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Street Food

There are aspects of Korea that often make it appear to occupy a “third place” between the developed and developing world, and one of these is the prevalence of street food. While such food in the West is largely limited to a few after-hours burger vans or greasy hot-dogs stands, here it often seems like every intersection has something temptingly sizzling away for a couple of chun (1000 won) a piece.

One such culprit is paejon, a potato-based pancake laced with green onions and red chilli that can be found in the old shopping district of Nampodong, next to the “world famous” Jagalchi Fish Market. These start life as a thin doughy batter ladled onto a hotplate where they bubble away for a few minutes before being sliced up and served on a plastic covered plate. Eaten straight off the cart dipped in some of that wonderous dark soy sauce with sesame seeds and chilli, paegon is the perfect way to split up an afternoon spent scouring the markets for bargains without blowing your appetite.

Often found sharing a hotplate with paejon is fried mandu, a light dumpling filled with shredded pork and bean sprouts. These little beauties are a Korean staple and more or less annihilate any negative connotations the word dumpling might conjure up – substantial enough to feel like you’ve eaten but light enough to stop four of five from turning into an ordeal. Mandu can also be found bobbing around in a bowl of Ramyon (noodle soup) in any Korean diner, but I personally prefer them the street way – lip searingly hot and shoulder to shoulder with the proles.

Elsewhere, cups of dried octopus tentacles make an interesting but as yet untried option, while tubular rice cakes in a colon bypassing hot sauce are a Duchess favourite and the type of thing people say puts hairs on your chest. The same hot sauce also comes smeared all over pieces of skewered barbecued chicken (see picture) that are undisputedly good but impossible to eat without getting all over your face.

On the less appetising end of the spectrum, Bondegi (boiled silkworm larvae) make an exotic if gut-wrenching alternative. A hangover from poorer times, these slater–like critters smell and taste pretty much as shitty as you’d expect but seem to enjoy steady business along the beachfronts of the city. Also on the rather-not-rosta is battered sausage on a stick, which has the consistency of spam and wet cardboard and is a singularly greasy and unpleasant experience.
Silkworm and sausage aside, Korean street food has so far been an eye-opening experience.

Standing at a food cart on a busy Busan street enjoying a good, cheap plate of paegon or mandu I feel divorced from my former attitude towards food. I used to imagine one day visiting restaurants with price-tags higher than my council tax, but that isn’t food, its status, and I’d now much rather risk six months of diarrohea eating the backstreets of Asia than spend an hour getting fleeced in one of those gentrified hovels.

All good in the hood

We’ve been in our new apartment for about two weeks now and I thought I’d share some of its mod cons:

We live on the tenth floor of an 18 storey block in Dong-bu Hyundai, Sajik-dong in an apartment - paid for and allocated by our school - which is thankfully somewhat more spacious than the typical studio deal dished out to most foreign teachers. We have been told that before us a family lived here, meaning it’s just about large enough to house our space hungry western asses, consisting of three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room/kitchen and a balcony.

Our building is a pretty cheek to jowl living space. In Glasgow we’d go for weeks without knowing anyone else shared our tenement, but here we have constant reminders of the lives stacked above, below and either side of us. Cooking smells waft in and out like an over-familiar visitor, while the triumphs and torments of nightly recorder practice seep through the walls like rising damp. Last Wednesday evening, as Korea was soundly defeating America in Olympic Baseball, I muted the TV and to my surprise heard a loud cheer all around me. Baffled at first, it soon struck me that the cheers were coming from individual apartments.

Straddling a long, sweaty climb, the area itself is pretty much as far into the hills as you can go without living in a temple, meaning our location can be problematic. Only one bus comes up here, a little number 5 that powers up and down all day like an ajuma workhorse. The bus takes about 10 minutes to get to the subway, but to get to school we must take a taxi – an inexpensive mode of transport but one that landed us in some inconvenient places until our Korean improved. Dong-bu also boasts a few shops, a bakery, an expensive looking restaurant and what I think is a brothel; not exactly Seomyeon but enough to cater for the day-to-day needs of most residents.

