Xelif

Sept. 11, 2001. Somewhere in Afghanistan...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Sheikh Osama! Our martyrdom operation was a failure!

Osama bin Laden: What, Khalid? I watched it on television! Our martyrs destroyed the infidels' symbols of imperialism!

KSM: This is true, Sheikh Osama. The infidels' buildings were destroyed, and many of the imperialists pig-dogs were indeed sent to Hell. But I have grave news...

OBL: What could possibly be the problem?

KSM: Well... Sheikh... it is difficult for me to say these words... I am dishonored... but Mrs. Moriarty is still teaching the 7th graders of Dubuque Central Middle School of charting typhoons like nothing happened. We... have failed, my Sheikh.

OBL: Blast it! The Moriarty woman has defeated us again!

Except that the poverty line is absolutely untrue. It's a tried-and-tested excuse that scammers use to justify themselves, but it's completely false. Scammers in Nigeria and other African countries are not in abject poverty. They're relatively well off. Most come from privileged backgrounds. They're more educated than their countrymen; they can speak, read, and write English fluently. (While English is an official language of Nigeria, it's not most peoples' first language; being able to read and write it fluently is a mark of good education.) They have the means to pay for time at cyber cafes. And as the article mentioned, they're seen by their peers as rich and successful. The article quotes annual takings from $14,000 to $25,000, which are excellent annual wages in Nigeria, where $8k-$10k annual income is considered middle class. If I made $125,000 a year and told you I was in poverty, would you believe me?

It's a blatant lie. People in Nigeria aren't starving, with the exception of some people living in areas of armed conflict in the northeast, where a low-intensity war with Boko Haram still rages. The scammers know quite well what the American stereotype of Africa is, and play to it.

Chinese people generally break all the East Asian stereotypes Americans have... which is slightly ironic, because the vast majority of East Asians are Chinese.

Interviewing children about potential trauma is extremely difficult.

Children are very perceptive, very sensitive to the environment, to the seriousness of situations, to how the adults around them are feeling and especially feeling toward them. They are exceptionally good at picking up on adults' cues of how they should speak and behave. But of course children don't have fully developed minds, they struggle to distinguish real and imagined experiences, they don't comprehend the consequences of what they say or do, and they are very vulnerable to suggestion.

Go too far in one direction and you have situations like Ms. Beers, where interviewers didn't do enough to discover her trauma.

Go too far in the other direction and you end up with the McMartin preschool trial in the late 1980s, the height of the Satanic Panic. An initial accusation of abuse by one mother (with untreated paranoid schizophrenia and alcoholism) spiraled into the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, which resulted in acquittal of all the accused on all 321 charges of ritual Satanic child abuse. The children were interviewed in a very extensive, suggestive, even coercive manner, by interviewers who seemed convinced that sexual abuse had taken place and that the children's initial denials were a result of fear or shame; the interviewers essentially guided the children to give the specific answers they were seeking. And it worked; while all of the children initially denied any sexual abuse had taken place at the McMartin preschool, most of them changed their stories to please the adults in the room. Many included fanciful elements that suggested they saw the interviews as inventive play sessions, but this didn't deter the interviewers - and the prosecution - from taking the children's (prompted) allegations as unquestioned fact.

IMO the foot binding scene is more complex than people in this thread are making it out to be. There's lots of things going on in that scene.

Chancellor Jia sees himself as the protector of Song Dynasty culture. The way he sees it, Khubulai Khan is not just threatening the Song Dynasty political order and his own position with it; Jia believes the Khan will destroy Chinese culture altogether. Foot binding reached its peak during the Song Dynasty, and was de rigeur for women of status - such as his niece. So a lot of things are going on in Jia's decision and approach to the binding, and I think Chin Han portrayed them wonderfully in his movements, subtle facial expressions, and tone of voice in that scene:

• Having Sunflower's feet unbound was a personal affront to him. In his mind, Sunflower is bound to be a woman of high status, perhaps even the Empress one day (if he can arrange it). As a woman of high status in late Song Dynasty China, Sunflower's feet must be bound - it would be unthinkable for her to have unbound feet.
• Sunflower's unbound feet reminded Jia of his and Meilin's peasant upbringing - her whoring herself out so that he might take a few coins to the festival. Jia strives to be the exact opposite of a peasant. In Jia's mind, to allow Sunflower to keep her feet unbound is to make her a peasant just like he and Meilin were.
• Chancellor Jia does have genuine concern for Sunflower, and in his mind, is acting in her best interests. His line, "this should have been done long ago", is genuine and heartfelt (and Chin Han delivers it perfectly). In his mind, it's not even about social expectations or his upbringing or his personal ambitions - he sees that unbound feet will be an impediment to Sunflower's future prospects as a woman of leisure; he has held off on the matter out of respect for his sister (which he does have, even though he doesn't show it), but it's already so late that the binding will cause severe pain to Sunflower (pain he judges to be necessary) - if he waits any longer, her feet will be too developed to bind, and she will essentially have disfigured, undesirable, peasant feet for life.
• As I said above, Jia sees himself personally as the protector of Chinese culture against the barbarian invaders. How can he protect Chinese culture if traditions are not respected in his own court, his own family? Sunflower's unbound feet may as well be Mongol infiltrators in his castle.
• The whole scene is an examination of power and powerlessness and Jia's character. Jia seeks power and control over all of the affairs of court and his family - yet there are things he cannot control. He knows, deep down, that he can't control whether Meilin is successful in her mission, but he can't handle that lack of power and control. The decision to bind Sunflower's feet, though surficially justified and correct to him for the reasons above, is his way of dealing with this. Subconsciously, to him, when there is a situation in which he is powerless, it must mean that someone is actively taking his power from him; chance and the vagaries of fate do not exist. He's powerless over Meilin's mission, so that must mean that Meilin is taking power from him. He reacts by taking power from her - not intentionally, mind you; Jia is an intelligent man, and he consciously knows that nothing he does to Sunflower will influence the success or failure of Meilin's mission. It's a subconscious way of lashing out over his lack of control by taking control over something within the other person's power.

I do wish that the writers of Marco Polo had taken more care to explain (or, in the Game of Thrones tradition, sexplain) foot binding, its role in society as an indicator of class and wealth and leisure for women, and therefore make Jia's beliefs and motivations more clear. The writing suggests that everyone thinks that foot binding is wrong and horrible and evil, when that is not the case - pretty much all of the women of the Song court should theoretically have bound feet, and the practice is commonplace. Binding Sunflower's feet was shocking because she was too old - everyone recognized that, even though it might be preferable for her to have bound feet, it's too late now; the arches are already developed and her bone structure is set in place, and doing it now would only cause her incredible pain (the custom was to start binding a girl's feet at 4 or 5; the bindings would gradually cause the foot to deform naturally as it grew, causing some discomfort to the child, but not scream-inducing pain).

The foot binding scene was my favorite scene of Marco Polo, because it was such a deep examination of Jia's character. It was revolting, to be sure, but it wasn't Saw-esque gore porn; the scene was meant to disturb you into thinking, not just to shock you.

edit: corrected/clarified a few words.