Fawcett’s Vision of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge

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In his book “Cambodia: A Book For People Who Find Television Too Slow”, Brian Fawcett offers a collection of thirteen humorous stories with rather serious life implications. The major themes of his interest in those stories are popular culture, the role of the media in shaping modern psychological character, and the meaning of genocide. In the following paper, the story “On the Difficulties of Crowd Control” will be addressed with the purpose of relating its main ideas and symbolism to the concepts of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Overall, the story “On the Difficulties of Crowd Control” reflects the concepts of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge by demonstrating the way media and modern communications affects people’s decisions in different parts of the globe.

The concepts of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge are well-seen in the story “On the Difficulties of Crowd Control”. First, the main event described in the story is a good illustration to the statement made above. Particularly, the story is focused on the students’ protest against American invasion of Cambodia. The protest takes place in Kent, Ohio. The location of students’ picket eloquently emphasizes the fact that the modern world is one enormously huge village due to the geographical remoteness of Cambodia and the United States. In this story, Fawcett makes stress on the impact of the mass media on the life of global society.

He shows that information from remote lands reaches the viewers all over the world within hours and viewers, in turn, do not remain unresponsive. People act to demonstrate their disapproval of the actions of their governments or governments from other countries. This is the case with the students addressed in the story under consideration. Their open protest against the actions of the government demonstrates how the concept of the Global Village works. Namely, when a conflict occurs in one part of the planet, people in other parts do not want to be silent.

Further, the story “On the Difficulties of Crowd Control” refers to the concepts of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge by means of describing the way Cambodian people accepted global culture and how this reception affected their lives. The following quotation from the story under consideration helps to understand what is at stake in the topic sentence of this paragraph:

An article has now appeared in National Geographic, with photographs of the

piles of whitening skulls fouling the rice paddies, and the walls covered with

photographs of some of those who were tortured, made to write confessions

and then killed – along with their families – because they could read and write,

wore glasses spoke foreign languages or erred in their interpretation of

Khmer Rouge doctrine (Fawcett 5).

This short passage demonstrates that the Khmer Rouge government aimed to destroy every individual subjected to the impact of global culture. The readers may notice that such innocent skills as the ability to read and write were seen by the Khmer Rouge as evidence of one’s guilt in cooperating with the outer world. Moreover, wearing glasses was unacceptable according to the doctrine of the Khmer Rouge because they believed it could offer an individual a chance to interact with other cultures.

In addition, the above-related passage testifies that the population of Cambodia was affected by the concept of the Global Village since there were people who had been punished for their fouls. In this vein, there were individuals cruelly executed for speaking foreign languages or for interpreting the doctrine of Khmer Rouge in a way that contradicted the conventional statutes. It appears that being a part of the Global Village was a capital offense for the Khmer Rouge.

Finally, the story “On the Difficulties of Crowd Control” reflects on the concepts of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge by providing a parallel between the events of the war in Cambodia and people’s daily routines such as watching television. In this thought-provoking opus, Fawcett states, “Cambodia is as near as your television set” (11). This statement with deep implications encourages meditating on the changes that took place in people’s lives in the second half of the 20^th century.

Today, any person may understand what the concept of the Global Village really means by means of merely pressing a button of one’s TV remote control. Thus, in this quotation, Fawcett explains that the proximity between a story shown by the media and a person sitting in one’s armchair and engaging in channel-surfing is the evidence that proves the fact that the world has become one global village.

Reflecting on the above-mentioned, the story “On the Difficulties of Crowd Control” from Brian Fawcett’s “Cambodia” is a stirring opus that indicates a close connection between the events that took place in south-eastern Asia in the 1970s and the concepts of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The story illustrates those concepts by showing how the mass media shape people’s lives in different countries of the world.

Works Cited

Fawcett, Brian. Cambodia: A Book For People Who Find Television Too Slow. Vancover: Talonbooks, 1986. Print.

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Fawcett’s Vision of the Global Village and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge

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