Even further up the hill a path winds into the mountain, past a Buddhist temple – a striking but not unfamiliar sight in Busan – and up in amongst the trees. From here there are some pretty sweeping views of the city. Far to the south a suspension cable from the huge Gwangali bridge is just about visible behind one of the green topped mounds that poke above the surface of the city like islands, while farther away still the black line of the horizon marks the Sea of Japan from the sky. From here the city slowly tapers inland, wrapping its way around the bluffs and hills before hazily meandering out of sight to the north.

Despite the accessibility problems I’m growing found of our little neighbourhood. It’s nice to back on to the mountain, and be able to see both green and city from our modest balcony, and I’m pretty sure we’ll soon start to recognise some of our Korean neighbours who smile politely at the Waygooks in their midst. Although if given the choice, I’d definitely live somewhere more central, for now at least, Dong-bu will do.

Chalet Suisse

One of the things I like about Korea is its seemingly endless capacity to surprise me. This was certainly true on Saturday night, when after a good (but by no means overwhelming) plate of Vietnamese rice noodles with seafood, a friend opted to spend the remainder of her farewell evening in the intimate and eccentric surroundings of Chalet Suisse a "Swiss Folk Music Cafe" in the Pusan National University district.

Skippered by the affable Mr Lee, and his grinning Setter/Spaniel “Clarinet,” Chalet Suisse transports its occaisonal patrons (numbering no more than about 10 at one time) from the scooters and blaring neon of the Busan street to the intimate confines of a swiss log cabin high in the Alps.

Upon entering the small space, the uniqueness of Chalet Suisse becomes clear. On one side of the room, a huge mural depicts a majestic Alpine scene of blue skies, rolling slopes and jagged peaks, while the remainder of the wall space is given over various items of Swiss culture and provenance; Male and female traditional folk costumes hang in dry cleaning bags on one wall, a cast iron leaf weaved with various wooden dolls and puppets straddles the door, while photos of a younger Mr Lee (presumably in Switzerland) hang proudly in the gaps.

Added to this is an orchestra of musical instruments. Covered shapes betraying the larger string instruments loaf in the corners, while a brigade of beautifully crafted and exotically shaped ukeles, banjos and the like hang pragmatically from a roof beam. As the evening progressed, Mr Lee produced and played a number of these instruments, accompanying yodelling songs with a Guitar, a Banjo and an Accordian, and at one point eliciting that I was from Ireland, playing “Danny Boy” on the Clarinet.

Chalet Suisse is undoubtedly a labour of love and appears to be more a place where Mr Lee can indulge his passion with friends than a business (after we ordered drinks he had to run out to the shop to buy them!) Going there renewed in me the sense that there is something special and uplifting in the human spirit’s capacity to find and cultivate a passion, even from the most remote and diverse of backgrounds, and I cannot but admire Mr Lee’s commitment and sincerity.

I aim on dropping by again when I’m next in PNU. Europe may be thousands of miles away, but at least Switzerland is only a couple of stops on the subway.

Galbi glorious Kalbi!

On our first weekend in Busan, my cousin Steve and his girlfriend Vicky took us to a Galbi restaurant. Since then, the thing has kind of snowballed for me and the Duch, culminating in the infamous "day of two Galbis."

As you might have guessed, Galbi is damnably good, and a typical experience could be described as follows:

You arrive at the Galbi restaurant with your companions and are immediately hit by the distinctive sounds and smells of sizzling flesh. As you breathe in, the aroma permeates every cell in your body, turning your mouth into a swimming pool and pulling your belly up into your chest. By the time you reach your table you are about 100 times hungrier than when you were at the door, a situation exacerbated by the visual effect of Galbi being consumed heartily all around you.

