Thursday, January 09, 2003

Today was 21c outside, but I stayed in bed nursing a light flu. Between drinking tea with honey, I slept and had some great dreams (an indications that I�m not all that sick).

When I woke a little while ago and watched a little bit of Armenian television via satellite.


It happens so often that when I turn on Armenian television they are showing music videos. I guess Armenians really love music. I think what they were showing was a rebroadcast of the holiday video show.


The first video I saw was System of a Down. I can see why System is so hot. Their music is supper energetic and all natural (I didn�t notice any synthesizers or drum machines), not to mention their songs are very thought provoking.


System was followed by a couple of somewhat patriotic Armenian videos.


The first was �Our Homeland�(?) and the pictures were about Armenia and its development. It was sung by quite a few different singers, but the only one I recognized was our very own Arthur (Madlene�s husband). The singers were all dressed very formal, as if they were attending an important meeting. The video was not staring the singers, but was staring none other than our president Robert Kocharian, who was showing how much the people love him and all of the major accomplishments that took place during the time he has been in office (as if he did all those things himself). There was even pictures of him and Kirk Krikorian.


The next video was about a solider that goes off to serve in the Armenian army. It was very touching and made me very proud to see our army in action with all its equipment and so on. Then at some point who becomes the center of attention in the video? None other than president Kocharian. In combat uniform, he passed out a metal to some soldier, shoots a rifle, looks through binoculars and so on. The video made him look very strong and in control.


Both those videos only lacked the message �Vote for Kocharian in 2003!!!� or maybe they did.


I can�t imagine that the artist of these songs envisioned that the video would be staring the president of Armenia.


I was waiting for the next video to be another presidential campaigning video, but it was some American video.


I watched for a little while longer, but didn�t notice any more Kocharian presidential videos or equal exposure videos for the other candidates.


The last video I watched was by Hasmik Garabedyan called �I�m leaving�. This video I�ve seen a few times and don�t care for it too much. It�s a video about a girl who is living with her boyfriend or husband (it�s not made clear) and while he is sleeping, she packs a suitcase and gets in a cab with him waking up and running after her, but he is unable to catch up to her before the cab drives off. The whole song repeats the words �I am leave my love and closing the door behind me� and has pictures of her remembering her and her boyfriend doing fun things together. Never did they show him being abusive or giving her reason to leave the way she did. She moves into a new place that she fixes up on her own, while remembering the good times she had with him. My understanding is that Hasmik is glorifying someone leaving their lover without any reason other than starting a new life alone someplace else (almost telling people it�s okay to leave what they have and start a new life in another country). Maybe there is another message that I�m too dense to understand.

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