-from John Priddy

Friends, I invite you to spend 22 minutes with the incredible award-winning film, Deface. Please feel free to send the link to your friends, too.

The amazing and talented John Arlotto has graciously allowed Windrider to screen Deface, a film about a faceless worker in a small North Korean town. Sooyoung stays quiet and follows the rules, but when his daughter dies of starvation, he is driven by his outrage to vandalize the large propaganda posters that decorate the town, an act punishable by death. Against the backdrop of today’s hopeless conditions in communist North Korea, Arlotto challenges his audiences to think deeply about what one person can do — even in the face of devastating oppression — to stand up against overwhelming social challenges.

The film caused me to think about conditions in America today, and how many among us are dealing with depression, oppression and the like. I wonder if we, like Sooyoung, might need to stand up and change the messages on the “signs.”

Depression probably best describes what many in our society are feeling right now. Whether an overall malaise, sadness or hopelessness, emotional depression is a very real and formidable foe that many face every day. Economic depression is also widespread among us. It’s also now a daily reality for many, especially in our 24/7 media-frenzied environment.

Oppression, and the human response to it, is a central theme in Deface. Clearly, the hero of the film, Sooyoung, is battling this type of evil — where the unjust use of power presses down on a people who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

But it is Sooyoung’s response to his circumstances that may help inform our understanding of both depression and oppression. Fueled with righteous indignation, our hero finds a place in his soul from which he can summon courage to not believe the slogans on the signs. He personally changes the messages and writes new ones. Others observe these acts and begin to rise up as well — out of their own depressed/oppressed existence.

Most importantly, the film shows us that the ultimate heroic attribute is sacrifice, a choice that may very well be the starting point for responding to the challenges we face today.

Now I’m asking you: “How can we change the messages on the signs?”

-Jp