You sit down at the table, and after a cursory glance at the menu the Korean amongst you orders for everyone. If there isn’t a Korean amongst you don’t worry – these restaurants basically serve one thing and God gave you fingers for a reason. After the order has been dispatched you attempt polite chat but it’s hard to concentrate. You pick at the Kimchi (fermented cabbage in chilli sauce) with your chopsticks and prod a few other side dishes distractedly.

Just as your stomach starts calling you names your server arrives with a big plate of chicken marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, chilli and garlic (I think) and slides it into the smoking circular pan in the middle of the table. It instantly hisses into life, popping and spitting and catching as your server kneads the chicken around the pan expertly with two great big wooden spatulas. It cooks like this for 5 minutes or so, your server every so often returning to massage it until, with a final flourish, he sets the spatulas to one side and turns down the heat. It’s now ready to eat.

Delirious with excitement, you extend a pair of trembling chopsticks into the pan, pinch a piece of chicken and place it on a sesame leaf along with some thinly sliced onions from your bowl of soy sauce, and a dab of spicy bean paste. You then wrap up the whole neat little bundle and pop it in your mouth in one go, taking care to allow a dribble of soy sauce to run down your chin. The finely serated sesame leaf, lightly perfumed and almost sweet tasting competes ably with the deep, brooding heat and flavour of the chicken, which you find particularly tasty where it has charred and become semi-stuck to the pan.

This process is then repeated until about half the Galbi has been eaten, at which point rice is added to the pan followed by – if you are that way inclined (and I think you are) - cheese. The rice has the effect of turning the pan into a great big paella type thing, while the melting cheese, although admittedly an odd addition, binds the whole mixture together perfectly into lovely chopstick-friendly clumps.

An indeterminable amount of time passes, you rediscover your companions, then without quite knowing how you got there you find yourself at the till making patting motions appreciatively and paying another ludicrously small amount.

You love Korean food.

The job (including lunch)

Korea isn’t all Galbi and beer it seems, with a substantial portion of my time taken up trying to impart knowledge to our future Asian masters. This, as with everything else in Korea, is conducted in a pantomime of hand gestures and a great deal of fecklessness.

Our day begins at about 9:10am, when we start the slow, sweaty trudge to school from our “love motel” (which is pretty much exactly how you imagine it.) On one side of the road, huge apartment complexes dominate the skyline, while on the other side, convenience stores and small enterprises jostle for space with small restaurants boasting large tanks of docile fish and slithering eels. Here and there workmen clamour over building sites industriously, while pavement-mounted scooters zoom past perilously close and taxi’s pore out of every intersection.

Every so often we hit a stench pocket, where the overwhelming smell of human waste hums in the air like a localised hell. The final stage of our walk takes us down a side street and past a neon cross topped church and into the pretty courtyard of our school, which is where the mayhem really begins.

Even before we’ve changed into our “inside shoes” we are typically assailed with lisping cries of “Danny teacher!” and “Sarah teacher!” from all directions. From here on in a tide of bobbing heads and exuberant greetings follow us up two flights of stairs to the tiny staff room, which we share with four other Waygooks and four Korean teachers. There is usually just enough time to hastily photocopy a few worksheets, gather our shit together and check the days’ schedule before scattering to our first classes at 9:40am.

The “morning” comprises of six periods; two 30 minute classes followed by a 20 minute break, another two 30 minute classes, an hour for lunch then another two thirty minute classes. For some reason I have been designated science teacher, so a good deal of my morning classes are spent fiddling about with ill-conceived science experiments while trying to silence a growing cacophony of “teacher help!” and issuing empty threats about the use of the Korean language. These experiments rarely demonstrate any scientific principles a seven year old could grasp and usually involve a lot of sellotape, swallowable parts and Korean-only instructions. It’s a race against the clock to make sure everyone has successfully constructed their experiment, packed up and if there’s time, learnt a few words of English in the 30 minutes allotted time slot. More than once a Korean teacher has had to wade in to help while I, red faced and sporting a child on each limb have uselessly appealed for calm. My other morning classes involve working from books or worksheets, and generally a lot of colouring in and some songs thrown in to waste a little time.

