90s electric guitar as the cinematic sound-instrument of our time. And now, of course, it is used in Republican campaign ads.
The duduk is employed to evoke opposite feelings. It can be either scary–”Watch out! Terrorists!”–or soothing–”How enchantingly ethnic!”–depending on context and setting. (The latter mood is often enhanced by an eastern woman singing “hayhhayhahahayhayhay” for 15 minutes without taking breath.)
Yet isn’t the duduk really just annoying? It’s like the bagpipes, only worse. I wish Hollywood, and John McCain, would put their new favourite musical toy back in its box.
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The music aside (which I like), there seems to be a resurgence in the campaign to up the pressure on Iran, possibly intended to narrow the options for the next president. Tom Friedman had a NYT op ed earlier this week saying it is time to squeeze the Mullahs hard because oil prices are down and today the AP was reporting an anonymous source telling the IAEA that Tehran has a secret weapons program. Maybe they do, but we shouldn’t rely on any anonymous informants who quite likely come from the neocon supported National Council for Resistance in Iran, which back a while ago discovered a laptop proving that Iran was developing ballistic missiles intended to deliver nuclear warheads. Turned out the info was bogus and was most likely concocted by Mossad before being passed to NCRI, somewhat similar to the role of Chalabi’s INC in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people around who really want another war in the Middle East and they are ready to make up whatever is necessary to support their case.
“Abandon… Turkey”? Isn’t Turkey trying to get into the EU? And if it qualifies as “the Middle East”, why is Israel in the Eurovision song contest?
Embarrassing.