Customer Reviews

The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan

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The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan is a DVD episode of "Frontline" exposing the reality of a shocking cultural tradition that has re-emerged in modern Afghanistan. Formerly banned by the Taliban, the practice of "Bacha Bazi" or "boy play" is a form of child prostitution. Boys as young as eleven are bought from poor families or collected off the street, and forced to dress up in women's clothing and perform for the entertainment of wealthy and powerful men. After the performance, boys are sold to the highest bidder or pawned for sex. Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi talks with the boys of this practice (illegal under current Afghan law yet intractably prevalent, especially since so many of its patrons are rich and powerful), as well as the boys' families and their masters. A grim expose of cultural pedophilia, The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan is disturbing and absolutely unforgettable. 60 min.

A pre-Taliban practice is back in which men watch boys dance in women's clothing and then auction to get busy with them. The work stands out as being able to actually film the pimps, customers, and victims in this injustice. Those concerned about sex slavery and human trafficking should find this interesting.

The lies and corruption are thick here. One man says he doesn't get busy with these boys, but the smile on his face reveals the truth. One pimp lied that a boy died when the documentary makers have proof of this falsehood. Sadly, the same adult who speaks nicely about a boy starts calling him by epithets when he escapes. The narrator says the men can't really be punished because too many of them are or know police officers and high officials.

Given the secretiveness of this controversy, it makes sense that the makers could only show one instance of this practice. However, I wish larger issues would have come up. At these dancing events, there sure were a lot of men. I think child slavery stuff in the US would NOT have crowds of 50 or more men watching it. What makes such huge numbers of men cool with this? For decades, I would say male homosexuality has been stigmatized in the Christian and Muslim worlds (and I don't like that; I support gay rights to the fullest). How can so many men speak openly and happily about congress with teen and tween boys?! Centuries ago, Middle Eastern poets wrote pederastic poetry; is this the modern evidence of such acceptance? A British author in a book on gays in the Middle East said some men assert that the Quaranic verse that "men shall not get with men" is NOT violated when men get with boys. That book said that's why cross-generational homosexuality may be viewed as okay, but this documentary doesn't touch that. Why aren't these customers interested in women dancing and hooking?! Some say certain males only get with each other when no women are around. In that country, is prostitution by boys tolerable but by women is not?

This documentary wasn't what I expected. However, sometimes TV stations gotta work with what they got. I am concerned that viewers could see this and say, "Hey! If the Taliban got rid of this, then they must be okay!" This was a glass half empty.

The video is absolutely fascinating -- if you think about what you are watching. I am the 4th reviewer and so I won't dwell on the story itself. To me the flaws are even more fascinating.

I already knew about the dancing boys and much more about same-sex stuff in Afghanistan. Okay, various types of man/boy sex have ancient roots since hundreds of yearsBC. So far as the corruption goes I don't know how far back it goes. My understanding is that there is a lot of man/boy sex of various sorts in Afghanistan without all this corruption. So the popularity of man/boy attraction was not a shock. But the exploitation was and as a Westerner I did find that utterly disgusting. However, the Frontline production nevertheless was lurid and exploited the sex angle did not give enough context to put even the corruption into context.

In many ways I wish that Frontline had presented this with ethnographic neutrality or objectivity. But they did not and so I feel that they are fair game to put under the microscope.

Okay the bad guys in the dancing boys scene lied to the journalists. Of course the journalists were lying to them about what they were up to and how they were going to present their filming!!!! Yet the video assumed an aura of objectivity and moral indignation about lying. It is okay if we do it but not if they do it because we have a higher purpose and that is how we do things and we can take our ways for granted. Okay, par for the course.

The exploitation of the boys was wretched (from my point of view), but little was said about the overall issue of the exploitation of children for labor in that part of the world and even in ours. Is sex work of this sort really worse for the child on average than working in a rug factory? Actually that is a serious question in terms of child development and they did not touch on it. The boys and their parents on average might on average see this as a good option. The poor family gets money, the boys get to know important people and there is more personal concern for them than in a rug factory. Yes apparently some boys are truly abused and their lives are ruined. But is this typical and how does it compare to other types of child labor?

We are shocked about using boys as sex objects. But I have to stop and think how radical Islamists were shocked at the roots of their anti-Western movement by the ways we use women as sex objects. Western advertising with half naked women, films, etc. have been disgusting to them for whatever cultural reasons. Going back to some of the foundational writings, they were disgusted that men and women would even dance together in church buildings. What kind of a religion is this, they thought!!! I really have to wonder what they think about dads letting their daughters dress up in tight short pants and march in parades that way and cheer and jump around at football games -- and they are actually proud that the other guys drool over their daughters. We take this for granted, but try to imagine this through Afghani eyes. So the Taliban were against the education of women and that is in my eyes a much greater crime than child prostitution because it cripples an entire culture and disempowers half the population. But when Islamists see daddys' little girl kicking her shapely legs can-can style in front of thousands of horny men while her parents smile, one thing they may think (of course among others) is that this is where the education and liberation of women can lead. The Frontline film did too little to help us understand the outlook of the culture in the broader context of sex, the subjugation of women, etc.

There was stress in the film that many of the men who were part of the dancing boy culture were men of power and influence. I started to get the impression on a second viewing and from what I know of anthropology in general, that the dancing boys or boy sex slaves more broadly were were tied into the system of maintaining power. Powerful men allow their friends and allies to have sex with attractive and popular boys and this is a way of passing out favors that help them maintain their power. Powerful people in our society give out material things to develop alliances -- such as gifts, invitations to parties, vacations, business tips, etc. But also hookers are used. In that culture apparently popular boys are used as favors to help build personal networks and alliances. We are dealing here with a social political system that we know little about and yet we are bombing their people and professing that we are hoping to win them over to our way of life. This seems almost silly even on the face of it.

It is interesting to read that our own government has even secretly attempted to exploit the system that exploits the boys!!! Welcome to the real world of power and leverage. Okay Frontline, this is an open invitation to give us several followups that go much deeper into this multifaceted topic. Or, you could simply do another film that this time says that DynCorp are bad guys.

"The now infamous Wikileaks recently released a cable from Afghanistan revealing U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of "boy play" where young boys are dressed up in women's clothing, forced to dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder. Apparently this is the sort of "entertainment" funded by your tax dollars when DynCorp is in charge of security in Afghanistan. ... Why shouldn't U.S. government contractors be able to win local favor by pimping young boys?" [...]

SAVE YOUR MONEY, THIS WAS ON PBS-TV.MORE BRITISH B,S,THINGS LIKE THIS
HAPPENED ALL THE WAY BACK TO ALEXANDER-THE-GREAT, IN THIS AREA,SO WHY
BE SHOCKED?