After the first four classes there is an hour lunch break which at 12 noon, is a little earlier than I’m used to but more than welcome after 2 hours with the Kindergarten terrors. There are four choices nearby for lunch; Paris Baguette, Tous les Jours, Camp and “The pasta place.” The first two are large chains that differ only in that Tous les Jours serves coffee. As you may guess by the names both serve a Korean take on French Patisserie - with varying degrees of success. If you have ever been in a quandary over whether to go sweet or savoury then go to one of these shops. Croissants come with a glaze of sugar and donuts which look normal on the outside, reveal a bean paste when bitten into. I’ve even heard tales of jelly and cheese sandwiches coming out of these places and though I’ve never experienced it myself, I don’t doubt it for a second. In some ways they get it right however; Mini bagel pizzas with sweet tomato sauce and a cheese and ham (and egg?) topping are perfect when you can’t look at a bowl of rice, while a coffee and (real) donut from Tous les jours is a great energy boost for the final classes. Camp on the other hand is the decidedly Korean lunch option, serving Kimbap (like Sushi rolls) Bi Bim Bap (an egg, rice, veg and chilli concoction favoured by the Duchess) spicy beef soup, Mandu (dumplings) and such-like. The service here is efficient and the food, as with most Korean restaurants, tastes good and is shamefully cheap. Forensic analysis of each dish should be expected sometime in the near future. Although I have yet to go to the “pasta place,” I’m sure the time will soon come when, more through curiosity than anything else, I will check it out.

The afternoon schedule consists of four 50 minute periods separated by 10 minute breaks. According to my schedule I should only be working three of these, but teacher shortages of late have often meant doing all four twice a week. These kids are at the elementary level, so the material is more advanced and some, though not all, can hold a decent conversation in English. The nature of these classes differs from that of the morning classes. The kids are generally (though not always) easier to control and the material a bit more challenging. I start a few of these classes by letting the kids sing a pop song. Most recently it has been “Ob-la-di-ob-la-da” by the Beatles and “You’re my inspiration” by some eighties power rock band but in future I get to choose. Youtube here we come! The rest of the class is taken up going through the assigned text book, some of which still have the original CDs (which makes things a lot easier,) but others that require a little creative improvisation.

At 6:20pm the school day finally ends and we set off in search of something to eat. Recent choices have included slices of tender barbecue pork, gloriously fatty and transformed into little morsels of piggy heaven when dipped in deep chilli sauce and wrapped in fragrant sesame leaves. But that’s a different story.

Shabu Shabu

For me, Korean food started on Friday night. Up until then, my experience was moew or less limited to a few visits to Kokyoro, whatever it was Air Asiana served up somewhere over the Ukraine and a few so-so meals consumed in a haze of jetlag and apprehension. As such, baring some tasty deep fried mandu (pork dumplings) in the restaurant around the corner from my school one lunch time, my first five days or so in Korea were spent with the distinct feeling that i wasn't quite getting to the meat and potatoes of Korean cusine. Until I tried Shabu shabu that is, which had both.

Literally translated as Swish Swish, Shabu Shabu involves simmering meat and vegetables in a rich spicy broth, to be eaten with a variety of side dishes and a wonderfully intense dipping sauce (of which more later.) As with alot of Korean food it seems, ther is very much a DIY element to Shabu Shabu, the low tables of the restaurant coming equiped with gas burners on which on which dinner is cooked in large communal pots to be shared with one's companions.
The occaison was dinner with our newcolleagues, and after taking off our shoes and settling in cross-legged around the table, the burner was soon fired up and coaxing a large pot of broth and potatoes into life. Next to arrive were the vegetables; large plates of oyster mushrooms, whole bunches of parsely and crispy green beans literally singing with freshness. Not long after these sank into the maelstrom of the now bubbling broth came thje coup de grace; Wafer thin slices of blood red beef, translucent and marbled with rich white fat towered on serving platters in what seemed like ludricous proportions.

