The Politics of The Elephant King

Last Saturday, I went down to Crenshaw Blvd in south Los Angeles to work the phones for a few hours on behalf of the Barack Obama campaign. The race is close in Nevada, and I was calling registered Democrats in the Las Vegas region, as well as a handful of Independents, Non-partisans, and left-leaning Republicans, to encourage them to participate in Early Voting, and to volunteer for the campaign. I made similar phone calls for John Kerry four years ago, on behalf of the United Auto Workers (teaching assistants were union-proud at NYU) -- but this year I'm far more optimistic. It's funny, because even with The Elephant King coming to theaters in just a couple of weeks, I find myself almost as excited by this year's political prospects as I am by my own movie premiere.

The reason is because my primary political concern, since well before I watched the planes hit the towers from Chinatown on Sept 11, has been integrating the United States into a global culture. The only way humanity will survive both climate change and the violent hiccups that characterize our transition through the nationalist phase is if we're united through a common global culture that transcends religious, ethnic, and the other superficial tribal distinctions that demagogues exploit to maintain power. Barack Obama seems to be the most capable politician around for the job of making America part of the world again. (This also happens to be the great fear of the right wing -- that America will lose its superpowers through integration into a global government.)

That's also the political subtext of The Elephant King. In one interpretation, the two brothers, Jake and Oliver, represent the two salient aspects of recent American foreign policy -- greed and naivety. The elephant -- the national symbol of Thailand -- represents foreign culture. The brothers try to save "the foreign" without first trying to understand it. (Of course, this is one interpretation. I hope the film lends itself to a few.)

Only about 20 percent of Americans own passports. Most Americans have never traveled overseas. (Some for financial reasons, but many out of fear or a lack of curiosity.) That means that the vast majority of Americans have never experienced the sense of "being a foreigner." It's a valuable learning experience, this sense of being a stranger in a strange land. Not only does it teach tolerance for U.S. immigrants, but it teaches that the American perspective isn't unique. In addition to American national chauvinism, there's French national chauvinism, Russian national chauvinism, Thai national chauvinism. Most country's citizens tend to think of their nation as the center of the world in one way or another, though few with our enthusiasm.

One of the main reasons I wrote The Elephant King was because after I spent some time living, working, and traveling in southeast Asia, I wanted to communicate the heady, exhilarating, lonely fluctuations of life as a "farang" -- a foreigner, an American outside of his national ethical context. I hope that in some way that experience comes through.

I wish I could have bought all of you trips to Chiang Mai. It really is still a beautiful city, at least some parts of it.