If you want to watch a Chinese 20-minute video equivalent of a Bosch painting, with commentary on politics and the environment, I recommend Zhou Xiaohu’s – Garden of Earthly Delights. You can see it at the White Rabbit Gallery if you don’t mind the flight to Sydney, or here if you don’t mind a few Youku ads:
https://player.youku.com/embed/XMTYxOTM2ODQ3Ng==
The part that stuck with me was the discussion of the impossibility of producing adequate rules to settle debates. The first two stills provide a nice antidote to the ‘debate me’ fools you see on twitter or makeshift stalls on University campuses:
The rest of the stills rehearse the discussions you might have in philosophy of research workshops after debating some clown on a camping chair next to your seminar room:
The final segment does an even better job than Question Time of ridiculing the idea that such debates are anything more than performances for our supporters. Farage and co come close, but there is nothing quite like the image of a giraffe and a weird mask debating through megaphones to highlight the futility of discussion under certain circumstances.
Then some figures come along and ruin the environment while some other figures do a bit of dancing. It’s an excellent way to sum up how doomed we all are.
See also:
Paul Cairney: Politics & Public Policy 