Within a few salivating minutes it was ready to eat. As expected, the broth was spicy and intense, a perfect home for the earth parsley and mushrooms that were every bit as fresh as they'd looked. The meat itself was plentiful, delicate and flavoursome, even more so when dipped in the small saucer of soy sauce with a smudge of dissolving wasabi on the side. The soy sauce here, i should say, is unlike anything i've ever had in the UK or elsewhere, with a flavour so intricate that i thought it must be something else entirely! As the broth bubbled down and the falvours deepened, gratin sized slices of potato appeared, by this stage al dente and infused with the cooking liquid. When these had gone, thick udon noodles arrived to flesh out the remaining broth and ensure a few more minutes happy slurping.

At the end of the meal, as i sat happy, converted and satisfied, a Canadian colleague observed that the swirling reds and lazy bubbles of the remaining broth was the closest thing you'd get to a drug trip in Korea. Fine by me

I blame the wire

Hi, remember me? I used to blog regularly on this site until The Wire entered my life and effectively killed my TV consumption for four box sets.

Set in and around the projects and high-rises of Baltimore’s deprived South Side, HBO’s most thrilling export to date (and there’s been a few) for a time dominated my life and pushed all other TV to the margins. Thus, while Delia was getting intimate with tins of canned lamb, Neighbours was moving to channel 5, and Michael Sophocles was shitting all over Sir Alan in The Apprentice, I was more concerned about Omar’s next stick up and what was happening in Hamsterdam to give a shit. I realise this amounts to nothing less that a dereliction of duties and an affront to my flashing friend in the corner, but it’s just so good I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself.

But that’s only one half of the story. The truth is that after watching The Wire I began to get a little disillusioned with my attempts at pop cultural analysis and plaigirism so I tried to turn my hand at fiction. You can read the results at Dead bodies weigh heavier than broken hearts and Fikipedia and judge the results for yourself, but all I can say is it’s damn difficult!

Anyway, while I no longer technically own a TV, I’m still managing to cram quite a bit of viewing into my drying eye-holes through the wonders of i-player and other streaming video, so without further snivelling, allow me to embark on by overdue, over-stylised and over-compensating TV round up of the week.

Battlestar Galactica was recommended to me by several sources, none of whom were overt Sci-fi geeks, so I decided to give it a go. Armed with the 2hr + pilot and an open mind, I decided to let the DVD do the talking and wasn’t disappointed.

The show follows the fortunes of the last remaining humans from the 12 Gobol space colonies as they flee the Zylons, a deadly band of robots turned rebels, looking for the mythical 13^th colony - which happens to be our dear own Earth. As the opening sequence dramatically reminds us each week, some of these robots look and feel human (not to mention are pretty hot) making the task ahead even more deadly as the Zylons hide within the humans’ midst.

This is a sexed up version of a 70s show by the same name, and with a kick-ass premise like this makes for addictive viewing (I’m half way through season one.) While it tends to drift towards the cheesy side a little to often for comfort, and the script can lag in places, Battlestar Galactica nevertheless punches with the big boys when comes to plot, drama and suspense. Plus there’s four seasons, making my unemployment quite frankly a breeze!

Also on the radar this week was Kidulthood, a gritty drama about the lives of the deprived teenagers at a West London school (available on BBC i-player.) as they deal with the aftermath of a pupil’s suicide. Written by Noel Clarke, who also plays the terrifying school bully Sam, Kidulthood doesn’t hold back when portraying the sex, violence and drugs of Britain’s modern youth, and has frankly made me terrified of anyone under 18!

Although quite similar in some respects to Larry Clarke’s 1995 directorial debut Kids, Kidulthood manages to carve out a space of its own when it comes to shocking the viewer and offering nothing but unrelenting bleakness as it eulogises the fate of Thatcher’s last, unwanted children.

It makes for compelling viewing, and with the sequel Adulthood out in cinema’s tomorrow, you could do worse than give it a shot.

Behind the ion curtain

As you may well be aware, this blog has a propensity to look westward across the Atlantic in its noble quest to source and dispatch TV wisdom to it’s small but discerning readership. With the Americans’ reputation for churning out shows such as the Soprano’s, Curb and The Wire, sorry Chavez, but cultural hegemony doesn’t always seem like such a bad thing.

Last week however, things were a little different. After having duped the Duchess into an Eastern escapade and bade a tearful “missing you already” to The Wire Series 1, I tossed the TV Guide and packed my bags as TV Casualty finally went Continental.

As any good guide book will tell you, the first thing you should do when you arriving in an unfamiliar country is channel surf your hotel box. Television can expose the best and worst aspects of a country, broadcasting everything from Olympic triumph to Regime change Through TV one can instantly access a rolling archive of the obsessions and intrigues that grip a nation’s collective consciousness at any given moment, and tap into the cultural life of a large swathe of its populous through the protective anonymity of a glass screen.

That said, you’re probably going to want to find an English speaking channel first to ease yourself into the culture shock. In this situation, BBC World is usually your best bet, merging as it does that familiar British presenting style with just enough extra international news to make you remember you’re on holiday. In its absence however Euronews should be more than enough to fill the gaping void. This isn’t because of the quality of journalism on show (Euronews somehow manages to cover Europe wide events with a level of scrutiny just below Newsround) rather it’s for the filler items in between news headlines.

One such filler is “No Comment,” where news footage is shown without narration, and little indication as to what is actually going on. While some of the footage is reasonably self-explanatory, some requires an altogether more creative approach from the viewer. Thus you can find yourself inventing all sorts of reasons why four men in grey suits should be walking into a building, and lets face it, whatever you make up is likely to be about 100 times less depressing than the truth.

Another filler item (and my personal favourite) is “Flashback,” in which a news story from exactly one year before is shown in surprising detail for Euronews, in doing so turning the whole concept of “news” on its head. Tuning into one of these bad boys can initially be incredibly exciting in a “Shit I knew this was going to happen!” way, but as the realisation dawns on you that you are neither psychic nor have you travelled back in time somehow, its actually quite interesting. Of course sometimes major events are reported that you have absolutely no recollection of, but I suppose its better late than never.

Having suitably reassured yourself that the English speaking world still exists, you may want to venture outside into new territories. On this occasion, I managed to stumble across Polska Nostrovia, a highly entertaining show in which Ladas and other Soviet era rust buckets are navigated around a variety of obstacles. This can range from contestants double parking on a yellow square to going hell for leather off road, mowing down cardboard cut outs of animals trying to cross the road, kind of like Top Gear meets The Animals of Farthing Wood. The fact that there is a language barrier doesn’t matter either, as the hilarity of bad driving is, of course, universal.

Other highlights include watching your favourite movies dubbed in German, which can range from being expertly done to absolutely ridiculous, as well as the ever popular music text in channels such as Viva.tv. Channels such as Viva serve not only to show that morons exist all over the world (witness XXX GUNTER IST SEXI XXX a few times and you’ll know what I mean) but also show that for all their enviable multi-lingual skills, lyrics written in English by Continental Europeans are all uniformly lame, alleviating somewhat that feeling of awkward ignorance implicit in travelling anywhere outside the English speaking world except possibly France.

With TV like this at your fingertips, it’s easy to see why people say travel broadens the mind.

Masterchef Goes Largish

The hangover has barely faded and Masterchef 2008 is already breathing its garlicky breath down our necks. Tearing a hole straight through eight weeks of BBC 2’s 8:30 weeknight slot (barring Fridays) Masterchef Goes Large 2008 is once again serving up generous portions of tears, triumph, (and a lot of the same) over the coming weeks and months. Under the critical gaze of large faced double act x and y, a whole battalion of food weirdo’s will be sweating it out in the Masterchef kitchen, each vying for that prized place in the final and the chance to “change their lives forever” with a guaranteed job in a “top kitchen” (and if they’re really lucky a shot co-hosting the Wild Gourmets or some similar drivel.)

At first glance a number of things jar in the Masterchef goes large format. For a start, while some of the contestants are old enough and far enough into their (mis)chosen careers to really benefit from the fast track to job in cooking, the increasingly younger make-up of the contestants make a less convincing case for the whole “one chance to realise their dreams” foundation on which the show trades. If they want to cook so badly, one asks oneself, why not just get a job in a kitchen? It could be that I’m missing the point entirely, or that getting what you want without working for it is actually looks good on a CV these days, but I don’t tune in to Masterchef now without my sceptic gun cocked and with the safety off.

It’s also painfully repetitive, with much of the show looking like it’s been directed by a computer programme. Each day the same lines are trotted out by the voiceover. “Accountant Robert is risking it all with…” describes anything technical or offbeat, while “but will that be enough to impress the judges?” is generally reserved for more conventional efforts. The emotional state of the contestants is similarly portrayed with a few easily recognisable rules. Stress and pressure are denoted by the Prodigy, while Keane usually kick in at the end accompanied by a group hug to portray the bond forged by the group and good will towards the emotional winner. Personally I’d want to kick him or her in the shins but then again I am solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Yet despite these foibles, Masterchef draws me back, if intermittently, again and again. Chief among the reasons for this is the quality and thoughtfulness of the cooking on show. Most of the contestants display a genuine flair and passion for what they are doing, and the often inventive, risky and instinctual combinations (particularly in the first round) show approaches to food I might not usually consider. The earnestness of the contestants is another plus; many contestants look like their very life depends on the taster’s reaction to their laboriously crafted creations, and I can only admire the guts it must take to put themselves out there through their food. For these reasons, last years contest threw up some interesting finalists and made for a good season finish. This year some of those contestants have been invited back to undergo life-threatening 16 hour shifts in some top kitchens later in the series, so it’ll be interesting to see how this kink in the format works out.

Exploring a more sobering theme this week BBC 2 also kicked off the first in (another) series of films about the Iraq War with the badly titled The Boys of Baghdad High. This fly on the wall documentary follows the lives of four Iraqi friends as they try to maintain a normal life on the increasingly blood soaked streets of the Iraqi capital. Having been provided with video cameras the boys then recorded the various aspects of their day to day lives, be it singing along to a Britney Spears song or running the daily gauntlet to school and back. For dramatic effect, the friends were all from different religious backgrounds (though only two of them appeared to hang out with each other) giving a further twist to the tale.

Although The Boys of Baghdad High was rich in material and made for a unique on the ground insight of what is going on in Baghdad, the programme was badly let down by the editing. For some reason the four boy’s voices were dubbed into English (in wildly unfitting accents) while everyone elses were subtitled, affecting the fluidity of some of the scenes. In addition, the film was cut somewhat haphazardly, and seemed to be trying to manipulate the footage to show the boys everday life, i.e. hanging out or being nagged by their mothers, jarring with the stark realities of the war. This in itself isn’t necessarily bad, but instead of providing us with a stark contrast as the programme makers must have intended, it seemed to enforce a misplaced light-heartedness to some scenes when the truth was much grimmer. Although it did throw up the line “If Chemical Ali really wanted to destroy the north, he should have fired a rocket with Mohammed’s socks in it.”

There were some poignant moments, such as when two of the boys parted company as one relocated to the Kurdish north to escape the violence, as well as some truly terrifying footage of explosions and firefights, but somewhere in putting it all together the integrity was lost, and as such I doubt The Boys of Baghdad winning any awards for film making.

Koreabridge